“Before we can do anything else, you need to be able to keep up.”

Deniel stood uncertainly outside the city walls. The rest of the file was there as well; grumbling and jostling as Egon and Aeghert shepherded them towards a dirt track leading into the nearby woodlot.

“So,” Egon took up the refrain with a smile. “We’re all going to go for a bit of a walk, so we are.” The smile widened into a grin. Egon’s face looked like he smiled readily, as if inviting you to share the joke. The faces of the rest of the file clearly communicated they didn’t share the humor. Roderick was mumbling accented curses under his breath, the tips of his mustache twitching. Vitta was less circumspect, his posture radiating hurt and betrayal.

“A bit of a walk,” Deniel echoed, watching the body language of his filemates. Aeghert nodded vigorously.

“A bit of a walk.”

“And how far is ‘a bit’?”

Aeghert chewed the inside of his cheek thoughtfully as he considered his answer. “Oh, we’ll see when we get there.”

“Until he gets tired.” Egon explained helpfully. “So, let’s be off.” The two seniors began to trot briskly down the roadway, shepherding the rest of the file along. The more experienced hands quickly sorted themselves into two rows of three, Matthias pulling Deniel in front of himself with a snatch and jerk on his shoulder. “Stand here.”

Roderick jogged easily alongside him, breathing evenly. The hobnails on his leather boots clattered on the cobblestones of the roadway, clattering rhythmically as six pairs pounded on rock. “Don’t mind him, he’s like that with everyone. Keep your spacing – take your right arm, tap the person in front of you and the person to your right on the shoulder.” He demonstrated, stretching his own left out rapping first Vitta, then Deniel. “You should be able to straighten the arm, but also still reach – that gives you your spacing.”

“If you two can carry on a conversation, we’re not going fast enough yet.” The terse snap from ahead brought Roderick back towards the task at hand. The “walk” continued, turning off the paved way onto a dirt track running towards the woodline. The hammering sound of metal on stone vanished in an instant, jarring in its absence and replaced with the crunching of frozen earth underfoot. The trees broke up the wind, at least, robbing the cold of some of the bite, but some distant part of Deniel’s mind knew that the moment he would stop moving the sweat soaking into his unfamiliar clothing would freeze him to the bone.

Over to the side, a group of woodcutters labored, bringing down the standing trees, chopping the limbs off the boles, and straightening the resulting logs. Those were being manhandled over to one side even as the axes rose and fell on still more, piled neatly into pyramids. Straight tracks showed where oxen would drag them away. To the other side, the limbs and brush were piled high on carts which ran towards the city, scrambling to feed the ravenous hunger that produced thick clouds of black smoke rising from near every roof. Still more smoke rose from deeper in the woods, the dark choked fume that spoke of charcoaling furnaces smoldering with a grudging heat under a charcoaler’s watchful eyes. Some of the woodcutters called out a greeting as the file passed, and Aeghert raised a hand in greeting without slowing or stopping. The two lines of three passed by and continued down the track, deeper into the shadow of the woodlot.

Vitta hadn’t grumbled audibly, unlike the rest of the file, but he winced every time his boots thudded down against the hardpacked and frozen dirt of the roadway. The red water had apparently done him no favors. Despite this, he moved easily and fluidly with obvious practice, letting the steps flow from one to the other with as little energy as he needed. Behind Deniel, Matthias continued to silently jog. His permanent scowl still stood fixed on his face, staring down towards the ground as he concentrated. To the side, Roderick’s mustache twitched as he puffed.

The road twisted on through the woods. The trees glistened where beams of light pierced through the cover of clouds and branches, illuminating motes of dust in the cold and reflecting off the layers of frost clinging to trees and ground alike. There was no movement besides the file, the normal sounds and sights of nature seemingly frozen into a picture of icy serenity. Deniel breathed in the smoking cold air, smelling the sharp odor of impending snow on the wind and feeling it chill his lungs right down to the core. The deep breath pulled at the unfamiliar clothes again, the doublet pulling strangely at his shoulders as his chest inflated, differently to the cuts he was used to. The strangeness pulled at his mind for a moment before he banished it, focusing again to the task at hand.

