Zarius stood at the lip of the command circle, his boots crunching on a layer of frost that had begun to reclaim the mud. The transition from the high-octane screech of the Velkyn raid to this heavy, ringing silence was always the hardest part of the job. It was when the adrenaline evaporated, leaving behind the cold realization of how many men were missing from the roll call. He watched the last of the perimeter fires being banked, the orange light flickering across the watchmen's faces who looked more like ghosts than soldiers.
Everything was technically "under control," yet the back of his neck remained tight. A phantom itch.
He'd spent the last hour buried in logistics, arrows, oil, casualties, the endless arithmetic of war, but his mind kept performing a persistent, rhythmic search for a single, messy head of hair. He'd last seen Cherion being practically abducted by Reiner toward the medical tent.
