Benden

Smoke now marked his way; a thin curtain of black fading into grey, blotting-out both the Gloam and the next wall. Strange, since smoke looked so similar to the Gloam, but the sight was always a comforting one. Seeing it meant someone was out in the distance, someone alive and still set against the monsters that came from beyond the walls.

The smoke was new; Benden had barely crossed the first irrigation trench since he left Barleybarrel. It had sprouted up quickly, and all at once. Too deliberate to be some of the north-most part of the fields, the ones the Rangers set alight. Much of it still smouldered, warding the Gloam.

It was the only reason Benden felt it was safe enough to come out here.

He had tried — and tired of — sitting and waiting. He had tired to be patient, but listening to people cry and fret, trying to ignore the danger that was trying even now to kill them, it wasn't something Ben had a lot of patience for. He wanted to do something to change the gnawing horror of just waiting for the death that waited beyond the wall to come and claim him.

More to the point, Benden wanted to fight. And wished he could. But he could barely hold a Salamander; had to tuck the butt under his arm in order to see down the sights, and could barely hold the barrel upright. A few swings of a sword left his arms weary, and he couldn't muster enough force to cut more than grass or weeds.

His boots sank deeply into the now dusty ground, much more so than they usually would under his weight. Only so much of that was because the vegetation at his feet was brown and brittle; a disturbing sight in a place that had been green for all the years he could remember it. Just a few hours beneath the Gloam, and every shrub, blade of grass, bush, crop, or orchard tree was brown, brittle, and paper-dry. It made a crinkling sound where he walked; the brittle bones of dead plants.

Benden's legs hurt, unaccustomed to the weight he carried on his back. Each step he made started a chorus of tinkling glass and sloshing water, a symphony created by an orchestra of a hundred bottles jostling in his backpack. Sweat fell in a steady trickle from the sides of his head, a drop splattering on the ground as regularly as the ticking of one of the clock towers back in the City.

The sounds, and the pain, were comforting. If Ben stopped feeling them, it meant the monsters out in the distance were close enough to see. Aches were only something the body felt when it knew it was safe.

The path turned slightly treacherous, crossing a trench over a thin metal plank. It wasn't set into the ground properly, and wobbled as Ben walked over it.

Ahead, the noise of the battle began to grow clear, like opening a dirty window to see. He could make out the distinct cracks of individual Salamander shots, and the occasional shout.

His gait had grown nearly as wobbly as the plan he crossed. He was carrying nearly a hundred pounds in the bag, a feat quite a bit beyond anything he had been asked to do while working the fields with the adults, or even in sport with the other children during whatever schooling Barleybarrel could manage. His fingers trembled where they gripped the shoulder straps, and his thoughts kept turning to inventing reasons to stop. Thirst, fatigue, fear, even doubts over how useful his supplies would be for the Rangers all kept nagging his thoughts and slowing his steps.

Benden wasn't sure what kept him walking. It certainly wasn't courage. He was a single strange-looking shadow away from dropping the bag and running back to Barleybarrel. And stubbornness didn't seem to apply when his resolve seemed so fragile.

Perhaps it was just a need to do more than wait for better men and women to save him.

His life had been lived by the grace of better people. His parents — as far as he knew —were still alive somewhere in the City. He had been abandoned at a Hospice shortly after his birth; neither of the people who conceived him willing to claim that weighty title of parent. But Barleybarrel had supplied its own heroes, the woman he refused to call mother until the day she didn't come back from the fields, who fed and clothed him despite being given nothing but bitterness. The teachers who gave up their single day off a week to open a school and teach him more than how to dig a hole. The neighbours who let him sit at their table every evening and eat their food. The old lady who lived alone, who insisted on coming to his home every school day and doing his laundry. The municipal planners, who lied about how many apartments were in a building so that he had his own roof to sleep under.

There were a lot of better men and women in Benden's ten years, and he had done nothing to repay them properly. Then, when the Gloam came for Barleybarrel, people came with padded coats and white scarves, and fought for them. And with everyone whispering about the possible end of everything; if the Golems and the Gloam reached the Spire and plunged the City into darkness, Benden didn't want to leave that gesture unanswered.

Lost in his thoughts, deafened by the noise of the battle, Ben didn't notice someone was following him until someone appeared on his left. He whirled about, and nearly toppled over when he shifted the bag he carried. The figure on his left had to lean over and help steady him.

"Careful, Mister Tammerlane," a man said to him, as Benden felt himself held upright by an arm that might as well have been a steel beam. "Never twist at the waist, when you're carrying more than half your body-weight on your back. Use your legs to turn."

