Chapter 4: The Gallow's Foot Muster
The road south was a study in misery. It chewed through the soles of his boots and settled a permanent ache between his shoulder blades. The world shrank to the rhythm of his own footsteps, the constant, faint hum of the wrapped sword against his spine, and the memory of Reina’s kiss, which alternated between a warmth in his gut and a sharp, lonely pang.
He followed the rumors, moving from one wretched roadside inn to another, listening to the talk of men with missing fingers and far-away stares. The war on the Drowned Marches wasn’t a noble affair. It was a grinding, ugly dispute over salt flats and fishing rights, fueled by border lords who hired their violence out to companies like the Gallow’s Foot.
He found the muster on a wide, bleak field outside a border fort that looked like a rotten tooth against the gray sky. It wasn’t an army. It was a temporary, filthy city of canvas and desperation. The air was a cocktail of scents: woodsmoke, boiling stew, unwashed bodies, horse shit, and the underlying, metallic hint of frost. Lines of men drilled with spears in the churned mud, their movements sluggish and unison a distant dream. Others huddled around fires, gambling with bone dice, their laughter too loud and sharp.
Leon moved through the chaos, feeling every eye on him. He was too young, his clothes too poor, his face too clean of the scars that seemed like badges here. He carried himself like he had a right to be there, the ghost-memory of a drill sergeant from another life straightening his back. Don’t look lost. Look like you’re checking the place out.
He found the Gallow’s Foot section by the banner—a crude, embroidered black bird clutching a rust-colored arrow, snapping in the bitter wind. Their area was marginally more organized, the tents in ragged lines, the fire pits dug deeper. A massive man with a face like lumpy clay and a faded Foot emblem branded on his forearm was tossing sacks of grain from a wagon with bored violence.
“Quartermaster?” Leon asked, his voice almost lost in the din.
The man didn’t even look at him. “Piss off, pup. Kitchen scraps are that way.” He jerked a thumb toward a smoking midden heap.
“I’m here to sign on.”
That got a look. A slow, dismissive sweep from Leon’s worn boots to his close-cropped hair. “Sign on,” the man repeated, the words a flat joke. “You got a sponsor? A letter from your daddy? A notable kill?”
“I have a sword.”
The quartermaster—Gareth, his mates called him—finally stopped working. He leaned against the wagon, crossing thick arms. “Everyone’s got a sword. Show me.”
Leon shrugged the pack off his shoulders, unwinding the sacking. He drew the black blade, holding it flat across his palms. The matte surface drank the diffuse afternoon light, offering no reflection, no boast. It just was.
Gareth’s bored expression didn’t change. “Pretty. Black paint. You kill a man with a painted sword, boy?”
“Yes.”
That earned a snort. “Right. Come on, then. Let’s see if you know which end to hold.”
He led Leon to a clear patch of ground near a row of battered practice dummies—posts wrapped in rotting straw and old burlap. A few mercenaries nearby paused their whetstone work or their mending to watch, their smiles lazy with anticipated amusement.
“Hit that,” Gareth said, pointing to a dummy. “Hard as you can. Let’s see your form.”
Form. Gregor’s voice echoed in his head. It’s not a club. It’s a lever. Your whole body is the swing. Leon took a breath, pushing the monastery’s silent violations, the smell of smoke, the weight of the gold sack, all of it into a cold box in his mind. He approached the dummy. He didn’t adopt a perfect guard. He just settled his weight, felt the familiar, hungry balance of the sword, and struck.
It wasn’t a heroic overhead chop. It was a tight, diagonal draw-cut, starting from his lower left, engaging his legs and core, the blade whispering as it crossed his body.
It didn’t thud into the straw.
It passed through. The black edge met the soaked, compacted burlap and the tough wood beneath, and it simply didn’t stop. There was a quiet, fibrous snap, and the top third of the dummy teetered, then slid off to land with a damp flop in the mud.
The sound of the whetstone stopped.
Leon recovered his stance, the sword now pointed down at his right. He felt the same strange, clean sensation—no drag, no jarring impact. Just completion.
