The fire burned low, a steady bed of coals that held their color like tempered iron. The light was enough to push back the dark to a respectable distance. Stronric kept his place at the edge of that light, where the night still had a voice but knew better than to speak too loudly. His axe lay within a hand's reach along the ground, and his eyes moved slowly over the rise, patient as a smith watching a heat. He had dragged the dragon's carcass clear earlier, hauling it to firmer earth. Now the bulk of it lay just beyond the fire, the long body stretched to its full measure, scales dull where the shadows laid over them and glinting where a stray spark leapt high and fell away. The swamp had tried to take the beast back once already. It would not do so again while he kept the watch.

He let his gaze pass over the company. Rugiel slept closest to the coals, curled on her side with one arm tucked beneath her head. In the crook of her other arm rested the white rabbit, as calm as a polished stone. Its fur held a faint silver sheen, and wherever it sat the air cleaned itself as if the very night deferred to it. The smoke that rose from the fire burned bright and straight. There was no sour note of rot, no bite of swamp gas, no wet stink that clung to cloth and beard. The air moved easily through the lungs. Even the insects kept their distance, as if the creature had fixed a border in the dark and the lesser things understood.

Bauru had taken the low fork of a cypress, his back to the trunk, one leg hanging at an angle that would have numbed a softer man. His crossbow lay across his chest with the string turned outward so it would not rub. He looked like a strip of shadow glued to the tree, all wiry length and stillness, the kind of stillness that was not emptiness but a hunter's rest. Dane sprawled near the fire, his shield tucked beneath his head as a pillow, arms thrown wide as if the earth itself had claimed him for a night's lodging. He slept as men do when they do not expect more trouble until morning, not trusting anything and somehow trusting the ground anyway. Beyond the circle of sleepers, Kara leaned against a tree. Even asleep she held herself like a woman giving nothing away. Giles lay with his head in her lap, his face slack in sleep where earlier the muscles had been hot with words, and Kara's hand rested on his brow in a light touch that could be read as comfort or a tether.

The quiet was full enough to listen to. The coals cracked and settled themselves with little sighs. Sleeper's breath moved in and out around the circle, slow and stubborn, the kind of breath that belongs to people who have paid a price for it. Now and again a faint drip sounded in the black beyond the rise where moisture gathered and released itself. He could not hear a frog. He could not hear a gnat. The swamp had gone cautious under the rabbit's eye.

He let that quiet have its stretch. His hands rested on his knees. His back ached at the line where the axe haft had leaned during the fight, telling him that bruises would flower when morning made its demands. The ache pleased him. Pain meant the body had done what it was meant to do, a message from flesh to memory so a man would not lie to himself about the cost. He stood when the message was done being sent. His boots bit the ground with a dry crunch that would have been unheard in most swamps, but tonight the topsoil held firm. He crossed to the dragon.

The knife came easy to his hand, a smaller iron than his axe but kin to it all the same. Work is work, whether it comes at the forge or in the field. He set the blade at the edge of a plate where skin gave purchase, then pulled with the left hand and cut with the right, a steady rhythm that was not rushed and did not stumble. Scales rose from flesh like old roof tiles under a proper pry bar. He eased a panel free and flipped it, then laid it flat with the inside up to cool so he could scrape it clean before he stacked it. Plates could be sewn to leather if they were cut into lamellae, and there was enough hide here to plate a dozen coats for people who knew how to move while wearing them. A dwarf thinks this way. Nothing that can be turned into a tool ought to be wasted. He found the knuckle of a forelimb and followed the seam through the tendon into the joint. The blade bit and his wrist twisted to save the edge. He pried the claws loose, one by one, claw tips thick as chisels and nearly as true. He laid them on a cloth by the fire. They could serve as gouges with little work. They could anchor traps. They could be drilled and fixed into brass for punches that would pierce hide better than any nail.

A pot sat on a low stone next to him where he had rendered the fat that sweated from the first slabs of meat. The fat moved in a slow circle, catching orange light and returning it as a dull shine. He had salted the long cuts and set them over stones near the coals to roast and dry at the same time. The rabbit's strange influence made the smoke burn straight and clean, and that was worth as much as a good roof. He turned a piece and watched how it wept. The steam lifted into a thick line. The scent was rich, but he knew the measure of it. There was a density to that smell that had nothing to do with grease. It was the weight of a thing that had drunk deep of the land year after year, making itself into more than animal. His fingers tingled when he pressed a slab with a thumb. Magic clung to the muscle. It felt like the moment before a strike, the second when the hammer knows the bar and the bar knows the hammer.

