I wake to the sound of someone laughing, and the laugh has teeth.
It takes a moment before the world assembles itself again — the hush of breath, the dull drum in my skull, the brand on my chest humming where the cloth rubs. My eye blinks grit; light is a blade at the slit it has left me. My hand moves and finds emptiness. Memory is a hot coal shoved back into my mouth: the brazier, the blade, my father's voice like a judge. My body tastes of iron and old ash.
Outside, someone calls my name and it is already not mine.
"Look 'ere, lads — the Count's stench wakes!" The shout comes from a kid with raw knuckles, face freckled and hard like baked clay. The man near him — a scarred fellow who smells of piss and stale adds, "He's clean for a noble, ain't he? They scrub the noble-blood better than they scrub a trough."
I lift myself on the elbow; mud clings to my lips. The tent is a sagged thing; a damp canvas breathes over us like a beast. I try to sit, the motion wracking the brand. Pain blooms white-hot across my chest and I drag air like a man under water. The other men watch the play of my face and bite their tongues like dogs.
"Give him a swig," someone says.
"See if he bleeds noble ."
A cup passes, a rump of bread thrown without ceremony. I take it because the hands that hand it are hands and hands are life, but the bread tastes like dust and the cup tastes like rust. The laughter around me is a chorus of small cruelties. They have names for this: they call it sport, or sanity, or the way men remind each other they are alive.
When I answer, my voice is a small, cracked thing. "I am Kaelen. I—"
"Aye, we know the name. He's kin to Lord Veal, ain't he?" Another voice, and the question is a chain that binds.
Someone spits on the ground. The spit is a measure of their contempt.
They begin to bait me like dogs at a tether. Little things, at first. A thrown scrap of bread that bounces off my leg.
A word like "weak" thrown as casually as a stone. Someone drags his fingers along the wet bandage across my chest, and the touch is curiosity without kindness. A boy, younger than me, pokes a finger into the gap where my hand used to be and laughs — an animal's curiosity. The laughter is sharp; the pain that flares inside me is very like humiliation.
They say I was branded for my shame. I say I was branded and not for shame, but they do not care for nuance. The world here does not speak in nuance. It speaks in body and in weight and in who can take a blow. My body is a ledger of other people's accounts: take this from him, give that to him. I am a number scrawled by boots.
I am given a bucket before long.
It is heavy and full of the smell of men's waste — the latrine's overflow. My job for the morning is the Groaners; everyone calls it a joke because the word "latrine" would be too honest. They push me over pits of brown sourness and point with the ends of spears.
"Get in there, noble. See if your blood floats."
I do not answer. I bend. I shovel filth. The stink coats my lungs and makes me retch once. Someone laughs until he coughs.
Another calls me "Stump" and the name sticks like mud.
Every scoop is a small desecration. A boy dies inside me in slow motion — the child who once believed names meant something. He is stolen in a dozen gestures: a shove, a taunt, the way they look away when I beg for mercy in my face.
Mercy isn't currency here.
My father paid for the world a long way away. Here, the coin isn't worth the paper it is printed upon.
They set me to other chores too: mending boards, dragging damp straw, picking lice off the dead because someone needs to be idle and someone must be dirty. The rhythm of the work becomes a thin rope to clutch at. I move like a man in a dream, hands doing things while my head is a room with the doors closed.
They bait me again and again. A soldier tosses a slug of stew past me, just out of reach.
"Catch that with your noble chin."
They shout the old jokes about nobles and their soft hands, about velvet and brocade. I don't have the strength to lash out. When I try to meet their eyes, most look away. Some have pity curled under their lips. Pity is worse than scorn. It is a whisper that says you belong to me only because I allow you the grace.
The commander walks along the line — tall, clean-creased like a man who polishes his conscience — and looks over us like a landlord. He sees me standing and spits.
"A bit of fine cloth poses as a mourner," he says so every man within earshot hears.
"Tell me, boy: does the Veal keep you on a leash? Or did he send you to learn the price of provoquin ?"
I do not answer. There is nowhere to hide. The commander's satisfaction is a low thing. He lives off the power he takes for being a voice.
They mock me in patterns and rhythms. Every insult is a stone thrown into the shallow water of my mind. Each stone ripples and finds a place: the old dream of Elyra's laugh, the promise of gentleness, my father's ledger of expectations. The stones do their work with a patience that is ugly.
I steal a glance sometimes toward the cook's tent. The smell there is different — warm meat, stock thick with fat, bread baked enough that it cracks. It is a sin to want it. I want it because the want is not noble: it is the basic hunger of the body.
That ache becomes a focus. It is a small thing: clean water, a warm ration loaf, the softness of bread in my mouth. When you have nothing for a long time, small things are the only gods left.
