Chapter 26: Escort Through the Green Belt
The hazard pay that followed the Iron Call had remained at its elevated rate. The Guild's refusal to lower the bounties served as a quiet admission that the violent escalation in the Green March was a permanent fixture.
Callis stood in the muddy staging yard inside the March Gate, adjusting the thick leather straps of his cuirass in the freezing pre-dawn fog. His breath plumed in the cold air, mixing seamlessly with the steam rising off the flanks of the draft horses hitched to the provisioning wagons.
Today, he stood as the fourth man in a Silver-class escort contract, assigned to shepherd two wagons loaded with quarried stone, alchemical salts, raw timber, and iron stakes out to the fifth mile marker to rebuild a logging camp shattered during the recent leyline flare.
Callis pulled a strip of dried, smoked flank from his leather pouch and tore off a bite. The intense, salty flavor of hickory and cured meat flooded his mouth, bringing a sudden, grounding warmth to the freezing yard as the taste anchored his thoughts to Lysa Morcant in her quiet curing shed.
"Good jerky," Kaelen noted from the side of the timber cart, his gravelly voice breaking the quiet as a shadow fell over the wagon.
Callis turned to see Kaelen standing a few feet away. Kaelen possessed the build of a moving wall, carrying a scarred tower shield and wearing chainmail damaged by years of frontier abuse. Veterans with his tenure usually viewed newer recruits as inevitable casualties waiting to happen.
Recognizing the dynamic, Callis immediately tore the strip of meat in half and held the offered piece outward.
Kaelen raised a thick eyebrow, taking the meat to chew it thoughtfully as a look of genuine respect crossed his weathered face. "Morcant’s shop?" he asked, shifting the massive weight of his shield to rest against his knee.
Callis nodded, brushing the salt from his gloves. "Yes," he confirmed, securing his own pouch back onto his belt.
"You have good taste, Vale," Kaelen decided, swallowing the tough cut of meat. "Rhett says you hold your ground when the line gets hit. He mentioned you took a razor-boar in the trench at Fort Vance."
Callis kept his voice completely flat and practical as he replied. "I was in the trench when the boar fell into the mud with me. I had a thick piece of iron and absolutely nowhere to run."
Kaelen snorted, producing an approving, harsh sound in the cold air. "Honesty serves well out here. I like that. We are running a diamond formation around the lead wagon today. I have the front, Rhett covers the rear, and you take the left flank. Watch the tree line closely. If something comes out of the brush, you anchor yourself. You lock your shoulder against the wagon timber and you make it come through your blade to get to the horses. Understood?"
"Understood," Callis agreed.
A month ago, taking direct tactical orders from a frontier mercenary would have chafed his deeply ingrained pride. Today, that straightforward instruction felt like the most valuable currency in Hartsgate.
The convoy rolled out as the sun breached the horizon to paint the bruised sky in streaks of dirty copper. The Green March had altered its character completely since the leyline flare. The ambient hum of the forest insects had vanished, leaving behind a tense, waiting silence while the frost clung to the dead briars.
Callis walked on the left flank, his boots finding the driest ground near the edge of the deep, frozen wagon ruts. His boar-sword rested easily in its sheath, his right hand resting on the iron pommel as he measured every step to keep strength in his legs. He conserved his energy, keeping his eyes fixed on the spaces between the trees to look exclusively for the sudden absence of light that signaled movement in the brush.
The caravan passed the third mile marker without incident, the wheels grinding a steady rhythm into the dirt. By the fourth mile, the terrain dipped into a shallow, creek-cut lowlands filled with dense, thorny scrub. The wagon wheels sank deeper into the muck, forcing the draft horses to slow into a grinding, agonizing crawl.
"Eyes open," Rhett called out from the rear of the formation. "The mud is thick right here. If the beasts hit us, they hit us now."
Callis dropped his center of gravity, wrapping his fingers firmly around the leather hilt of his sword.
The ambush arrived with a sickening, wet rustle of displaced brush.
