A gust of wind blew down the caravan, making horses stomp and whinny, coachmen grumble, and recruits clutch whatever clothes they wore. Each cart had a driver, two horses, two benches that sat three on each side, four wheels, and no top. There were closed carriages further up the line, for officers and military officials, he imagined, and in the distance black clouds cast a looming shadow over the plains.

  Grant lingered at the town gates for a moment. He took in the carts, the dark faces in their seats, the smeared gray landscape and the scale of it all. Seeing the future Campaigners made it feel so much more real, and he couldn’t help but wonder how many of them would never be coming home.

  He arrived at his cart to find four of the six seats taken. As he climbed on board, mumbling a half-hearted greeting, all but a man absorbed in a book glanced up at him with curiosity. His eyes wandered over the faces of two men and two women, stopping on the man sitting nearest the driver and almost pitching on his face as icy dread crashed over him.

  “Col…?”

  He stared dumbly at the scowling man.

  An ugly face glared back, snarling with contempt. “Who on the Goddess’s ass are you?”

  They had lived together at the orphanage until four years earlier, and Col had changed little since. His skin was darker, forearms corded with lean muscle, and a hook-shaped scar pulled at his upper lip. Instead of the oily tangle of black hair he’d had before, he looked like his head had been shorn close with a dull knife.

  His appearance said a lot about how he had spent those past four years, his hazy eyes more. Grant might not have recognized him from afar. But up close, there was no mistake that it was Col, who had put Grant through hell for years, ripping every copper off him and spending it on cheap liquor. It only stopped a month before they aged out of the orphanage, when Dan stepped in. Col and three of his friends caught them alone at school, but despite their ambush, Grant and Dan beat them bloody.

  Well, Dan beat them bloody while Grant did his best to distract them. Col’s nose had healed crooked after cracking against a wall, and Grant reckoned the man hadn’t taken a breath without it whistling since. Last Grant heard, he had joined a shipping crew and sailed off—a good fit for the man, as the only drink that would keep on ships was beer and wine.

  “Answer me,” Col spat, his pitted face wrinkled and dark eyes unfocused.

  Grant groaned inwardly, cursing himself for saying the man’s name. Between the constant drinking, the selection process, the head knocks, and the years that had passed, there was no way he would have remembered a boy he used to torment.

  “Are you slow or something? How do you know my name?”

  Despite his best efforts, Grant couldn’t find a convincing lie. “We were at the orphanage together.”

  Col squinted for a second and opened his mouth. He closed it and squinted harder. “Leeman?”

  Fuck.

  “That’s me,” he said sheepishly. Col’s frown deepened as he looked over Grant again, and then he slowly rose to his feet, taking a step forward. “Let’s see how tough you are without Dan around.” Everyone in the cart tucked their legs back, clearing a path for the sailor to pummel Grant.

  Grant met the challenge with a step of his own, flagrantly going against the wishes of his head, stomach, feet, and piss, which he imagined would prefer to come out light yellow rather than dark brown. He had no illusions about his odds against the man. Col was one of the best fighters in the orphanage, even in the stiff competition of future ditch diggers, debt collectors and debt defaulters, soldiers and mercenaries. Now he was a fully grown man, toughened by hard labor, and based on his missing teeth, plenty more practice taking a hit. He was by no means a big man, but his arms were wiry and defined—nothing like Grant, who managed to be both skinny and chubby at the same time.

  That didn’t mean Grant was ready to back down. That would just make things worse. He hid his dagger in his palm, hoping that a flash of the blade would deter the man if necessary.

  “No fighting in my cart,” muttered the gray-haired driver, turning to look over his shoulder. The left side of his face was covered in a long scar that barely missed his eye, the right dominated by a liver spot that sprawled from brow to chin. Grant blew out a breath in relief, but Col took another step forward.

  The driver stood and turned, his lip curled and eyes narrowed. “I said no fighting! Whoever throws the first punch gets dragged behind with a rope.”

  The standoff stretched.

  “And with the Goddess as my witness, I’ve followed through on that before!” The driver snarled through cracked lips, holding a coil of rope he’d gathered from the seat next to him. He looked eager to use the thing if Grant had to guess.

  Col stared for a moment longer, scoffed and sat, chuckling to himself. Grant settled in the farthest seat from the sailor, just glad it was open. If he had to sit next to him, he’d have half a mind to just take the rope. He relaxed his grip on his knife.

