Chapter 30 (Patreon)

He crossed the clearing toward them.

The easy noise of the camp fell into a different register as he approached Sarah’s team, not silence, but the kind that came when people pretended they weren’t watching. Theo, Robert, Jace, Mira, and Sarah stood in a loose knot at the edge of the training ground, gear stacked in orderly piles behind them.

Margaret saw him first.

She broke off from Theo and Robert mid-sentence and came straight to him, fast enough that the movement felt almost informal. Her arms went around him in a brief, tight hug that would have looked like nothing more than a greeting to anyone else.

“They had a rough night,” she murmured against his ear, voice low and precise. “Don’t push too hard at the start.”

Then she stepped away as if nothing had happened, already turning back toward her slate.

Mira moved next.

She took one sharp step forward, chin up, anger bright in her face, and Jace’s hand closed around her wrist before she got more than two paces. He didn’t yank—just held, steady, meeting her eyes until the tension bled out of her shoulders by a degree.

Theo and Robert came instead.

Theo had always been a big man, broad through the chest and shoulders, the kind of build that looked immovable. Now the bulk had been pared down into something harder. His face was leaner, the softness gone, his balance centered in a way that spoke of long miles and longer watches. Robert walked beside him, and the difference in him was just as stark. The old hesitation in his movements had burned away. He carried himself as if he belonged in his own skin, and the lumberjack tool never left his hand.

Jace followed a moment later, releasing Mira and stepping in behind them. They stopped in front of Harold, not quite at attention, not quite at ease.

Theo spoke first. “Sir,” he said, and the word still sounded strange coming from him, “no matter what Mira and Sarah say in a minute… this has been rough.”

Robert nodded once, jaw tight in agreement, and Harold could see the man's hand grasp the handle of his axe tightly.

“Yesterday especially,” Theo went on. “But we understand what you were trying to teach.”

He hesitated there, just for a fraction, as if the next part cost him something.

Jace stepped in to fill the space.

“Thank you, sir,” he said simply.

Robert moved right after him, hand coming out in a firm grip that Harold returned.

“Thank you for this,” Robert said. “For all of it. And for the potion you gave me.” His voice roughened, but he didn’t look away. “You gave me an impossible chance and task, I’ll do my best to live up to it.”

Theo stepped forward last, quick and almost awkward about it, as if he didn’t trust himself to linger. He shook Harold’s hand once, hard, then fell back into line beside the others.

Mira waited until they were done.

She walked up with her shoulders hunched and her mouth set in a line that made it clear she was still deciding how she felt about all of this.

“The past couple of days sucked,” she said flatly. “And you suck for doing it to us.”

She blew out a breath through her nose, the anger in her eyes dimming into something more complicated.

“But… thank you,” she added. “I know you’re doing your best to prepare us for what’s out there. After the mountains…” She shook her head once. “We weren’t ready.”

Then she stepped in and hugged him.

It was quick and fierce and over before he had time to react, followed by a light, impulsive peck on his cheek.

The clearing exploded.

“OOOOH—”

“Elroy, you’re dead—”

“That’s the Lord—”

Harold caught Carter’s voice somewhere off to the side, already moving.

“Both of you, with me. Now.”

The whooping cut off mid-cheer as Carter dragged them away for what was undoubtedly going to be a very educational conversation.

Mira stepped back, color rising in her face for the first time as she retreated back past Sarah.

Harold lifted a hand to the spot on his cheek, more out of reflex than anything else, still feeling the warmth of it.

Sarah stepped up, “Don’t get used to that,” she said. “We’re all a little fragile after the past few weeks.”

The noise of the camp dimmed again, the others fading to the edges of his awareness as she closed the distance, the space between them suddenly the only ground that existed.

Harold stepped into her space and pulled her into him.

It wasn’t careful. It wasn’t the measured, public embrace of a Lord greeting one of his officers. His arm came around her shoulders and dragged her in tight, the way he had when they were younger, and she had come home furious about something she refused to explain.

For a long moment, she held rigid.

Her hands stayed at her sides. Her chin stayed high against his shoulder. He could feel the tension in her back, the effort it took to remain the scout, the adventurer, the one who didn’t bend.

