"Pick up the pace and move closer to the core of the formation. You're getting a little too far out," Markus sent to those acting as the rearguards along the line of human relays. "Report." He ordered the northern side of their formation. If he was willing to spend the time to shift through and sense everything within the union, he could figure it out himself, but there was too much going on for him to shuffle through the knot of sensations in a reasonable time frame.

"The beastkin are already circling around us. We could punch through, but…" The woman left the rest unsaid as something called for her attention. But she didn't need to say; where would we go? Because half of the scouts were malnourished, and the others were simply injured or exhausted from the running fight.

Markus hadn't expected to exit the bridge and find themselves walking into the unwelcoming arms of an approaching legion. But at worst, he expected a couple of hours where they could flee unhindered before the beastkins would be hunting for them on this side of the river in large enough numbers to matter. The reality was very different as the legionaries hardly had a moment from walking off the bridge before being harassed.

Markus used every trick he knew to throw off any beastkins chasing them and dissuade pursuit. Traps were set in their wake. The tracks of the fish were covered. Smaller groups were sent out into the forest, making false trails in their wake, while the main group heightened their efforts to conceal their passage.

None of it worked. The centurion didn't know if they couldn't escape because everyone involved in the chase knew where they had to be going, if the beastkins were keeping up through sheer stubbornness and luck, or if they had the numbers to fill the whole forest… Though it was probably a combination of all three.

The thought crossed his mind to order everyone to scatter the force and hope someone would make it back to a legion as best they could, but the beastkins had already proven they were more than capable of finding and capturing them. Finding and killing would only be easier. The scout fish wouldn't even have a chance…

And yet the thought persisted as it continually reared its head within the back of his mind. The idea was unable to make it past the lump in his throat, but it remained like a wound he couldn't stop probing. However, with every moment that passed and every step closer they took to being trapped, the burden of duty was making it easier to push past the blockage.

The knowledge that the most probable result of splitting up was all of their deaths wasn't what was stopping Markus from voicing the command. Though to hedge his belief, Markus had already sent five scouts into the forest to make their way back alone. Hopefully, they would live, but he had little faith in that outcome. No, the centurion truly believed that their best chance of getting out was in a group, but that was looking less likely by the moment.

Reports of contacts with beastkins continually filled Markus's mind. They were attacking the scouts from all but one flank, and that was only because the river secured their right side. There were still some reports of beastkin across the river, but they were unimportant.

At first, he tried to move the group away from the river and into the forest but quickly decided against it when the attacks started. The beastkin were moving faster than them in the overgrown forest, and their only chance was to make a run for it on the mostly clear banks of the river. Never thought I would be thankful for the nearly seasonal floods. Markus thought in wry amusement.

For the last hour, they had been moving as quickly as they could through the trees no more than a dozen yards from the river's bank. There was no way they were making it out of this, not while fighting. I wonder if it's possible to negotiate. Not with the wolves, but the Redtail Faction? If they are genuinely opposed to the spell Scout Green was in, they might… Or, more likely, kill us to cover up the fact it exists. He thought with cold certainty. Internal politics did not mean they would be obvious about betraying their kin.

"But at least they have proven to be more… open-minded in talking to us," Markus muttered to himself. The trainees looked at him with faith and hope as he spoke, prompting him to finally make up his mind. Their looks had kept him searching for an answer this long, but all he was doing was delaying the inevitable. "Gather up! We are going to punch through and—

"Centurion," interrupted a horse voice. Looking over, Markus saw it was Sathera, and her interruption was surprising. He could feel her understanding of the decision he had reached through the mental link, but he also felt her conviction. Her face was covered in streaks of sweat and grime, and on her back was Green, who she and the other trainee had traded off carrying since the bridge. Though her face was practically hidden under a mask of dirt, he could tell she was young, somewhere in her mid-twenties.

