Flask in hand, I straightened and fired off a parade ground salute as the cart started forward. For a brief instant, the old man’s eyes glistened before he returned it with one of his own.

  “Was that who we were waiting on?” Tomas asked from behind me.

  I nodded and turned to find him leaning on a hand against the gap in the gate.

  Tomas pushed off the wall and came over to our packs. “Don’t see many half his age anywhere I’ve been, and to think he was in Acadia’s army when the Fall happened.”

  “Yep,” I acknowledged as I squat next to his pack and did my best to lift with my legs and not my back. Once he got his arms through the straps and tightened them like I showed him earlier, I let go.

  He grunted under the new weight, shifted his shoulders back and forth, and started securing the pack’s belt. “Gods, this is heavy. You know, thinking about the old soldier, it irritates the piss out of me to know how many people would just see some old man who could barely tell what time of day it is when I know the sort of things he had to have seen and done, you know?”

  I acknowledged the comment with a silent nod as I sat down in front of my own pack and slipped the straps on. When I finished, Tomas helped me to my feet which turned out to be a bit more of a task than either of us likely wanted to admit. Neither of our packs were remotely light, to the point I know any long distance through-hikers would go cross-eyed.

  At the same time, I was used to the weight because every time the Army made noises about reducing the weight carried by light infantry, it was code for adding another twenty pounds, minimum. Based on the noises he was making, Tomas, on the other hand, was clearly not as ready for this as he’d thought.

  “Only gets lighter from here,” I told him while checking over his pack for anything loose or likely to make too much noise.

  “Thank the gods for small favors. I feel like I’m lugging a goddamn anvil on my back.”

  I chuckled. “That’s because you are. Equivalent to a small one anyway. It’ll be rough the first couple days, for both of us, but we’ll get through this.”

  The grin that surfaced on Tomas’s face was not precisely happy. “Not like we have a choice, right? We’ve people to save.”

  I turned to give him the chance to look over my gear. “Spoken like an infantryman. Just remember, your feet are important. We might be on a tight timeline, but we have time to take breaks. Saving a day by pushing through won’t do us any good if we have to rest for three to recover.”

  “Makes sense to me. Shall we be off?”

  I took a moment to breathe in the late spring air, heavy with the scent of flowers and village life. “No time like the present. This trip isn’t going to take itself.”

  While I adjusted my pack near the edge of the garrison wall, Tomas quietly fell into step beside me. Several people I recognized from my visit to the bar with Aoife acknowledged our passing with quiet nods, but the majority we passed on the roads didn’t spare so much as a glance. One rather precocious child, all of maybe four, showered us with questions for the better part of a block before his mother yelled and he scampered back.

  “So, what do you—Ah, nevermind,” Tomas started to say as we reached the edge of town.

  I glanced over to him, then followed his eyes past me to see Cailleach joining us wearing a pack of her own. Somewhat puzzled, I noticed the quiver on her hip and the bow she’d brought to the Green during our first visit.

  “Not here for the whole trip,” she said coming up beside me. “Aoife wanted me to check out the tannery.”

  “And here I’d hoped you were worried about us,” Tomas lamented with a smile.

  Cailleach smirked. “To an extent, we were. You’re both quite capable, but the tanner hasn’t responded to the Green since yesterday. Neither of us relished the idea of either of you walking into something unaware.”

  “We have the book, you know,” I pointed out.

  “True.” Cailleach nodded. “But depending on your pace, you might have arrived before checking the book.”

  “Note to self,” Tomas muttered, “Check the book on every break.”

  “So what do you expect?” I asked.

  Cailleach shrugged. “I was given the impression the tanner and his family were reliable enough for the Green to ask us to look into it. Could be nothing.”

  “Could also be something,” Tomas noted.

  “Exactly. Two from the garrison are unaccounted for. It could be them. It’s also the closest homestead to the magnetite deposit, so it could potentially be an interested party.”

  With that, we walked on in silence, following the road as it wound north before eventually turning to the east. We took our first short break a little over an hour in, stopping at the base of a rise where the sparse trees began to thicken.

  The wind shifted while I checked my feet, and I knew we were relatively near the tannery when the first gust carrying the subtle aroma of death blew through. I expected the heavy chemical scent that came with it, but I couldn’t quite place the others.

  “I’m only vaguely familiar with tanning,” I stated while lacing my boots back up. “Does the process normally involve burning wood?”

  Tomas frowned but looked to Cailleach instead of answering.

  “It can. Without knowing the tanner’s methods, I can’t say if that’s expected.”

  I sighed and press-checked my pistol. “I’m going to go with the assumption it’s not then. Better safe than sorry. Tomas, if you wouldn’t mind?”

  Once back on my feet with some help, we set off again, this time far more warily. As expected, the tree cover thickened into forest fairly quickly once we reached the top.

