The Smoke

The fire cracked, spitting embers into the night. Garrett watched them rise and die, red stars that lived for a breath and nothing more.

“You hear me, Garrett?”

He blinked. Rodyn was staring at him from across the flames, gap-toothed grin splitting his scarred face.

“I said, you ever seen a man take an axe to the spine and keep fighting?”

Garrett took a pull from his waterskin. “Once. Berserker in the Northern Campaigns. Took three more cuts before he knew he was dead.”

The others laughed. Six of them left now, after the ambush two days past. Kelm’s company, what remained of it. They’d been twelve.

“Exactly,” Rodyn said, gesturing with a chicken bone. “I knew a pikeman once. Met him in the Reaver campaigns at Heller’s Ridge—took a blade clean through the guts. Walked twenty paces holding his own entrails before he noticed. Just kept going till he fell over dead.”

One of the others snorted. “That’s horseshit.”

“On my mother’s grave,” Rodyn insisted. “Body don’t know when to quit. Keeps twitching long after it should’ve stopped.”

Garrett said nothing. He’d learned long ago that mercenaries talked to fill the silence—the same stories, the same bravado, the same bullshit about how they’d die when the time came. Clean. Fighting. On their feet.

All of them fucking liars.

Young Tam, barely eighteen and still smooth-faced, fed more wood into the fire. Pine, from the smell of it. Green wood, still damp from yesterday’s rain. The bark hissed as it caught, and sap bubbled from a knot in the branch.

Tam’s fingers touched the little charm at his throat: a bit of carved bone on a string. A “Saint-bone,” bought from some market hawker who swore by the miracles of the Vellum Saints. Garrett didn’t buy it. A dead saint’s bone wouldn’t stop an arrow, and prayers didn’t pay the surgeon.

The smoke rose, thick and white, carrying that sharp tang of burning resin.

Garrett’s chest tightened.

The pop of a sap pocket—sharp as a snapping bowstring—and suddenly he wasn’t looking at Tam anymore. He was looking at Marcus, twenty-three years old with a crooked smile, feeding wood into a different fire. The Black Shields’ fire. Harbinger Wood. The night before everything burned.

“Garrett?”

He blinked. Tam was staring right at him, confused.

“You all right?” the boy asked.

The smoke curled between them, thick and cloying, and Garrett could smell it—the exact same scent. Pine pitch and resin. The smell of the forest burning around them, the smell of the trap closing.

“I’m fine.” His voice came out flat. “Just tired.”

But he wasn’t fine. The smoke was everywhere now, pulling him back, and he could hear it—the screaming. Tallor shouting orders that no one could follow. Men coughing, choking, dying in the dark while the brush burned in a perfect circle and the arrows fell like rain.

Twenty-three men.

His brothers.

He’d left them.

“Smoke got in my eyes,” Garrett said, and stood. His hand had found his sword hilt without him noticing. He forced his fingers to unclench.

Kelm was watching him from across the fire, the old campaigner’s scarred face unreadable. Kelm always saw too much.

“Get some sleep,” Kelm said quietly. “We move before dawn.”

The others settled back into their talk, voices lower now. Garrett moved away from the fire, away from the smoke, but he could still smell it. Could still hear Marcus screaming his name. Could still feel the heat of the flames at his back as he crashed through the gap in the burning brush and disappeared into the trees.

He’d run.

While they burned.

***

Tam shuffled over later, waterskin in hand. The boy always did that—hovered near Garrett like he was something worth learning from.

“They say you were at Crow’s Bend,” Tam said, settling onto a stump. “That true?”

“I was there.”

“They say it was a slaughter. Three hundred men dead in an hour.”

“Two hundred and seventy-three.” Garrett took the waterskin and drank. “I counted. Went back and buried every last one. Me and a few of the other survivors.”

“But you made it out.”

“I did.”

“How?”

Garrett looked at the boy. Smooth cheeks, eyes still bright with whatever fool notion made men pick up swords for coin. He’d lose that soon enough. They all did.