Then it went out of her.

Not all at once. A breath first. Then another that hitched halfway through. Her forehead pressed into the side of his neck, and her fingers caught in the back of his tunic.

“You suck,” she choked, voice breaking on the word.

He couldn’t stop it. The sound that came out of him started as a breath and turned into a rough, helpless laugh.

That did it.

She huffed something that might have been a sob and might have been a laugh and hit him in the ribs with the side of her fist.

“I’m still mad at you,” she muttered.

“I deserve that,” he said, and meant it.

He kept one arm around her for a second longer, then eased back, looking down at her face as she wiped at her eyes with the heel of her hand, already trying to pull herself back together.

“Did you learn anything?” he asked.

As he spoke, he lifted a hand and made a small circling motion toward his guard.

They moved immediately.

Packs came off their shoulders. Corked bottles wrapped in cloth were brought out with the care usually reserved for munitions. The first was passed to Theo, then to Robert, then down the loose sprawl of the graduates.

Carter appeared at Harold’s side and dropped one into his hand without a word.

Sarah watched the operation with open curiosity as Harold pulled the cork with his teeth and took a long drink. The liquid burned and bloomed warm in his chest, the taste sharp, clean, and familiar.

He let out a satisfied sound and handed it to her as he sank down onto the ground with a heavy exhale, legs stretched out in front of him.

“Well?” he asked again.

Around them, the first reactions hit.

“Gods—”

“What is this—”

“Is this from the Landing?”

“That’s—”

Laughter broke out. Someone coughed. Someone else lifted their bottle like a trophy.

Sarah lowered herself beside him, shoulder brushing his.

“You know I did,” she said. “Whose idea were these exercises? Yours or Garrick’s?”

She took a longer pull than he did and handed it back.

He turned the bottle in his hands, watching the light move through the glass instead of looking at her. He had known she would follow the line straight to the center.

“Garrick was always going to build those scenarios into the training,” he said at last. “It’s something we have to teach our scouts. They can’t think about their own safety all the time. They have to think about getting the information back to the legion at any cost.” He took another drink. “One scout dying can save a century marching behind them.”

He swallowed and forced himself to keep going, trying not to think about Max and the young family he left behind.

“I told him to give you a harder time.”

She went still.

“Something you never got through your hard head,” he added more quietly, “is that I’m trying to stop you from making the same mistakes you made last time.”

She didn’t answer.

She took the bottle back without looking at him, her gaze dropping to the dirt between her boots while the camp around them swelled with noise and relief.

Margaret had somehow acquired a second bottle and was sharing it with Hale, who tilted it, tasted, and gave a small, approving nod. Garrick and Carter had Elroy and Jenkins pinned between them, both younger men trying very hard to look as if they had never spoken to Mira in their lives.

The class was laughing. The edge of the past few days was bleeding out of them in the way it only could after something survived.

Sarah’s fingers tightened around the neck of the bottle.

“Is it so bad,” she said, still looking down, “to want to go explore? To feel the freedom of the open sky and the thrill of finding new places?” Her voice softened, the anger draining into something older and more stubborn. “To stand somewhere and know no other human has ever been there before?

A memory flickered in Harold's mind: Sarah scrambling up a narrow stone arch above the canopies, wind whipping at her hair, her laugh echoing as she balanced barefoot where the treetops broke over a chasm, horizon unbroken ahead. That was her paradise—sky and silence, the world revealed only for those daring enough to climb higher.

But he had seen another side too. Settlers pressed against each other behind a barricade of burning wagons at dusk, faces lit by flame and fear, watching the darkness for eyes that glinted back. For them, this place was not wide skies but a nightmare that pressed in from every shadow, a wilderness that only wanted to consume what little they built.

She finally glanced sideways at him.

“No,” he said quietly. “It’s not.”

He leaned back on his hands for a moment, looking out over the camp instead of at her, watching Theo nearly choke on his first real swallow while Robert laughed and pounded him on the back. The sound gave him a second to steady himself.

“I’ve been there with you,” he went on. “For all of it. We spent years on the road together. I watched you grow up out there—watched you fail, watched you get back up, watched you win when you had no right to. I supported you as best I could.”

