Oren spent his first night in the war zone in a shared tent with ten other soldiers from his unit, most of them from different paths, none of whom he knew in any real sense.
He didn’t sleep much; the sounds from a distance never fully stopped, intermittent explosions reaching faintly on the wind, and the movement of carts passing near the tent at hours he’d never before heard any movement in.
At dawn, everyone was called to assemble before the command tent, where a middle-aged officer stood, his face carved with clear lines of exhaustion, handing out orders quickly, without preamble.
“Support units are distributed today by path,” he said in a tone that admitted no questions.
“Theft, with me.” Oren moved with a number of conscripts toward one side of the square, where another man, younger than the officer, waited for them, apparently the direct officer in charge of the Theft unit at this position.
“I won’t explain much,” the man said, speaking quickly, like someone used to repeating the same sentence for every new intake that arrived.
“Your task is mainly to move what the soldiers can’t move quickly, or what’s dangerous to reach.
You won’t be sent into direct combat unless it becomes necessary.
Now, show me what you can do.” He set a small wooden crate before them containing scattered tools, then pointed to a spot several arm-lengths away.
“Move something from this crate to that mark.” Oren chose a small hammer, and focused on it as he’d grown used to in training, trying to ignore the surrounding noise and the constant movement around him.
It took him longer than usual, and he felt a strange scattering of attention he’d never known in the quiet training yard, but he finally succeeded in moving the hammer to the required mark.
“Good enough,” the man said, showing no particular admiration.
“You’ll need to get used to working amid noise.
There won’t be any quiet here to help you.” This was the first real lesson Oren learned that morning: that everything he’d trained on at the camp had happened under ideal conditions, and that war never granted him those conditions at all.
He spent the rest of the first day on small, scattered tasks: moving tools between nearby points, helping sort equipment that had arrived late, carrying out orders whose full purpose he didn’t always understand.
He noticed that no one explained the full picture of what was happening to him; he was asked to do something specific, so he did it, then waited for the next order.
During the short afternoon rest, he sat on an empty crate near the mess tent, eating his ration of dry bread and salted meat, when a young man about his own age sat beside him, carrying his own plate.
“You’re with the Theft group too, aren’t you?” the young man asked him.
“I think I saw you at the camp we were sometimes in the same mess tent.” Oren looked at him, and vaguely recalled his face from the past days; the man’s face was familiar to him from the old market, though they’d never spoken directly before the camp.
“Maybe,” Oren said.
“I don’t remember your name.” “Tofen.” The young man extended his hand quickly, with an easy smile.
“I always sat at the far end of the tent, so you probably didn’t notice me.
My friend used to snore loudly at night, and I’d move away every morning.” Oren laughed despite himself.
“I think I heard about that snoring from more than one person.” “Yeah, it became famous across the whole camp by the second week.” Tofen finished his meal quietly, then asked, “How long have you been on the Theft path?” “Since the first choosing, on the second day after we arrived.” “Same here.
I didn’t know anything about magic before that I’ll admit I still don’t quite understand how it works.” Tofen said this with a frankness carrying no discomfort, as though he felt no shame admitting his own ignorance.
They talked a little about the training, about the instructors, about each of their first failed attempts at moving a simple coin, and laughed together over small details that now seemed farther from them than the actual time that had passed.
It wasn’t a deep conversation, and Oren didn’t feel he’d made a true friend, but he felt a simple comfort in having another person share the same worry and the same ignorance of what awaited them.
On the second day, a small group of those on the Theft path, including Oren and Tofen, were called to assemble at the command tent.
An officer they hadn’t seen before waited for them there, of slender build, speaking quickly and in a tone that left no room to waste time.
“We have a task for you,” he said without preamble.
“A small forward point the enemy used as a temporary storehouse.
They partially withdrew from it last night after a brief clash.
They left behind some equipment we need: repair tools, spare parts for transport carts, and possibly some medical supplies.” He pointed to a map drawn in simple lines on a piece of cloth, showing the point’s location relative to the current front line.
“The place is close to our contact line with the enemy, but it’s not inside a fortified position.
A small team of soldiers will accompany you for protection, and you’ll move whatever can be moved without needing to get any closer than necessary to any point where the enemy might still be.” One of the conscripts asked: “Is there a chance enemy soldiers are still there?” “According to the latest information, they withdrew completely.
But information isn’t always a hundred percent accurate.” The officer answered with a frankness not without a practical harshness.
“That’s why a protection team accompanies you.
Your task is to move what you can, quickly, then come back.