  “Old friends?” The amused voice came from the seat across from him. He looked up to find a young woman. Messy, long brown hair draped to her slight shoulders. Her brown eyes were framed by a spattering of light freckles, and she wore a constant mischievous grin on her face, as if she had just stolen a cherry tomato from Grant’s plate.

  As any young man who received a moment of attention from an attractive young woman, Grant did the most reasonable thing he could imagine and immediately fell in love with her. “Oh, we go way back. He saved my life during the last Campaign. Took on an entire legion as I rescued a helpless maiden. Knocked himself on the head pretty bad, though.”

  She shook her head and leaned back in her seat, resting her palms on the railing. “A tragic tale.”

  “Shut your mouths,” Col muttered under his breath.

  Grant and the young woman stifled a laugh together. “I’m Grant.” He offered his right hand.

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  “Lira.” She paused, looking down. “Unmarried women don’t shake hands where I’m from.” Grant hesitated, drawing from early childhood memories. He pulled his hand back and touched his index finger and thumb to his forehead.

  “I hope that was right,” he said sheepishly.

  She put a palm to her chest and raised her eyebrows. “Where did you learn Zilen customs?”

  Grant gave a crooked smile and shrugged. “My mother is Zilen. I’ve never been, but she taught me the basics.”

  “Smart woman.”

  “Zile?” Col grunted, his eyes still forward. “Probably birthed him in a latrine from what I saw of the city.”

  Grant ignored him. If he wanted to get under his skin, he’d have to do a lot better than insults at a mother who left him and a city he had never seen. Lira just shrugged, clearly not bothered either.

  He sneaked another glance at the sailor. As far as Grant cared, their time in the orphanage was a different life now. But the man clearly bore a grudge that wasn’t going away with any amount of time, and Grant wouldn’t assume he could buy the man an ale to patch things over. Sometimes, a man like him just needed an outlet for his anger, and Grant had a few guesses about what he had in mind for that.

  The cart lurched and began rolling forward. Grant looked back at Iori with sadness, watching as its gray walls disappeared into the distance behind him. The city had never been especially kind to him, but it was all he knew as a home. A knot lodged in his throat at the realization that he might never come back, even if he survived the Campaign.

  With a disorienting jolt, the horses began to canter.

  Seconds later, it became a gallop faster than any animal Grant had ever seen. Wind tore through his hair and stung his skin as trees and farms blurred. He gripped the railing and tried to slow his breathing. Lira smirked at him.

  “Takes some getting used to!” she shouted over the noise.

  Grant nodded and shifted his eyes to the horses pulling the cart behind his. Their hooves rolled in a translucent blur, making their torsos almost seem to float. He remembered what Mr. Nerelot had told him about only using Identify on his dagger, but curiosity got the best of him. With a tinge of guilt, he squinted his eyes at the one on the left.

  Identify.

  [Identifying…]

  [Name: Draft Horse]

  [Breed: Ithian Trotter]

  [Level: 1]

  [Buffs: Greater Haste, Lesser Protection, Lesser Vitality]

  [Debuffs: N/A]

  He had heard tales of Enhancement Magic making sickly old women stronger and faster than a charging bull, but this was the first time he had seen it with his own eyes. What would such Spells make a man like Mr. Nerelot capable of?

  Grant had to look away before his head began to throb, putting attention on his co-passengers.

  To Lira’s left sat another young woman. She was blonde and slender, and she wore impeccably clean white robes. Her blue eyes stared emotionlessly at the floor, and her thin arms were wrapped around her stomach. Probably a bad idea to ask her name, he noted, allowing his eyes to wander to the person to her left.

  A man of average height and build wore a jacket dyed a deep hue of purple. He had short light hair, similar in color to the woman on his left, and sat with his right leg crossed over his left. Grant couldn’t get a look at his face because his chin was tucked into his neck as he read his book, completely unconcerned with anyone else in the cart. Typical noble.

  “What’s that?” Lira yelled over the sound of the wind whipping by. Her gaze was fixed on his right hand, where the dagger still sat hidden between his fingers.

  Grant cursed and Dismissed it, then raised his hands. "Nothing!" he shouted back.

