Chapter Seventeen Benjadir #2
The hours dragged, slow and sunless, the grey of the day pressing down until it dulled everything else.
Benni stayed near the perimeter, pacing with the restlessness of someone who wanted to be far from here, riding ahead, retracing her steps himself.
But the duty of command had its own shackles, and so he waited, shoulders tight, fingers tugging at the seams of his gloves until the leather creaked.
The first riders returned just after dusk, their horses lathered, flanks streaked with sweat and dust. The scouts dismounted wordlessly, and it was the darkness in their eyes that said more than any dispatch.
The youngest of them, a boy called Terin who barely had a stubble on his chin but rode like someone twice his age, stepped forward, holding out a stained waterskin.
Benni recognised it instantly, even before his fingers closed around it: the patch of stitched leather she’d once torn from her old uniform, a superstitious scrap she had never explained.
It was bloodstained.
Benni took it, slow and careful, turning it over in his hands like it might dissolve. The leather was still damp, not from water, but from the rust-brown smear of blood that clung at the seams.
“We found it off the eastern road,” Terin said, voice low but steady. “Just past the river bend near the old oaks, on this side of the Downs. Looked like she’d camped there. Fire was cold, long since dead. Some gear scattered, like she left in a hurry – or didn’t get the chance to pack.”
He hesitated, then drew a slow breath. “We found scuff marks in the earth under the oak tree, blood, too… just enough to know something had happened. And two sets of hoofprints, deep in the soft ground. Two riders.”
“We followed the tracks north, but the land rose hard and dry, and the trail disappeared into the ground. No sign of her and no sign of where they went after that.”
For a moment, Benni said nothing. His face was unreadable but for a subtle shift in his posture—the straightening of his back, the tightening of his jaw.
It was the kind of stillness that had nothing to do with shock and everything to do with the impossible calculus unfolding behind his eyes.
Astrid’s breath caught, just once, as Daen’s arm sneaked around her shoulders, more so to brace himself than to steady her.
They had barely begun to absorb it – still caught between what they now knew and what it might mean – when the rest of the scouts returned, and they did not come alone.
A low murmur rippled through the outer ring of the camp as the shapes grew clearer through the dim, torch-laced dusk: three horses with riders in battered cloaks, and one slighter figure slouched atop a pack mule, reins held not by his own hands but led.
The mule trudged on, patient and worn, and the man it carried looked no better – dirt-crusted, sun-weathered, with a narrow face and restless eyes that missed nothing.
Benni stepped forward before anyone else could, the merchant’s gaze snapping to him with that particular sharpness born of long roads and too many dealings.
There was no bow, no respectful gesture, only a narrowing of the mouth and a quick glance at the insignia on Benni’s shoulder that marked him Captain.
“He was travelling south from the villages beyond the old ridge,” one of the scouts said, swinging down from the saddle with a motion that betrayed both weariness and distaste.
“Came up behind us on the trail, wouldn’t stop jabbering.
But when we asked if he’d seen anything strange on the road, he mentioned a woman. Bound. On horseback.”
The merchant gave a curt nod, eyes narrowing as Benni turned to face him.
“I was headed toward the Queen’s lands,” he said, the words clipped, impatient. “Looking to trade what’s left before the next line of fire rolls through. Didn’t expect a bloody checkpoint.”
Benni’s steps closed the gap between them. “What did you see? Speak quick, old man.”
“I don’t know who she was,” he began. “Didn’t stop to ask. But three days back, maybe four, I passed a pair on the road that didn’t sit right.”
He paused to look around – at the soldiers, the sharpened steel, the ring of watching eyes. Then back at Benni.
“There was a woman. Her hair caught the light – gold, or close enough – but she kept her head down, never once looking my way. Hands tied. Riding, but not free. A young man led her horse. Quiet type. They weren’t speaking, not when I saw them. Just riding north.”
Benni stepped forward. “And you did nothing?”
The man’s jaw twitched. “What would you have had me do?”
“Anything.”
The trader snorted. “There are men hanging from trees in the hills where I came from. Children starving in villages your lot passed through some weeks ago. I don’t stop for trouble when I see it. Trouble doesn’t stop for me.”
“She’s not –” Benni began, but the man cut him off with a scoff.
“Captain, please. I’ve seen your flags raised over smoking homes. I’ve seen the bodies your Queen’s justice leaves behind. Don’t ask a man to grow a conscience in a graveyard you built.”
For a moment, there was no sound but the wind threading through the camp, tugging at cloaks and canvas. Benni didn’t answer. His jaw worked once, then stilled, and something in his chest closed like a fist.
“Get him out of here,” he said quietly. “Give him food. Or whatever he wants. Let him go.”
No one moved at first – then Daen gave the faintest nod, a silent gesture to the scout nearest the mule.
The merchant did not linger. He had delivered what he came to deliver, and now he would disappear back into the dust and the dark, vanishing like all things that slipped through cracks left too long unguarded.
