The snow hadn’t lasted. By dawn it was turning to slush, sinking into the trampled ground until the whole of camp smelled like damp leather and woodsmoke. Men moved through the fog like ghosts burdened with too much flesh—armour creaking, breath steaming. Somewhere a horse coughed; somewhere else a man laughed too loudly to convince anyone he wasn’t afraid.

Clyde made his rounds quietly, helm under his arm, gloves tucked into his belt. He liked the mornings before the drills began, when the world was half-asleep, and the noise of living hadn’t yet drowned out the silence that came after battle. The silence that clung to him still.

“Sir Clyde!”

The voice broke through the mist. Marreck came striding across the mud, chewing on a crust of bread and looking like he’d slept less than an hour.

“You look like hell,” Marreck said, grinning. “Did you fight the bottle or your conscience last night?”

Clyde raised a brow. “Can’t it be both?”

Marreck barked a laugh. “Saints preserve me. You’ll end up the first man in history to drink himself into sainthood.”

“Wouldn’t that make me the second?”

“Fair. The first was my uncle Garen. We buried him with a cask.”

Clyde almost smiled at that. It was easy with Marreck. The man had a way of cutting through the air of reverence that followed Clyde like an unwelcome shadow. Around him, Clyde wasn’t the King’s hound or the Lord’s favoured knight. Just another soldier with mud on his boots and aches that never quite faded.

The clang of steel rang out nearby. A few of the younger knights were already sparring in the training ring, blades flashing dull silver through the mist. Renn was among them—barely grown, all quick limbs and wide eyes, trying his best to look older than he was. His sword arm was decent, his footwork better, but his gaze kept flicking toward Clyde like a compass that refused to point north.

“Boy’s going to sprain his neck looking at you like that,” Marreck muttered. “You’ve got a fan.”

Clyde ignored him and stepped closer to the ring. “Renn,” he called.

The lad turned so fast he nearly dropped his sword. “Sir! Morning, sir!”

“You call that a stance?” Clyde asked mildly. “You’ll fall over the moment someone breathes on you.”

Renn scrambled to correct himself, flushing red. “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”

Marreck leaned on the rail. “Gods, he’s terrified. You could tell him the sun’s coming up, and he’d apologize for it.”

Clyde sighed. “He’s green. I was the same.”

“You were worse,” Marreck said cheerfully. “You glared at anyone who spoke to you for the first six months.”

“That was strategy.”

“That was arrogance.”

“Worked, didn’t it?”

Marreck laughed again, the sound warm as a hearth in the cold air. “Aye. And look at you now—leading drills, scaring the whelps, pretending you don’t care that they like you.”

Clyde didn’t answer. But when Renn hesitated again, glancing over for approval, Clyde stepped into the ring.

“Come on, lad. Show me what you’ve got.”

The other knights drew back to watch. Renn swallowed, nodded, and raised his sword. The first strike was cautious; the second had more weight. Clyde met them both easily, shifting just enough to parry. The rhythm of it—steel, breath, step—was familiar, soothing. He remembered being fifteen and too proud to show fear. He remembered older men watching him and saying, He’ll be good one day, if he lives long enough.

He’d lived. He wasn’t sure it was the same thing as being good.

Renn was lucky he’d made it to his 20’s before being tossed into battle. Less lucky for this to be his first.

Renn’s boot slipped in the mud; Clyde used the opening to twist the boy’s blade free and send it skittering across the ring. Gasps rose around them. Renn froze, chest heaving, face flushed. Then, unexpectedly, he grinned.

“Again,” he said.

Clyde blinked. “You sure?”

“Yes, sir.”

A beat. Then Clyde nodded. “Pick it up.”

They went again. And again. By the third bout, both were sweating despite the cold, Renn’s grin wider than before, his breath coming in quick bursts that turned to steam between them. When Clyde finally called a halt, the boy was grinning like he’d won.

Marreck tossed Renn a flask. “Not bad for someone who still has peach fuzz.”

“Thank you, sir,” Renn panted. He turned to Clyde, earnest as sunrise. “If I ever fight half as well as you, I’ll die happy.”

Clyde busied himself with retying his gauntlet. Compliments were harder to parry than blades. “Don’t aim to die happy,” he said. “Aim to live long enough to regret it.”

The other knights laughed, but Renn didn’t. He just looked at Clyde with a strange, unguarded light in his eyes; something deeper than admiration that unsettled Clyde. Was this what Aerion saw in his own eyes?

Marreck noticed. Of course he did. “Careful,” he muttered under his breath as they left the ring. “You’ve got the boy half in love with you.”

Clyde shot him a look. “He’s a soldier.”

“So are we,” Marreck said, not unkindly. “Doesn’t mean we stop being human.”

They walked toward the mess tent, boots crunching in the frost. Around them, the camp was stirring to life—men stoking fires, checking gear, cursing the weather. The sky was the colour of pewter. Somewhere far east, a horn sounded a long, low note that trembled on the edge of meaning. It wasn’t a summons yet. Just a reminder that one could come at any time.

Marreck stretched his arms and sighed. “Eat now while you can. Might be the last quiet meal before the thaw.”

“Optimist,” Clyde said dryly.

“Realist,” Marreck countered. “You’ll learn to tell the difference once you’ve stopped brooding long enough to laugh.”

Clyde didn’t answer, but the corner of his mouth twitched. That was enough for Marreck.

Later, when the camp had gone quiet again, Clyde sat outside his tent, journal entry half-written, candle guttering in the wind. The sounds of laughter still carried faintly from the other knights—Marreck’s deep rumble, Renn’s bright one tangled among them. For once, it didn’t grate.

He looked down at the page.

They trust me more than I trust myself, he wrote. And I don’t know if that makes me lucky or dangerous.

He hesitated, then added, almost an afterthought:

Marreck still makes me laugh. The boy, Renn, reminds me of what it felt like to believe in things. I fear for them both.

He set down the quill, blew out the candle, and let the dark settle around him like a cloak.