Cameron

"The lieutenant needs us to break through that line of Gloamtaken," Cameron relayed, after being sent back to his battle group.

Aranhall nodded, tilting her hat forward until the shadows obscured her eyes. "I wouldn't have guessed," she said drily. Dismissively. Like he had just wasted her time telling her that fire was hot. Cameron flinched, scowled, and tightened his hands into fists.

"We're to break through and make for the town square. Varnell wants you looking after the wounded, helping Sergeant Tavash set up a triage site near the fountain. And wants me to head for the wall, to tell Vincent we need his help," Cam added.

With the damn hat, Cam couldn't see much of her face, apart from the slight twist to her lips that could be a grin as easily as a grimace. But she was studying him, beneath the hat. Or thinking about something. The pause, the stillness, gave him that much of a clue.

"Things have gotten bad," she said eventually.

"That's been true since the Gloam reached the walls, over three hundred years ago," Hendricks remarked.

"Our situation," Gwen clarified, pointing up ahead. Valen had taken the lead, forming up Mack's battle group to drive into the enemy. Even Mildred had shouldered her Salamander, and had her sword in hand. "The lieutenant must think things are beyond her, if she's sending you to spend Vincent on us."

"Spend?" Cameron asked.

At his question, Gwen actually turned to study him. And the look in her shadowy eyes made him turn away. "You, of all of us, should know best. He burns away his life by Crafting. Every flame, every explosion, every note he makes when he writes with the flame. A little bit of him gone."

"As if we should exempt him from sacrificing?" Cameron asked. "Why should he get a pass, when the rest of us spend blood, friends, and our future?"

"Varnell would probably say we need to save Vincent for when it matters. Like against a Golem, or when there's nothing else we can do," Hendricks said.

"Why do you think Vincent's ever going to be sent against one of those Golems? His coat is black, like ours. It isn't red," Cameron insisted. "This is the best he can hope to be doing. And we shouldn't be stingy about using him for all we can. Barleybarrel deserves better than that."

Hendricks nodded, if not agreeing wholly at least acknowledging Cam's point. Fauth let the moment pass in silence. But Aranhall, the look she gave him felt like she had cut him open and was examining him from the inside-out.

And she didn't like what she had found. "He's not your companion. I suppose he couldn't be, not with your history," Gwendolyn said. "Perhaps that's why she picked you."

There was something heavy in her words. A thought, an idea, a judgement. Something that ought to have set on his shoulders and pushed down hard. But he didn't understand whatever it was, and it passed off as easily as slipping-off a coat. "Perhaps," he agreed.

"Then we'll punch through," Gwendolyn said, and she drew her surgical knife with her left hand. "Hendricks, that'll be up to you. Drive through them as quickly as you can, don't worry about what's happening behind you. Fauth and I will watch your sides."

"Fauth?" Cam asked. "Not me?"

"You have a hard run to make, and the most important mission," Gwen said. "That makes you the most important specialty, the person the rest of us need to protect. So unless it looks like one of us is about to get killed, just stick close to us and wait."

Gwen turned around, and pointed at him with her knife. It was a surprisingly menacing gesture. "Are you okay with that?"

Cameron nodded, and pointed towards the Gloamtaken. "I'll put up with it."

"Welcome to being the squad's medic for an hour," Gwendolyn said. "Hendricks, Fauth, let's go kill them."

Like pulling the trigger on a Salamander, Hendricks charged into the mob, sword flashing out and cutting down two before he had to slow down. Fauth fired off a single shot, reloaded, and kept firing at the creatures on Hendricks' left. Gwen, though, pressed herself into the mob as deeply as Hendricks, and shouldered her gun after a single shot. Sword in two hands, but with her surgical knife clutched in her left hand, she used the weapon less as a sword and more like a spear, thrusting without slashing, and using her knife rather than switching her stance when the creatures got too close.

Cam stayed behind then, as instructed, helping out when he could with a Salamander shot or two. But trying to find an opening as they fought around him was hard; Hendricks was cutting a wide path through them and could easily cut into Cameron's line of fire, and Gwen took keeping herself between Cameron and the Gloamtaken seriously. Most of the perhaps half-dozen shots he managed were near Fauth, who looked grateful to have some of that pressure taken off.

