Csshnk.

I never knew what to do with myself on the quiet nights.

Csshnk.

The orange coals of our campfire stained my vision.

Csshnk.

I turned my gaze to the stars.

Thud.

My sword fell to the grass.

Thud.

And the whetstone beside it.

I sighed.

Nobody snored in my warband.

Nobody shirked curfew to drink or gamble.

They were awake though, some of them. Prowling around as only Ash scouts could. Silent. Scheming and seamless in the night.

It made my duty on watch feel all the more pointless.

I frowned at the stars.

Quiet nights like this awakened a sense of longing within me.

To hear it once again:

Company.

Revelry even.

Raucous calls of stupid games.

Violence.

Simple pleasures drilled into me by the comradery of the Blood fahrar where I was raised.

Simple pleasures made all the more richer by the memories I had with my old warband, as brief as they were.

Starlight twinkled.

I might’ve cracked at the thought, years ago. Had I known.

I hated them, I think.

All their noise, their squabbles. It’s what drove me to the quiet. Where I felt I belonged.

Where the loneliness was crushing.

Where I longed to hear them again, from a distance. 

I wanted them to want me as my new warband wanted me now.

Effective, present and silent.

I wanted to hear them fight.

Laugh quietly over their strife, all the stress they caused each other.

I wanted them to slip me ale, glad to have me present and uneager for my contribution to their turmoil.

Instead I had this quiet. 

Ash was everything I knew it to be.

The subterfuge was beyond me, but it was my heritage. 

I had thought it would make sense to me, in time.

But in the months I’d spent amongst their ranks, it had only grown more perplexing.

I watched at first, so certain I would find something. That there’d be patterns. Mysteries to ponder and chase.

Instead there was silence in the dark.

And still I watched. Waiting and hopeful that one night I might catch the crack of a branch. That come morning I might see tracks from tent to tent.

That I might begin to unravel the nature of this warband and feel at peace within it. Find my home, like I realised all too late that I had once and rejected it.

Instead there was nothing I was privy to.

But I knew there was something. Amongst them. Their bonds were too tight, they were too familiar with each other to be all business. That the expecting dam in our ranks hadn’t grown pregnant by some celibate miracle.

And yet, all they were to me was silent.

It was maddening.

I felt excluded once more, but this time it was like a challenge. A puzzle I couldn’t solve. Some subtle trick, something that every Ash cub is taught in their youth that I missed entirely.

I snorted at the stars.

Anger licked my thoughts.

If I missed anything, my parents were to blame.

Parents.

I glowered.

I shouldn’t think of them as such.

They should have been nothing to me.

Just soldiers I knew by coincidence.

But I remembered all too well the nights of my youth where my dam and sire would feed and coddle me.

Where they’d play with me to pass the days out on their reconnaissance mission. 

Where they’d deny me the social language of our legion, of Ash.

Where they eventually left me in a Blood fahrar out of convenience to themselves. 

And I’d never seen them again.

And though I knew in the pits of my soul that that was good. That it was normal.

It was too late.

And some wounded, childish fragment of my mind clung onto those memories.

I was five. Young, but late to join a fahrar.

Late to the cohort.

I didn’t fit in. I was soft, quiet. Prime to be molded by an Ash primus.

Instead it was Blood.

With their noise and violence. 

And it worked, they tempered me. Forged me into a soldier.

One who was unafraid, unfaltering. One who wouldn’t back down.

One who could expect his warband to do the same.

One who now stood with Ash, those who vanished into smoke at the first signs of danger.

But I couldn’t kid myself into thinking I could stand alone either.

I tried that in the heart of my old warband.

It wounded them.

They were emotional.

Tightknit.

They were Blood.

I never fit in, but I wasn’t prepared for them to cast me out either.

And I learned the misery of being gladium all too swiftly.

I wandered.

Away from Grothmar, away from Blood.

I sought Ash, feeling it in my bones that it was where I belonged. 

And I found them, somehow.

By chance.

It felt certain. That this was fate’s hand, or some dormant instinct.

I now felt naive in perpetuity. 

I knew how they saw me.

I was a weapon to them.

A sword where they wanted one.

A shield when they needed one.

But a tool nonetheless.

I was a dullard.

‘Blunt like only Blood could be.’

But I wasn’t Blood.

Not really.

Wasn’t Ash either, no matter what I wanted.

Worse still, we were stationed on the west border of Grothmar and the Shiverpeaks. Not far from the keep where I was raised.

Where I’d forged and shattered bonds that were meant to last a lifetime.

Instead I was caught in a snare.

Trapped with Ash.

Tempted by Blood.

So close and yet so far.

It was confusing.

Infuriating.

I clenched fists.

My claws dug into my wrists.

I trembled in rage and snarled into the darkness.

The sound carried.

And I know they heard me, no matter how much I failed to hear them.

I know they heard me.

I know they saw me too, though they’d never find me watching back.

I couldn’t.

So I hung my head.

The coals of the campfire had died.

The comforts of a soldier called to me.

I picked up my whetstone.

I picked up my sword.

Csshnk.

And ever more, I hated the quiet of the night.

Csshnk.