The Ghost in the Ranks: The Warlord’s second life

THE GHOST IN THE VANGUARD

The vanguard did not know that their perfect armor was a cage.

Collins stared through the smoke at three advancing iron shapes, his knuckles aching around the slick hilt of his rusted dagger. His new legs trembled beneath a fallen support beam. The leading soldier drew a heavy broadsword, the metal scraping against steel, a sound that made the remaining conscripts weep.

"Is anyone alive in this hole?" the lead soldier asked flatly inside his visor. He stepped closer, his boot coming down inches from Watson’s bleeding, unconscious face. "Finish them. High Command wants the ridge clear by dawn."

"Don't touch him," Collins choked out.

The three soldiers stopped, their visors pivoting toward the mud-caked boy pinned under the timber. The leader let out a mocking laugh. "Look at this little rat. Still breathing."

"You are stepping too heavily on your left flank," Collins whispered, entirely devoid of fear. He shoved against the beam with a sudden burst of leverage, utilizing a weight-distribution trick he had taught his elite officers a lifetime ago. The timber rolled off his legs with a heavy thud. "And your neck guard is loose."

"What did you just say?" the soldier snarled, stepping forward to split Collins in half.

Collins didn't move away. He surged upward like a phantom, his fragile body screaming in protest as his lungs burned. He didn't swing wildly. He knew exactly where the secret weakness lay a two inch gap in the steel right at the collarbone, a flaw he had hidden from the imperial blacksmiths so he would always possess a way to kill his own men if they turned on him.

The rusted dagger found the gap with surgical precision.

The soldier stiffened, a wet gasp escaping his helmet as Collins twisted the blade ruthlessly, severing the carotid artery. Before the man could fall, Collins ripped the weapon free and let the heavy corpse collapse forward, using the momentum to shield himself from the second soldier's frantic swing.

"What is this?" the second soldier panicked, his sword clattering against his dead comrade's armor. "He knows the blind spots!"

"He’s a demon!" the third yelled, lunging forward.

"I am the man who built your army," Collins muttered under his breath, though the rain swallowed the words.

He slipped beneath the third soldier's clumsy horizontal slash. Collins jammed his heel into the back of the man's knee, forcing the massive giant to buckle. With a swift, brutal upward jerk, Collins drove the dagger through the unprotected underside of the chin guard. The soldier fell instantly, choking on his own blood.

The remaining vanguard scout backed away, years his sword shaking. He looked at the two dead elites in the mud, then at the pale, malnourished peasant boy coughing up dark phlegm from the sheer exertion.

"Who are you?" the scout whispered, his voice cracking with terror. "Who the hell are you?"

"Run," Collins said, leaning against the trench wall as his vision blurred. "Tell Winfred that the ridge belongs to the dead."

The scout didn't wait. He turned and fled up the muddy slope, scrambling over the parapet in a frantic retreat, his heavy armor clanking loudly in the dark until the storm swallowed him whole.

Collins collapsed to his knees, vomiting rain water into the mud. His chest felt like it was being squeezed by iron bands. Pathetic, he thought, staring at his tiny, trembling hands with deep disgust. This body is garbage. A simple three man execution and I am on the verge of fainting. Yet, beneath the physical revulsion, a cold drop of satisfaction settled in his gut. His mind was still intact. His strategies were still absolute. He could still kill them.

"Collins," a weak voice groaned from the rubble.

Collins wiped his mouth and dragged himself over to the pile of stone and shattered timber. Commander Watson was staring at him, his face covered in gray ash and dark crimson blood, his eyes wide with terrifying confusion.

"Help me," Watson whispered. "The beam...My leg"

Collins grabbed a thick iron pry-bar from the ruined trench floor. He wedged it beneath the heavy rock pinning the commander, throwing his entire meager body weight onto the lever. "Lend me your strength, Commander. I don't have the muscle for this yet."

With a mutual roar, the rock shifted, and Collins dragged Watson out of the meat grinder just as a secondary collapse buried the spot completely. Watson lay on his back, panting, his hand gripping his fractured thigh.

"The raiders," Watson gasped, his eyes darting around the trench. "Where are the others?"

"Dead," Collins said flatly, dropping the pry bar into the mud with a loud splash. "The one who survived ran back to the main line. We have maybe an hour before they realize he was scared off by a single grunt."

The remaining conscripts slowly crept out from their holes, staring at Collins as if he were a monster. No one spoke. The silence in the trench was suffocating.

