Embers in the snow

The icy darkness inside the subterranean archway smelled of old stone, woodsmoke, and wet leather.

Raymond Silverstein did not know how long he had lain unconscious at the base of the gorge. His ribs burned with every ragged breath, his knees were bruised black, and the skin of his face felt brittle, scraped raw by the screaming gale of Dead Man’s Pass. Dragging his body inch by inch away from the blizzard's maw, he collapsed against a damp, carved pillar, his strength entirely spent.

"Look at this one," a coarse, raspy voice grunted from the gloom.

"Still twitching. Thought the mountain only grew ice statues today." Heavy, iron-nailed boots crunched on the frost-dusted flagstones. Steel rasped against leather.

Raymond forced his swollen eyes open, his hand trembling as it reached blindly for a broken iron piton resting in the rubble. Rough hands seized his wool tunic, hauling him upward until he was nose-to-nose with a scarred warrior clad in boiled leather and wolf pelt. Behind the man, a dying campfire crackled inside the ruin, casting long, flickering shadows over half a dozen hardened sellswords.

The Iron Hounds—mercenaries of the Northern Frontier, trapped in the pass by the very storm that had swallowed Raymond.

"Easy, Jarek," a calm, commanding voice cut through the shadows. A tall man with a severe jaw, gray-streaked hair, and a dark wool mantle stepped into the firelight. Captain Kaelen looked down at the battered sixteen-year-old boy. He noted the peasant rags, the bleeding knuckles, and the stubborn, unyielding glare in Raymond's dark eyes. Even half-dead, the boy held the jagged piton pointed straight at Jarek's throat. "You're a long way from the mud, boy," Kaelen said softly, resting a heavy hand on his sword pommel.

"Oakhaven bailiffs send you up here to die?"

"I didn't... come here to die," Raymond rasped,

his voice tearing in his throat. He swallowed the bitter taste of blood, his fingers tightening on the iron.

"I won't die in the snow. I won't die a nameless peasant." A few of the sellswords chuckled, but Kaelen did not smile.

He studied the raw, burning ambition beneath the boy's frostbitten exterior. Up here, beyond the law of lords and bailiffs, survival was the only currency that mattered. "The storm won't clear for two days," Kaelen said, stepping back. "You can crawl back out there and let the frost claim you, or you can pick up a sharpening stone and earn your keep at our fire. We carry no dead weight."

Raymond didn't hesitate. He let the piton drop from his fingers and dragged himself toward the warmth of the embers. For the next two months, Raymond Silverstein ceased to be the forgotten peasant boy of Oakhaven.

He became the Iron Hounds' camp squire—mending torn leather armor, scrubbing blood from broadswords, hauling heavy iron-bound supply crates across treacherous northern trails, and tending warhorses in freezing mud. In return, the veterans gave him rations, a dry bed roll, and something far more valuable: lessons in survival.

Between long marches, Jarek taught him how to balance his stance; Kaelen showed him how to thrust a blade through a chainmail seam; and the band's scouts taught him how to read the borderland trails. Every blister on his hands and every line of sweat on his brow felt like a brick built toward a future he would own.