He took the bottle from her and drank, slower this time.

“I saw you at your best,” he said. “And I saw what it cost you to get there.”

The warmth of the brew settled in his chest, but it didn’t soften what came next.

“I saw you when you hit your stride,” he continued, voice low. “When no terrain could slow you down, and no ruin stayed hidden from you for long. I saw you in your glory.”

His jaw tightened.

“And I saw what came after. How bitter you got. How tired. Disappointed in people. In what we kept doing to each other while the other races took pieces out of us, and we still found time to fight among ourselves.”

He rolled the bottle between his palms, watching the last of the liquid move.

“I think what hurt you most,” he said, glancing at her now, “was how many people hated this place.”

He took another pull and handed it back.

“To you… This world was a paradise. Endless horizon. Deep wilds. Ruins no one had touched in a thousand years. Every day, something new if you were willing to go far enough to find it.”

He nodded toward the trees beyond the camp.

“To a lot of others, it’s a nightmare. No walls. No guarantees. No reward for just existing or welfare to exist on. This world doesn’t give you anything for free. You want something, you go out and take it. Or you build it. Or you die trying.”

His shoulders rose and fell in a slow breath.

“Not everyone can live with that equation.”

He turned toward her fully now, the noise of the camp washing around them.

“I don’t want to stop you, Sarah.”

The words came without hesitation.

“I never did. You’re the best thing humanity has ever had out there in the dark. All of you are. Every scout, every delver, every idiot who’s willing to step past the line and see what’s over the next ridge.”

His voice roughened.

“But you don’t just carry yourself.”

He tapped a finger lightly against the ground between them, as if the Landing itself lay beneath the soil.

“You carry the hope of everyone back there. Every civilian who’s never going to hold a sword. Every legionary marches because someone told them the road ahead is clear. Every kid who thinks this world might actually be survivable because people like you keep coming back alive.”

He looked at her, and this time he didn’t look away.

“So when I heard you wanted to take your team and go off on your own—when you were obviously not ready—it wasn’t the exploration that got to me.”

He shook his head once.

“It was the disappointment because it’s so…selfish…and so human. And it was exactly the same thing you hated in everyone else.”

The words fell from his lips in a tired and exhausted way. He took another slow sip and passed the bottle back to her. She took it while studying Harold’s face for a long moment before she too took a long sip.

Harold dragged a hand over the back of his neck and looked out across the clearing again before forcing himself to meet her eyes.

“Especially when there’s no reason you can’t go explore and do things that support us at the same time,” he said. “That’s the part that got to me.”

He gestured vaguely toward the horizon, toward the mountains they had both seen rising beyond the tree line.

“There are things out there I can’t do with legionaries. Not without making so much noise that the entire region knows we’re coming. There are routes we need mapped. Ruins we need to check. Tasks that only you’re perfect for.”

He glanced back at her.

“I need a solid team for that. A team that can move fast, think for itself, and come back with the kind of information that keeps people alive. I know the city isn’t for you.”

His mouth twitched, something between a tired smile and an apology. He leaned forward, forearms on his knees, voice dropping a fraction.

“I just needed to rein in that impulsive side of you long enough for you to survive becoming that team. To start thinking through your actions a little more.”

Around them, someone let out a shout of anger as Elroy apparently said something he shouldn’t have within Garrick’s hearing distance. Margaret was talking with Hale over the neck of a shared bottle, both of them watching the graduates with quiet satisfaction.

The sound sat at the edge of the moment without breaking it.

Harold looked back at her, the honesty still there, raw and unguarded in a way he never allowed anywhere else.

“You don’t have to choose between freedom and responsibility,” he said.

Sarah rolled the bottle slowly between her palms, watching the last of the foam settle at the lip before she spoke.

“I was so mad at you when you gave me that ultimatum,” she said.

Her voice had lost its edge. What remained was quieter and more dangerous.

“How are you going to punish us after what we went through with the Thresher King? That’s all I could think of. It wasn’t fair. We’d already paid for it. ”

She took a drink, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and stared out toward the tree line where the patrol routes disappeared into the green.