Every citizen was required to serve, though the age at which they started varied from fifteen to twenty-five, but no one who wanted to be a citizen escaped their decade. Many tried to run, saying it was unjust that they didn't want to waste a decade of their lives, but what was ten years to an average life span of a hundred and fifty years?

She must have been one of the ones to sign up as early as possible, and then she got into the scouts. She has skill. And spirit, Markus thought in admiration as she met his stern look. There was a fire burning in her eyes. Chest heaving to catch her next breath, her hand was steady as she pointed to the river. "Make a raft." She gasped out.

Markus's face was blank for a moment, then a half-crazed smile spread over his face as she sent him her idea, "…Yes!" He shouted in excitement.

Boats traveling on the Rush this far north were not something people did often, if at all. There was just nothing up here to make it worth coming. Every year, when the snow melted, the river was impassible with the torrent of water, and if you walked by any dock down south, you could hear sailors complaining of their damaged boats or being trapped in an isolated village one year.

But up past the Triad on the Rush, you never saw a soul on the river, and Markus was leery if anyone had ever been on the waters. A few river merchants worked the Twins' trenches, but they were strange folk up there, and you rarely saw them. The point was that, living up here for so long, the idea of sailing down the Rush to the Triad had never crossed Markus's mind.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"Squads two through four, start chopping down trees and limbing them before moving them to shore!" Markus barked out, causing the area to burst into motion before he sent, "Perimeter squads, keep them away for as long as you can, but pull back when pressed!"

He waited a moment before shouting, "The rest of you are on me! We're going to lay the trees out!"

Before, the few wounded scouts leading the trainees had a sunken, resigned look in their eyes. They knew death was coming. But now, they had a real chance at life, and that purpose had given them a new spark.

Within moments, the sounds of impacts against wood could be heard. Forming a tendril into teeth small enough to be called a saw and working it through a trunk might be difficult for most, but creating a wedge and smacking it into a tree hard enough to shatter rocks was not.

All around him, Markus saw wood chips fly into the air as the legionaries worked their castings in an intense frenzy. It wasn't long until the first distinctive cracks and pops of a tree falling sounded, followed by screams of fear and shouts of anger.

"Ahh! For fucks sake!"

"Watch what you're doing, fucking idiots!"

"By the elementals, at least guide the crow-begotten tree down!"

"Don't fucking chop into it on one side! You need a fucking wedge to guide it and a back cut! By the Elementals, does anyone even know what in the damnation they're doing?!"

The last voice that sounded Markus recognized as Kimel. She was a hard woman who liked spending her time in the forest more than at camp. However, the surprise was shattered a moment later by an enthusiastic male voice shouting, "Timber!"

"Out of the way!" Shouted Kimel, "Move to the fucking sides!" Markus looked over at the sounds of more screams and cracks of branches smacking into each other.

"Who was the fucking idiot that dropped that on us! I'm gonna do a favor to Olimpia by castrating you! We can even make a game out of it. I'll grab your legs and pull them to the sides until we find out which side your balls end up on. Heh, we can still call it a fucking wishbone, so long as you got something down there worth mentioning!"

As she talked, the youthful face of a man in his early thirties drained of color, becoming ashen. His eyes flicked to others for support, but Kimel wasn't the only one almost crushed by the falling tree. All he found were angry or indifferent faces.

"Kimel," Markus sent, "Show them how to cut down a tree safely but make it fast. We don't have much time." Kimel paused, making the young scout sweat for a few more seconds before turning to Markus and saluting him with her fist to the chest.

"Gather around, morons. I don't know how you joined the legions without learning this," Kimel shouted, "but this is how you chop down a tree!" Rapid chopping sounds could be heard in her words for half a minute before the sound stopped. "Once you have the wedge angled where you want the tree to go, you start on the back while pushing with a strand until it falls. Make sure to—"

Markus stopped listening to Kimel talk as he had more important things to do.

"Twenty coming in from behind!" Said a man's mental voice along the union link.

"Ten from downstream," A female Sent.

"Two groups of twenty from the north," Came a third voice with traces of fear suffusing the message.