Various muscles already ached and burned, unused to this manner of effort and brought out of practice by the journey, cramped and shortened by sheer lack of movement. He gritted his teeth and ignored the discomfort, pushing into it instead. The muscles were gradually loosening, the jogging becoming easier and more natural even as he tired and the five around him began to puff.

Suddenly, the trees disappeared. The transition was sudden enough to break Deniel’s focus again and he almost slipped, the nails on his leather sole sliding and scrabbling on the surface for a brief moment before finding purchase again. The clearing they had entered was bare and empty, surrounded by foreboding gloom on all sides where the woodlot hemmed it in. Grass grew in patches, the cold having leeched the color out of it but not quite robbed it of all vitality as the stalks waved in the broken breeze.

Aeghert slowed the jog to a walk, Egon slowing down in sync next to him. The remaining parts of the file slowed in turn, puffing as they struggled to catch their breath. The scraping and clank of their passage subsided, replaced with a quiet tranquility as the silence seemed to flow out of the surrounding woods and reclaim its domain. The susurrus of wind through the branches murmured out into that void, quiet and soothing despite the chill it brought. Deniel found himself caught by it, listening as it flowed past him while he walked.

The wave of nostalgia and sadness that caught him came entirely unexpectedly, swelling up from some hidden part of his soul. The trees here were wholly unfamiliar, their composition strange and their arrangement wholly artificial – a seeded woodlot to replace that consumed by the city rather than true forest. And yet there was a haunting familiarity to it that called of home, bringing with it waves of recrimination and regret.

You never even got to say goodbye, it murmured. Your family knows nothing of where you are, or what you’ve done. You’ve repaid their kindness and love by leaving the Easterners suspicious of them, and the rebels openly hostile.

I had no choice! Deniel screamed inside his own mind, replaying those moments in his head and remembering the glacial stare of the Reichsgraf. I was pushed into this, I had no say in the matter.

There’s always a choice. You chose. You chose to throw in with Stanmark, with strangers you knew and know nothing of. You chose to abandon your family. You chose to leave and betray the monks who had been close to accepting you.

The numbness seeping through Deniel was more than just the windchill eating into his sweat-soaked clothes, now. His steps seemed to slow and drag, dreamlike, thoughts clouding and clotting as he tried to think, to remember how he’d gotten here. For a moment, he was back in the wagon train heading away from Akenhof again – alone with his thoughts and misery. Then, a hand clapped down on his shoulders – hard. He stumbled, buffeted out of his fugue, looking up at the groepleid’s bearded face. The man’s expression was understanding, kind, though the voice was gruff as ever.

“You’re thinking too fucking much. Thinking rots your brain. Don’t think, just do.” The file closer’s eyes held Deniel’s for a second longer until he was sure the youth was back to himself, then the an straightened, stroking his beard lightly. “Now – we have to be ready and able to walk for long distances at a moment’s notice. We’ll be taking walks like this every day – eventually, with your pack and weapons as well – so you get used to it.” There was a disconsolate mumbling from the rest of the file until Aeghert’s glare flashed over them. “You’ve all gotten lazy since we went to winter quarters; no need to ruin the new material with that attitude.” He clapped his hands briskly. “Now, we’re going to turn here and head back; in spring, we’d continue on some, but there’s no point with you out of condition and the ground this way. When we make it back, we’re showing the new blood the basics of order.” Again, there was a murmur of discontent that again, Aeghert glared down into silence. “Once that’s done, the rest of the day’s yours. We’ll start establishing a routine again, and in a month I want you all back in form.”

With that said, the burly file closer spun on his heel, the hobnails digging furrows into the icy ground and tearing at the scraggly grass and weeds. “Egon, take the lead for the next stretch. We’re heading back to camp.” The ervaren nodded briskly and motioned everyone into motion, black curls bobbing over his slight frame. Behind him, the rest of the file set out again. Deniel stared straight ahead, his eyes boring into the veteran’s collar, his mind carefully blank of everything except the burning exertion in his muscles and a lingering sense of loss.