Beyond the eastern prairies the land had grown vast and empty, stretching out beneath a sun that seemed to burn everything its light touched. The trains that cut through it were no more than threads in the dark fabric of the world. They were a new breed of things, these steel serpents, long and winding, snaking their way westward like some obscene promise of progress. Behind them, trailing in the dust and the heat, rode the sons of men who had once believed in something more than gold or land. But all things die, even belief, and now those men were but echoes of their fathers' ambition.

  Dimitri had not been born to this wilderness, but the wilderness had elected him, a foundling among the unbroken tracks and the endless horizon. His father's empire—now a distant mockery—had been built on the iron and steam that surged beneath these same tracks, a kingdom forged from money and ambition. The wreckage of that empire lay strewn at his feet, its wealth no more than the brittle skin of a dead snake. But Dimitri had a vision, a way forward, and it lay in the West, where the promise of railroads and progress sprawled ever farther into the unknown. And so he went, with the weight of his bloodline clinging to him like a chain, equipped with a retinue of men as diverse as the lands they crossed. Among them was Dedue, his stalwart shadow, who spoke little but saw all, the quiet muscle to Dimitri's grand ideas. Felix, the blade-wielding cynic, ever at odds with the world but bound to it by the contract of his survival. Annette, the smiling domestic with hands too gentle for war, but sharp enough to keep her wits about her. And then there was Mercedes, whose faith clung to her like a cloak against the cold winds of this violent land, a peacekeeper among wolves.

  The train chugged onward, a steel beast in the desert, bound for a place none of them would leave unchanged. Its wheels clanged in rhythm with the heartbeats of men who still believed in something—perhaps the same thing that had driven them all westward in the first place, though none could say just what that was anymore.

  As they came to the last stop, the land dropped away like a bedroll discarded after a long night's sleep. The train hissed and shuddered, its iron bones settling with the weight of the journey’s end. Beyond the steaming engine lay a station of raw timber and rough-cut stone, its roof braced against the unrelenting sky. Guards loitered by the platform, their rifles slung lazy, their eyes sharp. The last stop. The farthest the rail had come. Beyond, the territory expanded wide and unbroken, cut only by the promise of track yet to be laid.

  Dimitri stepped down first. His boots struck the planks with purpose, the motion swift and clean, a man accustomed to knowing his footing in all things.

  Dedue followed, scanning the place with the quiet, watchful air of a man who trusted little and expected less.

  Felix was already cursing under his breath about the heat.

  Annette, struggling with a trunk near twice her size, tripped onto the platform, saved only by Dedue’s quick hand.

  Mercedes lingered at the door, adjusting her gloves, taking in the place with a cool, unreadable expression.

  Then came the voice, smooth as whiskey over ice.

  “Well, look at you. Fine set of travelers, straight out of some fancy painting."

  A man leaned against a stack of crates, one boot propped up, arms folded like he’d been waiting all day but wasn’t in any hurry about it. His hat was tipped just enough to shade his eyes, but not so much that Dimitri couldn’t see the glint of mischief in them. His clothes were worn but fine, tailored just enough to suggest a man who valued appearance but wasn’t above a little dirt.

  His smile was easy, practiced. "Welcome to the end of the line.”

  Dimitri met him with a look of measured scrutiny. “Claude Riegan, I presume.”

  Claude pushed off the crates, landing light on his feet. “The one and only.” He gave a little bow, mock flourish and all. “And you’d be Dimitri. The railroad’s bright-eyed new foreman. Or would ‘crown prince of industry’ be more fitting?”

  Dimitri’s jaw tightened by a fraction, the hint of a smile never quite forming. “I wasn’t aware you’d taken up comedy.”

  “Oh, I dabble,” Claude said breezily. “Gotta keep entertained out here, or you start talking to the vultures. They give terrible advice, by the way.”

  Felix scoffed, muttering something unkind.

  But Claude only grinned wider. He took them all in with a glance, his eyes sharp behind the easy manner.

  “Well,” he continued, clapping his hands together. “I suppose it falls to me to get you fine folks acquainted with the wonders of the West. I can already tell this is gonna be a lot of fun.”

  Dimitri straightened. “I expect you to do your job.”

  Claude’s smile never wavered. “Oh, don’t worry, Dimitri. I always do.”

  And with that, he turned on his heel, gesturing for them to follow.

  Dedue was the first to move, stepping in stride beside Dimitri. Mercedes followed with a sigh, Felix with a scowl. Annette, still struggling with her trunk, shot Claude a quick, sheepish smile.

