Mercy in the Ash Field

Only hours earlier, before the field drowned in smoke, Thomas had been standing under torchlight in front of his own regiment while Major Cedric Ashbourne made him into a lesson.

The men of the Royal West March Infantry had formed a loose half-circle around the supply wagons, their boots sunk in the riverbank mud. Artillery crews were preparing the cannons. The officers moved with the confidence of men who thought maps could make the world obedient.

Thomas had stepped forward because he had seen the target chart.

The next barrage was not aimed at the hill guns of the frontier clans. It was aimed beyond them, toward the stone refuge where noncombatants had fled after sunset.

"Sir," Thomas had said, keeping his voice level, "the range marker is wrong. There are civilians in the hollow beyond the ridge."

Major Ashbourne, tall and immaculate even in field conditions, turned with slow contempt.

"Are you instructing artillery, Private Reed?"

A few men lowered their eyes. Others waited for the familiar cruelty.

Thomas held his ground. "I am telling you what I saw through the glass."

Ashbourne removed one glove finger by finger. "And I am telling you what you are. A line soldier. The son of a disgraced surveyor who died with a traitor’s stain on his name." He stepped closer until Thomas could smell wine on his breath beneath the powder smoke. "If you wish to lecture command on war, perhaps you should have inherited better blood."

The men heard it. The gunners heard it. Even the drummer boys heard it.

Ashbourne took hold of the torn white cross strap over Thomas’s shoulder and jerked it hard enough to snap a buckle.

"You will carry powder until dawn," he said. "No rifle. No place in the front line. And if you speak once more out of turn, I will have you flogged for panic before the whole regiment."

Laughter came thin and uneasy from the men nearest the wagons.

Thomas felt every eye on him.

His father had died five years earlier in a prison infirmary after being accused of leaking boundary maps to frontier rebels. The accusation had destroyed the Reed name. Thomas had joined the Crown army not because he loved it, but because poverty and shame made ugly recruiting sergeants sound reasonable.

He had spent three years obeying men who despised him.

Still he said, quietly, "Those are not military tents on the ridge."

Ashbourne slapped him.

The sound carried farther than a shout.

"Carry the powder," the major said.