Three Caustic Crawlers broke from the tree line on the left flank. The creatures were low-slung insects the size of hunting hounds, their chitinous shells dripping with acidic green sap that hissed audibly as it hit the frozen mud.
"Left side!" Callis barked, his voice carrying cleanly over the snapping brush.
He drew the boar-sword in one fluid motion, the iron rasping sharply in the cold air as he braced his boots in the slush. He followed Kaelen’s instructions to the letter, stepping backward to slam his right shoulder securely against the solid timber of the wagon bed. The massive vehicle served as a reliable anchor for his stance.
The first Crawler launched itself from the brush, its mandibles snapping as it aimed straight for the flank of the lead draft horse.
Callis tracked the creature's arc, waiting until the insect hung suspended at the apex of its leap before bringing the boar-sword up in a brutal, two-handed thrust. The blunt iron tip punched cleanly through the softer underbelly of the insect, utilizing the momentum of the creature's own leap to drive the blade deeper into its vital organs.
Toxic green sap exploded outward to splatter across his boiled leather cuirass. The acidic fluid smoked and hissed against the hardened wax, but Yselle’s meticulous craftsmanship held the corrosive damage away from his skin.
Twisting the blade, Callis kicked the dying creature off the iron to immediately reset his stance against the wagon.
The second Crawler skittered sideways, attempting to bypass his guard to reach the cargo loaded in the back.
Callis stepped laterally into its path, bringing the sword down in a crushing overhead chop that severed the creature’s front legs and drove its face directly into the mud.
A split second later, Kaelen’s steel-tipped spear drove right over Callis's shoulder from the front line, pinning the crippled insect securely to the earth.
The third Crawler aborted its charge, clicking its mandibles furiously before turning to scuttle back into the safety of the dense brush.
"Let it retreat!" Kaelen roared over the noise of the panicked horses. "Hold the line! Keep the wheels moving!"
Maintaining his position, Callis wiped a smear of hissing sap off his leather pauldron with the back of his canvas glove. He kept his sword raised and his eyes locked on the tree line until the wagons finally groaned their way out of the lowlands and onto solid ground.
The tension finally broke when the convoy reached the cleared perimeter of the logging camp at the fifth mile marker. The camp overseer directed the wagons toward the reinforcement palisades, allowing the mercenaries to fall out of formation and lean against the timber walls to catch their breath.
Sheathing his sword, Callis felt the familiar ache in his arms and the heaving of his chest, but the raw, debilitating exhaustion of his first contracts was entirely absent. He felt grounded in his own body.
Kaelen walked over, unbuckling the thick strap of his tower shield to rest the gear against a post. He looked at the dead Crawler sap burning shallow pits into the wax of the leather armor, then evaluated Callis's face to check for the pale shock that usually plagued newer recruits after a close-quarters ambush.
Callis simply met his gaze with a steady, even breath.
Kaelen rested his hand on his hip. "You held the anchor," he acknowledged, his voice a low rumble of approval.
Callis didn't boast about the kill. "I made them come through the iron," he replied, repeating the tactical instruction.
Kaelen grinned, flashing a fierce, genuine expression before reaching out to slap Callis's shoulder hard enough to jar his teeth. "Good iron," Kaelen decided. "Next time we take a Silver run to the deep lines, you hold my flank, Vale."
Rhett Hollow leaned against a nearby post, watching the exchange in silence. Rhett gave Callis a slow, approving nod before turning to haggle with the overseer over their return timeline.
No one announced the change in his standing. It arrived in smaller ways: Kaelen assigning him a sightline, Rhett leaving him to hold it, and a water skin passed into his hand without ceremony. Callis stood in the mud of the logging camp and looked toward the dark wall of the Elderforest in the distance. He had done the job and held his ground on the flank, officially becoming a working part of the frontier machinery.
The march back to Hartsgate proved long, cold, and uneventful. Callis walked with the silver mark sitting securely in his pouch, the phantom taste of Lysa’s smoked meat still lingering pleasantly on his tongue. When the stone arch of the March Gate appeared through the evening mist, he looked at the towering structure and saw his own front door.