He cut along the belly with the shallow care that keeps a man from opening what he does not mean to open. He followed the length until steam curled up past his beard. He set his knife aside to cool a moment, and in that pause the shimmer came across his sight. It was not bright. It did not take the air away. It arrives the way an old memory opens its eyes when the conversation circles back to it.

Master of Axe, Level Up.

He looked at the words until they settled. He put his thumb against the corner of his eye and pushed a thought the way he had learned to push it. The panel opened with the same obedient glow as always, neat and orderly, as if a clerk had laid out his books and invited him to browse. The number was higher. The space where the description should have rested was a hard blank. He knew the shape of that blank. He had seen something like it before.

He sat back on his heels and let his breath out in a line. "Aye," he said, low enough that only the fire would hear. "Might as well tend it while the night is quiet."

Stronric went looking through the rest of the entries. The panel did not pretend to be a mystery. It liked to be read, and it liked to be right. Carpentry sat there with a modest mark. He could count the boards he had laid by memory, and they were not many, yet the number said he had more to answer for than a handful of lean-tos. The system had watched him brace a cracked table leg with a wedge and fix a warping haft with a proper cut and reuse and make a drying rack that did not fail when a man needed it to hold. It had kept its books while he had called the books foolish. Blacksmithing he knew in his bones, and the measure beside it did not surprise him. Weaponsmithing and armorsmithing stood where his hands said they should stand. The panel had noticed each heat and fold and temper he had not bothered to brag about. The annoyance came all the same. He did not like that a thing he had not asked for could be so tidy about his life.

He went back to the line that mattered. Master of Axe was higher. The space beneath it remained as blank as an uncarved face of granite. The Horn of Thoranthana had shown like this as well, power without a page, a tool that did not bother with its own description, asking you to learn it with your hands instead of your eyes. He could almost accept that, almost. A smith names his steels. A smith learns the temper of them. A tool without a name is a poor friend and a worse master.

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"Secrets again," he said, and it was not a complaint so much as a promise. "If ye will not give me the words, I will make the words in the work. Same as always."

Stronric closed the panel and picked up his knife and got back to work. The hide parted cleanly as he flayed. Steam rose and faded from the meat cooking slowly on the fire. He scraped the inside of a plate with the back of his blade to clean the last of the membrane so it would not foul when dried. He slit a length of sinew into long ribbons, rolled them in salt, and set them on a line of twine he had strung between two cypress knees. He packed the claws into a cloth and tied the cloth into small sacs. He told himself what each piece would become later. Not because he needed to, but because it is how a craftsman keeps his mind arranged. The skull would need daylight. The joints at the base of the jaw would tell him how the beast took its bites. Teeth would set well in copper if one were careful, and an edge honed from a dragon's tooth would cut in a way that pleased the hand.

Stronric worked until his shoulders warmed and the ache from the fight yesterday evened out, then he let his hands rest while his eyes took the measure of the camp again. The rabbit had shifted only a little. Rugiel breathed easily, no tremor in her hands, no pinch at the mouth that showed pain chewing at a woman's patience. The Canary roosted above, a pale bulk among the dark leaves, one eye open and turned outward. It had not dipped its head to hunt since they made camp, as if it knew the circle was set and the hunt would begin again only when Stronric chose to break it.

He turned the slab to keep and set the knife aside to cool again. The fire breathed, and the coals flexed under the weight of their own heat. A rustle moved at the edge of the rise, then the soft splash of reeds. Dane pushed himself upright with a snort and shuffled off to water the dark. He returned with the look of a man who had not slept enough to remember that he had slept at all. He sat on the log across from Stronric and held his hands to the coals, palms out, then turned them and warmed the backs, taking the heat as if it were an honest wage.

He did not speak at once. That pleased Stronric. Men who do not rush to fill a quiet can't be trusted with it. The firelight climbed Dane's knuckles, and the stacked cuts of meat shone where the fat beaded. Finally, Dane said, "I can still feel it, the meat from last night's meal. Not in the belly, but in my bones. In the back of the neck. It sits there like a good night in a good bed."