Suddenly, Watson reached out with surprising speed, his massive, calloused hand wrapping around Collins’s collar. He yanked the boy down roughly, slamming him against the wet timber of the trench wall. The commander’s hand moved to his belt, pressing a short, jagged skinning knife directly against Collins’s windpipe.

"Commander," Collins said, his voice entirely level despite the sharp edge nicking his skin. "This is a poor way to thank the person who just saved your life."

"Shut up," Watson growled, his face inches from Collins’s. His eyes were bloodshot, scanning the boy’s face with a desperate, angry intensity. "Don't play dumb with me, boy. I’ve been in the imperial army for fifteen years. I watched the Warlord’s elite shadow guard train in the capital. Those movements.That target selection"

Collins let his head fall back against the wood, letting out a soft, mocking sigh. "I told you, I read"

"Do not lie to me!" Watson roared, pressing the blade slightly harder, drawing a tiny bead of blood. "The Warlord’s secret manuals were burned after his execution! No peasant from the outer valleys knows that the vanguard armor has a gap under the armpit. Who are you? Are you a spy for the remnant loyalists?"

Collins looked at the knife, then directly into Watson's eyes. He knew he had to play the part of a terrified boy, or Watson would slide the steel into his throat right here. He forced his eyes to widen, letting a sudden, frantic tremor take over his voice. He grabbed Watson’s wrist with both hands, panting rapidly.

"I don't know!" Collins cried out, his voice cracking in a perfect imitation of a hysterical teenager. "I don't know, Commander! I was dying! When the boulder hit, I thought I was dead! My hands just moved on their own. I saw the gaps.I swear to God, I just wanted to live!"

Watson stared at him, his chest heaving as he searched the boy's face for any sign of a seasoned assassin's calculation. All he saw was a terrified, shivering kid covered in mud, crying in the rain. But the doubt remained, heavy and poisonous.

"You're lying," Watson whispered, though his grip on the knife loosened slightly. "A boy's hands don't just move like that. You killed two elite warriors in five seconds."

"They were clumsy!" Collins sobbed, squeezing his eyes shut, forcing the tears to mix with the rain. "They were laughing at us! They didn't think I would strike! Please, Commander, don't kill me I don't want to die in this hole"

Watson stared at him for three more agonizing seconds before finally pulling the knife away with a bitter curse. He fell back against the wall, holding his broken leg. "If you are a spy, Collins.I will personally tear your head off. Do you understand me?"

"I'm just a conscript," Collins muttered, wiping his face with his sleeve, his eyes dropping back into a cold, hidden stare the moment Watson turned away.

The immediate threat of discovery was managed, but the ice was incredibly thin. Watson wouldn't forget this. The commander would be watching every breath he took from now on.

"Get the men," Watson ordered weakly, his voice strained from the pain. "Clean up the bodies. If the inspectors find elite vanguard corpses killed by a kitchen knife, they’ll execute this whole unit to keep the secret from getting out."

"They’re already here," the older soldier with the crossbow whispered from the top of the trench ladder, his voice trembling.

Collins stiffened. He climbed up two rungs of the ladder, peering over the muddy parapet into the gray, breaking dawn.

Coming down the main supply road was a massive, black-lacquered imperial carriage, surrounded by twelve heavily armed cavalry guards wearing the crimson capes of the high officers. On the door of the carriage, painted in gold, was a sigil Harrison knew better than his own reflection.

The twin vipers of Winfred’s personal house.

The carriage came to a halt at the edge of the ruined outpost, the mud splashing against its polished wood. The door swung open, and a man stepped out into the pouring rain, holding a silk umbrella over his head. It was Winfred’s chief envoy, a cruel, soft-handed aristocrat named Malek who had been the one to read Harrison’s death warrant aloud to the crowds three weeks ago.

Collins’s fingers dug into the wooden ladder until his nails split, a hot, suffocating tide of pure, unadulterated malice rushing through his veins.

"They’re checking the frontline," Watson muttered from below, trying to stand but failing, his face twisted in agony. "Collins, get down here. If they see you looking at them like that, we’re all dead."

Collins didn't move. He watched Malek wipe the mud from his expensive boots, his mind already calculating the thirty different ways he could use a rusted dagger to take the envoy’s life before the cavalry guards could even draw their swords.

The war hadn't just come to his doorstep. His executioners had arrived to finish the job.