CHAPTER 3: THE NINTH

  The horn was a braying, ugly sound, the kind of noise designed to be impossible to sleep through. It cut through the pre-dawn darkness and dragged every man in the tent into sudden, cursing wakefulness.

  Around me, bodies jolted upright. Movement. Confusion. The tent came alive.

  "Shit. Already?"

  "Move. They don't wait."

  The tent flap opened. Gray light spilled in, just before dawn. A soldier stood silhouetted against it. "Up! Everyone up! Formation in five minutes! Move!"

  I sat up. The blanket fell away and cold air hit my bare chest. The brand throbbed. I looked down at it for the first time in real light. I could clearly see the brand. A geometric pattern radiating from a center point. Precise and permanent.

  Men scrambled around me, pulling on clothes I didn't have. I still had nothing but the blanket, the brand, and the mud caked on my skin.

  Someone threw fabric at me. I caught it. A rough-woven tunic, undyed. Then trousers, stiff, coarse. Then boots. Leather, worn, at least a size too small.

  I didn't ask where they came from. Just put them on. The tunic barely reached my waist. The trousers chafed immediately. The boots compressed my feet against the cuts from yesterday's barefoot march, and every step was going to be a conversation with pain.

  But I had clothes.

  "Move! Outside! Now!"

  I followed the others into the morning cold. Gray sky overhead, low clouds, the air damp and biting. The ground was churned mud. My boots sank with each step. The cuts on my feet sent up bright flares of protest.

  Men poured from other tents, forming rough lines in an open assembly ground marked by wooden posts. No organization yet. Just bodies standing in the cold, waiting.

  A soldier walked down the lines, shoving people into columns. I ended up in the back row. Good. Less visible.

  The man next to me was shivering. Young. Maybe eighteen. He had the same chalk mark I did. Low Quartz. His eyes were wide and scared.

  I didn't say anything. I was thirty-seven years old, standing in formation in an army from another world. I didn't have comfort to offer.

  We waited. The cold sank deeper. My breath misted in the air.

  Then she appeared.

  She walked toward us from the direction of the command tents. She had a limp, a hitch in her left leg, but it didn't slow her down. She moved faster than men half her age who had both legs working right.

  The left side of her face was a mass of burn scars. Temple to jaw, the skin twisted and shiny, pulled tight over bone. Her left eye was milky white. Blind. Her right eye was sharp and dark and moved across us like a blade.

  She wore a sergeant's insignia and a Low Ruby brand on her forearm, the first I'd seen above Quartz. Leather armor over a worn tunic. A wooden rod in her right hand, and not for walking.

  She stopped at the front of our formation. Turned. Faced us. Let her good eye sweep the ranks.

  When she looked at me, she paused. I was older than most of the others by a decade. She noted it. Filed it away. Moved on.

  Nobody spoke. The silence stretched until it grew teeth.

  "You are nothing."

  Her voice was harsh and carried without effort. Just volume and certainty.

  "You are less than nothing. You are the mud I scrape off my boots." She lifted one boot and showed us the sole. "In six weeks, some of you might become soldiers. The rest will become corpses. I don't care which. The Empire needs bodies either way."

  She started walking. The wooden rod tapped against her leg with each step, keeping time with the limp. "You tested Low Quartz. Low Jade. The bottom. The weakest. You have barely enough power to stand upright, and the enemy will cut through you like grain at harvest. My job is to make you slightly harder to kill. That's all."

  She reached the end of the first rank. Turned. Walked back. "The Ash March doesn't take prisoners. They don't negotiate. They don't retreat. They want you dead, every man, woman, and child in the Empire. You are the only thing between them and everyone you've ever loved. You should find that terrifying. If you don't, you haven't been paying attention."

  Her good eye fixed on a young man in the front rank. Maybe nineteen. "You think you're special?"

  The kid didn't answer. Smart.

  "You're not. You're a number. A body. A resource to be spent." She moved to the next man. "You will run when I say run. Stop when I say stop. Eat when I say eat. Your lives belong to the Empire now. The sooner you accept that, the longer you'll survive."

