Chadwick Rye

The firelight cast dancing shadows across the ancient stones of the watchtower, our small party huddled close to its warmth as the wilderness of the Greymist Mountains whispered its nightly secrets beyond our fragile circle of light. Twelve of us remained, scouts, rangers, and battlemages of the Queen’s Vanguard, tasked with charting safe passage through the contested borderlands. The thirteenth of our company, Orion, sat apart from us, his angular face turned toward the darkness, shoulders rigid beneath his worn leather armor.

I watched him from across the flames, the heat distorting his silhouette into something almost spectral. Three days had passed since our encounter with the displaced refugees at the foothills, three days of silence that had grown between us like a living thing, feeding on words I had left unspoken.

“Another round of watch begins in an hour,” announced Serafina, our expedition leader, her voice cutting through my thoughts. “Devin, Jace, eastern ridge. Rowan and Orion will take northern approach.”

My name paired with his sent a ripple of discomfort through my chest.

Commander Serafina had noticed nothing amiss between us, or if she had, military necessity overrode personal friction. I nodded acknowledgment, careful to keep my expression neutral as Orion’s eyes briefly met mine across the fire, then slid away with deliberate indifference.

The company dispersed to various tasks, checking equipment, reviewing maps, snatching precious moments of rest. I found myself alone by the fire, watching embers rise toward the star-scattered sky. Each glowing particle that ascended reminded me of opportunities, rising, fading, gone.

“Rowan.” Orion’s voice startled me. He stood at the periphery of the firelight, closer than I’d realized, his face half-illuminated and half-shadow. “We should check our equipment before watch.”

His tone carried the impersonal efficiency of a soldier addressing a stranger, not the warmth that had characterized our relationship during the six months we’d served together. I rose, brushing ash from my leathers.
“Of course,” I replied, matching his detachment.

We moved to the equipment cache in strained silence, methodically examining crossbows, checking tension on drawstrings, and confirming our supply of bolts. Each movement felt choreographed to maintain maximum distance while performing necessary tasks. The routine that had once been comfortable between us now felt like a performance, observed by our comrades who pretended not to notice.

As Orion reached for the night-vision ointment, a concoction of crushed fireflies and rare fungi that enhanced vision in darkness when applied around the eyes, our hands briefly touched. He withdrew as though burned, the small clay pot nearly tumbling to the ground before I caught it.
“I’ve got it,” I said quietly, unscrewing the lid and dipping my fingertips into the luminescent paste.

The familiar ritual of preparation continued, but beneath it churned memories of three days prior, the refugee camp sprawled across the valley floor, hundreds of displaced souls from the eastern settlements driven from their homes by forces that remained unclear. Our orders had been explicit: observe, map, report. Do not engage.
We had maintained our distance, documentating from the forested ridge above. Until the raiders came at dusk.
They struck without warning, two dozen mounted figures materializing from the eastern approach, their torches carving paths of fire and terror through the makeshift shelters. We watched from our vantage point as chaos erupted below, screams carried on the wind, figures running in desperate panic, the sickening efficiency of violence unfolding.

“We need to help them,” Orion had said, his voice taut with restrained fury.
“Orders are clear,” Serafina responded, though her white-knuckled grip on her staff betrayed her own conflict. “We cannot risk exposure. This is reconnaissance only.”
“They’re slaughtering civilians,” he pressed, already reaching for his weapon.

“Stand down, soldier,” Serafina commanded, her authority absolute despite the compassion in her eyes. “We are twelve against unknown numbers. We risk not only our mission but any hope of bringing warning to the capital if we engage.”

I had seen the transformation in Orion’s face then, disbelief hardening into something cold and unfamiliar as he turned to me, clearly expecting my support. We had joined the Vanguard for the same reasons, shared the same ideals about protection and service. In that moment, looking into his eyes, I had known what he needed from me, one voice, my voice, to side with intervention.

But I had remained silent.
The memory of that silence hung between us now as we completed our preparations for watch duty. When we finally moved toward the northern approach, the pale moon cast enough light to navigate the rocky terrain without torches. We assumed our position on an outcropping that overlooked a steep ravine, the perfect natural chokepoint for any approaching force.

For the first hour, we maintained our vigil without speaking, scanning different sectors with practiced efficiency. The night sounds enveloped us, wind through ancient pines, the occasional cry of a hunting owl, distant howls that might have been wolves or something less natural in these borderlands.

“I’ve served with you for six months,” Orion finally said, his voice so quiet I almost thought I’d imagined it. “Six months of shared danger, shared purpose. I thought I knew you.”
The accusation in his words, though unspoken, cut deeper than any blade. I kept my eyes fixed on the darkness beyond our position, focusing on a point where the moonlight silvered the tops of distant trees.

“You know me,” I replied, matching his subdued tone. “What happened down there…”
“What happened was that we watched people die,” he interrupted, still not looking at me. “People we could have helped.”
“And likely died ourselves,” I countered, the familiar argument we’d all replayed internally now finding voice. “Serafina made the right tactical decision.”
“I’m not questioning Serafina’s command,” Orion said, finally turning to face me. In the moonlight, his features seemed carved from stone. “I’m questioning why you, of all people, said nothing. Not one word when I looked to you.”

