Through Smoke and Stone
The road to Dunmere Crossing cut through country that no longer trusted either side.
Burned carts stood where orchards had been. A chapel bell lay cracked in a ditch. At a shallow stream, Thomas washed blood from his face and saw in the water not a clean soldier, but a man divided against his own coat.
They reached the crossing at dawn’s gray edge.
The Crown’s provisional tribunal tent had been raised beside the river because officials preferred inquiries close to roads and far from graves. Mounted provost guards stood outside. Clerks carried ledgers under oilskins. One field printer was already setting type for the expected bulletin: DECISIVE VICTORY AT GRAYSHADE FORD.
Thomas stopped reading.
Ashbourne had arrived before them.
Through the open flap of the command tent, Thomas saw the major standing beside Governor Wessex, one arm bandaged, posture still elegant. Captain Bell was not with them. Thomas guessed the man was either dead or already useful in silence.
"If we walk in openly," Owen whispered, "they’ll arrest us."
"They will try," Thomas said.
Sena drew her hood lower. "And if they do?"
Thomas touched the folded order inside his coat, then the brass compass in his pocket. Two weights. Two dead men speaking differently in his blood.
"Then they do it in front of witnesses," he said.
The witnesses came from unexpected places.
Refugees from the burned ridge had followed the cart road to the crossing seeking missing kin. British stretcher bearers moved among them. So did camp servants, mule drivers, laundresses, and one war correspondent from London who smelled a sharper story than victory. The air was full of damp wool, horse sweat, and rumor.
Kellan looked toward the river where his own people were hidden in the reeds beyond musket range, waiting for his signal.
"Once this begins," he said, "it will not belong to us alone anymore."
Thomas nodded.
"It never did."
He straightened as much as his ribs allowed and walked toward the tribunal tent in a torn red coat carrying the evidence of his own army’s crime.
The guards stepped across his path.
"Private Reed," one said with disbelief. "Major Ashbourne reported you dead."
May you like
Thomas met the man’s eyes.
"He reports many things," he said. "That is why I need the provost marshal now."