Markus took in the rapid-fire reports, overlaying the information on his mental map of the area. The front and back of the formation had most of a half a mile separating them, with the northern flank a fourth of a mile inland from the river.

"First squad stall the advancing beastkin and fall back. Sixth and eighth squads move to support the seventh squad as they delay the beastkins and pull back. Ninth squad, perform a controlled retreat to us." Each sentence that Markus sent to his people was only delivered to those he was addressing. While a commander could never have too much information so long as it didn't cause indecision, the troops didn't need a distraction by knowing an overall battle plan and all the information that went along with it. Especially how fucked they were.

"Keep me up to date on any developments." Markus sent to everyone.

Seconds passed into minutes, and what felt like every few seconds, he felt a pang as his mind was torn from the union. In the back of his mind, he added another mark to the death toll as their chances of escaping lessened.

Shouts filled the trees around Markus, the trainees, and the survivors from the 1st turma bit out chunks from the logs. More time passed, and they all felt the growing pressure to hurry as the perimeter of scouts slowly compressed, every scout supporting each other as they retreated.

The workers' movements became frantic as they knew time was running out, causing those commanding them to shout at them to get their heads out of their asses and think when they were almost killed by falling trees. Rushed as they were, every thirty seconds, another one of the two to three-foot-in-diameter trees fell to the ground and was swarmed over by the scouts like a colony of ants until it was branchless.

The logs began to pile up, but far sooner than anyone wanted, the outer perimeter had no more room to retreat as there were only a dozen paces between them and the workers. Not that anyone was surprised, as it had long been clear they would have to fight to buy time for the crafter to finish. A rush of three dozen beastkin came storming out from the depths of the forest in an attempt to catch them before the scouts could escape onto the rafts.

In response, Markus shouted, "Charge!" leading the scouts into battle. Using a tendril on his bar, he swept it out around him and slammed it into the legs of the leading beastkins, knocking them off their feet. He did not stop his stride to finish them off, leaving them for the fifty others coming in his wake to handle.

Screams of rage and pain filled the afternoon forest, drowning out the clanks of steel on wood and flesh. The bodies of the two sides mingled, performing a rendition of the oldest dance known to man. That of bloody conflict, which, no matter its choreography, was always the same yet different.

One moment literally bled into the next as Markus surged along the battle line, supporting all he could reach with his gore-stained and now bent steel rod. But try as he might, he could not save all his men. Their lack of equipment and fatigue were too much of a burden for them to come out of this battle without losses.

After the initial rush, the beastkin quickly realized they were outnumbered and couldn't outfight the desperate scouts, so they fell back. The beast's howls of rage echoed off the trees as they went, followed by the jeers of the victorious humans. Doing a quick check, Markus counted another thirteen dead, putting the total cost to hold this ground at twenty-three. But finally, the rafts were ready.

And though Markus hated to admit it, the dead helped them more than the living, as they decreased the number of rafts they needed to build. Constant reports of spotting more beastkin flooded into Markus's mind from pulse and the union messages, but it no longer mattered.

"Let's go!" Markus shouted and sent to his legionaries. Bodies turned and rushed towards the logs laid next to and on top of each other on the bank, making up their rafts.

"Pound in those bars!" Markus heard someone shout as he raced over the leaf-strewn forest floor. Markus leaped off the bank, passing the last tree and dropping to the river's beach a few feet below.

Sand flew up behind him as he ran with those who had held the perimeter. He watched as the bars they took from the cages were pounded through the tree trunks, piercing multiple logs and keeping them together.

Markus paused on his last stride before stepping onto the raft, searching the forest's darkness. He thought he could see the flickering forms of beastkin among the trees, but he paid them no heed. Sending out a pulse, he ensured no one was left out there. Not that it would matter if he discovered it now, as they would be on their own.

Turning a moment later, Markus stepped onto the raft as those already on it pushed and pulled it out into the wide river with their psy.

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