A Word-General towers a head above the living soldiers around it, a figure of flickering grey-gold light shot through with the stark white of shouted command. It wears armour from a dozen eras at once, a bronze cuirass over mail, a crested helm over a mail coif, the plates shifting as the light flickers, and no two generals wear the same mixture. Its face is clearest at the mouth, which never stops moving.

Most of the time the commands are silent, and only the shapes of words flash in the air before it like frozen lightning, a luminous afterimage of "hold" or "advance" hanging for a heartbeat. When the zone is strongest its voice breaks through: a roar that is felt in the chest like a blow of wind. It does not walk so much as appear at the head of a line, then at another. The air around it smells of iron, sweat, and the sharp, burnt scent the zone gives to spoken power.

Word-Generals exist only while the Grammar is awake, and vanish when the fighting stops. They gather where battles have been fought before, so an old border field or a much-contested siege line may raise several at once, from different wars.

Each is commanding and imperious, and cannot help issuing orders; it treats every living person within reach as a soldier to be directed. Some are coherent, and repeat a clear last order that once won or lost a battle. Others are fragmented, shouting contradictory commands that make the zone stutter. None seems to know that its war is over, or which side the living around it are on.

A Word-General’s orders work as any order in the Grammar works, by the weight of rank and conviction behind them, and a dead general’s last order carries the rank it had. A soldier caught by one may be overwritten and become one of the Commanded, holding a line that no longer exists until thirst kills him. Two generals shouting opposite orders can make the ground crack and the air shimmer, and tear soldiers between them. They also carry the knowledge of ancient battles and forgotten strategies.

A commander who knows the field may learn from them; the knowledge of lost wars speaks in their repeated orders. Few dare to listen long. The safest counsel among soldiers who have fought in the Grammar is to stay away from the Word-Generals, give no orders one cannot live with, and obey none blindly.

Soldiers believe the Word-Generals are the great captains of the past, returned to fight beside the worthy, and some armies seek out old battlefields in the hope of one taking their side. A Word-General takes no side; it is a remnant of command, not a captain, and it orders friend and foe alike. Veterans who have heard one tell that its last order was usually the order that lost its battle, and that the dead general goes on giving it.

Sellsword captains who have fought in the Grammar tell of a dead general’s shout that held a pike line against cavalry for a whole afternoon, and of the night afterwards, when the line still could not move.