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the first casualty of war is innocence.
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War was nothing like what Hermione had imagined. It was not the grand clashes of swords or the swift strikes of vengeance she had envisioned, but a slow, grinding affair of waiting and obeying the commands of men who fancied themselves the greatest swordsmen alive. And when the waiting was over, there was training. Always training.
Endless training.
Under the blistering sun, through the biting cold of the night, in rain and snowfall. Day after day, the harsh realities of battle wore down her body. Her fingers snapped like kindling after Lord Umber knocked her to the ground and crushed them beneath his weight and ironclad boots. The skin of her palms blistered, rubbed raw by hours of handling weapons too heavy for her. There were nights when the simple act of breathing became agony, her chest still bruised from a blow struck by a fresh recruit during sparring. They were careless, these boys sent to fight, careless with her and with their own lives.
When it came time for the ranks to be set, she was assigned to the lowest of them all—rank twenty-seven, a place of no honor, the dregs of Robb's brigade. A flicker of indignation stirred in her, deep down where her heart still cared for such things. But the exhaustion that clung to her bones left her too drained to speak, much less to protest. The fight she had once carried like a banner now felt like a distant memory.
