In the blue hour before sunup, Soren listened to Jannek's ragged breath and wondered, not for the first time, whether mercy was a myth invented by the healthy. The wound was bad, a neat slot at the thigh, clotted by pressure and a single wrap of bandage, but too close to the artery for anything but hope or a real medic.
Kale had insisted on cauterizing, but Jannek shrieked at the first touch of hot steel and then refused to look at any of them for the next hour, eyes screwed shut, whispering some borderlands lullaby through his teeth.
Soren knelt at the edge of their makeshift bivouac, scanning the uphill for movement. The pines above creaked with the slow thaw, and each drip of meltwater sounded loud as a dropped coin. He counted the drips, waiting for one that didn't fit the pattern.
The others huddled under a scrap of tarp, but Soren kept to the perimeter, sword laid flat across his knees, the cold biting his palms until the feeling in them returned.