When the sound of hooves faded and the stillness returned, Benni remained where he was, hands slack at his sides, eyes fixed on the firelight flickering over the ridgeline as though it might conjure something – anything – that could tell him what to do next.
“She’s alive,” Astrid said, uncharacteristically soft.
“Yes,” Benni answered, and the word sounded more like a sentence than a realisation. “Alive. But we don’t know where. And we don’t know who has her.”
“What about the Queen? Do we report to her?”
The question came hesitant, almost reluctant. But it had to be asked.
Benni shook his head. “No.”
Astrid tilted her head. “You’re sure?”
“If we tell her Ara is missing, she’ll assume the worst. And she’ll burn the cities down just to make an example of the ashes.
” His voice was flat, but there was something raw beneath it, something that cut deep.
“Even if Ara’s still there. Even if she’s alive.
Even if there’s a chance. You know what she’d do. ”
They all did.
No one spoke after that, not for a long time.
The night deepened, stretching wide over the camp like a mouth held just slightly open.
Somewhere down by the river, a horse whinnied, restless.
A fire cracked. The sound of metal striking stone echoed faintly from the weapons tent, a soldier sharpening a blade he might never need.
“She would burn it all,” Benni said at last. “Not to rescue her. Not even for vengeance. But because it would be seen as weakness if she didn’t.”
He turned to look at them then – Astrid, whose hands were balled into fists at her sides, and Daen, silent as always but with that same shadow behind his eyes that had lived there as long as they’d known him.
“I won’t hand her that excuse,” he said. “Not unless there’s no other choice.”
“So, what do we do?”
“We wait for word. We scour the roads. We pull every whisper from every passing merchant and watchman and gods-damned drunk in a tavern until we find out where they took her.”
“And if we don’t?”
Benni’s voice was sharp. Not loud, not reckless. Just steady, burning with a fury that threatened to break loose. “Then we burn it down ourselves. But only if we have to.”
And with that, he turned back toward the camp, the weight of command settling hard across his shoulders. This was no longer just a war, no longer just a campaign. This was personal – and personal things had a way of tearing kingdoms apart.
Later, when the camp had settled into a strange, uneasy stillness, Benni found himself alone beneath the crooked rise just beyond the ridge.
The firelight from the tents flickered faintly behind him, casting long shadows up the slope.
His hands were braced on his knees, breath coming slow, like it had to be coaxed in and out of his chest.
He had known Ara for most of his life. First as a sharp-edged girl with no patience for fools, then as a fellow grunt in the barracks, a sparring partner and a drinking companion.
And for a heartbeat, something more—brief, fragile, like a flame trembling at the end of its wick.
It hadn’t lasted, not because it burned out, but because she had snuffed it, clean and without cruelty, pinching it out before it had a fair chance to catch.
She had never explained why. No grand falling out, no bitter words, no betrayal to mark the wound – just a quiet withdrawal, like a tide slipping back before the shore noticed it was gone.
One day they were close enough to share stolen moments under the eaves of the barracks, to feel the shape of each other.
And the next, she had stepped back behind the lines – still near, but never like that again.
He hadn’t asked. Not because he didn’t care, but because he’d understood—on some level deeper than he could explain with words—that whatever door had shut in her was not one he had the right to knock on.
There had been something brittle in her back then, something that hummed with tension even when she smiled.
And Benni, for all his sharp tongue and blunted fists, had known how to see that. He had seen it and chosen not to press.
And yet, in all the years that followed, she never left his side.
Whatever line she’d drawn between them had not been a wall but a boundary – firm but never cold.
Their friendship, once forged in firelight and skirmishes, had held through every campaign, every long night in foreign tents, every moment when command pressed so heavy it bent the spine.
It had held through her rise and through his.
Through victories they did not feel like celebrating and losses that never stopped aching.
They had argued, of course – about tactics, about politics, about the old guard and the new.
But never about each other. Not once had she made him feel lesser.
Not once had she wielded her titles like a weapon.
She trusted him in a way that had nothing to do with rank or camaraderie – it was something stronger than either, something that ran deeper. And he trusted her in return.
He had loved her in many ways, and not all of them had names.
But the one that endured – the one that had shaped the man he became – was the kind that does not demand, does not break, does not look backward in longing.
It was steadier than that. Built not from desire, but from a covenant of scars – on their skin and in their hearts.
A knowing that could only be forged when you had bled for someone, and they had bled for you.
She was his General. His friend. His guidepost on the darkest roads. And if she needed him now – wherever she was – he would not fail her.
Benni rose, brushing the grit from his hands as he turned back toward the camp. The stars above him burned pale and distant, indifferent to the ache in his chest, but he walked with purpose all the same.
She was out there. And until she stood beside him again, he would not stop moving. Not for rest. Not for doubt. Not for anything less than her return.
Let the war wait a little longer. He had something far more important to win back.