Late in the day, when the bell of a distant siege tolls like a dull heart, someone jabs me with a spear tip.
"Oh? You looking at the cook's tent, are ye? Think you'll get your lord to send out a tray?" The jeer makes the men laugh until their sides ache. Their cruelty is a ritual now; they use me to warm one another's cold hands.
The baiting grows worse when a patrol returns from the line with trophies — a banner with a ripped corner, a helmet dented like a head.
The commander slams the helmet onto a post. He points at me.
"You, noble-boy. Bring that helmet. Put it on and salute." The men howl. I obey because the rope inside me that ties to survival is stronger than the rope that ties to pride.
I put the helmet on and the world pinches. Men jeer. A boy throws a handful of gruel into my face and the food lands like wet mud. For a single moment I flinch, and every man near me laughs so hard they weep. That sound should have split the sky. It splits me.
There comes a point where there is no dignity left even to hold on to. I am too tired.
I move through motions as if stitched to them. At night, when the fires die down and the men speak in low voices, the baiting becomes whispers. They tell stories about the first knights: how a proper man faced his shame and died.
They tell stories because they need a moral to sleep by.
I sleep poorly in a hollow beside the trench, wrapped in some sodden cloth. I count the breaths of the man beside me who is still alive and know the count will stop soon. The stars — if the clouds let them — look like wounds in a sky that cannot heal. My dreams are not of home; they are of the smell of blood that has been set and will not come off.
Hunger is an animal with its own claws. It bites and shapes decisions. It hums under the work. It becomes a voice that is quieter than the others but more honest. It does not shout at me for being noble. It simply asks why I am letting myself starve.
By the second night I am near the edge. The baiting has done its slow, surgical job. I am tender in a certain way: the parts where their fingers have found chinks in my armor. If I had a fire, I would burn the memory of my father and Elyra clean. I cannot hold onto them anymore. They fall away like old clothes.
The cook's tent is a small, warm mountain across the mud. Men pass by carrying pans and plates like promises. For a while I only watch. Then the watching is a stone in my gut.
The thought of taking is not noble, but necessity fattens neat excuses. I weigh the risk. The more I think of the prize — water, bread, the sweet, blessed softness of it — the more the stone grows until it becomes a plan.
I move like a shadow. I learn to make myself smaller, to fold into the wetness of the world. My one good eye scans for movement. My other senses sharpen in compensation. The taste in my mouth is dry as old leather. The brand on my chest burns with each breath; each step feels like a ledger paying itself. I crawl along the boards with the muscle-memory of a man who once had purpose.
I creep close enough to the cook's tent to smell the belly of the stew. The flap is tied but not tightly; the cook is busy with men slapping bowls and not looking to the edges. A crate stands near the tent's post; under it the canteens are hidden, half a dozen bright things glinting like promises.
My hands — weak, awkward — push the crate just enough to free the first canteen. It's cool in the hand, and the sight of water is such a Christian miracle that I can hardly breathe. I raise it and press the rim to my lips.
The cook's boy turns. He is a wiry thing with a face like a rat. His eyes find me and turn into knives. He yells, a high, surprised sound that wakes everyone.
"Thief!" he screeches, and men look up as if the word is a warhorn. I am caught as the world snaps into focus with brutal clarity — the tip of a spear, Moloch's boots stomping, the faces of men folding into masks of hatred.
One of them— a lanky youth who's been taunting me all day — grabs my arm, and the canteen slips from my fingers. It hits the mud with a sound like an oath. I lurch for it anyway, but hands close around my throat. The laughter is a blade in my ears.
"Caught the noble rat," someone croons.
They drag me into the square, a mockery of a court under the dripping canvas. The commander stands in the center with his arms folded. He speaks like a priest at a spectacle.
"So this is what the Veal sends us," he says, and his voice is a blade.
"You stole water. From our kitchens. From men who give their flesh for this soil."
They press the canteen into my face. It is wet with mud and slime. A boy spits into it. I feel the spit like salt in my mouth, like a lash.
"Kill him," someone calls, and for a second my pulse dances like a trapped thing.
There is the edge of panic. The world becomes a narrowing tunnel and I want to return to the place where my father's house is still a picture in my mind.
But there is no rescue. No mercy. The men around me have already taken their pleasure.
The commander steps forward, and his hand arcs. He brings the flat of his blade down across my face. The impact is a concussive blow. The taste of copper floods my mouth. For a second, I see the sky sideways.
They bind me to a post and beat me. The blows are not necessarily meant to kill; they are meant to carve a map of failure into me. Each strike is a sentence, written in the language of bone. I go through a zone of blackness between the hits; my breath comes in shallow, shocked bursts. A man kneels and holds my jaw open to spit at my brand.