  Crossing into the woods, I noted the touch of humanity in the form of multiple thick stumps within line of sight of the road. Given their roughly uniform size, I ventured a guess that they were purposeful forestry, which Tomas acknowledged. Evidently, the bark from trees in question was useful for tanning certain types of less flexible leather.

  Not long after, Cailleach grunted and stopped in her tracks, head high as the wind carried another lung full of awfulness past. Without a word, she shrugged out of her pack and stashed it behind some nearby groundcover.

  While Tomas and I did the same, she picked up her bow, slid a single, black-fletched arrow from her quiver, and stated, “I’ll go on ahead. Give me a five-minute lead. I’ll meet you on the road just short of the tannery.”

  Cailleach had been gone all of thirty seconds when Tomas quietly spoke. “It feels wrong letting her take all the risk.”

  Acknowledging the comment with a nod, I dispelled the illusion on my walking stick and slid the scabbard into my belt. “Always does, Tomas, no matter who it is.”

  “Did you check in on Jenna before we left?” the bard quietly asked a minute later.

  I eyed Tomas for a second and decided to let it slide. He was clearly nervous and riding his ass now wouldn’t help. At least he’s trying to be quiet. “I did. She’s doing much better.”

  “They changed the bandages while I was there last night. I have a hard time believing she’ll be all right after seeing that.”

  I kept my inward grimace off my face. Having seen the injury myself, I shared his concerns, but at the same time I trusted Cailleach and the priests, too. “She’s a tough girl, Tomas. She’ll be fine.”

  “Probably a family thing, then. Believable, considering the shit you shrug off.”

  I grinned. “I don’t shrug it off, Tomas. It’s conditioning. I’ve just been through worse.”

  Tomas cast a skeptical glance in my direction before returning his attention to the road ahead. “I’m afraid to ask what you went through to make this trip seem so easy.”

  I had to stifle my mirth into a quiet snort. “Just before I crossed over here, I graduated from something the Army called Operator Training Course. Six months of pure hell. There’s a part of OTC they call Stress Phase. You hike forty miles across worse terrain than this. You have twenty-four hours. Just you, your map, a compass, and whatever else you’re carrying. No one there to baby sit you.”

  Tomas’s disbelieving squint looked like it carried actual physical pain with it. “A day? But how? You could—”

  When his disbelief sputtered off into silence, I finished the thought, “Leave the Glade at dawn and get to the Green before the sun set? Yeah, totally could.”

  He was still shaking his head while he levered back the arm on his crossbow and loaded a single bolt. “But why?”

  I checked my watch. Thirty seconds. “To prove you can. The unit they were training me to join specialized in all the worst jobs, the hard ones where failure isn’t an option. If you’re going to ask the impossible from someone, it helps to know they can deliver first.”

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  I rose from where I’d crouched and Tomas followed.

  “Maniacs, the lot of you,” Tomas muttered, but despite the words, his tone carried respect more than anything else.

  “Victory isn’t always easy, Tomas. Sometimes, you have to be a little crazy to even try getting that far,” I noted and stepped forward.

  Proceeding low and quiet, I kept one hand on the silent sword’s hilt on my belt and did my level best to ignore the fact my trigger finger itched. As comforting as it would be to have a firearm in my hands, I had to push past the limitations from years of Army training and indoctrination. Without the ability to make new ammunition, every trigger pull brought me inexorably closer to the day I had nothing left to feed my weapons, closer to the day I had no choice but to turn to the sword, to the bow. As annoying and discomfiting as it might be, given my comparative lack of familiarity with either, I’d be better off relying on them now, when I had the luxury of resorting to superior force, instead of having no other options.

  As it stood, I advanced down the path a little twitchy from my choice to step away from Army indoctrination, but certain in my belief that if I ran into a hostile between here and the tannery, they’d be in the process of assuming ambient temperature thanks to Cailleach’s passing.

  Rounding the first bend, it occurred to me I really had no clue what House doctrine dictated in a situation like this. In certain situations, it was entirely reasonable to bypass sentries entirely instead of removing them.

  My steps came a little quieter, my pace a little slower, and my hand on my hilt a little tighter. Behind me, I felt Tomas’s presence more than heard it. He’d matched pace to mine when I’d slowed without breaking silence.

  The stench of death hung heavy in the air but still didn’t quite smother the fresh wood fire scent itching at the back of my throat.

  Ahead and out of sight, a squirrel chittered away. I froze, suddenly unsure if the source was natural or not. It took me a second to dig through my memory and sift through the conversations I’d had with Aoife on the tail end of our trip to the Green.