Don’t try to take more than you can carry safely.” The team was assembled quickly: five armed soldiers for protection, and three from the Theft path, including Oren and Tofen, plus a third conscript, silent the whole time, who seemed more tense than the others.
They moved out shortly before sunset, walking on foot along a narrow path between low hills, gradually drawing away from the noise of the rear camp toward a different silence, heavier, punctuated by distant sounds Oren couldn’t precisely locate.
They reached the target point as darkness approached, a small stone building, half collapsed, surrounded by a number of crates and equipment scattered hastily, a clear sign of a rapid withdrawal that had left its owners no time to take everything with them.
The protection soldiers spread out at the edges of the place, while Oren, Tofen, and the third conscript began examining the nearby crates in search of the needed tools.
“This crate has repair tools,” Tofen said in a low voice, carefully opening a wooden lid.
“A bit heavy, but I can try moving it.” Oren began examining another crate a little farther off, sitting at the edge of a collapsed wall, where approaching it meant stepping slightly outside the soldiers’ immediate zone of protection.
“That’s too far,” one of the protection soldiers whispered to him.
“Try to move it from here if you can.” Oren estimated the distance, farther than anything he’d tried before in training, but decided to attempt it anyway.
He focused on a metal piece protruding from the crate, trying to ignore the distant sounds and the faint noise of the soldiers’ movement around him.
He felt the usual prickling sensation, but it was weaker than usual, scattered, as though part of his attention remained hanging on what was happening around him despite himself.
The first attempt failed.
He tried a second time, closing his eyes for a moment before opening them this time, trying to recover the kind of focus he’d been used to in the quiet training yard.
It partially succeeded; the metal piece moved a short distance, but didn’t reach the safe spot he wanted.
“Take your time,” Tofen said from his spot, carrying his own crate toward the gathering point.
“We’re not in a huge hurry yet.” By the third attempt, Oren finally succeeded in pulling the metal piece all the way to a spot near him, away from the collapsed wall, where he was able to carry it in his hands without needing to advance any further.
He felt a clear exhaustion afterward, greater than any he’d known in training, as though the surrounding conditions had drained an extra effort from him he hadn’t accounted for before.
“Good,” one of the protection soldiers said, passing by him.
“That’s why we need you here, even if it looks simple from a distance.” The team began gathering what it could carry, preparing to withdraw before the dark deepened further, when they suddenly heard the sound of fast footsteps from the eastern side of the building, followed by the terse shout of one of the protection soldiers: “Movement!” In the next moment, the sound of a brief clash broke out from that direction, crossing shouts, and the sharp clang of metal striking metal.
It wasn’t a large clash, but enough to flip the relative calm of the place into sudden chaos.
“Gather what you have, now!” the protection team leader shouted.
Oren moved quickly toward the remaining crates, trying to move what he could without thinking too much about precision, while the sound of the clash continued from the eastern side, closer now than it had been moments before.
He saw Tofen running beside him, carrying a smaller crate this time, his face pale but moving with relative steadiness.
“I don’t think they withdrew completely, like they said,” Tofen said in a broken voice as he ran.
Oren didn’t answer, focused on trying to pull one last tool that had fallen near the collapsed wall, when he heard the sound of a nearby explosion, far closer than any sound he’d heard until that moment, followed by one of the protection soldiers shouting for everyone to get down.
Oren dropped to the ground, feeling dust and small stones scattering over him, before raising his head cautiously to find the clash had drawn closer still enemy soldiers, more numerous than expected, according to what he heard one protection soldier shouting advancing from the eastern side, while the small protection team tried to contain the situation.
“We need to withdraw now!” the team leader shouted.
“Take what you have and move toward the path we came from!” Oren began moving in the required direction, carrying the metal tool in his hands, when he noticed Tofen stumbling slightly behind him, then suddenly falling to his knees with a faint sound that didn’t match the scale of the surrounding chaos.
“Tofen?” Oren called, stopping for a moment despite someone shouting the need to keep moving.
He saw Tofen trying to rise, his hand at his side, his face suddenly drained of color.
“I’m fine,” he said in a broken voice, trying to stand.
“Just…
tripped.” Oren rushed to him and gripped his arm, trying to help him up, and felt something warm and wet touch his hand from Tofen’s side, without grasping its meaning in that first instant.
“He needs help!” Oren shouted toward the nearest protection soldier, who rushed toward them at once, glancing quickly at Tofen’s side before pressing his hand there firmly.
