How a battle ends

A battle ends the moment one side has nobody left still fighting. It does not wait for the end of the round: the game asks after every blow, throw and shot, whenever a man leaves the field, and at the start of every man's turn (a wrestling throw is the one act it does not ask after, so a battle ended by one ends when the next turn begins), so the last man of a company to stop counting ends it there and then.

Who is still fighting

A man counts as still fighting if he is alive, has not gone down or fled, still has his nerve, and is on his feet or could get back on them. That last part is generous: a man lying senseless still counts if his legs are sound, because he will come round, and so does a man whose leg is only numb.

A man stops counting when he is:

• dead;
• down: out of the fight for good, because he fainted from loss of blood or a wound put him out. He no longer stands on the field (a shape marks where he fell), and he goes on bleeding at the end of every round; if he comes to half his blood, he dies where he lies;
• fled: he has left the field;
• running: his nerve has gone and he is making for his own edge. He may still rally, but while he runs he does not count, and a side whose last men are all running has lost;
• on the ground for good: his legs will not bear him even once any numbness has passed, or, for a beast, it has fewer than three legs that will. See On the ground.

With No one ever runs ticked on the muster, nobody's nerve moves, so nobody runs and no company gives way: a battle then ends only when one side has nobody left who is alive, not down, and able to stand. See The muster.

The three endings

The last line of the log says the same and, when one side won, whether any of the beaten side ran.

A company that gives way

A company knows when it is beaten, and need not be killed to the last man. At the end of each round, a company that is down to half its men or fewer still fighting, and is outnumbered by the men the other side still has fighting, judges itself as a body. The chance it holds is the nerve of the men still up, taken together, less a good deal for every man it is outnumbered by, and less again when it is down to its last two or its last one. If it fails, every man left breaks at once, and since none of them is still fighting, the battle is over. The log marks it with a line of its own.

This applies to your company as much as to theirs. The half is counted from the company's own strength, so a company that marched out outnumbered is not judged until it has lost half of itself. A company whose men have more nerve sells itself more dearly. Boars, bears and trolls hold longer than most companies of men; a wolf pack gives way a little more readily. See Nerve.

On the road: the chase

In a battle on the road, the field is not always yours the moment the last of them breaks. If any of them can still run (on their feet or able to get up, and not senseless), the game stops and asks: Run them down or Let them go. Let them go and the battle ends as above. Run them down and it goes on. They make for their edge by the same rule any running man follows, and leave the field once they reach it or are more than a turn from every one of your men still fighting. Your men strike them as they catch them. Call off the chase, beside End turn, ends it whenever you like, and it ends by itself once nobody is left who can run. A man who gets his nerve back turns and fights, and the battle is simply on again.

The chase decides what the field is worth. What happens to each of them at the burying is told under the road.

You cannot give a battle up yourself. The way out of one you do not want to finish is to leave for the muster and march again (see Leaving for the muster).

The box

When the battle ends a box opens over the field. Under its title it says how many rounds the battle lasted, and then lists every man who took the field, his name in his side's colour, with what became of him:

• unharmed, or standing, wounded: still on the field, and not running;
• routed, still running: on the field, with his nerve gone;
• fled the field;
• down, and why: fainted from blood loss, or the wound that put him out;
• dead, and why.

After a man's fate comes how many he slew, if any. Only a man killed outright by his blow, his throw or his shot counts; one who went down and bled to death later does not.

What next

Three buttons close the box:

• Fight the same match again starts a new battle at once, from the muster as it stands: the same men marching on each side, whole again, with the kit the muster gives them. Any kit left to the lot is drawn again, and the field itself is new. You form up again before the first turn.
• Change who fights takes you to the muster. The finished battle stays behind it: the muster's Back to the field returns you to the field and this box, until you march again.
• Look over the field closes the box and leaves you on the field as the battle left it. Nobody can act, but you can select any man, fallen or standing, to read what was done to him, and scroll back through the log. Back to the muster, on the order bar, is the way on from there.

Nothing carries over

Each battle starts from the muster, and nothing that happens in one reaches the next. Wounds, deaths, kills, a man who broke and ran, arrows loosed, a weapon lost or picked up from the grass: all of it stays with the battle it happened in. A man killed in one battle marches whole in the next, as the man he was when you mustered him. Nothing is won or lost for the purse. The muster remembers only what you set on it.

That is a skirmish. On the road, wounds and deaths carry from one fight to the next.

A battle that will not end

There is no limit on rounds, and one thing can keep a battle going for ever. If the last men up on each side cannot hurt each other (a bronze mace that no longer gets through a boar's hide, and a tusk that no longer gets through her armour, say), neither ever goes down, neither is hurt enough for his nerve to give, and nothing lets a man leave a fight he cannot win: the other side's men never walk away from one, and yours cannot leave the field unless their nerve goes. It is rare. If you see the same two trading blows for dozens of rounds with nothing getting through, it will not end on its own: go back to the muster and march again.