  Cautiously, I replied with a call of my own. To an actual squirrel, the tuk-tuk-tuk trill would signify danger, but to Syr scouts, the timing between the trills made the call a question, a request for confirmation, not a warning. I waited a handful of seconds, listening intently, and as I breathed in to repeat the call, I received my answer, another set of trills. As I stood up entirely, a second call immediately followed the first, and Tomas matched my new, much faster pace.

  The next bend in the path was the last, the tannery set back in the clearing that immediately followed, surrounded by a low stone wall. One of the outbuildings had burnt, now little more than charred, smoking timber, but my eyes were focused on the elf standing at the door to the main building. The fact Cailleach still scanned the surroundings warily didn’t worry me nearly so much as the bloody hands holding her bow.

  Without breaking pace, I slowly drew the blackened sword on my hip without the spark of will necessary to silence my surroundings. “Situation?”

  Her eyes flicked to me momentarily. “Our two missing garrison troops came through here last night. I did what I could quickly do for wounded, but I need you to stay with the them and notify Aoife so the Green can send assistance.”

  I glanced over my shoulder to Tomas who silently nodded in return. Cailleach stepped off the porch and headed deeper into the property as we came up the steps.

  The thick smell of shit greeted me at the door. I braced myself for what I suspected I’d find as I took in the trails of blood across the floor inside while shucking my pack. What had come to mind didn’t soften the mental blow when I followed the hushed grunts of pain back to their source, a bedroom off the hall on the far side of the central living room.

  After some quick talking to calm frazzled nerves from the sudden appearance of strangers, I knelt next to the unconscious woman lying on the floor while Tomas gently guided her young son and his knife into the hall with quiet assurances.

  I didn’t need to be a doctor or even a medic to interpret her pale, waxy skin, intermittent shivering, grimaces, and heavy sweating as phenomenally bad signs. I cautiously lifted the blanket that had been tucked around her and immediately replaced it. The bandages around her midsection were starting to soak through in spots and not all of it was red. In that instant, I knew I had remarkably few options and those would, at best, only delay the inevitable.

  Having spent over a decade at this point dedicating my life to defending the innocent and hardening my heart with defiance, embracing spite as my engine to overcome the impossible, every instinct, every principle I believed in were perched and pointed in the same direction: overcome and destroy every and any obstacle in my path no matter the cost. But this was not an obstacle that could be overcome. It wasn’t even something I could stop, much less appreciably delay.

  I slowly sank to the floor next to the woman as her breath grew increasingly shallow. Brushing back the few strands of dark hair, heavy thoughts welled up from dark places, familiar specters that I’d picked up on battlefields across the world, nearly drowned in at funerals. How did it happen? Who was she, really? Was she a victim? A protector? Did she see this coming? Did she accept her fate? Did she greet it with a smile on her face, believing the price worth what she protected?

  A feeling greeted every question, each locking into place with the others as my mind wandered. On some level, I knew the answers I felt were my subconscious filling in the blanks with what it wanted to believe, weaving a story to help me deal with the helplessness I felt. That’s how the mind works, right? Always trying to protect you in the only way it knew how, trying to make sense out of a senseless world.

  I ignored the dampness growing on my eyes as I closed them. I ignored how it pooled and threatened to spill down my cheeks while I threaded my fingers between hers. Images flickered through my mind, of a little girl running through a field of flowers with the sort of happy smile only children have, of a young woman standing in a dark corner blushing, subconsciously playing with her hair while the young man in front of her spoke and offered her something. Each came faster than the last, speeding into a dizzying, hard to follow blizzard of colors and feelings that weighed ever heavier on my heart. A warm hearth, a babe in her arms, a curious toddler prying at her arm trying to see why people were fussing at the bundled newborn, the many smiling faces of the young man from earlier as time added years to them.

  Dimly, at the edges of this self-deception, I felt more than heard shouted words, felt echoes of fear and shock that fled before sudden anger that bled into determination. Determination turned to spite in a wave of sharp pain, then followed by increasing weariness, welling worry speckled with regret and indecision, and eventually acceptance.

  The woman took a long shuddering breath, her hand tightening around mine, and those feelings faded, leaving only a single quiet, unspoken question drifting in my mind. Is it finally over?

  I squeezed her hand tightly and whispered my fears to myself, “All things have an end, but none know the hour of its coming. All we can choose is to see it to the end, to push as far as we can, to find what little happiness lies in our path and grasp it with all our strength until we no longer can. Were I able, I would lend you the strength to push that hour back, to find the next mote of happiness that makes this all worthwhile.”

  I grimaced, hating myself for my inability to do more than this. Intellectually, I knew that even in my world wounds like this were only technically survivable. Once the stomach or intestines were pierced, there were too many variables at play. Even when the wound was cleared, dead tissue debrided, holes in the organs closed and patched, the many layers of tissue, muscle, and skin patched and sutured, the fact remained that the spilled contents did their own damage. Stomach acid burned and denatured, metabolizing and breaking things down. The bacteria in decomposing fecal matter multiplied and spread, producing a multitude of toxins even if they weren’t directly attacking the tissue where they found themselves.

