Campfire and Night

Erwin took the parchment without putting it away immediately. His lips pressed together, and his fingers rubbed back and forth along the edge of the paper.

"The third matter." His voice carried weary resignation. "Miko's progress in learning."

Ron watched him quietly.

"Grammar and writing. Three days—three whole days. Just look at the exercises he wrote."

"I feel like teaching a troll would be easier than teaching him. At least trolls don't poke holes through paper."

Erwin took off his glasses and wiped them with his sleeve. "Do you know what it feels like to teach someone in his twenties who has held a hoe since childhood but never a pen?"

Ron's lips twitched. He forced down the curve of a smile and glanced toward the courtyard, where Miko was crouching before a companion, helping adjust the straps on his breastplate to the proper length.

"At least he spelled his name right," Ron said.

"What?"

"His name. He spelled it right."

Erwin opened his mouth, let out a soft sigh, and said nothing more.

Ron's fingertips tapped lightly against the table, a faint smile hidden in his eyes.

The smithy stood on the eastern side of the camp. When Brom took over the place, the camp's original blacksmith was crouched before the forge, filing rust off a sword.

His name was Todd. Not yet twenty, he had only a few soft hairs of beard growing on his upper lip. When Brom walked in, he stood up with the file still clutched in his hand. His eyes first caught sight of Brom's blazing red beard, then Brom's hands, worn into shape by anvils and hammers.

"You," Brom said.

Todd set down the file.

"Show me the forge, the bellows, and the quenching trough."

Todd looked around. Ash still lay uncleared in the firebox, the leather piston of the bellows was leaking air, and a layer of rust and oil floated on the water in the quenching trough. Brom snorted at every spot he inspected. By the time he finished examining the trough, those snorts had become one continuous sound.

"This is it?" Brom said.

Todd nodded. Brom smoothed his beard apart with both hands, the brass rings at the ends of his braids swaying.

"The furnace is passable. Replace the leather piston in the bellows. And change the water in the quenching trough every day—one bucket of water to three pounds of salt. The edge will come out harder." He slapped Todd's thigh hard enough to make his knee buckle. "Boy, you'll keep being an apprentice. My apprentice. Forget everything you learned before and start over from the beginning."

Todd's eyes reddened as he nodded hard. Not because of that slap, but because he had thought that once Brom arrived, he would no longer have the right to stand before the forge.

Brom was no longer looking at him. The dwarf pulled out the stack of blueprints Ron had given him and spread them over the forge platform. The third version of the crossbow replacement parts: an eccentric wheel, a connecting rod, two sets of pulleys. He studied the plans for a while, his thick, stubby fingers running back and forth over the marked dimensions.

"The precision requirements aren't low," he muttered to himself. "But it can be made."

His eyes gleamed in the forge light like two pieces of flint heated anew.

On the northern side of the camp, Aina was crouching in front of Pete. Pete sat against the wall with his injured leg stretched out before him, the bandage half undone. Aina gently pressed the edge of the wound, and Pete's thigh muscles suddenly tensed, but he did not make a sound.

"Good. It hasn't festered." Aina took a medicine jar from the leather pouch at her waist. She evenly spread salve around the wound, then drew out a strip of linen soaked in strong liquor and wrapped the wound again.

Aina tied the strip tight with a slipknot, stood, and brushed the dirt from her knees. Her gaze swept across the recruits changing gear in the courtyard, the smoke rising once more from the direction of the smithy, and the wasteland beyond the camp where people had already begun turning the soil.

Several civilian women passed by her, each lowering her head in greeting as they went. One elderly woman stopped and handed her a clay jar.

"Priestess, these are celandine flowers picked this morning. Do you think they can be used?"

Aina took the jar and looked down at the herbs inside, their leaves still standing upright despite having been scalded.

"They can. Next time you gather them, leave two sections of the root. They'll grow back."

She returned the clay jar to the old woman and added, "Just call me Aina. I'm no longer a priestess."

The old woman accepted the jar. Her lips moved as though she wanted to say something, but she swallowed the words. She nodded and walked away, hugging the jar to her chest. After taking several steps, she turned back.

"Lady Aina."

Aina did not correct her again. She stood beside the herb garden, afternoon sunlight bleaching her pale golden hair nearly white. A breeze blew in from the river bend, lightly swaying the leather pouch at her waist. A faint herbal scent drifted from its opening, mingling with the smell of earth.

At dusk, Fiona's patrol brought back a wild boar and a doe. Each animal had fallen with an arrow through its eye. Two Fian Champions carried one apiece on their shoulders, and when they entered through the camp gate, everyone in the courtyard stopped what they were doing.

Ron lit a bonfire in the courtyard—a real bonfire. The wood was stacked into a tower, dry moss and shredded bark stuffed beneath it. Flames slipped out through the gaps between the logs, staining the courtyard walls orange-red.

The wild boar was mounted on an iron spit resting across Y-shaped stakes on either side of the fire. The scent of roasting meat mingled with woodsmoke, rising from the castle courtyard and drifting into the twilight.

Ale was brought out from storage. Brom was the first to raise a wooden cup. The dwarf planted one foot on the base of an anvil and lifted his drink above his fiery red head.

"I was locked in a cage for twelve days." His voice drowned out the crackle of the bonfire. "Twelve days without touching a hammer or a drink. I was about to go mad from holding it in."

He tipped back his head and drained more than half the cup. Ale ran down his beard. He slammed the cup down, making it wobble as liquor spilled across the forge platform, hissing into white vapor in the heat.

"Tch, this ale isn't strong enough," he said. "Still, it beats having none."

The recruits sat around the other side of the bonfire, cups in hand, but no one drank first. Cole looked at Miko, and then Miko raised his cup.

"To the wounded. To us," he said.

Fifteen cups rose together toward Pete. Pete sat against the wall, holding a cup of his own. His face reddened in the firelight, then he raised it and took a gulp.

Then the singing began. Not from the recruits—the veterans sat on the other side of the fire, their weapons propped upright beside their knees.

The man farthest to the left began first. His voice blended with the crackling of the bonfire, as though it had traveled from somewhere far away. He sang in the common tongue of Calradia, its syllables entirely unlike the local ballads of Velen—brief and forceful, yet more desolate.

"The tavern lights of Praven blaze bright,"

"Dhirim's ale is cold and rich,"

"Come, wandering brothers, raise a toast to this fleeting night,"

"Swadia's knights wear gleaming armor, Rhodok bolts pierce castle walls,"

"Tomorrow, you and I may stand on opposing sides, but tonight, set grudges aside,"

"When the first rays of dawn fall upon the hills, spears and steeds will ride to war once more,"

"Who remembers last night's toasts? Who remembers whom we died for?"

Brom's cup paused in midair. He had never heard the song and could not understand the common tongue of Calradia, yet his fingers tapped softly to the rhythm, and from time to time he lifted his cup for a deep swallow of ale.

Aina sat among the civilian women, a basket of herbs in her lap, but her fingers had stopped at its edge and no longer turned over the leaves.

Erwin sat beside Ron, his glasses reflecting the bonfire's glow. His lips moved soundlessly with the syllables.

As the final line faded, a spray of sparks burst upward from the bonfire, flared for an instant, then dimmed. No one spoke.

Ron watched the dancing flames, a trace of quiet gravity passing through his eyes. He drained his cup in one go. Beyond the camp, the sound of water from the river bend drifted in from afar.

The bonfire still burned.