Fifth Sergeant Tomaas of Olsten. Just a kid. A prisoner of war. Body not recovered—didn’t even have a family to return him to if he was.
He immortalized them—the Valkesta Squad. Made them carve out graves for the ones who didn’t return. Asked if they’d dig him a grave, too, beside the rest.
You’re fine, Tehali would say in the nights she steeped his wounds with hot water and an herb mix the healers gave to him. You’re all right.
Leave me alone! he screamed—at her, at the ghosts of his squad sergeants. At the vision of Isaniel that stood in the corner of his bunk night after night after night saying: Liar. Cheat. Traitor.
He was. He still might be. Bass squeezes his eyes shut until they hurt, until someone moves his tent flap to the side to enter. Haaman, of course. Their footsteps are easy to tell apart from the rest, a little jumpy and not as heavy. Bass sits up on his elbow, rubbing his eyes.
“Can’t sleep?” Haaman crosses their legs beneath them to sit.
“Never could before a battle.” And never could after, either. He hasn’t slept well since he decided he would kill Kensy—for all of his cruelty, Kensy’s been with Bass for a long time.
What happened to the man he once knew? Have they changed so irrevocably, so unrecognizably? They warred at the front lines together. They killed together, bled together. When Basuin thinks of Kensy, he thinks of the man who sat beside him and drank ale from the same tin cups as Basuin until they laughed the horror of their crimes away. Ground their sins into the ash beneath their boots together.
When Basuin imagines killing Kensy, it’s still that version of him. The version that Bass considered a friend. Not whatever gnarled, twisted, cruel thing Kensy became as he shed the man he was in Grimmalia.
Maybe Kensy was always that, and maybe it was easier to believe he was good. Because if Kensy was good, then Bass could be, too.
Haaman wrings their hands together, staring at the floor. “You should go without us,” they finally say. “I didn’t mean what I said earlier, but they’re children. They don’t understand.” It sounds weary, like their words are too hard to even say. Terribly pained. “I’ll take them to the northwest in the morning. Hou-tou said she’ll help. I’ll protect them,” Haaman says quietly, “with my life.”
If he could do it over again, Basuin would’ve dismantled the Valkesta squad before they even left. He knows this. He would’ve spared them, his comrades, from the death he knew awaited them at the top of that mountain.
He would’ve gone, alone. And he would’ve died there, at peace, alone.
“I trust you,” he tells Haaman. But he doesn’t apologize. There was never any moment that he wanted an apology after Valkesta, after Isaniel, and he’s certain Haaman doesn’t want one now.
“Then leave now,” they say. Haaman digs into the crease of their knuckle as if to draw blood, nails bitten to nothing. “You can move with the night.”
“Will you be all right?” he asks. “With the two of them?”
“I have friends.” Haaman looks upward as if they can see them now. “There are still some who haven’t left. Who don’t want to leave their home.”
He doesn’t either—want to leave. Before this, he didn’t even know if he had a home anymore. And that’s why they must fight. Now, more than ever. Because they don’t have much else to lose—so they have to fight for what’s left.
Bass claps Haaman on the shoulder, squeezing them. “Thank you.” He hopes Haaman knows how much he means it. Words are shit, don’t mean a thing. But he’ll kill Kensy, and he’ll fight for the forest, and maybe that’ll be enough.
Haaman’s beady eyes have narrowed. “Don’t thank me. There’s nothing but death ahead of us.”
A muscle in Bass’ jaw twitches. “No one can read the future,” he says, something he’s spent the night staring up at the ceiling in thought of—if he could have changed anything with clandestine knowledge of the future. “Not even the gods.”
He tucks the blanket tightly around Yaelic’s shoulders and under his chin, resting a heavy hand on the boy’s sleeping frame in a lingering touch. Then, he takes the dagger from his hip and places it with Yaelic’s things. Boys and their sharp things—too young and too bloody. The sheath is worn, from his father, to himself, and now to Yaelic.
When he peeks into Ren’s tent, she’s asleep too. Her arms are locked around a slumbering Qia as if someone might try and take the fawn away. Everything about her is sharp and defensive, even as she rests. Basuin doesn’t dare touch her for fear she might jump awake. So he watches her, the soft rise and fall of her chest, the way a sliver of moonlight graces her cheek the way he wishes he could.
He takes nothing with him. As he walks away from their camp, for the last time, he pulls his harness over his shoulders and buckles it around his waist, sword hanging from his back. He’s ten paces into the trees before Ren’s voice slices through the silence.
“You’re leaving me?” Her voice is shrill, filled with betrayal. But something more than that.
When he turns to look at her, cold fear seeps behind a crooked mask of anger she tries to wear. He can see right through her.
“I’m not leaving you,” he tries to stress. “If I leave right now, I can make it to the River before Kensy.” He swallows. “I spoke with Haaman—they said they would take Qia and Yaelic westward.”
“And where would I go?” she hisses. Ren’s eyes, beautiful and glassy with the wash of the moonlight, are poisonous. “You were going to leave me behind.”
“Ren—”
“Liar.” The way she wraps her arms around herself, protecting herself, makes him wither. “You said I’d never be alone again. You lied. Liar.”