“Luck,” Garrett said.

Tam nodded like that meant something. Like luck was a thing you could carry, a charm against steel and fire.

“You afraid of dying?” the boy asked.

Garrett almost laughed. “No.”

“That’s what makes you good at this, isn’t it? Rodyn says you fight like a man with nothing to lose. Like someone out to prove something.”

“Rodyn talks too much.”

Tam leaned closer, voice low. “My sister’s in Greyhook. She’s got the cough. Worse when the river fog comes. I’m here so the healer doesn’t shut the door.”

Garrett had heard a hundred reasons men took coin. That one didn’t smell like pride.

“You’ll get her crownmarks,” Garrett said.

Tam exhaled, shoulders dipping. “So... you really don’t fear it?”

“Like I said. No,” Garrett said. “You’re fighting to make it home, Tam. I’m not.”

And that was the truth. Every contract, every battle, every stupid stand where wiser men ran—Garrett walked toward the blades. Held breaches. Stood in shield walls alone. Took wounds that should have killed him.

But death wouldn’t take him.

Always one more reprieve he didn’t deserve.

***

The next morning came cold and gray. They broke camp in silence, moving south toward Kelm’s promised contract.

Garrett checked his gear by habit. Sword sharp. Armor sound. Straps tight. The ritual of a man who’d survived by being careful, by being good at this one terrible thing.

“Ever think about walking away?”

Kelm had come up beside him, quiet for a big man.

“From what?”

“This.” Kelm gestured at the trees, the road, the others preparing to march. “The whole damned business.”

“And do what?”

“Anything else.” Kelm’s scarred face was unreadable. “You’re good enough you don’t need to keep doing this. Could hire on as a guard captain somewhere. Train men. Die warm in a bed beside a lass instead of face-down in a pile of shit.”

Garrett tied off his bedroll. “I’m fine where I am.”

“Are you now?”

The question hung there. Kelm wasn’t pushing—the old man never pushed—but he was seeing something.

“Last night,” Kelm said. “The smoke. You went somewhere.”

“Bad memory.”

“We’ve all got those.” Kelm paused. “But most men don’t look like they’re still there.”

***

They marched in column, Garrett near the rear where he always positioned himself. Better sight lines. Better chance to see trouble coming.

Better chance to run, if it came to that.

The thought arrived unwanted, and he shoved it down. He didn’t run anymore. Hadn’t in ten years. He stood and fought, every time, and if the fight killed him then that was fine. That was the point.

Except he never died. Always walked away.

The road wound through a pine forest, and the smell was everywhere—sap and needles and smoke from some distant fire. Garrett’s jaw tightened.

“Riders,” Rodyn called from the front.

The column stopped. Hands went to weapons.

Three horsemen emerged from the trees ahead—scouts, from their light armor and the way they sat their saddles. The lead rider raised a hand, empty palm forward.

“Looking for Kelm’s crew,” the man called.

“I’d say you found us.” Kelm stepped forward. “You the one hiring?”

“I represent Lord Penfeld. The contract’s changed.”

“Changed? How?”

“More coin. But more risk.” The rider grinned without humor. “Castle garrison’s twice what we thought. Going to be a bloody affair.”

Kelm glanced back at his men. Six of them, already tired, already diminished. This was the kind of contract that made widows.

“We’ll need details,” Kelm said.

“Come to the camp. Two miles east. Lord Penfeld would like an answer by tonight.”

The riders turned and left, and Kelm gathered his men close.

“Thoughts?”

“Depends on the coin,” Rodyn said.

“Depends on the odds,” another added.

They looked at Garrett. They always looked at Garrett when times were lean, and it came to the ugly logistics of the blade.

“Imperial legions wouldn’t touch this,” Garrett said. “Empress doesn’t waste her soldiers on border squabbles anymore. That’s why Penfeld’s hiring us.”

Kelm grunted. “So what’s your read?”