  Claude winked. “Don’t worry, Miss Annette. I won’t let these rough sorts work you too hard.”

  Dimitri exhaled through his nose. The first day, and already, the West had found new ways to test his patience.

  The township they'd disembarked at was built in the image of the east, though forged in wood rather than stone, in the transient labor of hands that knew the desert was no lasting home. The broad main street was framed by buildings whose facades bore the ambition of a grander civilization, their signboards carved in the proud lettering of distant cities, yet all lay veiled in a fine and ceaseless pall of dust, as if the land itself rejected the notion of permanence. Men in high-collared coats and ladies in bustling skirts wove their way between sun-darkened strays laden with firewood and burlap sacks. Rough men in ponchos and well-traveled leathers loitered beneath the awnings, their gazes slow and measuring as the procession of Dimitri and company passed.

  Claude strode easy at Dimitri’s side, nodding to a merchant here, a street performer there, as if he were of the place. He lifted a hand to where a weathered man stood watch on a porch beside a lacquered placard bearing the words ALL FIREARMS TO BE CHECKED WITH THE MARSHAL UPON ENTRY.

  “Whole town’s got a strict policy on sidearms,” Claude remarked, glancing toward Dimitri with a knowing smirk. “You’d think a rule like that wouldn’t fly out here, but folks like it better this way. Fewer stray bullets in their windows.” He gestured toward a farrier’s shop, where an old man hammered at a set of shoes while his apprentice filed down a horse’s overlong hooves. “Turns out most would rather settle their business with words than lead. Who would’ve thought?”

  Dimitri’s gaze swept the town. His posture was straight, his manner deliberate, yet there was a tension in the set of his jaw, something guarded in his observance. He took in the placards, the people, the dust and motion. A town alive, yet precarious, one good storm away from being swallowed back into the sand.

  “What about knives?” Dimitri asked.

  Claude grinned. “Ah, well. Those are harder to regulate.”

  Felix scoffed at this, arms crossed over his chest. “And swords?”

  Claude tilted his head, squinting up at the sky as if the answer might be written there. “Most… likely?”

  Felix let out a sharp breath, part sneer, part laugh. “No deal.”

  Beside him, Dedue rumbled, his voice a steady rockslide. “I must insist that I retain possession of my weapons, so that I may better protect Lord Dimitri.”

  Annette, ever chipper, piped up, “The sharpest thing I’ve got on me is a potato peeler. Should I turn it in?”

  Claude blinked. “I think you’ll be fine.”

  Mercedes let out a small, worried sigh. “Oh dear. And my medical bag has quite a few sharp tools, though I’d rather not think of them as weapons…”

  Claude grinned and sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Relax, gentlemen…and ladies. We’ll be moseying out of here fast enough that we don’t have to worry about leaving anything with anyone.” He gestured loosely down the street, where a group of well-dressed army men stood conversing in front of a tall carriage, their polished boots at odds with the dirt beneath them. “No time to stop and stretch. Our chariot awaits.”

  Dimitri, who had remained silent through the exchange, finally spoke. “Then let us not linger.” His voice was even, but his eyes held the flicker of something restless.

  He started forward, the others falling in step behind him.

  Claude gave a low chuckle. “Man on a mission, I respect it.” He slid his hands into his pockets and fell into stride. “Just don’t forget to blink, yeah? Wouldn’t want you turning to stone before we get where we’re going.”

  The road was no road at all, but a thread of ruts worn into the skin of the land, barrelling westward into heat and emptiness. The desert was vast, rolling in bleached plains and distant ranges, the wind a ceaseless whisper through the sage. The sun climbed slow and mean, and the days burned long. The nights were cold, the stars like ice pricked into a black firmament, and in the morning the earth rose up from its slumber dry and unrepentant. They traveled for days, the wheels of their carriage grinding over sun-hardened dirt, the iron-rimmed hooves of their horses clopping dull against the ground. In the waking hours, their shadows stretched long behind them, and by midday they rode hunched beneath their hats, braced against the weight of the sky.

  Once, they stopped at a river too shallow to name, the waters running thin over polished stones. Annette waded in up to her ankles, gathering linens from a washbasin, her sleeves rolled to her elbows. The wind took her humming, sent it scattering into the heat, a song half-formed and without an end. She hung the clothes on a line strung between wagon spokes, the fabric snapping sharp in the dry air.