Gareth stared at the sheared post. The cut surface was unnaturally smooth, like polished stone. He blinked, then his eyes narrowed, going from the dummy to the unmarked blade. “Alright,” he grunted, suspicion now layered over the boredom. “Lucky hit. Borik!”
A hulking man with a beard woven into two thick braids looked up from cleaning his nails with a dagger. “What?”
“Test him. Gently. I want to see that thing against real metal.”
Borik stood, rolling shoulders thick with corded muscle. He grabbed a training sword from a rack—a blunt, heavy thing of browned iron, notched from countless impacts. He sauntered over, giving Leon the same dismissive once-over. “Don’t wet yourself, kid. I’ll go easy.”
Leon said nothing. He adjusted his grip. This wasn’t a thug in an alley. This was a professional soldier. The ghost-memory supplied tactics: Against superior strength and reach, control the distance. Let them overcommit.
Borik didn’t bother with ceremony. He lunged, a straightforward, powerful thrust aimed at Leon’s chest, slow enough to pull, fast enough to hurt.
Leon didn’t parry. He sidestepped, the iron blade hissing past his ribs. As Borik’s momentum carried him forward, Leon brought the black sword up in a short, rising arc, not aiming for the man, but for the blade itself.
He intended to knock it aside, to create an opening.
The black edge met the iron training sword a hand’s breadth from the hilt.
The sound was a single, high, crystal ping.
The lower half of Borik’s blade spun away through the air, landing point-first in the mud several feet away. Borik stumbled, thrown off balance by the sudden absence of weight, staring dumbly at the perfectly severed stump of iron in his hand. The cut was mirror-smooth.
A complete silence fell over their section of the camp. The lazy smiles were gone. Now the looks were sharp, calculating, edged with a low-grade alarm.
“What in the seven hells is that?” a new voice said. It was a woman’s voice, husky from shouting orders and smoke.
Leon turned. The woman who approached was maybe thirty, dressed in practical, travel-stained leathers and a mail shirt that had seen better days. Her hair was the color of dirty straw, hacked short, and a pale, slick scar ran from her temple to the corner of her mouth, pulling her expression into a permanent, lopsided smirk. Her eyes, a washed-out gray, missed nothing.
“Captain Varka,” Gareth said, his tone shifting to wary respect.
Varka ignored him. She walked right up to Leon, her eyes locked on the black sword. She didn’t ask to hold it. She just stared. “Sky-iron,” she said, the words quiet. “I’ve seen one piece, once. On a lord’s mantle. A dagger. He wouldn’t even touch it for fear of spoiling the polish.” Her gray eyes flicked up to Leon’s. “Where’d a slum rat get a sky-iron sword?”
The question hung in the cold air. A lie could get him killed. The truth—an old smith, a burning brothel, a dead mentor—was too complicated, too weak.
“It was a gift,” Leon said, holding her gaze. “For services rendered.”
Varka’s lopsided smile deepened. She understood services. “Services to who?”
“A madam. A knight-killer. A head nun.” He let the bizarre list sit. “I need to get stronger. They told me the Foot pays in silver and lessons.”
“We pay in blood and betrayal,” Varka corrected, but she was still looking at the sword. “That thing… it’s a cheat. It’ll make you lazy. You’ll rely on it. Then someone will brain you with a rock while you’re admiring how clean your cuts are.”
“I know,” Leon said, and he found he meant it. The sword was a miracle, but Martellus hadn’t needed a miracle. He’d just been a force of nature. “I still need to learn what it can’t do.”
Varka was silent for a long moment, the only sound the wind flapping the banner and Borik muttering as he retrieved his broken practice blade. Finally, she nodded, a quick, decisive jerk of her chin. “Gareth. Put him on the rolls. Standard share, minus the cost of his kit and board. He starts with the scouts. Light duties.” Her eyes hardened on Leon. “And that blade stays wrapped unless I or a sergeant say otherwise. You flash that in a tavern or on the road, you’ll have every cutpurse, noble’s agent, and rival company on you like flies on shit. It’s not a sword. It’s a problem. Understood?”
Leon nodded, sheathing the black blade back into its sacking shroud. The hum against his spine faded to a whisper. “Understood.”