  Even if all that were done promptly, the endless litany of IV antibiotics you’d be on didn’t do more than tilt the odds in your favor. Too many different types of possible microbes spreading too many different toxins through an already strained system. Every medication only added to the weight being handled by the liver and kidneys, pushing one or both ever closer to simply folding under the strain and shutting down.

  Striking down bacteria produced its own toxins, as every dead microbe became its own decomposing waste. It was entirely possible to win the battle against the bacteria themselves but lose the war to the aftermath because they’d grown too far, damaged too much, and all that sudden apoptosis pushed an already overburdened system over the lip.

  Aside from self-loathing for myself, all I had was sympathy for this poor woman. Out of all the ways people died, sepsis was not a pleasant way to go. It generally took its time killing you and it would be agonizing the entire time.

  I dimly remembered Wyk and wondered if this Ranja he’d spoken about was a hearth goddess like it had sounded. I knew I didn’t understand how the gods here worked, how the lines were drawn, who cared about what, or what they’d do about anything. I just knew that someone needed to pray for this woman, and I hoped that if Aoibheann couldn’t help her, then Ranja would, that when her time came, someone was there waiting for her with a warm smile, a mug of something hot, and understanding.

  Something in that thought brought me comfort, the idea that someone would be there waiting when it all ended to offer a warm place to rest for a while, a hot meal, and help for finding your way after. My self-loathing ebbed under the growing warmth that rose from that thought, and I found myself wishing I could share it with the woman next to me. Anything to ease what she was certainly going through.

  Emerging from what felt like a dream-like haze, I had a vague impression of a hand on each of my shoulders as I opened my eyes. Both left light, caring touches behind, each leaving a feminine impression that differed subtly from the other.

  While the woman next to me was still sweating, she no longer grimaced, no longer struggled to breathe. Death hadn’t claimed her. If anything, its grip seemed to have slackened a little. She seemed at peace in whatever sleep had taken her.

  “Thank God for small favors,” I sincerely whispered to myself and found out the hard way that standing was not a thing I could do at the moment when my legs gave out with nearly no warning.

  An anxious Tomas appeared in the suddenly open bedroom door, but I preempted him with a raised hand. “Quiet, she’s sleeping now. Mind helping me up?”

  Tomas stared at me, like he was looking through me for a moment before he jerked into motion and dragged me to my feet. We paused a moment for him to quietly close the door on the way out and I leaned on his shoulder the whole way to what served as a couch in the living room.

  “Are you okay?” he asked as he slid me onto the clearly handmade cushions.

  “Fine, I think. Just really tired, I guess. Maybe all that weight took more out of me than I thought. Probably just the adrenaline wearing off, though,” I answered, my eyes drawn to the hearth on the opposite wall. “Is it me, or is it a little cold in here?”

  Tomas followed my gaze. “A little, I suppose. I could start a fire, but I’d need to clean things up a bit first.”

  Biting back a sudden yawn, I noticed the blood trailing across the stone floor. “Shit. Yeah. Give me a minute, I’ll help. What happened with the kid? Were there any others?”

  Tomas’s expression darkened ever so slightly. “There were. Young Ian is on the front porch standing watch. Well, as much as a child his age can anyway. He needed to feel useful, I think, so I asked that of him. Oh, and don’t worry, I already sent a message back to Aoife. The Green is sending a group out. They’re on horseback, so it shouldn’t take long.”

  I jerked back to sudden wakefulness. “And the others? What actually happened here?”

  Tomas’s face didn’t change, but the leather in his gloves creaked as his hand tightened on the knife hilt at his side. “Jan, he’s the tanner, took his two eldest sons out with him to hunt for the next round of hides. I haven’t the slightest if anything happened to them or not. That left Lyria, his wife, and the rest of the children here on their own. The eldest remaining caught our rats sneaking into their finishing shop, raised the alarm, and paid for it with his life. The details after that are a bit muddy.”

  I nodded weakly. “Yeah, they tend to be, right afterward anyway.”

  “Cailleach tended to the next youngest, he’s across the hall. He got it pretty good trying to save his mom, but he’ll probably be okay. Their sister, Lena I think, is keeping an eye on him for me. Brave girl. Tell you what, Sam, just rest. I’m going to check in on everyone, clean things up a bit, and see about that fire. Maybe even throw something together. A hot meal always helps, right?”

  Between the brave smile he gave and the hopeful tone, Tomas was just as lost as I was, groping for some way, any way to be useful. My thoughts wobbled a bit, but I managed a nod. “Sounds like a plan. I’ll pitch in when I can.”