Page 3437 -- CCLXXXVIII.

Chapter Two Hundred Eighty-Eight: ‘The Knife in the snow...’
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Ugh. What a splitting headache. How long had it been since he’d felt one this bad? He thought he’d overcome this problem long ago, but now, here it was again. Old and familiar pain. The kind that brought back memories along with it.

That made it the very worst kind of pain, as far as Jercash was concerned.

He rolled over, only then realizing that he was on the ground. And cold.

Damn cold. It took a minute for his vision to clear. Where the hell was he? The mountains?

What had happened? He tried to recall.

The last thing he remembered...

Ah.

The battle. Right.

Well, shit. That fight had taken place in Kandra, the capital city of Kavia. So if he’d ended up all the way out here, then it must not have gone very well.

Hmm. He remembered a volcano. Specifically, a volcanic eruption, blanketing the horizon. And he remembered--ah.

Gohvis, that wild bastard. Where’d he go? Showing up out of the blue like that and suddenly pitching in with the battle? It had been so out-of-character that it had actually, somehow, made Jercash more concerned about his situation, not less.

Yeah. That was it. The real last thing he remembered. Thinking that if Gohvis was deciding to pitch in, then things must’ve been even worse than he’d thought.

And he’d thought they were pretty bad.

This entire warfront had been left in Jercash’s hands. And at first, it had been quite the endeavor. Jercash hadn’t felt such unquestioned authority at his fingertips in quite some time--hell, maybe ever. With the benefit of hindsight, perhaps that feeling had gotten a bit intoxicating and made him a tad... overzealous.

Especially after he and his boys managed to slay one of the Vanguardian marshals.

Carson. What a self-righteous prick that guy had been.

The celebration after that victory had been the stuff of legends. A party in the capital city, quite literally dancing on the bastard’s corpse, then parading it around the streets for all to see. The Kandran governor-general had not looked too pleased at the sight of Carson’s smote body lying there, but Jercash and his men had made sure to correct that attitude of his.

No frowning allowed during a celebration. That was the Abolish way.