Finished once their feet began moving.
Forty minutes into combat, all of Sergeant Drav's lessons - how to step, where to point the spear, how to stand firm when pushed - dissolved like smoke. The fight did not care about drills. Instead, motion came from somewhere beneath thought, deeper than words. This knowledge lives in bone, not books. It tells you to move without deciding. One noise says run now. Another says wait but stay ready. Rhythm takes over. Training fades. Instinct leans in.
Now they fought just to stay alive. Every single one. Four still left.
Later that day, Kael walked forward while Bren followed just as he said he would. Ysse stayed to the side, watching edges. Ahead, Orren hobbled along, hurt in some way he refused to explain, though it was clearly serious; still, he studied the land and pointed out paths before anyone else saw them coming. They did not march like soldiers anymore. That stopped happening about three hours back. Now they belonged to something unnamed - uneven steps, raw guesses, four individuals moving because stopping meant danger placed there by others who never showed up.
Bren no longer trembled, though that didn't mean he felt safe. When things get bad enough, fear fades - not because it vanishes, but because there's no space left for it. What takes its place is something steady, sharp, quiet. From far away, someone might mistake it for peace. That state had settled into Bren. Motion came smoothly now. Loud noises failed to make him jerk back. Tasks got handled, one after another, without questions asked.
Kael saw it unfold, a mix stirring inside - pride tangled with sorrow, much like the ache when youth is shaped into roles never chosen.
Not one brought up Sorin. Nobody mentioned him at all. He stayed out of their words completely. Not a single comment slipped through. Their silence on Sorin was total.
Still not. A holder hadn't formed for it. In each one, it rested - like food caught mid-swallow - there but stuck, raw and motionless, paused where timing never showed.
Later, their talk turned to things that mattered. Not ideas. Not hopes. Just facts on the ground. How much water remained. Where each unit stood. Which way the wind pushed the smoke - a sign of fire, maybe gunfire. If the eastern edge still stood firm or had cracked under weight. Orren thought it broke. He watched men run past without orders. That kind of scatter does not follow command. Wagons vanished from the road. No fresh rounds. No food. When supplies cut off like that, one thing usually comes next. Out here, luck runs thin. So he figured the worst.
A breath came when they slipped down into the thin cut of land, just as the sky shifted tones. Light faded while feet scraped loose stone. The air sat low there, cool and still between dirt walls.
Alive we still are, Bren said, sounding like someone testing a thought they did not fully trust.
"Yes," Kael said.
"What do we do now?"
Kael turned toward Ysse. From her, a glance slid sideways to Orren. Up above, his eyes moved across the sky like they did over old charts - quietly tracing lines, setting himself in place, reading its form.
"We find the others," Kael said. "Then we find out what actually happened today."
That fight mattered. Yet it stood for something larger, too. Slowly, like dawn light touching old stone, what he carried now matched what stirred in him back then - the very start, breathless in the practice ground, tracing that scar on the shaft, sensing its silent demand.
Maybe they weren't so different after all, he wondered. The line between them seemed thinner each time he turned it over in his head.