  A short distance away, Felix and Dedue moved in a slow, deliberate cadence, the sounds of their sparring measured and clean. Felix had stripped to his undershirt, his sword flashing in tight arcs, his eyes keen with something more than focus. Dedue stood firm, one forearm braced in front of him, the worn leather of his bracer absorbing the blows with the quiet confidence of a man who had done this a thousand times before. There was no talk between them, only the rhythm of impact and retreat, the desert air disturbed only by the shifting of sand beneath their feet.

  Beneath the shade of a gnarled desert tree, its roots drinking deep from some forgotten vein of water, Mercedes sat cross-legged in the dust, her bible open in her lap. She noticed how the sun seemed to pause above them, a suspended judgment in a sky without mercy, looking up from the page—as if hoping to find some sign in that burning blue. But there was only the silence of the land, the rustling of Annette’s linens in the wind.

  She turned the pages slow, her fingers gentle against the fragile parchment, lips moving in quiet recital of words meant to bring comfort. In these times especially.

  She lingered on a passage—

  'The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.'

  It was a familiar verse, yet it weighed heavier today.

  A small wind teased the edges of the book, rifling the pages as if impatient to move on.

  The road ahead was long. And she feared, deep down, that it would only lead them into darkness.

  Dimitri meanwhile stood apart on a hill, his hands on his hips, gazing out over the land ahead.

  Claude stood beside him, arms folded, his stance easy but his eyes sharp.

  “Hard as it is for me to admit, I’m not familiar with this township coming up. I say we head straight through,” Claude was saying, his voice light, though his words carried an edge. “No stopping, no chatting. Just grab what supplies we need and move on. There’ll be plenty more places to stop by and make friends along our route–with slightly less of a worry any of us might end up with a shiv through the ribs.”

  Dimitri exhaled slow, his expression unreadable. “We need laborers. We need men to lay track. For such arduous work, we can’t afford to be picky.” He glared at Claude. “Or lacking in zeal.”

  Claude laughed under his breath. “You think that’s what you’ll find there? Good men, eager to sweat and toil for a couple dollars a day? Chances are that all you’ll find are drunks, deserters, men with nothing left to lose. And if you take them with you, you’ll be dragging that nothing along for the ride. You’ll be lucky if the worst they’ll do is steal from you.”

  Dimitri’s eyes were cold. “We take what we can get.”

  Claude’s grin was easy, but for once there was no humor in it. “And what if the thing we take is the thing that ruins us? I don’t intend to go down with this—or any other—ship if it sinks, you know. Because I’m not just some low-rent scoundrel, in this for a little coin and Washington’s good graces. I have my own interests to look after. Like staying alive.”

  A silence stretched between them, the kind that belonged to men who had yet to decide whether they were allies or adversaries.

  Before nightfall a camp was made, the fire crackling low and sullen.

  Shadows stretched long across the dirt, shifting as the flames licked at the dry air.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  Annette was crouched and tending to a pot of stew boiling over the pit, now and again glancing up to observe the two in their resuming feud with a growing frustration. Next time she looked Dimitri was standing rigid, half-turned and his jaw set, while Claude lounged numb in expression with his back propped against a log, facing toward the fire, his hands crossed behind his head. The space between them was thick with words unsaid, with something close to hostility—until Annette, finally fed up, jumped up and clapped her hands together.

  “Alright, that’s enough glaring for one night!” Her voice was bright, but there was a force behind it. “There’s nothing more awkward than sharing a meal with someone you can’t even look in the eye, so let’s clear the air already.”

  Claude flicked a glance toward her, amused but wary. Dimitri didn’t look away from him at all.

  Annette huffed, stepping between them, hands planted on her hips. “Okay. I get it. Claude, you’re worried about getting dragged into something bigger than you signed up for. Dimitri, you don’t want anyone questioning your mission. But neither of you is going to win this argument, so how about we meet in the middle?”

  Claude arched a brow, lazy grin intact. “And what exactly does ‘the middle’ look like, oh great peacemaker?”

  Annette narrowed her eyes at him. “For starters, Dimitri, maybe stop acting like you can order Claude around like one of your servants. And Claude?”

  She turned her gaze on him, smile never quite fading.

  “Maybe try to look like you’re actually on our side, instead of making everyone wonder if you’ve got one foot out the door already.”

  Silence.

  Dimitri exhaled sharply through his nose, but said nothing.

  Claude leaned his head back, considering, then let out a burst of laughter.