"By the gods," says someone close, "I'd forget my name if not for the mark." They laugh.
The commander's hands are accurate, clinical. He knows how to break a man without making a spectacle of death.
Then someone kicks my leg and it fractures with a noise that is both sharp and muffled. The world folds in on itself like a cloth being wrung.
I taste nothing but pain.
The men pull away and look at me as if to see whether I still belong to them. I howl then — not for pity but because the howl contains everything that has been taken. It is a pure animal sound, ancient and true.
They leave me for the night.
I lie half-conscious on the frozen mud, the brand searing, the broken limb a furnace.
The breath of the trench is a white, icy thing that steals warmth.
The stars — where they can be seen — are small and cruel.
I expect to die. The thought sits like a stone and warms me strangely. If they are careless, I'll pass in my sleep and be simple dirt and no one will remember. The idea is not romantic; it is clean.
It is then that I notice the man watching.
He sits a little apart, where the mud is less churned, wrapped in rags that have seen better wars and worse winters. He is small in stature, bent, a limp to his walk.
The men near him call him names — "Old Rat," "Zahir the worm," things meant to scrape.
I know of him by talk. The camp is full of stories: he stole a banner, they say; he deserted and came back; he killed a captain in a brawl; nobody knows for sure. The truth is a thing men make to suit their fears.
He looks at me with a steadiness that does not ask pity. His eyes are sharp—too sharp to be kind, too patient to be cruel without purpose. He is dirty beyond the usual dirt; his nails are black as if they have been digging in graves. When he stands, his knees crack like old wood.
A boy saunters to him and spits. "Old Rat!" he jeers. "Go gnaw a bone." Everyone laughs. The old man does not flinch. He lets the laughter hit him and slide. He is nothing like the others. He is something else.
He stands and comes to me, not with a swagger but with an economy of movement. He kneels beside my head, not touching me, only observing like a man checking a clock.
"You worse than I heard," he says, his voice like gravel. There is no mockery. There is something like interest.
I cannot answer properly. My mouth tastes like iron and my tongue is swollen.
"You got guts, lad," he continues. "Or you got a fool's hunger. Same thing in the end." He looks at my hand, at the brand stitched to my skin.
"Brand and blood don't make a man. They make a name folk can spit at."
I find that I trust him with the truth the way you might trust a fever.
"I stole," I say, and the words are small and cold.
"I was caught."
He watches me for a long moment. Around us the camp is a chorus of low noises — men cursing, the skitter of rats, the distant boom of siege. The air tastes of boiled meat and old sweat.
"You'd gone and done it again tomorrow," he says. "Or the day after. The stomach knows. That's honest." He reaches and snatches the sodden rag that covers my leg and pulls it away. The bone is a dark shadow beneath — the swelling says it's not right. He mutters some word I don't catch.
"Why help me?" I ask, because everything has a cost.
He smiles — it is a crack that opens in his face. "I ain't helpin' yet," he says. "I watch. I mark. I learn the men who can take and the men who only talk about taking. You—" He taps my chest where the brand burns.
"You're a stag in a field of traps. A stag runs pretty and dies. A rat… he learns where the crumbs hide."
Somewhere in his voice is not salvation but a ledger of survival.
I watch him through blurred eyes. He is not god or teacher. He is an old thing with a hunger sharpened by time. The way the other men mock him does not lessen him. If anything, it polishes his edges. His confidence is not built from respect; it is carved from necessity.
"Take this," he says at last, and pushes something into my hand. It is a small scrap of bread, cold and hard, but bread. "Eat."
I gnaw at it. It is more beautiful than any lover I have known.
He speaks then — not with the quiet of a preacher, but with the bluntness of a man who knows taxes and thieves and how the two feed one another.
"If you wanna last, lad, you learn a thing. A rat knows the world by its hiding places. A stag knows the world by the meadow. Yer in a war that don't care for meadows."
The words are not gentle and they do not promise a savior's hand. They are a contract drawn in mud: learn to take, or rot. He watches me as if measuring a ledger.
"Tonight," he says, "you try again. You take and you bring me half. If you get caught, I don't know your name. If you succeed, maybe you live so I can bother to teach you what I know."
"You'll teach me?" The question is paper-thin and frightens me with its eagerness. I am a child asking for a story in a graveyard.
"What will teach me?"
He laughs, a dry rasp.
"I teach no one not willing to eat the rot. I teach the ones who stop pretendin' they deserve anything. You wanna learn, the test is simple: bring me bread, bring me water, and maybe you keep breath in yer chest tomorrow."
I agree because the option of not agreeing is to curl and dissolve. I have nothing else like a choice.
