The Blade That Wasn't Claimed

The firepit cracked with wet pinewood. Smoke curled low across the trampled grass, thick with the scent of pitch and damp wool. Darin sat with his knees to his chest, hands hidden in the folds of his tunic. Around him, the others chewed quietly. Dry bread, salt meat. The food was tough, the silence tougher.

They'd dug the piss-trenches too shallow. That much was obvious. Even the wind seemed to wrinkle its nose as it passed the camp.

Raive barked twice at the shield-tenders, then again at a mule-handler who'd let a bridle slip. The man didn't even respond—just stared off toward the edge of the trees, where scouts had vanished earlier that morning.

Darin didn't speak. Harl had wandered off two fires down to flirt with a knife-woman who'd helped skin last night's haunch. Others sat with their clans or tradefolk. Darin had no such luxuries.

His eyes kept drifting east—where that glint had come from.

He stood. Quietly. No one stopped him.

The ridge fell away behind the rear ranks. He stepped off the slope and followed the memory of the light he'd seen earlier. The grass grew taller here, less trampled, and the soil was broken in long, unnatural lines. Furrows, maybe. Or scars.

The glint was still there—half-buried, crusted in black soil and rusted at the edge.

He knelt and brushed aside the dirt.

It was a blade.

Not gleaming. Not crowned in gold. But old. Thick-spined. Single-edged like a butcher's cleaver, but curved. Its hilt was broken, wrapped in fraying leather, and its crossguard bore a sigil worn almost flat—a circle etched with three notches, like a broken wheel.

Darin reached to lift it—and stopped.

He looked around. No one in sight. No one watching.

Still, he waited.

Then he wrapped his fingers around the hilt and pulled.

It came free without resistance, as though the earth had been waiting to give it up.

The blade was heavier than it looked. Not ceremonial. Not forged for show.

It was a killing tool.

He turned it in his hands. It felt… balanced. Honest. Not eager like the new-forged swords he'd once seen at the baron's fair. This one didn't shine. It warned.

He wrapped it in cloth and bound it tight. His standard-issue cleaver would still hang at his side, for now.

But this one—this one had survived something. And now it would again.

By the time he returned to the fire, the mood had shifted.

"Raiders hit the scouts," Harl said quietly. "Three came back. The fourth lost his face. Half the sergeants think it was border folk. The others say sellswords."

Darin glanced toward the captain's fire. The officers were arguing, hands sharp in gesture, faces strained.

One voice cut through the rest—Sir Rhoran.

"We hold the ridge. We hold the line. We wait for signal from the pass."

And then quieter, to someone unseen: "If any man steps out of formation tomorrow, leave him. Alive or not."

That night, Darin couldn't sleep.

He lay under his threadbare cloak, fingers brushing the cloth-wrapped sword beneath his body, heartbeat steady.

He hadn't spoken a word of it. Not to Harl. Not to the quartermaster. Not even to the priest who wandered through camp murmuring blessings to men who no longer believed.

But he remembered the sigil. The broken wheel.

Not a house mark. Not in Halrix Vale.

Something older.

He would ask. Later. Quietly.

But for now, he kept it close.

He was still a no-name footman.

But the blade he carried hadn't belonged to one.