  She walked back to center. Faced us all. "My name is Sergeant Mira Kolt. I survived three campaigns. A mage burned half my face off. A warhammer shattered my leg. I'm still here. Most of my friends aren't." She paused. "I'm meaner than I need to be because I know what happens to soldiers who aren't ready. I've buried them. I've watched them die screaming. I won't lose sleep over you. But I'll do my job."

  She raised the wooden rod. "Strip off those tunics. We run."

  Nobody moved.

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  "Now!" The rod cracked against the nearest man's shoulder. "Tunics off! Move!"

  We moved. I pulled the tunic over my head. The cold hit my bare chest again. The brand was visible. Around me, other men bore similar marks, Low Quartz, Low Jade. A hierarchy burned into skin.

  Kolt's eye swept across us. Cataloging. Confirming.

  "Good." She pointed with the rod. "Camp perimeter. Two miles. Keep up or get hit. Fall down and get left behind."

  She turned and started running.

  We followed.

  I kept up for about half a mile.

  Kolt set a hard pace, her limp barely costing her speed. Younger instructors ran alongside with their rods ready. The recruits pulled ahead of me immediately. Most of them had been training their bodies since childhood. Building strength. Preparing for this.

  I was a factory worker who'd spent eleven years standing in one spot. Different kind of endurance.

  At three-quarters of a mile, I was falling apart. My lungs burned. My legs shook. The brand on my chest pulsed with each heartbeat, hot and insistent. I tasted blood where I'd bitten the inside of my cheek.

  An instructor materialized beside me. "Move, old man! Faster!"

  The rod hit me across the shoulders. Not enough to drop me. Enough to let me know what dropping would cost.

  I stumbled. Caught myself. Kept running. Or kept doing something that was technically running.

  At a mile, I could see the finish. The assembly ground where other recruits were already gathered, already done, already breathing normally while I was dying by degrees. The gap between me and the next-slowest runner was embarrassing.

  My vision narrowed. Gray edges creeping in. My heartbeat was too loud, too fast. Each step was a separate act of will.

  I made it another hundred yards.

  Then my legs quit.

  One moment I was moving, the next I was on my hands and knees in the mud. The impact jarred through my whole body. I tried to push up. My legs had no interest.

  My stomach heaved. I vomited. Nothing but bile and spit. The taste was acidic and I heaved again anyway.

  I stayed there. Hands and knees. Gasping. Shaking. Covered in mud and my own vomit.

  Boots appeared in my vision. Kolt's.

  "Get up."

  I tried. Made it to my knees. My legs wouldn't take the next step.

  "I can't—"

  "Then you die here." Her voice was flat. The weather report for my immediate future. "Get up or stay down. If you stay down, you're done."

  I looked up at her. Scarred face. Blind eye. Good eye watching me with the detached curiosity of someone observing an insect that might or might not make it across a puddle.

  I got up.

  The same dumb, grinding stubbornness that had kept me at that conveyor belt for eleven years. The refusal to stop moving, even when moving had no purpose. It had been a flaw back home. Here, it was the only thing I had.

  "Walk," she said. "You can't run, walk. Finish the loop."

  I walked. Every step sent pain through my feet and up into my shins and knees. My chest heaved. My legs trembled. But I walked.

  The other recruits had finished and moved on to other drills. I walked past them alone, coated in mud and vomit, the oldest man in a field of kids. They watched me pass. Some with pity. Most with something harder.

  The weak link. The liability. The man who was going to get them killed.

  I finished the loop. Kolt was waiting.

  "You're the weak link," she said. Loud enough for everyone to hear. "You slow everyone down. That means everyone pays for your weakness."

  She turned to the rest. "Everyone! Extra drills! Because the old man couldn't keep up!"

  The groans were instant. Hateful. I felt every pair of eyes on me like individual burns.

  "Down! Push-ups! Fifty! Count!"

  They dropped. "One! Two! Three!"

  I tried to join. Got down on my hands. My arms held for ten before they collapsed. I went face-first into the mud.

  They kept going. "Twenty-one! Twenty-two! Twenty-three!"

