Mud and Men

The sun had not risen, but the waking began anyway. Not from birdsong or the tolling of a noble bell—but the rustle of cold feet shoved into hard boots, the groans of men who'd slept on their sides too long, and the hiss of piss turning to steam in the frostgrass.

Darin rubbed his palms together until his skin stung. He had no gloves, only cloth wraps slick with last night's mud. Beside him, Harl broke the ice on their water bucket with a dagger he claimed to have taken from a dead man four days ago.

"Drink before the officers do," Harl muttered. "Last time they emptied half the casks for their mules. Like the beasts needed clean water."

Darin sipped. The water tasted of iron, old wood, and some sharper thing he didn't want to name. He passed the bucket without comment and looked out across the camp.

Canvas shelters sagged low with damp. Men crouched around finger-thick fires that wouldn't catch. A few still slept curled in their cloaks, but most moved with the slow rhythm of resignation, not urgency. Behind them all, further upslope, rose the crimson pennant of House Thirel—its threadbare fabric flapping against the morning wind like a dying bird.

"See them?" Harl nodded toward the higher rise, where the officers' fires burned hotter, ringed with raised stones and logs. "They're not even cold. What's that say?"

"That we're not them," Darin said.

Harl chuckled. "Sharp tongue. You ought to mind it, though."

"I do," Darin replied. "That's why I still have teeth."

A voice barked across the slop of trampled dirt. "Shield-line forms at horn-call! No excuses! Clean gear! If your blade's dull, your neck'll match it!"

Sergeant Raive.

Darin and Harl turned in practiced motion. Raive walked with a limp earned at Bale's Crossing, though he'd never say which side had wounded him. His greaves were polished—almost offensively so—and his voice had the cadence of a man who enjoyed obedience more than outcomes.

"Third shield-rank assembles in one hour! Rear files double-time, pack mules get moving first. If you're not formed when I look, I'll piss in your mess kit and make you drink it!"

Murmurs followed his departure. None too loud. Raive had sharp ears for dissent and a cruel memory for names.

As the men moved, Darin knelt and untied the bundle holding his shield and blade. The shield was nothing more than curved wood and rawhide, battered and waterlogged. His sword was a short cleaver—more tool than weapon. He checked its edge with his thumb and sighed.

"Going to need a better blade before this ends."

Harl looked over. "That won't happen unless you find a dead knight and no one else watching. And then, you better kill the man who saw you take it."

Darin didn't smile. "There's always someone watching."

A horn sounded—a deep, warbling call that echoed across the camp and bounced off the tree-line to the north. Movement surged instantly. Boots on mud. Packs thrown over shoulders. Mules braying in protest as they were whipped into readiness.

The levy moved in clumps—no order yet, only instinct. Old veterans barked at younger ones. Some men fumbled their shields; others pissed themselves before finding formation. It was the same every time: first light, first march, first taste of how far the nobility could stretch patience before it snapped.

Darin took his place. Third rank. Near the middle. He knew the logic—they put the taller men in front, the cowards in back, and the ones who didn't flinch in the middle. They hadn't told him that, but he'd noticed the pattern.

"March light today," Raive called. "No drums. Scouts report movement south of the stream. No one talks. No one sings. You talk, you bite your own tongue off before I hear it."

They marched.

And the mud—gods, the mud—gripped boots like a mother gripping a drowning child. It pulled, it clung, it fought back. Each step felt like dragging a corpse behind him.

After an hour, the line was a smear of cloaks and hunched shoulders. Cold water soaked through greaves. Wind cut through wool. The sun rose like an afterthought, weak and pale.

Harl leaned in. "Still think joining the levy was smart?"

"It was that or keep harvesting oats for a man who calls himself 'Ser.'"

"And now?"

"Now I march."

They crested a rise, and Darin saw the terrain ahead—a broad field, half-flooded, bounded by a thin treeline and a ridge further beyond. To the west, a burned farmstead. To the east, the glint of something metallic, half-sunk in the earth.

The captain rode up—Thirel's bastard cousin, armored in mail and wearing a grin too white for the hour. "Camp here!" he called. "Dig your piss-trenches! We hold this ridge for the day!"

A moan rolled through the ranks—quiet, shared.

As the men began to move, Darin stayed still a moment, looking eastward. That glint. Not a sword. Not a helm. Something older, maybe. Ironbound. Forgotten.

"Come on," Harl muttered, elbowing him. "Unless you're planning to piss in front of the whole company."

Darin turned, but his eyes flicked once more toward the half-buried shape.

He didn't know why, but something about it felt like the first step of a longer road.

And he was already walking.