“It’s a bad contract,” Garrett said. “Garrison work means walls. Means stairs and choke points and nowhere to maneuver. Means dying in piles.”

“But doable?” Kelm asked.

Garrett thought about castle assaults he’d seen. The bodies stacked at the gates. The screaming in narrow halls. The way blood made stone stairs into slides.

“Doable,” he said matter-of-factly. “If you don’t care about the cost.”

Kelm nodded slowly. “And do you?”

The question was simple. The answer wasn’t.

Did he care? About Tam with his unscarred face? About Rodyn and his stupid stories? About any of them?

He should. A good man would.

But Garrett had stopped being a good man ten years ago, the night he ran while his brothers burned.

“No,” he said with finality.

Kelm held his gaze. “Then we take the fucking contract.”

***

Lord Penfeld’s camp was a collection of tents and tired men who’d been fighting too long already. A banner with a black reed on a white field hung limp on the center pole—minor Vareland nobility trying to carve out a border holding before winter locked the passes. The lord himself was absent—of course he was—but his captain laid out the contract.

A castle. Stone walls, garrisoned by thirty men. Penfeld wanted it taken before the onslaught of winter, and he was willing to pay triple rates for the first company through the gate.

“First through means first to die,” Kelm said.

“That’s why it pays triple,” the captain countered.

They took the contract. Of course they did. Men like them always did.

***

The assault came three days later, just before dawn.

Garrett stood in the dark with the others, watching siege ladders get positioned. Somewhere behind them, Penfeld’s archers were finding their marks. Somewhere above, men were dying quietly as arrows found throats and eyes.

“You good?” Tam whispered beside him.

“I’m good.”

“I’m not.” The boy’s voice shook. “I’ve never done walls before.”

“Stay behind me. Do what I do.”

“What if—”

“Stay behind me.”

The horn sounded.

They ran.

Garrett hit the ladder third, Tam behind him, and the world compressed into rungs and breath and the weight of armor. Above, someone was screaming. An arrow hissed past his ear. His hands found stone, and he pulled himself over the parapet into chaos.

Steel and bodies and the wet sounds of men dying badly.

He killed a guard, then another, moving on instinct, on ten years of habit of hand that made him good at this one horrible thing. Beside him, Rodyn went down, skull cleaved in half like a melon. Ahead, Kelm was pushing toward the gate mechanism, toward the inner courtyard where the real fighting waited.

And then Garrett smelled it.

Not smoke. Burning pitch.

The defenders had lit braziers along the walls, ready to pour the boiling tar over the stone façade on the next wave. The smell—that cloying, tar-thick stench of pine resin and copper blood—hit him like a fist.

He was back in the clearing. The Black Shields were dying. The arrows were falling. And Marcus was reaching for him, mouth open, screaming something Garrett couldn’t hear over the roar of the flames.

Marcus hooked a gauntlet into Garrett’s shoulder strap—hard grip, desperate, trying to haul him back.

Garrett drew his knife.

Cut the strap.

And ran.

“Garrett!” Tam yelled, high with panic.

Garrett snapped back to the moment.

“Garrett! They’re coming!”

Guards pouring from the tower door. Too many. Kelm’s group was cut off, pinned at the gate. Someone needed to hold the tower entrance. Someone needed to stand in that doorway and die slowly while the others completed the objective.

It was the kind of moment Garrett had been seeking for ten years.

The death he deserved.

He moved toward the tower door. Tam followed.

“No,” Garrett said. “You stay—”

“I’m not leaving you!”

The boy’s face. Smooth and young and terrified. Like Marcus had been. Like all of them had been.

“Listen to me,” Garrett grabbed Tam’s shoulder. “You run. Find a way out. You—”

“No!” Tam’s voice cracked. “The Black Shields never ran. You never ran. I won’t either!”

The words hit harder than any blade.

The boy believed it. Believed the lie. Believed Garrett was something worth following into death.

