Chapter Three A Price Paid in Blood #2
Morna poured water over his hands, washing away dirt and blood. Her touch was firm, practical. She wiped the corner of his mouth where blood had dried, then tested the line of swelling along his collarbone with careful fingers. Caelan hissed despite himself.
“Not broken,” she murmured. “Sprained. Swollen.”
“I can manage,” Caelan said, voice tight.
“I know,” Morna replied, and the words held something like recognition.
A guard barked an order, and prisoners were driven away from the trench.
They were marched into a different building, darker, with iron bars set into its small windows. The sleeping barrack. Bodies stored until needed.
Inside, air was thick with breath and damp straw. Coughs echoed. Someone scratched at sores until blood seeped. The smell of sickness was stronger here, and Morna’s gaze moved automatically, cataloging it.
“Too many bodies,” she murmured. “Too little air.”
“They want us sick,” Caelan said softly. “Sick men break faster.”
Morna’s jaw tightened. “Useful, but not strong.”
They were shoved into a corner where straw had been flattened by others. Ewan sat heavily, shoulders shaking. Elara curled into herself, knees drawn up, trying to make her sobs silent.
Caelan leaned closer to Elara. “You are alive,” he said.
Elara lifted her face, tears streaking. “Not safe,” she whispered.
“No,” Caelan said. “But alive. Hold to that.”
Morna shifted in, voice calm and steady. “Breathe slow,” she told Elara. “In, then out.”
Elara tried. Breath caught, then eased by a fraction.
A guard passed the barred window, glancing in. His eyes lingered on Elara, then slid to Morna, then to Caelan. He moved on without speaking.
Morna’s gaze followed him. “Ears,” she murmured.
Caelan nodded. “Always.”
The day dragged in a grim routine. Work parties were formed and hauled out.
Men with strong backs first, then those who hesitated too long.
Women as well, depending on what the guards decided they could carry.
Caelan’s shoulder injuries earned him a brief exemption, not mercy, only calculation.
A broken tool had no value. A bruised one could still be used later.
The work parties returned near dusk, and Blackwood showed its other face.
Men stumbled into the yard carrying split logs heavier than any honest wage demanded.
Their hands were blistered raw, fingers split and bleeding where rope and rough handles had chewed them.
Guards did not offer water until the logs were stacked to satisfaction, then tossed a skin into the dirt as if feeding a dog.
A few prisoners dropped to their knees and drank from the muddy puddle formed by spilled water. A guard laughed.
Ewan had been taken with the first work party. When he returned, his shoulders sagged and his eyes looked unfocused, as if his mind had wandered somewhere safer while his body kept moving. He tried to hide his hands, curling them into fists.
Caelan caught the motion. “Show me,” he murmured.
Ewan hesitated, then opened his fists. Skin was torn at the palms, red and slick. A sliver of wood protruded beneath the callus of his thumb.
Caelan’s stomach tightened. A quartermaster was trained to see the cost of labor in broken tools. Here, men were tools meant to break.
Morna shifted closer, eyes narrowing. “Hold still,” she told Ewan.
The boy’s lips trembled. “It hurts.”
“Aye,” Morna said. “So it will hurt coming out too.”
With the smallest blade she had been allowed, a thin knife more suited to cutting herbs than flesh, she eased the splinter free. Ewan sucked in a breath through his teeth. Morna pressed a wad of cloth against the wound.
“You should not waste that,” Ewan whispered, staring at the cloth as if it were gold.
Morna’s gaze was firm. “Infection wastes more.”
A new prisoner was shoved into the barrack after the work party, broad-shouldered and scowling, bruised across the cheekbone. He sat too close to Elara’s corner, crowding her. Elara flinched and pulled in on herself.
The man snorted. “Stop shaking. It makes me sick.”
Elara’s eyes filled. She tried to shift away, but there was nowhere to go.
Caelan’s temper flickered. He kept it leashed, but his voice came out cold. “If you need space, ask the guards. They will surely grant it.”
The man turned his scowl on Caelan. “You think you are clever.”
“I think you are frightened,” Caelan replied. “And you are looking for someone smaller to punish so you do not feel it.”
The man’s nostrils flared. He lifted as if to rise.
A cough came from the shadows at the back of the barrack, deep and wet. Another prisoner laughed softly, a sound without humor. “Sit down,” the voice said. “If you fight each other, they do not need clubs.”
The broad man hesitated, then sat, jaw clenched.
Caelan felt the small victory like ash. It solved nothing. It only kept Elara from being crushed under someone else’s panic.
He leaned back against the wall, forcing his breathing slow.
He thought of Kincaid’s storehouse, the way he used to run his fingers along sacks of grain, counting by touch in the dark.
He had believed then that if he could keep supplies steady, he could keep people steady. He had believed order was safety.
Blackwood was order too, but it was order built to starve the soul.
A guard came to the barred window and barked a number. Two prisoners were dragged out. Later they returned limping, faces slack with shock, eyes fixed on nothing. One of them, a woman with hair matted to her forehead, whispered a single word as she collapsed onto straw.
“Questions.”
Caelan’s stomach turned.
Valerius wanted information, and he wanted it measured, extracted, recorded. Not in a burst of rage, but in a system. That meant there were rules, and where there were rules, there were gaps. It also meant time.
Time for fear to grow.
Time for promises to sound tempting.
Time for a man to decide he could buy his own survival with someone else’s ruin.
Morna was taken midafternoon the following day, escorted to a small shed near the yard’s edge. She returned with her basket and a few scraps of cloth bundled in her hands.
“They want me tending their men,” she said quietly, sitting near Caelan.
“They trust you with tools?” Caelan asked.
“They threaten me with hunger,” Morna replied. “Trust is not part of it.”
She lowered her voice. “They have dried herbs in storage. Enough to keep prisoners from dying too quickly.”
Caelan’s mind latched on. “Then they keep a ledger.”
Morna shot him a look. “You think in ledgers even here.”
“Ledgers mean patterns,” Caelan said. “Patterns mean weaknesses.”
Morna’s gaze softened slightly, as if she could not argue with the logic. “They mean control too.”
“Yes,” Caelan said. “That as well.”
Late in the afternoon, the door slammed open and cold air rushed into the barrack. Two prisoners were shoved inside, faces bruised, eyes unfocused. Behind them came Valerius.
He did not stride like a warrior. He walked like a man entering a room he already owned. His presence changed the air. Conversations died. Even coughing seemed to quiet, as if fear tightened lungs.
Valerius’s gaze swept the room and landed on Caelan.
He stepped closer, stopping just within arm’s reach, careful to keep his distance from the reach of desperate teeth. His expression was calm, professional, almost mild.
“Quartermaster.”
Caelan kept his face blank.
Valerius’s eyes flicked to Morna, then to Elara. “You gather women,” he observed.
“They are prisoners,” Caelan said, voice even. “Like me.”