Night arrives with the slow, careful footfalls of the dead. I creep again toward the cook's tent. This time there is pain in each step: the broken leg tingles, a ghost of it screaming. I move with the muscle memory I have been practicing in my humiliation. I know the paths that men do not watch. I know which boards groan and which shadow is the cook's back.
And yet fate — or the dull, inevitable law of my world — catches me. I slip. A spoon falls. A man stirs. The tent flap moves.
Hands seize me as they did before, and my stomach drops in the same way a great bell does when it is cut. The cook is there, blue-faced and weeping curses.
"Thief!" he cries, and the sound is worse because this time it carries disappointment as well as rage.
They drag me out again into the open where the moon sees all. The commander is awake and his face is calm and small and terrible.
"You could have learned to ask," he says, mock-solemn. "But your kind would rather steal." He nods to a pair of soldiers.
"Teach him a lesson." They oblige.
This beating is closer to hatred than the last. They break my ribs with a boot. It is a soft, sickening sound. The knife-edge of cold cuts across the skin where bruises bloom. The taste of my own blood is a medicine I cannot swallow.
Through the spinning and the pain I hear something else: a murmur, like the whisper I have been hearing underfoot — the old, quiet sound that has been present since waking. The smell of the earth is different tonight, deeper. It is not the same taste of rot. It is more of a living thing — a pulse beneath the world that would not let me forget.
I close my eyes and in that little matchbox of darkness I feel hands that are not human. Maybe it is delirium. Maybe it is the trench's breath. I cannot say. The world tilts and then I am thrown into the cold again.
They do not kill me. They leave me on the ground like a rag. The moon watches. The fire dies. The men sleep.
When my senses return in the shallow hours, Zahir is there. The old man sits near, his shadow long and black. He looks at me as a man looks at a broken tool: with appraisal rather than pity. He does not offer comfort. He does not smile.
"You done good," he says, not with praise but with the sort of recognition that is a payment in itself. "You got caught. That means yer brave enough to try." He does not sound pleased.
I want to bite at the world, at the bone of what I have become.
"You wanted me to bring you bread," I rasp. My voice is half-ash.
He smiles and the smile is a small thing like a knife's edge. "I wanted to see if you'd risk the shame of choice. A man who steals and runs is still a man who steals. A man who steals and goes back to his muck is a rat. There's a difference."
He pauses and watches the way my chest heaves.
"Tonight you got caught. That's a mark. You wear it or you don't. The next time, you might learn where the guards sleep. Or you might die trying. Either way, you'll know the cost."
I do not feel chastened. I do not feel guided. I feel cold and oddly cleansed. The brand sings like a promise.
"Will you teach me?" I ask again, because the question is not one of hope but of hunger.
He looks at me like he measures a coin's edge.
"If you keep the wits and lose the softness. If you can stomach the things you must do and keep the hunger in yer belly, then maybe. If not — stay a cleaner. Sweep and die. The world is full of neat graves."
He crouches and scrapes the mud away from my face, not to make me presentable, but to remove the crust of failure so he can see the bone beneath. "For tonight, eat." He hands me the bread he had taken from the cook earlier — a theft of theft.
I break it in half and eat like a man who has not eaten since childhood. The taste is a small heaven. Tears come with it — not for the bread but for what the bread means: the acceptance of a bantam life in a big, cruel world.
While I chew, he tells me the rules in short sentences, not lessons. "A rat sees the paths men don't watch. A rat keeps silent. A rat eats and hides the sign. A rat takes the small things first. Never make a show. Never fight unless you have a path back. And when you look at a man — look to his hands. The hands tell the truth."
I listen and fold the words into me like the first dry wood of a long, cold night. The men in their tents snore and dream; the moon is a pale coin hanging. Beneath the ground, I hear the whisper again — faint, patient. Not an answer, not a command. More like a marker: this place remembers.
When dawn stubs its thin light on the sick horizon, the men stir. The camp smells like the world recovering for only a little while. I crawl to the edge of the trench and sit with my leg bent under me. The bread halves like a memory. The pain is stinging and honest. My face is a map of new lines.
Zahir stands and limps away, not with the swagger of one who has conquered but with the quiet of a man who knows the day's ledger is evened a little. He throws over his shoulder, "If you live, come to the old latrine and find me. Bring nothing pretty."
I do not know what sort of teacher he will be. I only know the taste of bread. I only know the hollow inside, which is a strange, sharp thing that feels like a promise and feels like a sin.
The camp awakens into its small chores. The men pass me and do not strike. They have done enough for today. Their cruelty abates like weather. They will find new amusements.
I sit and I think about the commander's face, the way the world etched me into a thing. I think about the boy who found me stealing and how quick his fingers were to shout. I think about the bread and the old man's voice.
I name myself nothing tonight. I keep the brand's heat under cloth. I tuck the memory of the theft into my gut and let it ferment.