A Fightin' Chance
Iron-rimmed wheels dug small trenches into the earth. A slurry of mud and blood clung to the frame as a wagon is pulled to a stop.
In the center of Zijdel, the scene had become bathed in falling ember and flickering firelight. This slave camp had become nothing more than a smoldering heap of corpses and destruction. The air had grown thick with the smell of burning flesh, charred hair, iron, and blood. The horse pulling the wagon shook it's head, neighing in a low, panicked trill. A man pulled the reins, bringing the cart to a stop just outside the heat of a collapsing bunkhouse. It was a safe spot—far enough from the leaping embers to keep the wood from catching, but close enough to work by the firelight.
The man slowly inches his body out of the driver's bench and lands on the ground, his legs buckling slightly. He moved toward a collection of corpses lining the roadway. His gaze scanned across the ground, observing the bodies of soldiers with the cold, calculating eye of a merchant weighing grain. His cloak, the color of pine needles in a dark forest, swirled around a frame that seemed permanently bent by years of back-breaking work.
He hobbled toward the first cluster of fallen men, his hands emerging from the cloak like talons reaching for prey. They were unsightly things—knuckles burdened with boils, fingernails cracked and stained, and palms layered with callouses. He curls his digits around the hilt of a weapon and looks at the soldier on the ground. Still in his rest clothes, never had a chance to don his armor.
The scavenger hocked a glob of dark phlegm into the mud, his eyes narrowing at the steel in his hand. "As usual," he rasped. "Soldiers 'ave shite 'sides their blades."
He gave the longsword a disparaging flick to shake off the worst of the gore before tossing it toward the wagon. It landed with a hollow metallic clatter against the wagon bed. He didn't stop to admire the craftsmanship; he simply moved to the next man, his fingers methodically finding the dagger at the soldier's waist with practiced ease.
"Feckin' Falcons," he muttered under his breath, his voice catching on the smoke in the air. "Gang of barbarians, the lot of 'em."
He paused, nudging a corpse over with the toe of a boot that had seen better decades. He studied the portrait of carnage: the deep, jagged gash across the gut followed by the precise puncture at the throat. It was the calling card of the Swift Falcons—mercenaries who fought for the dissenters with a mechanical, joyless efficiency. Any place graced by the march of the Falcons was often left bloodied and burning. Corpses dot the path of their travels.
The scavenger's gaze drifted past the armored dead toward a trio of men slumped near the steps of a fallen mess hall. They weren't soldiers. They wore nothing but threadbare burlap tunics and reed-woven sandals.
"Feckers don't git orders t'kill slaves regular," he grumbled, trudging through the mire of thick blood and mud toward them. "A pleasure trip, yeah?"
He reached the first man and rolled him onto his back. The scavenger flinched—not out of pity, but out of a sudden, sharp disgust. These men hadn't been granted the "mercy" of two fatal wounds. Their torsos were a map of cruelty, marked by seven long, shallow cuts that trailed down toward their thighs and vitals.
"Sick fucks," he hissed. He let the body drop back into the mud with a wet thud. Yet another sign that those monsters had been through this place. No other troupe active in this civil war would dare desecrate the dead.
The air felt heavier now, colder. He turned his back on the corpses and retreated to his wagon, his breath hitching in his chest as he hauled a heavy canvas pack from the bed of the cart. He checked the reinforced lining with a gnarled thumb; it was thick enough to hold a dozen unsheathed blades without piercing his own skin. He had work to do, and the firelight wouldn't last forever.
The scavenger’s pack was heavy now, the iron hilts and crossguards of a dozen blades digging into his spine through the thick canvas. He was turning back toward the wagon when a peculiar sight snatched his attention.
Near a soot-stained wall that had miraculously stayed upright, a figure sat huddled in the mud. It was a person, or what was left of one, hunched over their own knees in a tight, protective coil. Even from a distance, the scavenger could see the black shafts of seven arrows protruding from the back like the quills of a starved porcupine.
He paused, his eyes narrowing. They’d been executed from a distance, yet the body wasn't sprawled in the dirt like the others. It was braced, rooted. The arms were locked around the midsection in a desperate, rigid cradle.
"Hidden something, 'ave ya?" he murmured, a spark of greed cutting through his exhaustion. "A purse? A memento from the masters?"
He limped closer, hunger and greed gleaming in his dull eyes. Up close, the smell of iron and blood was overwhelming. The arrows had been driven deep into the vertebrae, some punching through the ribs to the front, dyeing every inch of the figure's rags a deep, gruesome crimson.
