Crunch.
Scritch.
Crunch.
The boys limped back to the barracks in silence.
Slade's jaw wouldn't stop throbbing. His hands looked like raw meat. But he'd survived. That was the point, wasn't it? Survive the day, then the next, then the one after that?
Inside, the barracks smelled like sweat and wet stone. Someone had already collapsed onto their cot. Another was crying again, a different boy this time.
Oliver stood at the entrance, arms crossed, his silhouette cutting a jagged shape against the dim torchlight. "Dinner in an hour. Clean yourselves up. You all smell awful."
Slade didn't keep his head down.
Maybe it was the adrenaline still humming in his blood. Maybe it was the throbbing in his jaw. Or maybe it was just the sheer, grinding indignity of the last three hours — the realisation that keeping his mouth shut hadn't saved him from the shale, so it wouldn't save him from Oliver.
He stopped in front of the older boy, the seven-foot spear vibrating slightly in his grip.
"Well, that's what happens when you grind boys into the shale for three hours," Slade answered, his voice sounding like it had been scraped over gravel. "We smell like the blood you asked for."
A heavy, suffocating silence fell over the row of cots. The boy who was crying stopped. Even the shadows seemed to pull back.
Oliver's eyes narrowed into two cold slits of flint. He leaned in, his breath smelling of stale ale and iron.
"So you want another beating?" Oliver's voice was a low, dangerous growl. He stepped closer, his chest nearly brushing Slade's spear. "You know what? I think I misjudged you. Congratulations, Slade. You're up for your first mission."
"What—" Slade's voice cracked.
"You seem brave enough to answer back to me," Oliver sneered, a cruel, mirthless smile twitching at the corner of his mouth. "So go answer back to your enemy too. I'm sure you'll love that. Report to the north gate in ten minutes. If you're late, I won't need a mission to finish what the shale started."
Oliver turned on his heel and vanished into the dark hallway, leaving Slade standing alone in the centre of the room.
For a long moment, nobody moved. The silence in the barracks wasn't peaceful; it was the heavy, averted-gaze silence of a herd watching one of their own get culled.
Then someone whispered, "You're dead."
But Slade didn't answer, nor did he look at the boy who said it. Instead, he knelt down, and reached deep into the straw mattress of his cot. His fingers brushed against something cold and wrapped in a strip of torn cloth. It was a small, rusted blade he'd managed to smuggle back from home. His old man's knife.
Slade tucked it into his belt, hidden beneath the tunic. He stood up, grabbed the heavy ash-wood spear with a wince, and turned toward the door. The boy in the next cot, the one who'd been crying, didn't say a word. He just pulled his blanket up over his head, as if looking at Slade was bad luck.
Slade walked out into the dark.
A crimson window fractured Ahsira's screen.
[NEW OBJECTIVE: THE NIGHT WATCH] [REWARD: ???] [WARNING: LETHALITY RISK - HIGH]