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Chapter 3 - The Price Of A Moment

Time, which had compressed into a series of terrifying, distinct heartbeats, snapped back to its frantic, chaotic rhythm. The wolf-helmed knight stood over Finn's cooling body, his lance dripping. His gaze, cold and appraising, was fixed on Kael. In that single look, Kael saw his own death calculated. He was not a threat, merely a loose thread to be snipped. An untidy loose end in an otherwise clean execution.

The knight took a step forward, his armored boot sinking deep into the mud. The trench, which should have been a defensive fortification, was now a dueling pit, barely wide enough for one man to swing a sword, let alone for a fully armored knight to maneuver. It was Kael's only advantage. That, and the mountain of dead horseflesh beside him.

Kael's mind was a maelstrom. Finn's last, surprised gasp echoed in his ears, a sound more piercing than any battle cry. The image of the boy's collapsing form was seared onto his vision, a fresh layer of horror wallpapered over the seventeen other memories of this same, damned trench. A thought, cold and acidly clear, bubbled up from the depths of his soul: A life for a waterskin.

It was a mad thought, a liar's thought. A coward's way of framing an atrocity. He had murdered a boy's hope, his future, all for a few more seconds of his own miserable existence. The weight of that choice was a physical thing, a stone in his belly. But it was also fuel. He had paid an unspeakable price for these next few moments. He would not, could not, waste them.

The knight raised his lance, preparing for a short, powerful thrust. Kael didn't wait. He didn't have the skill to parry, the Aura to deflect. He did the only thing he could: he dove sideways, scrambling over the slick, bloody corpse of the horse.

His hands sunk into the still-warm flesh, the smell of blood and viscera flooding his senses. He half-climbed, half-rolled over the beast's massive torso, putting the dead animal between himself and the knight. It was a clumsy, desperate maneuver, the act of a rat, not a soldier.

The knight's lance stabbed the air where Kael had been a second before. A grunt of frustration escaped the man's helmet. He tried to navigate around the horse, but the cramped space and the deep, sucking mud worked against him. His heavy armor, a fortress on the open field, was a cage in this narrow, corpse-choked ditch.

Kael, now on the other side, grabbed his discarded short sword. His hand, which had been numb from hammering the stake, now trembled with a surge of raw adrenaline. He was no swordsman. His knowledge of combat was a patchwork quilt of his own violent deaths.

The knight, seeing his lance was too unwieldy in the tight quarters, dropped it with a clatter and drew his arming sword, a weapon far superior to Kael's own crude blade. He was methodical, professional. He placed a mailed boot on the horse's flank, beginning to climb over.

Kael knew he couldn't win a direct confrontation. He didn't try.

As the knight's leg crested the horse's back, Kael lunged forward, not at the man, but at his footing. He drove his shoulder hard into the knight's rising knee. It wasn't an attack meant to wound; it was an attack meant to unbalance.

The knight, caught mid-stride with all his weight on one leg, was utterly unprepared for the change in leverage. His stabilizing foot, already deep in the treacherous mud, slipped. With a curse muffled by his helmet, he flailed, his arms pinwheeling for a balance that wasn't there. He toppled sideways, crashing heavily into the muddy trench wall.

For a moment, he was a turtle on its back, his heavy plate armor working against him. It was a window of maybe two seconds. Kael took it.

He scrambled over the dead horse, ignoring the knight's flailing sword. He didn't try for the helmet or the thick breastplate. He dropped to his knees in the mud beside the downed man and aimed for the gaps. The weak points. The places he himself had been pierced a dozen times. He drove his simple, unadorned short sword with both hands into the gap between the breastplate and the tasset, where the leather straps that held the armor together were exposed.

There was a moment of resistance, then a sickening, wet tear as the blade punched through leather, mail, and flesh.

The knight stiffened. A choked, gurgling sound came from within the wolf-helm. Kael didn't pull the blade out. He pushed it deeper, twisting with all the strength his wiry frame possessed. He leaned on it, his face inches from the emotionless steel helmet, his knuckles buried in the man's side. He felt the life shudder out of the body beneath him, a final, violent tremor that ran up the blade and into his own bones.

Then, silence.

Kael remained kneeling for a long second, his breath coming in ragged, painful heaves. The world rushed back in—the screams, the rain, the distant clash of steel. He had killed a knight. A real, armored, trained knight. Not with skill, but with mud, desperation, and the weight of a dead horse.

He pulled his sword free and staggered to his feet. His eyes immediately fell on Finn's body, face-down in the mud. A small, woven charm, now dark with blood, had fallen from his tunic.

The grizzled sergeant, Marius, appeared beside him, his face a mask of disbelief. He stared at the dead knight, then at Kael, then at the dead horse. He opened his mouth, then closed it again. His professional soldier's mind was clearly struggling to process the scene. The madman who was hammering stakes moments ago was now standing over the corpse of one of the Baron's elites.

"Get his sword," Marius finally rasped, pointing with a bloodied axe. "And his coin. The dead have no use for them." He clapped Kael hard on the shoulder, a gesture that was less camaraderie and more a stunned acknowledgment of survival. "You earned it, you crazy son of a bitch."

Kael didn't move. He just stared at Finn. The boy who had offered him a smile. The boy whose life he had traded for a tactical advantage. He had won a few more minutes, maybe a few more hours of life. The price was a ghost that would now walk beside him for whatever remained of this miserable existence.

And Kael knew, with a certainty that chilled him more than the rain ever could, that this was only the first of many such debts he would have to incur.

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