  Lira stared for a long moment. Her eyes gleamed and her lips curled into an amused grin, as though she wanted him to know she was lying, and that she was in on it. Eventually, she shrugged. "Must've been a trick of the light."

  Grant chuckled, then looked away. Fortunately, Lira seemed eager to drop the issue. Mr. Nerelot had just told him that Siphoning Fang was valuable. The Item could not be lost or stolen, but not everyone would know that. He'd seen a man beaten half to death over a game of Saboteurs and Guardians in Mr. Fletcher's inn, and the assailant had only lost two silver on the hand.

  The noble boy at the front of the cart glanced over, scowling as though he was offended to be breathing the same air as them. "Could you two shut up? I'm trying to read, and your incessant barking is distracting me."

  Grant opened his mouth to tell him to piss off a cliff, but Lira gave a sharp laugh and pointed. “Quite the group of winners we have, isn’t it?” she said. She pointed at each person in the cart, starting with Col. “A drunk.” Her finger moved to the noble. “A rich boy who can’t take a piss without a servant unbuttoning his pants.” She pointed at the young blonde woman staring at the floor. “A shaker.” She pointed at Grant and herself last. “And us!”

  The noble boy scoffed and turned back to his book, mumbling something under his breath about "unwashed peasants."

  Grant caught himself about to burst out laughing but forced his mouth closed, remembering what Mr. Fletcher used to say. The higher the man’s station, the more fragile his pride. A beggar can be stepped on every day and never raise a hand back. A king will have a man drowned for coughing in his presence.

  He nodded and smiled at her joke instead.

  The next hours blurred together like the passing countryside. Grant kept his attention on his Mana, making sure to cast Identify every time it regenerated above four. Col scowled at Grant for much of the time, the young nobleman remained fixated on his book, and the blonde woman’s eyes seldom left the bottom of the cart.

  Lira, on the other hand, sat with her right leg crossed over her left, humming a song to herself. If the selection and recruitment process had been traumatizing for her, she was hiding it well. He wanted to talk to her, to learn everything about her, but something stopped him from asking.

  A small drop landed Grant’s palm, disrupting his thoughts. Another landed on the back of his neck. Then drizzle, barely more than a mist, began to fall sideways. The nobleman scowled up at the sky, as if in disbelief of its audacity to wet his book, and with a move of his lips, cast a Spell. The rain plinked against a shimmering blue shield of air above him.

  And then it began to pour.

  Grape-sized drops pelted Grant’s skin, each one stinging like a rider’s crop, and his fingers tingled from the cold. The cracks in the bottom of the cart were too narrow to drain the water fast enough, and a shallow puddle sloshed at their feet, soaking through their boots.

  Before long, they were shivering from the cold. “Hey, think you can cover the rest of us with that Spell?” shouted Lira at the nobleman. If he heard her, he gave no sign of it. In what seemed to be a petty act of noble scorn, he raised his eyebrows and flipped to the next page in his book.

  The dark and torrential rains wrapped over the rocking wagon. He leaned over the edge, nervously examining the nearest wheel. Every rock, wobble, and creak sent a spike of panic through him, that they’d hit a hole or fallen tree at any time and throw him off the back, straight under the hooves of the horses behind him. He nearly squealed at a violent jolt, imagining what would happen if a spoke snapped and threw the wheel off its axle.

  To make things worse, with a blinding flash, the sky rumbled and the cart rattled. Everyone startled but the driver. Grant shrank further into his seat, peering up and idly wondering if the terrifying conditions would lead to a halt. The misstep of a single horse could end in a catastrophic accident.

  “Think we’re going to stop?” he shouted toward Lira over the rain, trying to keep the nerves out of his voice.

  “Doubt it! Look where we are.”

  When the sky lit up again, illuminating his surroundings, he realized how ridiculous the idea was. Ankle-deep storm water covered the surrounding fields, off which rain pattered like pebbles landing in a lake. If they stopped, the cart would only flood faster. Forward was the only way through.

  “We just need to make it past the Stormplains!” she yelled. Grant nodded, not having the first idea what that meant.

  The cart rolled on, splashing through puddles and bouncing on potholes. Grant’s lower back cramped from hunching over, his head began to pound from the constant noise. He shifted between positions, trading one pain for another when the first became unbearable, and then trading back minutes later.

  And every time he looked to his left, he found Col scowling sideways at him, his hands clenched into fists.