She had told him that they would need more men. And yet he had sent them out either way. Half of them into an early grave, just because he thought he could not spare one hundred more men to protect five times as many from certain death.
As Impa had predicted, the Garoh had been upon them from the back as soon as the tides of the Hylian troops had swept away the main defenses in the canyon. And all of a sudden, after forcing their way into this bottleneck of tall, angular rocks, the other half of the Garoh put in the cork on one end and slaughtered as many soldiers as they could before losing this battle.
They never retreated. The Garoh language knew no word for it other than Desertion, Flight, or Betrayial Of Your Tribe. And even though she had told His Majesty all this, Harlen had still insisted on sending only these few soldiers, of whom even fewer were left now.
Impa moved with precision, avoiding bumping into any of the staggering, disoriented survivors, yet she did not want to make it seem as if she avoided them. She wanted to look every single one of them in the eyes and beg them forgiveness for not sparing them this fate. For not stopping Harlen from letting it happen. Losing so many of their comrades, their friends, having to see them picked apart like butchered animals and gathering the sorry remains to burn them before the wolfos came to bite at them.
Monsters have become so plentiful, Impa thought solemnly, yet the worst of them aren't out here in the wilderness, but in Hyrule's very castle. She stopped for a moment, looking up above, where the purple sky of dusk looked like a tiny, bright crack in the dark mass of the canyon. How can you Goddesses watch over us from up there if you can't even see the bottom of this chasm? she wondered, Why have you forsaken us?
In that moment, a few voices rose above the murmur of low sobbing of the living and whispered prayers for the dead. Most notably were the high-pitched cries of a child. Impa immediately ran over to the source of the sounds, no longer bothering to not run into anybody. Their eyes were all turned towards the same sight anyways. And when Impa could finally see the boy, too, her heart almost gave out.
There he lay, a tiny, young Hylian with bright brown hair, bloodied and covered in cuts and pieces of ill-fitting armour. His once-green tunic was stained brown by all the blood. Some was his, the rest that of his Garoh opponent, who lay twitching and dieing next to him, impaled on a short sword, thrust through his lithe body and into the ground. Impa's violet eyes widened even further, when she saw the mark on the boy's palms. Mere moments ago he had still held that weapon.
He was a child soldier. Harlen had actually dared to send a child into battle. Suddenly Impa couldn't bear looking towards the other corpses anymore. How many more were there? Had there been some even among her own unit, or had Harlen carefully chosen to assign them only to the other legions?
Ultimately it didn't matter. The battle was done. And this kid was bleeding to death, crying in agony over what he had seen, what he had done.
"Quick!" Impa yelled to the few men standing about, "Some bandages! His wounds must be tended to!" While they went, she fell to her knees in front of the boy. When victory had been theirs, she had sworn to appear strong, to not shed a single tear despite their heavy losses, just so to ask her men to keep their eyes unfazed too, until they were back on home soil and it was safe to mourn.
Yet the sight of that boy made her break her vows. She was overwhelmed by seeing a child who had not even seen his tenth nameday yet on a battlefield like this, sent to fight and die by a king obsessed with revenge on a people he thought had wronged him.
For but a short moment, Impa understood Harlen now. And thus, she made a new vow, in sight of the Goddesses above, to make him pay for it.