His voice was familiar. Not that Ben had heard it more than once, but the first Ranger you ever spoke to leaves an impression. Strangely kind, even for a lifetime spent around kind but distant adults, the man who had introduced himself before as Valen Redgrave seemed as if he were deliberately careful in his mannerisms. Deliberately careful, as if he were trying to avoid breaking something by accident.

Something, or someone. As if how he behaved was the sheath holding a sword.

"I have this," Benden growled, but he couldn't raise his eyes to meet the Ranger's gaze.

Valen released his grip on Ben's backpack, and the full weight of his burden nearly made his knees buckle. He had almost forgotten how heavy it was.

"I don't doubt it," Valen agreed. The Ranger stepped in front of Ben, and crouched down, forcing their eyes to meet. "Thing is, you left without a torch," he said, as he extended his arm and held out a pair of short metal sticks, wrapped in cloth on one end.

Benden blinked, and instinctively began to deny needing one. But he saw Valen was wearing another three on his belt, opposite his sword, Ben reconsidered.

"Okay," Benden agreed. "I should have brought one with me."

"Two, ideally," someone else said, from just out of sight. Benden turned, using his feet to swing himself around, to see a woman wearing an odd looking hat approach. "Torch only lasts half an hour. Always want a bit of wiggle room for getting lost."

"Or your torch might be a dud," Valen added. "Nothing quite as embarrassing as not being able to light one while the Gloam's rushing at you."

"You nearly had that problem last night," the woman said.

Ben's eyes widened at that, but Valen only laughed. "The torch worked fine. I just picked the wrong moment to forget how a flint worked."

Something about hearing Valen say that felt like drinking a cold glass of water. Benden felt himself relax, even as he shifted his shoulders to keep the weight of his backpack up.

"Also, Mister Tammerlane," Valen said. "You forget that no one should go alone. Especially not towards the oncoming Gloam, when its creatures are marching for us."

"I'm not going back," Benden said quickly.

"I wasn't asking you to," Valen said, in that slow and measured speech of his. "Not until you finish your mission. But since I cannot allow you to go alone, Corproal Gwendolyn Aranhall and I will walk with you."

"I didn't ask for help."

"You offer help instead," Valen answered. And the kindness in his voice made Ben's eyes just a little blurry. He wiped his sight clear with his sleeve. "Choices like yours are the bricks that make up the walls."

"I'm not sure he'll get that metaphor, Valen," Gwendolyn said.

But Benden understood, and was having a hard time keeping his eyes clear, as water welled out and trickled down his cheeks. If anyone ever asked him, he would blame it on the dust in the breeze.

"That being said, Mister Tammerlane, let us take some of what you're carrying."

"No," Benden sniped. He looked from Valen to Gwendolyn, looking at how much their own packs pulled against their shoulders, and how much the bottoms sagged. "This is my mission."

"Afraid we have to, soldier," Gwendolyn said. "Regulations, and all."

Benden's next step sent a shiver of pain that radiated up and down his leg, and his knee nearly buckled. "Regulations?" he asked.

"Yeah. You're not allowed to carry more than half your body-weight, unless you're on a road," Gwendolyn insisted. "Right, sir?"

Valen blinked, and shook a little before he answered. "I, yes, regulations. It's to keep soldiers from twisting their ankles, or getting stuck in the mud. Corporal Aranhall would know, being my squad's medic."

Benden suspected the excuse was a ruse. It wasn't the first lie he had been told by adults trying to be kind. He was about to tell them off, and keep to his march, but a look at Valen brought him up short.

"There are times, as a soldier, where you can't tell someone the truth," Valen said. "But honour and respect won't let you lie to them. When that happens, among soldiers, we tell a lie so obvious it can't be missed. Like calling the sky green or fire cold. And we do it so the truth can be told without being said. It is a courtesy, from one warrior to another."

Benden looked up, from Valen to Gwendolyn, and something caught in his throat. His thoughts drifted back to the months and years he had spent, abandoned by the people who were supposed to raise him. Who had abandoned him. And for the first time, he placed their deed on a scale, and set it against the people in his life who had gone out of their way for him. To the people who had given him a home, kept him from the institutional orphanages in the City, who had fed and cared for him, and made schools in part to keep him. Who had made him a part of their community despite him and his lifetime of bitterness.

And on that scale, he added these two soldiers, who looked at his childish stubbornness and insisted on respecting it.

And on that scale, the woman who had taken him in, all those years ago. The woman whose last name he took as his own.

And on that scale, his blood parents weighed nothing. He knew who he wished to be, and they were not it.

"If it's a regulation, guess I don't have a choice," Benden said, and Valen reached over to open the top of his pack. "There's a hundred bottles in there. Twenty each should bring it down to half my weight."

"Twenty each, no more," Valen agreed.

And Benden Tammerlane walked again, with both his heart and his pack lighter than they had been just a minute ago.