He reached down to haul the corpse back, but the weight defied him. Even with the pulse long gone, the body refused to yield. As he strained, he saw only matted black hair and sunken, ashen features—yet the grip was no mere rigor mortis. It was a predatory, post-mortem snap; a final, desperate lock that had outlived the heart.
"Oi! Give it up, ya broad," he grunted, his fingers slipping on the cold, wet fabric. "The dead 'ave no need for mementos in the land of the livin'."
Lacking the balance for a shove, he brought his heavy, mud-caked boot up and lashed out at the shoulder. The corpse toppled with a sickening, stiff thud, her center of gravity finally broken.
The scavenger leaned in, expecting the glint of silver or the worn leather of a pouch. Instead, the air died in his throat.
Nested within the frozen circle of the woman’s arms was a newborn. The infant’s face was a map of tragedy—cheeks sunken from malnutrition, skin the color of a winter bruise. It didn't cry. It didn't even seem to breathe.
"A shame," the man whispered. The thought hit him with a cold, flat finality. To be born into the hell of a Forscythe slave camp was one thing, but to die before even learning the weight of one's own name was another.
He stood over the tiny, silent form, the fires of Zijdel reflecting in his watery eyes. He should turn away. He should get back to his wagon before the Falcons returned to finish the looting.
"The tyke ain't ever gon' see the future," he muttered, his hand hovering indecisively over his pack strap.
But a "what if" began to itch at the back of his mind—a small, irritating spark of defiance against the gods who had permitted this slaughter. What if this wasn't the end of the road? What if the gate wasn't closed yet?
The scavenger stared at the tiny, grey face. He should walk away. He had a wagon full of steel and a long road ahead. But the "what if" gnawed at him, sharp and irritating as a splinter.
With a strained, raspy grunt, he reached under the cover of his pine-green cloak. His fingers fumbled against a hidden pocket until they brushed against glass. He pulled out a small, wax-sealed vial. The liquid inside was a murky, viscous gold that seemed to catch the dying embers of the burning village.
"Stupid," he hissed at himself, his thumb hovering over the seal. "Sell dis in the capital, and I’d be eatin' like a king for a year. Or save it for when me own lungs finally give out."
He looked from the vial to the silent, blue-lipped child. The woman’s frozen arms seemed to tighten one last time, a silent plea from the mud.
"Aye, I know," he snapped at the corpse.
He cracked the seal with a yellowed fingernail. The scent that wafted out was sharp—bitter herbs and something that smelled like ozone. He knelt in the bloody slush, his knees cracking, and carefully tilted a single, heavy drop onto the infant's tongue. Then, with a trembling hand, he rubbed the rest of the liquid into the child’s chest, right over the heart that refused to beat.
He waited. The fires roared nearby, and a beam from a collapsed house groaned, but the child remained a statue. He leaned in so close his shadow swallowed the babe, searching for a flutter of a pulse.
Nothing. The eyes remained blank, staring at a sky they had never truly seen.
"Right shame, that is," he muttered, the weight of the wasted draught hitting him harder than the cold. He felt like a fool—a soft-hearted, penniless fool.
He stood up, his joints protesting, and returned to his heavy pack. He struggled to heave the straps over his shoulders, the clatter of swords sounding like a mocking laugh in the silence. But just as he tightened the buckle, a sound cut through the roar of the flames.
A wet, rattling cough.
The pack hit the mud with a heavy thud, forgotten. The scavenger stumbled back, nearly tripping over his own feeble legs. Within that stiff, protective grip, the newborn was shuddering. A thin, whimpering cry—more of a squeak—squeezed out of the child’s throat.
"Still kickin', are ya?" The man’s voice was thick. He reached back into his cloak, pulling out a small leather pouch. He pinched a bit of fine, shimmering powder between his crooked fingers—healing dust, rare and caustic. "This'll sting like the blazes, and it ain't meant for babes... but it’s better than the alternative."
He sprinkled the dust over the child’s chest. A faint, localized warmth shimmered over the infant's skin, and the shallow gasps turned into a full-throated, healthy wail that echoed off the marble walls.
The scavenger reached down to finally take the child. This time, the mother’s arms didn't resist. As if the woman’s spirit had stayed behind just long enough to hear that first real cry, her body finally relaxed, her fingers uncurling to surrender her burden to the stranger.
"'Ey now, lil' one," he whispered, tucking the crying bundle into the warmth of his cloak, right against his own ragged tunic. "Can't say if this is a blessin' or a curse I've bought ya. But I'll do right by ya. I'll make sure ya have a fightin' chance."
He didn't look back at the woman in the mud. He shouldered his pack, heavier than before, and hauled himself into the wagon. As the horse began to pull the cart away from the ruins of Zijdel, the scavenger sat in the back, the newborn's heat a strange, new weight against his chest.
