A signal arrived when the sun dipped low. The command followed without delay.
Morning comes. Two hours past sunrise. Not the west but the east moves first - that is what the order claimed, casting their units as vanguard of a united front. They called it privilege. Same sound, different meaning beneath. Kael remembered the muddy flats where his group stayed, then the high western ridges where officers lounged in silk tents. He saw how things lined up. Needed no speech to know who stood above and who below.
Eastward units held back from the front lines.
That first price tag was their job.
A hush spread across the valley, not sudden but drawn out - like dusk pausing on purpose. Flames from mealtime blazes dipped to embers. Sounds typical at night - the bickering, shuffling cards, off-key tunes sung by tired voices longing for home - faded without warning. Silence took over, heavy and close, leaving only tens of thousands stretched beneath wool blankets, eyes open or shut, sharing breaths under a sky growing colder. Each man held fragments of the same unease.
Midnight came. Each breath was too loud, as if the dark would notice. Time slipped through fingers already empty.
A gap waited near the back, tucked beside stacked boxes, out of the gusts. From a pocket, Bren pulled a small piece of candle, placing it gently on the ground. A flame caught, flickering low in the dark. They lowered themselves nearby, forming something like a ring, though no one said so. Sitting there, close but not touching, made silence easier. Thoughts stayed inside heads, unshared, while shadows leaned across faces.
Footsteps ahead of everyone else, that was Sorin - always stepping up when words were due.
"I want everyone to know," he began, in his large serious voice, "that if I die tomorrow, someone owes me a drink."
Bren's laugh burst out, sharp at first, then it softened. His voice didn't rise, yet Orren gave a slow head tilt - the corner of his lip twitched anyway.
"Specifically one drink," Sorin continued. "Doesn't matter what. Whatever they have wherever we end up. I'm not demanding quality. I'm demanding the gesture."
"Done," said Ysse.
"Recorded," said Orren.
"Done," Kael said.
Bren stayed silent, just for a beat. After that pause came the words: "Could it happen that I go before you?"
"Then I owe you a drink," Sorin said without hesitation. "All of us do."
"That's four drinks," Bren said.
"You'll have earned them."
A sudden gust made the flame dip, then it held still. Quiet settled between them, the sort that feels warm instead of heavy. What lies beyond the ridge matters, Orren said flatly, listing slopes and cover not to scare anyone but because facts help him think straight. Ysse stayed still, eyes sharp, tossing out two clear questions before accepting each reply with a slow dip of her chin. Much later, Sorin pulled something dark from his pocket - old fruit carried all this way on purpose - breaking it into equal shares like the act meant more than eating.
Out of nowhere, Bren shifted how things felt. Staring at the flame, he kept his eyes down as words finally came. Quiet filled the space before he broke it.
"I've never seen anyone die," he said. "Not violently. My grandmother, but that was - different. That was like watching someone finish a sentence."
He stood there, waiting. Silence filled the space around him. Not a single person moved forward. The room stayed still, heavy with quiet.
"I don't know what I'm going to do tomorrow," he continued. "When it starts. I don't know if I'm going to be a person who can do what needs to be done, or the other kind. I don't know which kind I am yet."
"None of us do," Orren said. "That's not a weakness. That's just honesty."
"I keep thinking about my father's farm," Bren said. "The east field, specifically. The way it smells in early morning when the soil's been turned. I don't know why I keep thinking about that field."
Kael studied the boy - just seventeen, doing his best to wear courage like it fit - and inside him, a weight dropped. Not loud, not sudden, just there, as if the quietest part of a pond had claimed a sinking rock.
He leaned forward.
"Hey," he said.
Bren looked up.
"I'll put you behind me," Kael said. "Tomorrow. When we advance. Stay within two steps and I'll put you behind me. Whatever comes first, it comes to me first."
Bren held his gaze without blinking. The silence stretched between them like a wire pulled tight.
"You don't have to - "
"I know I don't."
For a second, the boy stayed still. Then Kael saw it shift - whatever had weighed on him, some quiet burden worn thin by time. It wasn't joy, not quite. More like someone handed him an outstretched hand mid-fall, one he almost refused before letting go and reaching back. A breath passed. He nodded without words.
"Alright," Bren said.
"Alright," Kael said.
Silence sat heavy on Sorin's lips as his eyes moved between the two - soundless, yet louder than any word he'd spoken since nightfall.
Darkness swallowed the room once the flame gave up its light. After that, they found their mats without speaking, resting beneath a sky full of unseen hours. Morning crouched beyond those silent stretches, patient but certain.
Staring at the ceiling above his cot, Kael turned the spear's mark over in his mind. The sealed cargo lists came next, then faces of highborn men watching from their estates on the ridge, plus whispers of a single clash ending everything. Flags crowded the lowlands, yet not one flew for him. Why such a war began - forget speeches, ignore painted scenes along city walls - he dug deeper, hunting what hid behind the truth, the form beneath the silhouette.
Still unaware, he moved forward without realizing it. The moment had not caught up to him just then.
He intended to find out.
The cold of the spear handle filled his grip as darkness pressed close, yet the imprint on his skin stayed sharp, so he allowed it to linger, even when time slipped away and dawn refused to come.