Basil scrambled back to get out of the way of a nurse whose arms were overflowing with a mountain of sodden, crimson bandages. In his haste, his hip clipped the edge of a frame, and he stumbled, his weight falling directly onto the bandaged leg of a wounded man.

The soldier let out a moaned whimper.

"I’m sorry! By the Gods, I’m so sorry!" Basil stammered, his face burning. He stepped back again, only to land squarely on the foot of a passing medic. The man didn’t even acknowledge the Prince’s heir, probably he hadn’t seen him; he simply shoved past with a grunt of annoyance, his mind occupied elsewhere.

Basil stood frozen in the narrow aisle, suddenly and painfully aware of the audience he had gathered. Men rose on their elbows, stretching their necks to get a glimpse of the spectacle. He could feel the weight of their stares, hard, judging, and weary. He felt like a stray dog that had wandered into a temple, clumsy and unwelcomed.

In a moment of pure, childish instinct, he looked toward his father. He glimpsed him several rows away, leaning over a veteran who was gesturing animatedly toward a missing finger. His father didn’t look back. No rescue was coming. Basil felt the heat of shame crawling up his neck; he was certain the men were looking from him to his father, pitying the Fox for having sired such a whimpering, leaden-footed pup.

Suddenly, a hand shot out and tugged firmly on his surcoat, pulling him out of the path just as another medic hurried by with a bucket of sloshing red water.

"Easy there, your Grace," a gravelly voice said. "You’re likely to get trampled or scrubbed if you stay in the middle of the road."

Basil turned, breathing out a frantic word of thanks. The man sitting on the bed had a perfectly round, jovial face, shaved clean to the scalp. He might have looked like a friendly merchant from the capital’s square if it weren’t for his mouth. A horrific scar had sheared away the skin from his lips to the back of his cheek, leaving his side teeth permanently exposed in a skeletal grin.

"No worries, little Lord," the man rasped, his small, soft eyes twinkling despite the ruin of his face. "Bit overwhelmed, eh? Don’t fret. At your age, I couldn’t even hold a hoe straight without tripping over my own shadow."

A chucled oozed out from someone.

He nudged the man in the bed beside him. "Got something to say, Letio? Or are you too busy thanking the Weaver that dagger didn’t find your balls instead of your thigh?"

The man named Letio gave a weak, wheezing chuckle, though he kept his eyes squeezed shut.

The scarred soldier turned back to Basil, his permanent grin widening. "Pay him no mind. That one’s a proper stick up the arse. Always got his nose turned up, sniffling at everything like a dog that found a fresh pile of shit. We have to clog his nostrils with rags at night just so the rest of us can get some sleep."

Basil let out a startled, genuine laugh. The tension in his chest loosened a fraction. He thought of a certain man who had the same irritating habit, always sniffing and prying into business where no sniffing was required.

"I should probably go apologize to the nurses later..." Basil muttered, his ears burning as he looked back at the chaos he’d caused in the aisle.

"Ah, bugger that," Moly rasped, his skeletal grin shifting slightly. "You’re the Prince’s seed. They should be thanking you for giving ’em something to trip over besides blood-buckets."

"I don’t think my father would appreciate me thinking like that," Basil said softly.

"He’s right to feel that way. Means he’s a good man, and a better father. My old man used to thrash me red every time I snuck off to see the shepherd’s daughter." Moly chuckled, a wet, whistling sound. "But bugger the old man, I married her anyway. Though I made sure to plant a brood in her first! Best way to convince two sets of parents to agree to a wedding is to let nature do the talking. A soldier’s sworn word, that is!"

Basil blinked, his face turning a shade of pink. "That would cause a catastrophe for my parents. If I went... playing around like that, it would make me a very poor man in manners."

"Didn’t you cause enough catastrophe hiding in a supply cart for two days? Oh, aye, where are my manners?" The soldier extended his hand for a clasp. "The name’s Moly. Got a brat of my own back home, and by the look of this stump, I’m set for an early retirement. I’m from the First, and despite the mess of my face, I can still tell a joke, even if I have to whistle it through the gaps in my teeth."

Basil instinctively reached out to return the gesture, his hand hovering in mid-air before he froze. He looked down at Moly’s . There was nothing there but a clean, heavy binding.

"Oh! I... I am so sorry!" Basil gasped, jerking his hand back as if burned.The soldier had extened the left but he grasped the right. 𝘧𝑟𝑒𝑒𝘸𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝓁.𝘤𝘰𝓂

A roar of laughter erupted from Moly, not a bitter sound, but a genuine, belly-deep rumble. Around them, the men who had been staring with judgment suddenly joined in, their cackles echoing against the tent walls.

"No worries, little Lord! Ha! It’s been too long since I laughed that hard," Moly wheezed, wiping a tear from his good eye. "The boys needed the entertainment. It gets tiring staring at the white ceiling and the nurses’ arses. And there’s nothing special about the latter, let me tell you, they only sent the old wenches to this front.All the good one are with the lordlings."

Basil stood there, the embarrassment fading into a strange, warm curiosity. He felt the weight of the tent’s gaze shift from mockery to a rough, soldierly sort of affection. He leaned in a little closer, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper.

"Can I... can I ask you something? A question?"

"Ask away, lad. I’ve got nothing but time and half a face."

Basil gestured vaguely toward the opening in Moly’s cheek. "On a windy day... do you feel the breeze inside your mouth? Does it whistle through?"

The laughter that broke out this time was thunderous. Even the sniffling Letio in the next bed let out a jagged hoot. Moly grinned his terrifying, wonderful grin, nodding vigorously.