“Good. Welcome to the Gallow’s Foot, boy.” She turned to leave, then paused, glancing back over her scarred shoulder. “One more thing. The man whose blade you just ruined? That’s Borik. He’s your new tent-mate. You just bought his next three bottles of rotgut. I’d start figuring out how to pay that debt before lights out.”
She walked away, leaving Leon standing in the mud, the weight of the gold sack replaced by the weight of the stares around him. Borik was now looking at him, his initial shock replaced by a slow-burning, speculative resentment.
Gareth shoved a rough wool tunic, a dented helmet, and a thin bedroll into his arms. “Tent seven. Look sharp, cheat-sword. War doesn’t wait for you to get cozy.”
Leon hoisted the gear. He looked at the muddy field, the grim fort, the thousand stranger-soldiers. This was it. No brothel to protect. No monastery to endure. Just the raw, ugly mechanics of getting stronger. He took a breath of the cold, metallic air and started walking toward the rows of tents, the black sword on his back feeling, for the first time, like a real and terrible secret.
A year had past.
A year had past.
The memories of Kandor’s smoke and the monastery’s silent hallways had been overwritten by a brutal, grinding collage. Leon had learned the difference between the guttural war-shouts of northern barbarians and the deep-chested bellows of orc raiders. He’d learned how to sleep in mud, how to identify the early rot in rationed grain, and how to send silver coins to Sister Elmina at the dockside shrine with a message that contained only a number and no name.
His old roommate, Borik, had died not with a heroic shout, but gurgling on a lungful of his own blood after a rusted barbarian spear found a gap in his mail. The tent felt too empty after that, until Varka dumped Kiriko’s kit inside with a gruff, “She’s your problem now.”
Kiriko was a wolf-kin, all sharp angles and sharper tongue. Tufted gray ears twitched constantly atop her head, and a low, warning growl seemed to live permanently in her throat. Her tail, a bristling brush of silver-flecked fur, was a blunt meter of her mood. At first, she’d hated him. She’d slept curled with her back to the canvas wall, her amber eyes reflecting the lamplight like a feral thing’s, convinced he was another human who saw her as a talking dog.
Time, and shared survival, had worn the sharpest edges off. He’d handed her a bowl of stew when a fever left her shivering. She’d silently returned his whetstone after a skirmish when he’d thought it lost. The truce found its strangest expression one night after a brutal march, when without thinking, he’d reached over and scratched the base of her ear where it met her hairline. She’d frozen, then let out a shuddering sigh, her entire frame melting into the touch, a sound escaping her that was pure, uncomplicated animal relief. The next morning, she’d been furious, glaring with a betrayal that cut deeper than any human insult.
Now, they were deep in the rocky, pine-choked passes of orcish territory, and the company had been fighting a running battle for three days. The air stank of conifer sap and the coppery reek of old blood. Leon’s world had narrowed to the weight of the black sword in his hand, the heave of his own chest, and the solid, familiar pressure of Kiriko’s back against his.
Five orcs circled them, hulking shapes in crude iron plates, their greenish skin slick with rain and grime. Their tusks were chipped yellow, their eyes small, hungry coals.
“Leon.” Kiriko’s voice was a tense murmur, her own notched short sword held low. “You still owe me coins for that potion last week. Pay up.”
He barked a laugh, the sound startling one of the orcs into shifting its footing. “Now you’re asking about that? I thought we were even since I pulled you off that spear last month. And then there was the river.” He adjusted his grip, feeling the humming readiness of the sword. “Matter of fact, you owe me.”
An orc lunged. Leon moved, not with a grand swing, but a brutal, efficient thrust that punched through rusted ringmail and into the thick muscle beneath. The orc staggered, and Kiriko, without looking, jerked her elbow back into its jaw, feeling the crack against her armor.
“The head of that chieftain over there,” she hissed, ducking under a wild axe swing. Her tail lashed, brushing his leg. “Its bounty is twenty silvers. That’s fair enough to pay my debt to you. If you can take it.”
“You’re buying my labor now?” He spun, his blade a dark arc that severed an orc’s wrist. The hand, still clutching a cleaver, thumped to the wet ground.
