Recruit Regiment Base, 48th Colchis Auxiliary Army
At five thirty in the morning, dawn had yet to break.
The air was like coarse burlap soaked in ice water: heavy, damp, and bone-chilling.
Frost left over from the night still clung to the barracks' metal walls and the wire fences, gleaming with a lifeless shimmer beneath the pallid beams of the searchlights.
But that cold and silence vanished the instant a savage roar erupted, loud enough to shatter icicles and tear through the morning mist.
"Johnny!!! How! Many! Fucking! Times! Have I told you!!!"
The roar came not from a loudspeaker, but straight from a chest that seemed forged from rock and anvils. It carried an impact almost solid enough to smash into people's faces, sweeping across the entire recruit assembly ground in an instant. Even the air seemed to tremble.
The speaker stood directly in front of the ranks, like an erupting volcano draped in a dark gray training coat.
He was the chief instructor for this intake of recruits, Sergeant Dragovich.
His face was weather-beaten, his skin like tanned leather, its deep creases seemingly ingrained with dirt and Smoke that could never be washed away.
Most intimidating of all were his eyes: gray-blue, cold, and as sharp as two honed bayonets. Now blazing with undisguised fury, they were fixed on a pale young recruit trembling slightly in the third rank.
"You're fucking infantry! Infantry! Understand?! Not some goddamn cook peeling potatoes in the rear! And certainly not an honor guard standing by the gate in a pretty uniform!"
Sergeant Dragovich advanced with heavy strides, his boot soles striking the frozen ground with dull thuds, like war drums pounding against everyone's chest.
He came almost nose to nose with the recruit named Johnny, spraying spittle and clouds of white breath