“Keep moving, I’ll help him!” the soldier said sharply.
The soldier carried Tofen partly, with Oren’s help on the other side, while the whole team began retreating toward the narrow path they’d come from, under the sound of a clash still continuing behind them, intermittently.
Tofen kept talking for a few more steps, short, broken sentences about being fine, about being able to walk, that it wasn’t as serious as it looked.
Then he suddenly stopped talking, and Oren felt his body’s weight increasing in his arms.
“Tofen?” No answer.
“Keep carrying him!” the soldier shouted, as the two of them tried to quicken their steps despite the growing weight.
After a short distance, the soldier suddenly stopped, placed his hand at Tofen’s neck for a moment, then looked at Oren in a silence that needed no words.
“No,” Oren said, in a voice he didn’t quite know the source of.
“No, he was talking just a moment ago.” “We have to keep going,” the soldier said, more calmly than Oren expected, but firm.
“We can’t stop here.” Oren looked at Tofen’s face a moment longer than he should have the face that had been laughing, only a few hours before, about the story of the snoring in the tent now still in a way he’d never seen before, without movement, without expression, as though something essential had suddenly left it.
“Move!” another voice shouted from ahead.
Oren moved.
It wasn’t a conscious decision so much as a response of his body, which kept moving despite everything else in him having stopped, for a moment, at that final look.
He helped set Tofen’s body onto a small stretcher one of the soldiers had brought quickly, then continued walking with the team toward the safe line, carrying the metal tool he’d moved minutes before, in a hand still trembling slightly, without his clearly noticing it.
The withdrawal continued for a while before the team finally managed to reach a safe point near their own lines, where other soldiers waited for them, clear worry on their faces.
The gathered equipment was handed over, and Tofen’s body was handed to another team responsible for moving the dead, without much said.
One of the officers quickly asked for details of the clash, and the protection team leader answered in terse sentences, describing the number of enemy soldiers they’d faced, how the withdrawal had gone, and the single loss they’d suffered.
“The mission succeeded,” the officer said finally, examining the list of recovered equipment.
“Good.
That’s all we need today.” Oren looked at him a moment, trying to understand how that word, “succeeded,” could describe what had happened only half an hour before.
He said nothing.
There was nothing to say to an officer who didn’t even know Tofen’s name.
Oren returned to the support area with the rest of the team, exhausted in a way he’d never known before, an exhaustion extending beyond his muscles.
He sat on a crate near his tent, looking at his hands, which still carried traces of dust and dried blood in a faint layer at the fingers.
A group of soldiers passed by him, talking about an expected wave of attacks in the coming days, their voices weary but not without life, one complaining about a shortage of tobacco, another laughing at a remark Oren didn’t clearly hear.
Life seemed to go on around him in a strange way, as though what had happened hours before were nothing but a passing event for the place as a whole, even if it wasn’t for him.
He took Marin’s letter from his pocket, and opened it slowly, not to read it again, but only to see her handwriting once more, that hand that reminded him of a distant place still existing despite everything.
He folded it again, returned it to its place, then touched with his hand the cloth pendant resting beneath his shirt, as he always did.
He thought of Tofen, of the way he’d talked about the tent and the snoring and his own first failed attempt to move a coin, small, ordinary things that hadn’t deserved to end this way.
He knew nothing real about him, not his family name, nor exactly where he’d come from, nor who might be waiting for him somewhere.
But he understood, in a simple way he couldn’t put into clear words, that Tofen had probably wanted to return to his own village too, just as Oren wanted to return to Marin.
He wasn’t alone in that wish, nor in that fear, and perhaps no one in this entire place was either.
He thought of himself, of that moment when he’d stopped to help Tofen instead of continuing straight toward safety.
It had been a quick decision, one he hadn’t thought through, hadn’t weighed against the balance of danger and safety he’d drawn up for himself only a day before.
He didn’t feel he’d done anything heroic, but he noticed, without quite understanding the meaning of the observation yet, that keeping himself from danger wasn’t a decision he could hold to absolutely, when someone else before him needed that extra moment.
He arrived at no clear answer.
He didn’t even try to.
He only sat there, amid the camp’s ongoing noise and the sound of a distant explosion echoing now and then, carrying with him a small question that hadn’t existed in his head only a day before.
His unit was called to assemble again a short while later, as news arrived of a new group of wounded coming in from another point on the front, and a need for extra hands to move them.
Oren rose slowly, wiping his hands with a cloth before moving toward the sound.
The war was not waiting for anyone to take in what he had lost.