  I lay there and listened to fifty men count out their punishment for my failure. The numbers carried venom.

  When they finished, Kolt dismissed them for rest and food. I stayed in the mud. Just breathed.

  Someone walked past and deliberately kicked mud onto my face. "Thanks for that, old man."

  I didn't respond. Didn't have the energy.

  Eventually, I forced myself upright. Staggered toward the latrines. Needed water. Needed to not be wearing my own vomit.

  Behind me, I heard angry voices. Following.

  The latrines were crude wooden structures over open trenches. The smell was overwhelming, but there was a water barrel outside. For washing. I stumbled to it, hands shaking, and splashed water on my face. Cold. Clean. It stung the cuts but cut through the grime.

  Footsteps behind me.

  I turned.

  Three of them. Young men with clenched jaws. The one in front was the guy I'd heard counting push-ups loudest, putting real fury behind every number.

  "You got us punished, old man."

  I straightened. "I know. I'm sorry."

  "Sorry doesn't fix it." He stepped closer. The other two spread out. Not surrounding me exactly, but cutting off the easy exits. The third hung back a step, arms crossed, looking like he'd rather be somewhere else but wasn't willing to say so. "You're going to get us killed out there. Weak links break, and everyone next to them gets crushed."

  "I'm working on it."

  "You're failing at it." The second one was shorter, stockier, with a wide face and quick hands. "We should sort this out now. Better you learn the lesson here than on a battlefield where it costs us our lives."

  I'd never been in a fight. The factory hadn't prepared me for violence. Just for repetition and pain.

  I raised my hands anyway. "I don't want this."

  "Too late."

  The first one shoved me. I hit the latrine wall and couldn't catch myself properly, too exhausted. The second one followed with a punch to my ribs. I curled. A kick caught my thigh. I went down.

  I covered my head and my chest, protecting the brand by instinct, and took what came. Kicks to my side, my back, my legs. Not trying to kill me. Making a point.

  The third one didn't participate. Just stood there watching, shifting his weight, looking uncomfortable. The other two didn't seem to notice.

  Maybe thirty seconds. It felt longer.

  When they stopped, I was on the ground beside the latrine, gasping through new pain layered on old.

  "Keep up tomorrow," the leader said. "Or we stop being gentle."

  They left. The reluctant one glanced back once, then followed.

  I lay there and took inventory. Ribs: bruised, possibly cracked. Lip: split. Face: adding to the collection. My side ached where a boot had connected solidly. None of it was permanent. All of it was going to make tomorrow worse.

  Lighter footsteps. Slower. I tensed.

  But instead of another kick, someone crouched beside me.

  "You gonna stay down there all day?"

  A woman's voice. Direct.

  I looked up.

  She had the build of someone who'd grown up doing physical work. Strong hands, plain face, steady eyes. She wore the same rough training clothes as everyone else. On her arm, a different mark than mine. Low Jade.

  She wasn't smiling. Just looking at me with calm assessment.

  "Can you sit up?"

  I tried. She helped, one strong hand under my arm, pulling me upright with the matter-of-fact efficiency of someone who'd hauled heavier things. She handed me a rag, relatively clean.

  "For your face."

  I took it. Wiped the blood from my lip. The rag came away red.

  "Thanks."

  She nodded. "I'm Senna."

  "Marcus."

  First time I'd introduced myself in this world. The name felt strange in my mouth. The only English word I'd said in hours that anyone would understand.

  "Come on, Marcus." She jerked her head toward the barracks area. "You need food and water before the next drill. And those feet need cleaning tonight. Infected feet will kill you just as dead as the enemy."

  "How do you know about my feet?"

  "I've got eyes. You walk like a man stepping on glass." She started moving, then looked back when I didn't follow. "Coming?"

  I followed. Each step hurt. My ribs ached. My feet bled.

  But someone had helped. In a place where I was the weakest, the slowest, the most expendable thing on two legs. Someone had decided I was worth a clean rag and a walk to the mess tent.

  I followed Senna through the camp. The drills continued around us. Shouting. The sounds of an army grinding itself into shape.

  And I was part of it. Whether I wanted to be or not.