There it was, the core of the chasm that had opened between us. Not that I had failed to support countermanding orders, but that I had failed to acknowledge the moral weight of our inaction. That I had broken something fundamental in our understanding of each other by remaining silent in a moment that demanded recognition of shared values, even if those values could not translate to immediate action.
“What would you have had me say?” I asked, the question emerging more defensively than intended.

“Anything,” he answered, his voice carrying the weariness of disappointed expectation. “That it was wrong. That it hurt to watch. That you wished circumstances were different. Not this… calculated silence, as though those lives meant nothing compared to our mission parameters.”

His words struck with precision, finding the exact center of my own self-recrimination. In truth, I had remained silent not from tactical agreement but from something far more selfish, fear that speaking would crack the professional façade I had cultivated, revealing the storm of helpless rage and grief that threatened to overwhelm me. I had chosen emotional self-preservation over honesty.

“I couldn’t…” I began, then faltered, searching for words to bridge the understanding between us. “If I had spoken, Orion, I would have broken. And I couldn’t afford to break. None of us could.”

Something shifted in his expression then, not forgiveness, but perhaps the first opening toward understanding.
“We’re trained to compartmentalize,” I continued, watching a cloud shadow pass across the ravine below. “To put the mission above our individual reactions. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t feel it. Every scream, every life extinguished while we watched, I carry that. I just… couldn’t speak it aloud and still function.”

Orion was silent for a long moment, his gaze returned to the wilderness beyond our position. When he finally spoke, his voice had lost some of its hardness.
“I know about compartmentalization, Rowan. What I don’t understand is why you couldn’t trust me with the truth of what you were feeling, even after the fact. We’ve shared enough dangers that I thought we’d earned that honesty with each other.”

His words illuminated my mistake with painful clarity. Not speaking in the moment had been a tactical choice, perhaps even a necessary one. But maintaining that silence afterward, retreating into duty and protocol rather than acknowledging the shared burden of what we’d witnessed, that had been the real betrayal of our bond.
“You’re right,” I admitted, the simple words somehow more difficult than any elaborate explanation. “I should have spoken to you after. Should have acknowledged what happened instead of hiding behind orders and protocol. If I could do it differently…”
A sound from the ravine below cut through our conversation, a faint scraping, out of place among the natural rhythms of the night. We both shifted instantly into alert posture, personal matters set aside as training took precedence. I raised my hand in silent signal, indicating direction and suggesting approach. Orion nodded, the familiar communication between us functioning despite personal friction.
We moved in practiced tandem down the rocky slope, using natural cover and maintaining visual contact through gestures developed over months of working together. The source of the sound revealed itself, a mountain goat dislodging stones as it navigated the steep terrain. We exchanged the all-clear signal and began our careful ascent back to the watchpoint.
Halfway up, Orion paused, turning to me in the moonlight.

“If you could do it differently,” he prompted, returning to my unfinished thought as though there had been no interruption.

I met his gaze directly, abandoning the protective distance I had maintained.
“I would still follow orders,” I said truthfully. “But afterward, I would have acknowledged what it cost all of us to do so. I would have honored those lives by not pretending their loss didn’t affect me. And I would have trusted our friendship enough to show that wound, rather than hiding behind duty.”
Orion studied me for a long moment, his expression unreadable in the moonlight. Then, with a slight nod that carried more meaning than words could convey, he turned and continued upward. I followed, feeling something between us shift, not healed, but perhaps beginning to mend.

As we resumed our watch position, the silence between us felt different, no longer a barrier but a shared space where understanding might gradually rebuild. The eastern horizon showed the first faint lightening that preceded dawn, hours away yet but inevitable.
“We’re returning through that valley on our way back,” Orion said eventually, his gaze fixed on the distant darkness where we knew the refugee camp lay. “I intend to stop. To bear witness, if nothing else. To help bury the dead if they’re still there.”

It wasn’t a question, but I heard the unspoken invitation beneath his words, a chance to take action where before we had not, to acknowledge rather than avoid.

“I’ll be there with you,” I promised, the words carrying the weight of commitment beyond this single act. A promise to no longer hide behind silence when difficult truths needed speaking.
As the night continued its slow surrender to approaching day, we maintained our vigil side by side. The gap between us remained, but it was no longer widening. I had learned, at significant cost, that sometimes the bravest action is not physical intervention but simply giving voice to the truths we carry, that acknowledgment itself is a form of action, and silence can wound as deeply as any blade.

When our watch ended and we returned to the company firepit, now reduced to glowing embers, I realized there would be many such moments in the life I had chosen, times when duty and orders would conflict with personal values. The challenge would never be simple. But I had learned that whatever action or inaction circumstances required, I would no longer hide behind silence afterward.

Some fires must be spoken to be honored, even when they cannot be fought.

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