“I’m assigning you a target!” she snapped, driving her shoulder into another creature’s gut, following with a vicious upward stab.
They fought in this syncopated rhythm, their movements a practical dance born of a dozen shared ambushes, their words a constant, gritty commentary. He parried a blow meant for her flank. She tripped an orc that threatened his blind spot. The bickering was their breath, their anchor in the chaos.
“Your form is sloppy when you’re tired,” he grunted, deflecting a mace.
“Your jokes are worse than your footwork,” she retorted, kicking a fallen dagger towards him.
When the last orc fell, a gurgling heap at their feet, the sudden silence was louder than the fight. The only sounds were their ragged breathing and the distant cries of battle elsewhere in the misty pass. Leon leaned on his sword, the black blade unmarked, the orc blood sliding off it like water off wax.
A slow clap echoed from the rocks above. Varka slid down a gravelly incline, her lopsided grin wide. “By the Black Bird’s shitty nest,” she chuckled, wiping a smear of grime from her scar. “That was better than a mummer’s show. You two should just marry each other and get it over with. The bickering’s already like an old married couple.”
Kiriko instantly stiffened, her ears flattening against her skull. “Don’t be disgusting,” she snarled, but the tips of those ears flushed a dark, betraying pink.
Leon just shook his head, a weary smile touching his lips. “The dowry would be a mess of owed coins and broken gear, Captain. Not worth the paperwork.”
Varka laughed again, a short, sharp sound. “The chieftain’s head is that way, by the big rock. Twenty silvers, like she said. Collect it. Then we pull back to the main column. This push is over.” She looked at them, her gray eyes missing nothing—the way they stood close without thinking, the defensive angle of Kiriko’s body, Leon’s casual readiness to engage her nonsense. “Clean each other up. You’re both a mess.”
She moved off, barking orders to a cluster of soldiers further down the pass.
Kiriko wouldn’t look at him. She bent to wipe her blade clean on a scrap of cloth with furious concentration. The silence between them now was different, charged with Varka’s words.
“She talks rubbish,” Kiriko muttered finally.
“She does,” Leon agreed quietly. He knelt by the orc chieftain, a massive brute with a necklace of human teeth, and set to the grim work. The sword made it quick.
Later, back at the temporary camp nestled in a defensible gully, the silence held. They sat by their own small fire, sharing a waterskin. Leon rolled the two heavy silver coins from the bounty in his palm before tucking them into the oilcloth pouch with the others destined for the shrine. Kiriko watched the fire, her tail wrapped around her legs.
“You send it all away,” she said, not a question.
“There are people waiting for it,” he said, thinking of Reina’s fierce smile in the kitchen garden, the feel of her grip on his tunic. The memory was a clean ache, a point of light in the murk.
“Hmph.” Kiriko was quiet for a long moment. “You don’t… pet them, do you?”
He looked over at her. Her profile was sharp against the firelight, her ears angled slightly back. “No,” he said, the truth simple. “I don’t.”
She gave a single, tight nod, as if that settled something. Then she shifted, turning her back to him to unstrap her pauldron, presenting the line of her neck and the base of her skull. It wasn’t an invitation. It was a test, and a confession, all in one.
Leon finished checking the edge of his sword. Then, without a word, he reached out and let his fingers gently knead the tight muscles where her human shoulders met the dense fur of her neck. She shuddered, a long, slow exhalation escaping her, her ears finally relaxing fully. He didn’t speak. He just worked the tension out, this small, strange currency of trust between two people who had nothing but the next fight and the debts they chose to honor.
In the dark, with the fire popping and the camp settling into exhausted quiet, Leon looked north, towards Kandor, towards the monastery on its hill. The black sword lay beside him, a pool of deeper shadow. He was getting stronger. He could feel it in the ease of his movements, in the way fear had morphed into a kind of focused clarity. But the horizon of his need—the power to face a force like Martellus, to truly protect something—still felt impossibly distant. It was a cold night, and the road ahead promised only more of the same. But for now, there was a fire, a tentative peace, and the weight of silver meant for home.
The next day, the battle against the Orcs intensify for the worst. Chieftains, commanders, warlords and even the Orc King was there destroying all the soldiers and nobles.