Rewrite That Witch
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Chapter 814: Impartial Person

“The demonic beasts have fled — they all fled!”

The cheer went through the battlefield in a wave. The entrance to the cave was littered with corpses, the living swarm already dissolving into the distance. The machine gunner released the trigger and found that his finger joint had gone numb — he flexed it slowly, registering the stiffness. He looked down at the gun barrel, which had turned red from sustained fire. Scrapped, by the regulations. There had been no opportunity to change it.

“They were intimidating at a distance, but once you start fighting them—”

“The Church’s God’s Punishment Army was fiercer.”

“They’re beasts, after all.”

“Beasts?” The voice that responded belonged to a senior soldier who had clearly heard enough. “Go fight one with a bow if you think they’re just beasts. Three years ago these things were ravaging the Western Region. Everything changed because of His Majesty, do you understand that?”

“Y-yes, Captain!”

“Then stop celebrating and change the gun barrel.”

Edith watched from the rear of the battlefield with an expression that was more thoughtful than satisfied. She had come with Roland’s army through the Tooth Extraction Campaign and the destruction of the Church, and in all that time she had been working at the same private study: how would she command this army if it were hers? How would she structure the engagement to maximize what the firearms could do?

The new army demanded a new logic. Its doctrines had nothing to do with knightage charging formations or mercenary field maneuvers. She had been a successful practitioner of the old methods — excellent weapons, personal bravery, the momentum of cavalry — and she had found, with some discipline, that her prior success was something to discard rather than build on. Once she understood that her previous experience gave her no reliable guidance here, she began watching Roland instead.

Today had confirmed her thinking.

Firearms killed at range and did not tire. Their lethality was not about the space between soldiers but about the geometry of the lane: the narrower the field of fire, the more concentrated the killing. Two platoons could fill a front that would once have accommodated only three or four knights charging abreast. The engagement here had used only three machine guns — not for lack of room, but for lack of ammunition — and even so the density of fire had built a wall nothing organic could cross for long. When the demonic beasts pressed too tightly together, she had seen the ground mist red. The soldiers didn’t even need to aim in the traditional sense. They maintained the line and pulled the trigger.

If His Majesty had been in command, he wouldn’t have done differently.

What she could not fully explain was the behavior of the beasts.

Some fraction of the swarm was plainly intelligent — not just reactive, but capable of rudimentary analysis. When the main advance failed, they had spread out and begun to wander the cave perimeter, occasionally howling, apparently trying to bait or encourage the rest of the swarm to sacrifice itself in the bottleneck. They had the cognition to recognize a tactical problem. And yet despite this, they had obeyed the commanding voice without apparent self-interest. A demonic beast could survive alone in the wilderness; it had no biological need for hierarchy. And yet these had functioned as a unit under orders they could not have chosen voluntarily.

Was there something connecting them to the source of that voice that overrode individual interest entirely?

She filed the question away. Roland was the person most likely to have an answer.

He was, she thought, still the only thing in Neverwinter she consistently found surprising. Each time they spoke she came away turning the same question over: how large is that mind?

“Miss Edith.” Brian’s voice behind her. She turned to find the young officer’s face open with an emotion that struck her as unusually unguarded. Gratitude, she thought — real gratitude, not the performed variety. “You were invaluable today. I’ll make certain His Majesty knows your contribution in the battle report.”

“I only did what I was asked to do,” she said. A small smile. “I wasn’t confident it would succeed at the time. There’s no need to mention it.”

“Unacceptable.” He shook his head with conviction. “His Majesty’s principle is that results are what the army recognizes — not intentions, not process. A victory is a victory. If I omit your part in it, that’s theft. And it’s unfair to you.”

“Very well.” She shrugged. “If you insist.”

“I do.” He straightened and gave a proper military salute. “I also want you to know — I understand now, a little better, what you said about trust. The First Army is grateful for your counsel.” He held the salute a moment, then departed, already moving toward the next task on a long list of them.

She watched him go.

Something clarified.

She thought she now understood why Roland had selected a border patrol captain for a senior command role. In the knightage, battle credit was currency — it was what you built your petition for reward on, and the last thing you wanted was to dilute it by sharing. A record of outright false claims was harder to compile than an honest accounting. The social cost of acknowledgment was real, and most knights paid it grudgingly or not at all.

Brian had not hesitated for a moment.

She thought of what else the First Army had shown her. Promotions and rewards were still linked to performance — that part was unchanged from the old model. But the spirit around that structure was different. Completely different. And Brian’s instinct — to be fair even when fairness was optional and cost him something — was part of that spirit. It was character, and Roland had apparently identified it early.

Loyal to his king and honest. Command and knowledge could be learned. Character was a much harder thing to manufacture.

The ideological work in the primary school textbooks — the conscious shaping of these soldiers’ sense of what an army owed its members and what its members owed each other — might be the actual architecture. She had noticed the difference in spirit from her first days with the First Army. Now she thought she understood its source.

And today she had, in some small way, left her own mark on it.

Half a day later, Roland received word that the situation had been resolved.

At that point, the hundred emergency reinforcements had already boarded their ship. The remaining forces were still preparing, awaiting dispatch orders. Even the Witch Union’s newest members — Annie, Broken Sword, and the others — had made themselves ready to go. From City Hall to the barracks, all of Neverwinter had held its breath in the manner of a city under actual siege.

It turned out to be a false alarm.

The messenger was Maggie again. She sat with her head tilted slightly to one side and her mouth barely open, watching him with the steady patience of a creature for whom waiting required no effort. He took out some beef from the drawer and tossed it onto the table. She picked it up with immediate satisfaction.

In the end, he did not order the first platoon to return — morale had to be considered. But he rotated Soraya and Summer in to replace Annie’s team and tasked them with conducting a more thorough survey of the ruins.

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