Boots in the Smoke
The war returned as boots in wet ash.
Amani heard them before Owen did. His head lifted. The braids at his neck moved in the wind. Somewhere beyond the broken cart, metal knocked against metal, then a voice cursed at the mud.
Redcoats.
Not a full company. A search party. Six, maybe eight. Men sent to gather officers, finish wounded enemies, and burn what paperwork the dead had failed to hide.
Owen tried to push himself upright.
Amani pressed two fingers against his chest.
"Stay."
The order should have insulted him.
Instead, Owen obeyed because his body had already voted against pride.
A lantern appeared through the smoke.
Then another.
Private Tom Bell came first, nineteen and too thin, holding his musket like a borrowed tool. Owen knew him. Bell had played a tin whistle badly outside the cook tents and cried when fever took his brother in the third campaign.
Behind Bell walked Colonel Malcolm Vale.
Clean boots, even here.
Silver at the cuffs.
Mourning black ribbon tied around his arm for officers who had died because of orders he wrote from safety.
Vale saw Owen and smiled as if finding a misplaced possession.
"Captain Ashford," he called. "Still refusing to die on schedule?"
The soldiers spread out.
Muskets rose.
Amani did not move.
Vale's eyes slid to him. The smile widened.
"And the beast has found you first."
Owen's throat worked.
"He gave me water."
The words came cracked, but they landed.
One soldier laughed. Another spat into the mud.
Vale stepped over a broken shield and stopped three paces away.
"Listen to that, boys. Our tender captain has been adopted by the butcher."
Amani held the flask at his side.
The clay looked darker in the moonlight.
Vale pointed his pistol at Owen first, not Amani.
That told Owen everything.
"You have something of mine," Vale said.
Owen's fingers moved toward his sash.
Pain stopped him halfway.
Vale noticed.
"So you read it."
A soldier shifted. Bell's eyes flicked from Vale to Owen.
"What order, sir?" Bell asked.
Vale did not look back.
"A fever order. Nothing that concerns children."
Children.
The word passed through Amani like a blade through cloth.
His hand closed around the flask so hard Owen heard the leather strap creak.
Vale lowered his pistol toward Owen's torn sash.
"Captain, you are injured, confused, and compromised by enemy contact. Hand me the paper and I may let the fever take you naturally."
Owen laughed once.
It sounded like a cough breaking apart.
"There was no fever."
The search party went quiet.
Vale's face tightened.
Amani took one step forward.
Every musket swung toward him.
Owen could barely breathe, but he raised his voice.
"Ask him why he fired on the white flag."
The smoke moved.
Men who had marched under Vale's commands looked at one another and found fear where obedience had been.
Vale's pistol cocked.
"Captain Ashford has always been delicate."
Owen looked at Bell.
The boy's lantern shook.
"No," Owen whispered. "I was late."
Then, with fingers slick from blood and mud, he pulled the sealed order from beneath his sash and held it up to the moon.
May you like
The red wax had broken.
The truth had not.
