Radeon reached the cesspit, and the sour reek hit him like a slap. Filth steamed in the trench while a stick of cheap agar smoldered on a stone, losing the war one thin curl at a time.
Tobacco smoke lay low over the sitting pits where men squatted and traded talk, tongues as loose as their bowels.
"They say those peaks drink more blood than rain."
"Aye, and that's why they hauled our sorry hides up here, instead of leaving us to our cups."
Radeon took their measure with a glance. Most had the look of itinerant practitioners, clothes patched yet spirits high. The battlefield had not reached their smiling faces yet. For them it was still a chance at a banner and a place.
One sat quiet in the middle of it all, thin as a reed in pristine white robes. He edged from one knot of men to the next, never quite close enough to ask for what he needed, eyes slipping to the rags in their hands.
No one went to him, but Radeon knew that stubborn clench in his jaw.
A fool who had squatted first and only after remembered he had brought nothing to wipe with. Radeon stepped toward the young man and let a clean scrap of parchment slip from his sleeve.
"Here, young lord. Use it."
The boy took it without looking at him, chin high and jaw tight. Only the red creeping up his ears betrayed him. Radeon was already turning away, letting him keep his pride.
Once the parchment was thrown down into the muck, Radeon uncapped his waterskin and let a thin stream wash over the young man's stained fingers.
They left the stink behind together. The youth scrubbed his palms against the inside of his robes and gave Radeon a sharp, puzzled look.
"Young lord," Radeon said, eyes on the dirt. "I'm only a scholar. If I'm to write these wars, to put your name where it belongs, where should I put myself?"
The boy's lip curled. His gaze flicked to Radeon's soft boots and ink-stained cuffs. He weighed him and found a clerk where a sword hand should be.
A row of curses crowded his tongue. Words for cravens who watched while others bled. He bit them back and tugged a folded map from his belt instead.
He thought of quills and sagas in warm halls. Of his master listening while singers trimmed truth to please him. The old man had warned him once to mind the men who made songs.
"Draw it clean. Now. Do that for me, scribe, and I'll show you where they pen the ones too soft to fight."
Radeon fished a stub of charcoal from his pouch. His wrist moved in quick, sure strokes. Lines for ridges. A smear for forest. A river in three bold curves.
In a few breaths, a second map lay between them, cleaner than the first. The young lord tried to keep his face still and paid for it with talk.
"The banners will come up this road," he said, his finger tracing the bend. "My uncle never leaves the main track. He loathes the woods, says flanking's a cheat for men who can't win in the open."
"Here. I think. Yes, yes, here. He'll set the camp somewhere along this stretch," he said, his hand sliding on, less sure. "Wagons packed tight to the road, leech-tents just behind."
"The ones who won't stand in the line get thrown back here." He tapped the hollow behind the ridge. "Cooks, ink-fingers, all the soft hands. Safe enough for you."
Not wanting to linger, the young swordsman turned to go, certain he had schemed enough to set his name in ink and wax.
'One more favor in the bank, might be worth something later.'
"Young lord, a moment. They'll want your portrait for the reports when this is over," Radeon said, lifting his gaze at last.
He slipped back to their small corner. His filbert moved quick over the canvas he had set ready. He caught the boy's likeness in a handful of lines. The set of his jaw. The proud tilt of the blade.
"Sword up, young lord. Like this. Good. Hold it there."
When he finished, the young swordsman stared as if at a brighter version of himself. Secrets and the picture lay between them on the board, a fair trade in both their minds.
Then Radeon left the stench and chatter of the pits behind and carried them only in his mind as he made his way back to the tent.
Fay never even saw Radeon return. Her head stayed bent over her leather-bound book, pen moving in slow, secret loops. Whatever ran behind her eyes he could not read, but he saw the white of her knuckles on the binding.
Radeon would not have her crack in the thick of it. His hands closed around hers. Not a lover's touch, but a firm squeeze, the kind a mentor might give a frightened child.
The tremor ran its course and faded from her fingers. Radeon kept her gaze, steady and plain, asking without words for her to stand her ground.
Fay did not pull away. For a moment she let herself lean into him, as if his shoulder were a post in a storm.
"If I die here, then let it be chasing the sky I begged for," she whispered.
At twenty she liked to say her life was already half spent. Betting what remained on this road did not feel much of a loss.
Radeon heard the quiet scraps of her muttering and let her be.
He had been afraid once. He still grew tired. Bone-deep weary when old mistakes came back to claw him.
Once he had been a hungry boy, begging for alms and small chances from others, and as his road rose above theirs, he learned to regret how he had clutched at every kindly word.
This hard lesson stayed with him. Better to bear the hard choice himself than let pleasant words from others steer his hand toward regret.
So if she later rued this choice, any comfort he pressed on her now would curdle into a sword in her mind, its edge honed on blame.
Radeon held his ground beside her and let the quiet stretch. He kept his ear turned toward the tent wall, to the muffled murmur beyond, while his merchant's smile did its work and he sold one portrait after another.
The sun went down. The dinner bell rang along the camp. Radeon drew Fay's cloak close to her sleeping body and set her leaning against a spare crate of crops and greens.
Before he closed his eyes, he slid the bag of spirit stones into the inner pocket of her cloak. All the earnings from the portraits he had sold. He told himself he had no use for that weight in what came next.
If they chanced to take him, they would strip him, count every stone, and wonder why a harmless painter carried such a fortune.
"Better the fortune stays with her."