  “Alright, alright.” He lifted his hands in mock surrender. “You win this round, Miss Negotiator. I’ll play nice.” His gaze slid to Dimitri. “We’ll head into that shady little town come morning and dredge you up a good, hearty working crew. Sure we will. But only on one condition.” He held up a finger, one half cast in the firelight. “I’m making a run for it at the first sign of any trouble, anything that I don’t otherwise see myself capable of breaking out of, other than to make a straight run for the hills. Is that fair enough?”

  Dimitri remained still, eyes unreadable beneath the glow of the fire. Then, stiffly, as if the words cost him something, he said, “very well.”

  Annette grinned, clapping her hands again, this time in triumph. “See? Was that so hard?”

  Neither of them answered. The fire crackled. The night drifted on.

  The next day dawned without any further disagreement. An uneasy truce thus struck, the town which was now to be the caravan’s first destination lay low in the valley, a mean assemblage of clapboard and adobe buildings squatted under a sky vast and pitiless.

  The dust of the road rose at their coming, turning their passage spectral, a slow procession of silhouettes backlit by the molten sun. At the town’s edge stood a wooden arch, weathered and half-fallen, its crude letters carved deep—Red Butte. Some letters had worn away, some had been shot through, leaving the name half-legible, half-forgotten. They rode past hitching posts where horses stood rib-thin and drooping in the heat. Past buildings that leaned with the weight of time and neglect. A general store with warped windows. A saloon where figures loitered in the shade, glass-eyed and listless. A chapel, its cross still standing but blackened by old fire.

  The wagon ground to a halt before the town’s square, such as it was—a broad patch of dust between the well and the boarding house. A handful of men stood there, watching. Not the idle curiosity of townsfolk, but the wary scrutiny of men who had learned not to trust what rolled in from the horizon.

  Claude swung down first, all easy grace. He set his hat at a jaunty angle and cast his gaze over the assembly, reading them like a card hand.

  Dimitri followed, heavier in his step, shoulders squared with that solemn intent of his.

  From the wagon bed, Felix leaned forward, arms braced on his knees. He looked from one face to another, expression hard, like a man waiting for something to go wrong. Dedue dismounted without a word, his presence a quiet thing but no less commanding for it. Annette clambered down with an effort, dusting herself off, while Mercedes stepped carefully onto the hard-packed earth, her gaze flickering toward the corroded chapel with a moment’s hesitation.

  Claude grinned, spread his arms. “Gentlemen,” he said. “We come bearing opportunity.”

  No response.

  The townsmen watched in silence, their faces carved from the same stone as the land.

  Dimitri stepped forward. “The railroad moves westward. We seek strong hands to aid in its construction. The work is hard, but honest. The pay is fair.”

  One man spat in the dust.

  Another scratched at his beard.

  A third, taller than the rest, crossed his arms and said, “And where’s this pay comin’ from?”

  “The government,” Dimitri answered.

  A laugh. A low, dry thing, like wind through dead brush.

  “Government’s money don’t mean much out here, son,” someone jeered.

  Claude stepped in. “It’ll mean plenty when it brings the trains. Trains bring people. People bring business. Business brings prosperity. That’s the long game.”

  The tall man eyed him. “You play long games in short lives, friend?”

  Claude’s grin didn’t falter. “Every day.”

  A beat of silence. Then one of the men shifted, rolling his shoulders. “What’s the work?”

  “Track laying,” Dimitri said. “Ties, rails, spikes. You work, you eat. No room for idlers. Men of all races and creeds are welcome.”

  “Got room for men who drink?”

  Felix muttered, “You’d be out of work already.”

  Another man in the crowd turned, brow furrowed.

  His gaze landed on Felix, narrowed.

  “I know you.”

  Felix’s fingers flexed where they rested on his belt. “I doubt that.”

  “No,” the man said. “I do.” He stepped closer, the stink of whiskey and sweat rolling off him in waves. “You cut down a man I rode with. Years back. East of the Pecos.”

  Felix’s eyes darkened, his body gone still.

  Claude sighed. “Here we go.”

  The man moved first, hand flashing toward his belt, but Felix was already up, already moving.

  A step, a pivot, the gleam of steel.

  The man staggered. Blood bloomed across his shirt.

  He hit the ground hard.

  Silence.

  No one raised a hand or so much as a shout in vengeance. The men did not move. Not to avenge the fallen, nor to mourn him. They only watched, their expressions carefully void of anything at all.

