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The column smashed itself head first into the assembled line of Mizarian archery. You were aware that this would be an archer who would perform poorly against your heavily armoured and armed poleaxemen.
Any sense of formation or discipline had been expelled from their thoughts as they began hacking and slashing their way in. There would be no prisoners here, of that you were certain. The winds picked up again from a northeastern direction, bringing with it the iron smell of blood and the stench of sweat. You kept your distance for now, preferring to overlook and command from the rear, as you were the man in charge of this campaign; you shouldn't risk yourself by fighting in the front.
Though part of you had dearly wished to join them in the bloody business that is melee combat, you also knew that that was not to be. In your youth you had time for such things, adventuring and erranting across as the squire of Ehrenfried. Those were good times, yes, but they also are now starting to feel like the past, an echo of your boyhood. Yet, you knew that if you were to return to Greifswald, your old life could not be picked up again. No, you would return as the full-fledged heir of the dukedom, expected to be the ever-present and loyal heir. There would be no more adventures, no more racing Wittekind across the plains. Duty would come for you.
But you do still wonder why you came here; your faithfulness aside, of course, was it a desire to see the world before the world would demand all your time? Did you come here to leave as a boy and return as a man? Or is it the opposite? Did you come here to escape the drudgery of adulthood?
This crusade can't be all you can be remembered for; tight, the shadow of your father and, to a lesser extent, that of your great-granduncle loom large over the family legacy. What would be yours compared to your father's? Shall you be a footnote in the history of it all, only remembered as the second duke and the second crusader named Albrecht von Adlershorst? How can you slip out from under your father's shadow? Your namesake at least had to earn his place in the world, though at the price of having to pass things on to his great-nephew rather than any children of his own. But it is his sword that now rests on your belt. Is there really such a shame in being handed all you have to you by the previous generation? Was that not the natural way of things? Part of you wished to go out and carve out something on your own, but has your father not given you the foundation to build something greater with? Is that not the point of it all?
