The Third Fireline

The parchment was thick. Not waxed, not stained. Real vellum. Which meant it had passed through three hands before reaching Darin. And none of them had dirt under the nails.

Raive dropped it beside the cook pot. He didn't speak. Just pointed once, then crouched by the steam, letting the fire hiss up the side of the blackened copper.

Darin picked up the scroll.

He read it twice.

Then a third time.

Then folded it slowly and tucked it into his belt with the same care he used when sheathing a dull blade.

Raive didn't look up. "It says what I think?"

"It says I've been noticed," Darin replied.

The Third Fireline was notoriously unwinnable. A forward trench made on bad soil, facing the swamp that nobody marched through—because no sane army ever attacked from the marshes. Except once, two winters back, and the stink of that slaughter still hung in the frost like a buried fever.

It wasn't a front line.

It was a message.

"Three days," Darin said. "One ration shift. No resupply." He stirred the stew with the edge of his blade. "No relief promised."

"Who signed it?" Raive asked.

"No one," Darin said.

Raive grunted. "Coward's ink."

That evening, the men who followed Darin did what they always did: they waited near, without gathering close. They didn't ask. They didn't have to.

They'd heard.

Orders didn't travel on parchment. They traveled on breath. On the glance of a quartermaster. On the way the dice stopped falling quiet.

By torchlight, Darin began choosing.

He didn't pick his strongest. He picked his most stubborn.

They departed before dawn. Twelve men. One mule. No banners. No escort. Darin carried the sealed order on his chest, visible through a cut patch on his outer layer. A reminder: this is not a rebellion.

They arrived by dusk.

The Third Fireline was little more than a ditch, a stacked wall of rotting sod, and a collapsed palisade tower that leaned toward the marsh like a drunk praying.

No defenders.

No welcome.

Just wind.

And rats.

They unpacked in silence.

Jorah, the mule-handler, began laying the old oilcloth across the trench roof — a joke, really. There were gaps big enough to piss through.

"Feel like this place wants us," he muttered.

"No," Darin replied. "It wants us dead, which means someone else does too."

On the second night, the marsh lit up. Not torches. Not an attack.

Signal flares. From the other side.

Raive narrowed his eyes. "Scouts?"

Darin shook his head. "Spectacle."

On the third day, a runner arrived.

Thin. Pale. Scared.

From command.

Carrying a "revised order" and two loaves of dry bread.

The new scroll read:

"Your station has been observed from afar. Hold one more day. Reinforcements pending. Faith honors resilience."

It was signed in ink shaped like prayer, but not by a hand Darin recognized.

That night, Darin gathered his men around the old firepit in the trench. The sky spat sleet, but it hadn't broken into full snow yet.

He held up the scroll.

Then he dropped it into the fire.

Nobody spoke.

Jorah stirred the ashes with a knife. "So, what now?"

Darin met each of their eyes.

"We hold. But not for them."

He stabbed his blade into the ground between his feet.

"We hold for the next men who'll stand here. And we'll leave them better earth than we found."

At dawn, Darin's crew began rebuilding the trench.

Not because of orders.

But because they wanted proof they were more than bait.

By midday, a small supply cart rolled down the frozen slope. No flag. No driver's seal. Just four barrels of fresh pitch, twenty wool cloaks, and bread still warm enough to steam.

The attached note read:

"Observed. Endured. Noted. Return at your discretion."– No signature.

Darin folded it.

This time, he did burn the parchment.