Chương 33: Smoke, Stone, and Steel

By the time the stew bowls were scraped clean and the lamps along Stonegate's yard flickered to life, I found myself at the usual fire with Leif, Henry, Erik, and Farid. It had become a sort of habit, sitting around the flames at the end of the day, bowls in hand, trading scraps of our routine, bits of specialization talk, and whatever gossip the camp coughed up. The fire crackled, sending little sparks into the night sky.

I sank onto the bench, the ache of another day in my hands and shoulders, and for a moment just breathed. Stonegate's walls loomed behind us, steady and indifferent, a copper edge of safety against the black. Leif broke the silence first, stretching until his spine popped. The firelight caught the new scars across his knuckles.

"Two months in Polearm & Formation," he said, shaking his head in disbelief.

"And I'm finally starting to feel it. Endurance drills, shock charges, spear walls. Vanguard's in reach if I keep pushing." He said it with the kind of confidence that made the rest of us grin. Leif had always been the one pushing harder, running longer, never satisfied with "enough." Henry gave a dry laugh, already shaking his head.

"Yeah, you can keep that pace. Erik and I? We're doing the bare minimum. March in formation, stab in formation, call it a day. That's plenty of spear work for me. The real future's in Logistics."

"Exactly," Erik said, raising his spoon like a toast.

"We do the drills so the sergeants don't flay us, but once that's done? I'm in the supply tents, learning weights and counts. Henry's in the ledgers too. Better chance of surviving ten years with ink stains than fang marks." Leif scoffed, sitting straighter.

"You two will rot behind wagons while I'm driving a spear into a beast's eye."

"Or the beast will drive you into the dirt," Henry shot back, but his grin undercut the words.

"Better the dirt than soup ledgers," Leif muttered, though the spark in his eyes betrayed his amusement. Farid rolled his shoulders, the bowstring calluses on his fingers catching the firelight.

"At least you three know where you're headed. Scouts don't have it easy, tracking drills, archery until my arms burn, and these flare runes." He dug into his pouch and produced a small wooden cylinder, faint grooves etched along the surface.

"Half the recruits can't even light theirs without burning their eyebrows." That earned a round of chuckles. Finally, they all turned to me.

"Rune Ops is finished," I said.

"Fifteen days buried in chalk dust, another forty-five bent over carvings until my hands felt like stone. I passed the exam. Tomorrow I start Field Sappers & Siege Tech, trenches, fortifications, siege engines. The glamorous life of a soldier." Farid whistled low.

"From chalkboards to shovels. You don't make it easy on yourself, do you?"

"Someone has to," I said.

"Walls and trenches hold longer than bravado." Henry raised his spoon.

"I'll take bravado if it means I don't have to dig."

"Same," Erik agreed instantly. Leif just smirked.

"You two can count barrels all you like. I'll be earning a place in Vanguard. Ed'll be building walls. Farid'll be running the woods. In ten years, we'll see who's laughing." The fire crackled between us, warmth sinking into tired bones. For a moment, we were just boys, comparing scars and futures, dreaming the kind of dreams that only made sense when shared by the fire. The kind of talk that stitched us closer together with every night we repeated it.

Henry's eyes drifted toward the small wooden cylinder Farid had been rolling between his fingers all evening. He cocked an eyebrow.

"You've been waving that thing around all night. Going to tell us what it actually does, or just keep pretending it's a toy?" Farid smirked, holding it up so the grooves caught the firelight.

"Scout flare. Red for danger, green for mark, white for call. Full charge can be seen a league away." Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. The moment I caught sight of the etched grooves, I leaned forward without thinking.

"Circle intake, triangle conversion, upward V for activation. Cheap resin seal so it doesn't trigger by accident. Inefficient design, though, the conversion mark bleeds mana if the resin isn't iron-bound. That's why the color shifts sometimes." Farid blinked.

"Or," he said dryly, "you could just say 'it spits fire into the sky.'""Yeah," Erik added with a smirk, "only Ed could make a flare sound like a lecture." Henry chuckled, tipping his empty bowl toward me.

"Give him another ten years and he'll be writing manuals for the quartermasters instead of digging trenches." Leif grinned in the firelight.

"Scholar of Oxspell. You should retire early and spend the rest of your life measuring triangles while the rest of us fight beasts." I shrugged, letting a smile tug at my mouth.