"Aye! Sometimes even the rain gets through if I’m not careful! I have to chew on the left side of my head, or I’ll end up wearing my dinner on my shoulder." He beckoned Basil closer with a wink. "Here, you want to see something cool? Watch this."

Moly tucked four fingers from his remaining left hand into his mouth, his eyes crinkling as if he were about to summon a hound from across the valley. He drew in a massive breath, his chest swelling, and then blew with all his might.

Instead of a sharp, piercing whistle, a pathetic, hollow wheeze escaped through the gap in his cheek, sounding like a dying flute.

Moly slumped back, laughing at his own failure. "For the life of me, I can’t whistle no more! I try to call my wife and I just end up sounding like a drafty window."

Basil laughed with him, feeling a strange newfound stillness settle into his bones. The crushing weight that had been on his back hadn’t vanished, but it had shifted; it was no longer a faceless monster, but a collection of voices. All he had needed was that first bridge to be built.

"Thank you, Moly," Basil said, his voice clearer now, ringing with a respect that had nothing to do with courtly etiquette.

"No worries, your Grace," Moly wheezed, his skeletal grin softening. "I’ll keep you no more, else the boys’ll say I’m hoarding the Prince’s blood all for myself. Go on then, I’m sure there’s plenty here with tall tales to tell. Just don’t believe half of what the liars from the Fourth tell you."

Basil nodded and moved on, but this time his step was sure.He was a boy walking through the living history of his father’s victory.

He met a man they called ’Horsebane,’ a massive halberdier from the Third whose arms looked like knotted oak. He had earned his name by single-handedly bringing down six Oizenian chargers in the frantic minutes before the line broke. He sat upright, his arm in a crude wooden splint, speaking of the promotion to Decario that awaited him once he could hold a blade again.

Further down, he sat for a moment with ’Nanny-Muck,’ a Hound who had survived a knight’s charge by pulling the man from his saddle and holding his head under the rising, bloody slurry of the Ford until the armored man stopped kicking.

"Iron don’t breathe too well in the mud, little Lord," the man had whispered with a wink.

The tent, which to the boy had once seemed as a place of sterile horror, was becoming stories of survival and grit. But that as for many others was a peace that was fragile.

A sudden, piercing shout erupted from the lightless depths at the far end of the pavilion.

"BACK TO THE LINE! BACK TO THE LINE!"

Basil spun around to see a man in a middle row suddenly convulse, his body arching off the hay mattress with a violent snap. He wasn’t awake, but his limbs were thrashing with the strength of a man still locked in the middle of the slaughter.

"SHIELDS UP!"

The man’s bandages began to unfurl as he fought against invisible ghosts, his fresh wounds weeping red onto the white sheets. In an instant, the somber quiet of the tent was shattered. Two nurses dropped their basins, the water splashing unheeded as they rushed to pin the soldier’s shoulders down.

"Agalosios! Over here!" a medic barked, lunging across an aisle to grab the man’s thrashing legs. ’’Hold him down the sucture is gonna come off!’’

The soldier let out a gargling scream, his hand clawing at the air as if trying to find a sword that wasn’t there. The surrounding patients flinched, some covering their ears, others staring with a hollow, knowing dread. As if knowing that to be a familiar sight.

A nurse sprinted through the aisle, throwing her entire weight across the man’s thrashing shins. The wooden frame of the bed groaned, the legs skidding across the dirt as the soldier fought with a frantic, mindless strength.

"I thought I said double the dose for this one!" a surgeon bellowed, his voice cracking with the strain of the chaos. "Why the fuck is he up?"

"Stop him! Hold his shoulders!"

"The stitches! The wounds are opening, we’re losing the closure!"

More bodies joined the fray, a desperate heap of white tunics and leather aprons lunging at the soldier. He was a mountain of a man, his muscles corded like iron cables, even as his blood began to seep through his fresh dressings, blooming like dark roses on the linen.

Basil stared, his breath hitching. He knew that face. He had never learned the man’s name, but he remembered the rough, calloused hand that had offered him a waterskin of bitter vinegar-water during the long march to the Ford. The man had laughed then, telling him it was the only thing that kept a soldier’s spit from turning to dust. Now, that same face was dilaniating as if in deep pain.

"STOP! STOP, YOU BASTARDS!" the soldier roared, his voice a raw, gargling sound. He threw a blind, heavy fist, catching a medic in the jaw, though the impact seemed to shatter his own knuckles against the man’s teeth. "YOU OIZENIAN BASTARDS! I’LL KILL YOU! I’LL CARVE THE SUN FROM YOUR CHESTS!"

He was back at the river. He was back in the red soup, fighting ghosts and shadows that only he could see, in that red dance that had failed to claim his life sating itself with his mind.

It was in that dance of limbs that a small figure went.

He was small, a sliver of silk and bone weaving through the frantic mass of adults. He ducked under a nurse’s reaching arm, slipped between the waist of a leaning surgeon and a medic’s braced leg.

The soldier lunged upward again, his teeth bared in a snarl, his hand clawing at the air. But as his fingers snapped shut, they didn’t find the throat of an enemy. They found a small, warm hand that reached out and firmly grasped his own.

The man froze. The roar in his throat died into a strangled whimper.

By then the medic had a much easier time holding him down forcing a drink in the man’s mouth that succeeded at last in subduing him.

It was in his last moments that his head turned, his wild, sightless eyes searching for the threat. But instead of the glint of an Oizenian spear, he found a pair of deep emerald eyes, steady and clear, staring back at him from just inches away.

The snarling mask of the warrior dissolved at last, leaving only a tired, broken man behind.Drifiting back onto dear sleep.