There was little evidence they were advancing, it was hard to see through the smoke, the Gloamtaken, the flashes of fire. The clearest evidence they were advancing, though, was Cameron stepping over the Gloamtaken Hendricks had cut down.

Hendricks stepped to the side, suddenly. Towards Fauth, cutting his way furiously sideways. Cameron looked, over, wondering what he had missed, but Fauth wasn't pressed any harder than he ought to be, and the Gloamtaken he fought kept dying. But something shoved him hard form behind, pushing him into the gap Hendricks had vacated.

"Go, burn you," Gwendolyn bellowed as she pushed him forward. Though the gap, where there were no Gloamtaken. "Get Vincent. If Varnell asked you to, it's because she thinks we're tied to the stake and someone just brought a torch."

Cameron ran, then. It hurt to do it, running away from the fire was something that could get you killed in Oversight, even if it saved your life. Shadows, like soldiers, were never supposed to run from the fight.

He ran past the fountain at the town square without slowing, without looking back. Not that his thoughts were so disciplined, as he worried about what would happen when he arrived. It was a strange experience, running from a fight and asking a Crafter for help.

Not a Crafter. Vincent, like everyone who could Craft that Cameron had ever dealt with before last night, hadn't earned the red coat. Not a Crafter, not someone trusted to let their power be governed by their own judgement.

"Burn me," Cameron cursed, the words slipping out despite how strange it felt on his tongue. That swear, so common in the city, so absolutely forbidden in his line of work. But somehow, despite hating the taste of it, the curse felt strangely appropriate.

He was, after all, doing something that every instinct in his life told him was wrong. Fire didn't help. There was no salvation in the fury of someone who could Craft. The small scars on his body told him that. The coworkers, comrades, who had died on the job told him that. Mackaroy's scars and haunted eyes told him that. And the memory of Crafter Saval pointing her hand, and making a shadow vanish so thoroughly there was nothing but smoke...

And despite all of that, the Golem they had stood against still marched on the City. Worthless, dangerous, it was hard to believe he was now running to one of them to save the Rangers, and to save Barleybarrel.

Despite his thoughts, his feet only slowed when he crossed the secondary torch line behind Barleybarrel, and reached the town's people. "Ranger," someone shouted, standing up. The man who spoke didn't approach, Cameron suspected he looked like he was being chased by a Golem. He only turned and shouted. "There's a ranger coming through, clear a path."

Well meaning, that gesture. But it likely created as many obstacles as it cleared. People all around looked up from what they were doing, stopped and stared. Worst of all, they gathered. And as Cameron slowed down, as he prepared to find some way through them, he saw them.

Really saw them.

This was, after all, Milanie's town. The people she loved. And with that bit of extra sympathy, Cameron could let himself see how much of this life he hadn't understood or appreciated. These people who laboured long and hard, who grew the food and built the walls the City depended on, who had been abandoned to the Gloam by an army and authorities that, while it cared, viewed them as the least imperilled place in the City.

"Ranger, what is it?" one of them asked.

"Have the Gloamtaken broken through?"

Cameron flinched, hearing that question, as it carried a ripple of fear through the gathering crowd as palpable as a boot stomping on a puddle. Cameron held up his hands, and tried to answer that fear. "No. We're still fighting. We're still fighting."

"Cam?"

It was her. Sunshine in her hair, light in her eyes. He smiled, rubbed the side of his head with his hand, and wanted rather desperately to hold hers. "Hi. Sorry, I..."

She stepped through the crowd in three quick steps, crossed the distance between them, and wrapped her arms around his chest. "Cam. You're okay. You're okay."

"Yeah, I'm okay," Cam answered. And for a moment, he forgot what he was doing. Why he was there. And didn't mind. He could be here, in this moment, and let the world pass around them.

"What do you need, Ranger?"

Cam recognized the man. One of the people who had been out in the field with Varnell, one of the last ones out. Cam looked up to him, and pointed to the south. "I need to get to the wall. To make sure Vincent's almost done."

The man nodded. "Right," and he pointed towards where the crowd was thinnest. "This way."