"Maybe I will. At least it's a plan, and with my head buried in books half the time, it probably suits me." Their laughter rolled around the fire, easy and warm. It wasn't mockery, not really, just another reminder that I'd never quite fit the same mold they did. And maybe, in their own way, that was how they made room for me. When dawn came, the warmth of the fire was replaced by the bite of cold air and the bark of orders.

I slung my kit, still tasting ash from last night's stew, as the company split toward their assigned formations. Erik walked beside me for a few steps before veering off with Henry.

"Good luck with your ditches, Ed," he called over his shoulder, grinning. The east classroom smelled of rope, dust, and old iron. Mantlet frames leaned against one wall, half-finished shapes of wood and canvas. A scale model of a counterweight trebuchet sat on the central table, its arm tied down, sling empty. Beside it, a torsion bundle wrapped in gut twine looked like a muscle cut from a giant. Fifteen recruits filled the benches. None were familiar.

I slid into a seat, realizing with a small knot in my stomach that I was the outsider again. The quartermaster strode to the front with a pointer in one hand and a stack of slim stitched booklets under the other. He dropped the stack onto the desk with a thud that snapped the room to silence.

"Specialization runs five hours, fourteen hundred to nineteen hundred. Two breaks. That's all you get. Each subject has its own manual, siege engines, fortifications, bridges, mining, beast countermeasures. Twenty to thirty pages apiece. Read and memorize them" He let his gaze sweep the room before continuing.

"Recruits from every barracks are sent here. Stonegate has four royal army barracks in total, northeastern, northwestern, southern, and central. The others handle infantry, logistics, and supply. Only the east wing of the central barracks keeps every tool a sapper needs. Siege engines are built here, and supplies for fortifications, bridges, mining, and beast countermeasures are stored here. Once you've learned the basics from these books, instructors will take you outside.

Everything you see out there will make more sense after this fifteen-day theory period." I blinked, realizing with a jolt that I hadn't even known the city held other royal barracks. No wonder every face around me was new. I'd spent months thinking Stonegate's training yard was the whole army, when in truth it was just one corner. Now it made sense why no one from Rune Ops had followed me here, our paths had simply split into different wings of the same city. He lifted the top booklet. Siege Engines.

"Names. Parts. Failure points. Uses. Miss one, and you'll miss when it's about to break. When it breaks, it kills." The next booklet. Fortifications.

"Trenches, profiles, drainage. No drainage means drowning in your own mud. Gabions, fascines, revetments. Words that mean the difference between a wall that holds and one that caves." Another. Beast countermeasures.

"Tier Ones hate fire. Tier Twos hate choke points. Tier Threes don't care. But if the ground buys even a heartbeat, you've done your job." A few recruits shifted uneasily, thumbing the edges of their booklets as if the words inside might bite. One by one, he flipped through the manuals, reducing each to a handful of brutal warnings. Then he tossed the bundle down the first row.

"Take one of each. Don't lose them. If you fail theory, you'll be digging for the rest of your life." The quartermaster kept us on the clock. First block: siege basics. He walked us through the trebuchet and ballista with the Siege Engines booklet open in front of us, barking corrections whenever someone's eyes wandered. Then a short break. Second block: fortifications. Trenches, berms, parapets, drainage, and the difference between a hasty cut and a deliberate redoubt. Another break. Final block: knots.

Bundles of rope were dumped on every desk, and by the end of the hour my fingers were raw from square knots and clove hitches. The quartermaster smacked anyone who tried to use their teeth. The ache was different from Rune Ops. Carving runes had left my fingertips blistered; rope left them raw and burning. At dismissal, he lifted two cracked-leather volumes.

"Restricted," he said.

"Field runes for controlled charges. Sign if you can read. If you can't, don't bother. You'll only lose fingers." I stepped forward, put my name on the ledger, and the quartermaster passed me a manual. Back at my bench, I opened it. The first plate showed a flare rune, almost identical to the one Farid had waved last night, only stripped bare: channel depths marked, resin fills shaded, notes scribbled in tight script about dye bleed and iron filings. I smiled despite myself.

From fireside gossip to manuals on my desk, from flares to fortifications, I had walked straight into another world of switches and symbols. it was not as elegant as Rune Ops, perhaps, but just as vital. Smoke, stone, and steel: the tools of a soldier. And now they were mine to learn.