The guards were coming. The smoke—the burning pitch and pine—was everywhere. And Garrett stood in that doorway with a boy beside him who refused to run because he thought Garrett was brave.

Because he didn’t know the truth.

Garrett raised his sword.

“All right,” he said quietly. “Then we stand.”

***

They held the door.

Garrett didn’t count how many came. Didn’t count his wounds. Didn’t think about anything except the next guard, the next cut, the next breath. Tam fought beside him, clumsy but fierce, and when the boy took a sword through the shoulder Garrett killed the man who did it and kept fighting, kept standing.

Because running wasn’t an option anymore.

It had never been an option.

When Kelm’s men finally reached them, when the gate was open and the castle was falling, Garrett was still on his feet. Barely. Tam was sitting against the wall, pale but alive, and Garrett was bleeding from places he’d worry about later, if there was a later.

“You held,” Kelm said, and there was something in his voice that might have been respect.

Garrett looked at the bodies in the doorway. Looked at Tam, who’d stood when he could have run. Looked at his own hands, still gripping his sword.

“Yeah,” he said. “I held.”

***

They burned the dead that evening—both sides together, because that’s what you did after castle fights. No point in separating them. Dead was dead.

Garrett stood watching the pyres, Tam beside him with his arm bound and splinted. The boy would heal. The shoulder would scar, but he’d keep the arm. A small mercy in a merciless trade.

The smoke rose white and thick into the evening sky—that same sharp scent of burning pine and resin—and Garrett didn’t look away. Didn’t flinch. Just watched it climb and dissipate, carrying whatever remained of the men who’d died today.

“You saved my life,” Tam said.

“You saved mine first.”

“How?”

Garrett was quiet for a long time. The smoke kept rising, but it didn’t pull him back anymore. It was just smoke now. Just wood burning.

“By not running when you should have,” Garrett said finally.

Tam frowned, not understanding. That was all right. He didn’t need to understand. Someday maybe he would, when he was old enough to have things worth running from.

Kelm approached, moving carefully. The old campaigner had taken a cut across the ribs, but he’d live. They’d all live, the ones who’d made it.

“Penfeld paid,” Kelm said. “Triple rate, like promised. Your share’s waiting.”

“Good.”

“That was a hard stand you made. The tower door.” Kelm paused. “I’ve seen you fight before. Today was different.”

“How?”

“Today you fought like a man who wanted to live.”

Garrett said nothing. What was there to say? He’d spent ten years seeking death. Today he hadn’t stood to die. A boy too stupid to run had forced him to stand with honor.

“I’m heading north after this,” Kelm continued. “Got a contract in the border cities. Rimegate, maybe. Garrison work, steady pay. I could use a man like you. Like you were today.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Do that.” Kelm clasped his shoulder—carefully, because everything hurt—then limped to his horse and hauled himself up with a grunt. He rode north and disappeared into the smoky dark.

Tam shifted beside him. “You going with him?”

“Maybe.”

“What about...” The boy gestured vaguely at the smoke, the castle, the bodies. “All this?”

“All this will still be here. Wars don’t end because you stop fighting them.”

“Then why stop?”

Garrett watched the smoke rise. Watched it thin and fade and disappear into the darkening sky.

“Because the fire’s out, boy,” he said. “And I’m still here.”

Tam looked at him, confused. That was all right too.

The fire crackled. The smoke rose. And Garrett stood there, watching it go, and for the first time in ten years, he wasn’t back in that clearing with the Black Shields burning.

He was just here.

Standing.

Still alive.

The smoke disappeared into the evening, and Garrett turned away from the pyres. Behind him, the flames kept burning. But this time the flames didn’t burn his back. Ahead, the road north waited—garrison work, steady pay, a different kind of life for whatever remained of him.

He swung up onto his horse.

Tam followed, wincing as his wounded shoulder took the weight.

And the smoke rose into the empty sky, carrying the dead toward whatever they were owed, while the living rode on.

Because that’s what you did.