Blood and Belief

A horn blast shattered the darkness.

It was still dark. The barracks was cold, the air thick with the smell of unwashed bodies and fear. Around him, men groaned and stirred. Someone coughed—a wet, rattling sound that wouldn't stop.

"Up! Everyone up!" Sergeant Arvik's voice cut through the darkness. He was banging a stick against the bunks as he walked down the aisle. "You've got five minutes to be in the courtyard. Anyone late gets ten lashes."

Cael sat up. His ribs screamed. The bruise from yesterday's spear butt had spread across his entire left side—purple and yellow and painful to touch.

Around him, the other conscripts scrambled out of their bunks. Most were still in the clothes they'd been wearing when conscripted. Cael was no different—salt-stained pants and a tunic that reeked of the sea. The smell made his chest ache. Three days ago, he'd been standing at the helm of the Salt Daughter, reading the wind and calling out course corrections. Now he smelled like a man who belonged to the ocean but would never see it again.

Mira was already up, tying her boots. She'd slept in her clothes, knife tucked under her pillow. She caught Cael's eye and jerked her head toward the door. *Move.*

He moved, ignoring the ache in his ribs.

***

The courtyard was packed. Hundreds of men stood in rough lines, shivering in the pre-dawn cold. Breath misted in the air, carrying the stale smell of fear-sweat. A few torches burned along the walls, casting everything in harsh orange light.

Cael found himself in the middle of a line, Mira to his left and a thin man to his right. The thin man was shaking—from cold or fear. Probably both.

The army moved like a ship with no rudder. Men drifted without purpose, crashed into each other, received orders and forgot them. On the Salt Daughter, Cael had run a crew of twelve—coiling lines, trimming sails, navigating by stars. Every man had a role. Every action had meaning. Here, it was chaos pretending to be organization.

"Welcome to the Army of Valorheim's Northern March."

Captain Drest stood on the same platform as yesterday. Behind him, a dozen soldiers held torches. The captain's armor gleamed in the firelight, polished and clean. Everything about him screamed professional soldier—a man who'd spent his whole life at war and didn't know anything else.

"Today, you begin training." Drest's voice was crisp. "Most of you have never held a weapon. Most of you have never seen combat. That changes now. You have two weeks to learn everything you need to survive on a battlefield. Two weeks before you face Karthia's invasion force at the border."

Two weeks.

Cael's gut dropped. Two weeks to transform fishermen and farmers into killers. On the Salt Daughter, it took six months to train a proper deckhand. And those skills were about staying alive against the sea—not taking another man's life.

"You'll be organized into squads." Drest continued. "Eight men per squad. Your squad is your family. You eat together. You sleep together. You fight together. And if you're lucky, you die together instead of alone."

No one laughed. The silence stretched until Drest continued.

"Sergeants, sort them out."

Arvik and the other sergeants moved through the crowd, pulling men out of line and organizing them into groups. Cael was grabbed by the shoulder and pushed toward a cluster of five others.

"You six are Squad Two." Arvik said. "Get to know each other. Your lives depend on it."

He moved on without another word.

Cael studied his new squadmates. Mira was there, still sharpening that damn knife. The young boy from yesterday—Petyr—stood with his arms wrapped around himself, trembling. An older man with gray hair and hard eyes stood off to the side, studying each of them in turn. And two others—a rail-thin man with a haunted look and scars across his back visible through his torn shirt, and a quiet woman who wouldn't meet anyone's eyes.