Stronric watched the breath move in Dane's shoulders. "The beast sat high on the cord," he answered. "I would call it A." Stronric had spent time thinking of the bests class in the world for a long time while the others had slept, but he was still new to this world and had yet to perfect this skill.

Dane barked a laugh that did not wake the others and shook his head. "If it were A, we would not be here. An A grade beast swallows cities. Heroes or no heroes, it eats the world that stands in front of it. This is not that. This is a strong thing, aye, but not a doom. High E, maybe a low D. The line between the two is a hair, and a man needs a proper hunter or a cook who knows the signs to split that hair without lying to himself."

Stronric looked toward the cypress where Bauru slept with one leg hanging. "Then we will ask him at dawn. He has the eye and the habit of naming things by their right size."

"Aye," Dane said. "Let the man who keeps cords do the counting. For me, I know only that I will swing easier tomorrow, and my feet will not argue with the ground."

Stronric turned one of the keeping slabs and set his knife down again. "We will portion it for need, not pride. Small shares in the morning. A strip held back for a hard hour, either for strength or for a man who begins to flag. The fat was rendered clean. The sinew dried straight. Nothing wasted."

Dane nodded and let his gaze walk out over the dark beyond the rise. "Armand," he said, and he left the name there because the night would hold it as carefully as either of them.

"Tell me what ye saw," Stronric said.

"One moment he was with us," Dane answered. "Running well and talking as if that would keep the fear off the others. The next moment he was not there. No cry. No splash. No sound at all. He was simply not where he had been. I have heard men leave the world. That was not the sound of it. This was like a door closing between breaths, and when I turned there was only a place that did not have Armand in it."

Stronric listened without correcting anything. A man does not help another by reshaping what he has seen into more comfortable measurements. "We will read the ground at first light," he said. "The earth keeps a better book than memory. If a thing or beast touched him, it left a mark somewhere. If it was only absence, the absence will have a shape of its own."

Dane's eyes shifted to the tree where Kara sat. Giles's head lay in her lap. Her hand on his brow could be a comfort or to quiet. "It is Giles that turns my stomach," Dane said. "He was spoiled, yes, but he was never cruel. Now he snaps like a dog kept too lean. Each day is worse than the last. Kara lays a calm hand on him, and it looks kind, but somehow the fire in him burns hotter once she touches him. I do not like to think ill of a friend, but I do not know the man I see today."

"Ye spoke the same in daylight," Stronric said, and his voice did not sharpen. "That tells me ye mean it. We watch him. We set him to work that steadies a man. We do not let him set the pace for the company."

Dane let a breath out through his nose and managed a tired smile. "Do not forget our bargain," he said. "An estate. A fine dress for the missus. Ponies for the little ones. You promised with your eyes open."

"A bargain is a bargain," Stronric said. "Ye will have them. There is no forge that runs without fuel, and there is no man who fights as he should when he fears for his own house. It costs less to set a man right than to drag him along half wrong."

Dane pushed himself to his feet, set his hand once on Stronric's shoulder in a weight that was not just politeness, and laid himself back down with his shield under his head. The breath eased out of him into sleep that was not perfect but would do. The circle of sleepers closed again around the fire without tightening. The quiet settled back into its grooves.

Stronric tended the fire and turned the keeping cuts at a pace that would not rush the heat out of them. The rabbit shifted against Rugiel's arms, and the smoke slid upward in a clean line that did not waver. He let his eyes rest for a heartbeat on the blank line of Master of Axe at the edge of his sight, the way a craftsman glances at a tool he has not yet tuned to his liking. When the system kept its words to itself, a dwarf used work instead. He cut another strip of sinew and rolled it in salt. He set a plate to dry at a better angle. He checked the pot and skimmed the surface where it looked as if a skin might form over the fat. He wiped his blade on a square of cloth and honed it with three plain strokes that made a proper whispering sound.

The night held to its shape. The swamp stayed where it belonged, beyond the ring of light and order. The coals laid down a warm glow that asked for nothing. The Canary watched with one eye. Rugiel's breathing stayed even. Bauru did not shift. Kara's hand did not leave Giles's brow. The white rabbit slept with its nose tucked in and somehow kept the air honest. Stronric kept the watch the way a man keeps a promise. He worked because the work needed doing, and because there are times when the right way to ease a mind is not to think lighter thoughts but to set a better edge.

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