“It wasn’t until I was leading a sweep out here,” she went on, “that it started to make sense.”

He didn’t interrupt.

“One of the new scouts broke off to run something down on his own. Thought he’d spotted movement. He didn’t signal or anything…he just went.”

Her jaw tightened. “I had to pull the rest of the team after him. When we tracked him down, we found him in a gully with a group of goblins on him and more circling. He was barely alive when we got him out, and even worse, I used our only healing potion on someone who had stepped into one of Garrick's stupid traps.”

She drew in a slow breath through her nose.

“But we lost the route, and we were late. By the time we got back with what we had discovered, the legion patrol had already walked into an ambush the other adventurers had set up for them.”

The camp noise seemed to dip again, as if the memory pulled sound out of the air.

And Garrick believes in hard learning. They started it by throwing some kind of potion that exploded into a gas that made it hard to breathe and burned their skin everywhere. It really drove home the point that we failed there.

She finally looked at him. “That’s when I got it.”

She sounded tired. A faint, humorless huff of breath left her.

“I hated you for it,” she admitted. “Right up until I had to stand in front of the rest of the team and explain why those legionaries got hit.”

She nudged his shoulder lightly with hers.

“So… congratulations. You were right.”

Then, after a beat—

“Still a terrible way to teach it,” she added.

Robert arrived with the unsteady confidence of a man who had discovered Harold’s brew was significantly stronger than anything he had expected.

His ears were a little red, his grin wide and unrestrained, and he pointed at Sarah as if he had just made a very important tactical decision.

“No more brooding, I’m tired of feeling it through our bond,” he declared, voice louder than necessary. “Up.”

Before she could protest, he caught her wrist and hauled her to her feet in one smooth, enthusiastic motion.

“Robert—” she started, half laughing, half scandalized.

He spun her anyway.

Mira let out a high, delighted shriek at the sudden movement.

“Go, Sarah!” she said, backing up a step—

—and Jace, who had been watching with the careful stillness of someone enacting a plan, reached out and grabbed her hand.

Her protest turned into a startled yelp as he pulled her into the clearing.

The circle that had been a loose sprawl of tired scouts and legionaries dissolved instantly. Someone started clapping in an uneven rhythm. Theo thumped the bottom of an empty crate like a drum. Elroy, who had escaped whatever educational experience Carter had been giving him, added a terrible attempt at a whistle.

Sarah tried to glare at Robert, but he tripped over his own foot and nearly took both of them down.

“You’re drunk,” she accused.

“Yep! I am celebrating survival,” Robert corrected with great dignity, immediately losing that dignity when he attempted to twirl her again and turned too far.

Mira, dragged into a half-circle by Jace, was laughing so hard she had to brace a hand against his shoulder to stay upright.

“This is your fault,” she told him.

“I only encouraged him a little. We can both feel Sarah’s emotions even as she tries to keep herself closed off; he’s nearly as bad,” he replied as he pulled her in close and held her as they drifted around each other. “And I wasn’t going to let him dance with you,” He whispered into her ear.

Across the clearing, Carter stood with his arms folded, watching the chaos with the long-suffering expression of a man who had already decided he would allow exactly this much before restoring order. Some of the other scouts had begun to peel off with those they wanted to take with them. The group was surprisingly diverse.

Margaret leaned against Hale’s shoulder, bottle in hand, the corner of her mouth turned up in open amusement. Even Garrick had not disappeared into the trees. He stood at the edge of the light, observing, a faint shake of his head the closest he came to approval.

Harold stayed where he was on the ground for a moment longer, the empty bottle resting loosely in his hand.

The knot in his chest had loosened without him noticing.

Sarah’s laugh carried across the clearing—unrestrained, bright in a way he hadn’t heard since before the Thresher King, before the ultimatum. It might have been a mistake, but it was needed and ended alright.

Robert dipped her in a move that would have been impressive if he hadn’t immediately lost his balance and had to hop backward to keep from falling.

She smacked his shoulder and came up laughing anyway.

For the first time since he had stepped into the camp, Harold let himself lean back on his hands and simply watch.

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