  Felix looked down at the body. If he felt anything, he didn’t show it.

  Then, with an almost bored efficiency, he wiped the blade on his sleeve and sheathed it.

  He sighed. “Are we done here?” He asked no one in particular.

  Claude exhaled. “Well, I sure hope so.”

  Mercedes, so appalled by the ease of his violence, rushed to the fallen man’s aid, but there was nothing to be done. Other than to offer him a prayer of peace.

  Annette only shrank and clutched her hand tight to her breast. She had been thinking. She had, like the others, at first taken the sullen silence of the villagers for mere suspicion, the natural wariness of frontier folk toward outsiders. But as her eyes swept over the crowd—the downcast stares, the sunken cheeks, the way none met her gaze unless forced—something colder settled in her gut.

  The men bore no shackles or brands. Yet something pressed on them—something weightless and vast. A yoke unseen.

  Her eyes swept to men perched in lookout towers, rifles cradled like extensions of their arms.

  Not guards. Not a town militia. Watchmen.

  Not a town. A pen.

  The truth struck her all at once, sharp and bitter.

  A slow tide of murmuring discontent was washing over the onlookers. None would heed Dimitri’s call. They dispersed before long, as though its members were of a singular mind stricken with a madness that made them akin to livestock sheep. The one cut by Felix left there bleeding in the stones, Mercedes’s softly murmured benediction was the only sound to be heard.

  Dedue craned his head to speak into Dimitri’s ear, “there is nothing more to be done here.”

  If it were any other man’s advice, he might have protested.

  Instead, “we’re leaving,” he commanded roughly. This land was more poisoned than he had thought. More than he could bear to reckon with, just then.

  Everyone went back to the wagon, a silence stretching in their retreat.

  Claude was the last to look back, exhaling as he shook his head. “Gonna be a long road west.”

  No one disagreed.

  A day passed. The wagon was rocking with the slow grind of its wheels, its canvas walls breathing with the wind. Outside, the land stretched on, flat and featureless, a long smear of dust and scrub beneath the hard blue vault of the sky.

  But inside, it was dim and airless, the space narrow, the boards beneath them groaning with every jolt in the road. Dimitri sat hunched on one of the crates, elbows on his knees, hands loose between them. His hair hung over his eyes, wild and sunlit at the edges, his expression unreadable in the half-light. The lantern swayed with the wagon’s motion, throwing shadows like gallows ropes along the canvas.

  Across from him, Dedue sat with his back straight, his great hands resting in his lap, patient as stone. He had watched Dimitri’s silence for some time, the way his shoulders squared as if bracing against an unseen weight. Until finally, he spoke.

  “You are troubled.”

  Dimitri didn’t look up. His fingers flexed, curled into a fist. “They were slaves,” he said. “Even if no chain bound them.”

  Dedue nodded once. “I saw.” His words were heavy with knowing.

  “They could not even answer for themselves,” Dimitri went on. “Even unchained, they were not free. Do you understand?” His voice was quiet, but tight with something simmering beneath.

  Dedue regarded him, his face unreadable in the shifting dark. “I do.”

  Dimitri exhaled through his nose. “What is this place?” he murmured. “This country. It swallows men whole and spits out their bones, and those who remain are hollowed out, stripped of whatever made them men to begin with.”

  Dedue did not answer at once.

  The wagon groaned beneath them. Somewhere outside, the caw of a crow rang thin in the emptiness.

  “This land has known no law but force,” Dedue said at last. “To many, that is all it will know.”

  He let his hands rest against his knees, his voice as steady as his gaze.

  “But you seek to change that.”

  Dimitri scoffed, low and humorless. “And what does that matter? A few words about wages and honest work will not turn slaves into free men.”

  “No,” Dedue said. “But a kingdom might.”

  At that, Dimitri’s gaze snapped up, sharp and blue as shattered ice.

  Dedue met it without flinching. “You build more than a railroad,” he said. “You build an order where none exists. You have spoken of it before, in quiet moments. A land where men stand side by side, not divided by race or wealth, but by the sweat of their labor. A place where no man is property, and none must wield the gun to hold what is his.” He tilted his head slightly. “Do you still believe in it?”

  Dimitri stared at him. The wagon jolted over a rut in the road, but neither moved.

  At length, Dimitri exhaled. “Yes,” he said. This time, with no hesitation.

  Dedue nodded. “Then speak of that,” he said. “Not wages. Not work. Men are drawn to purpose, not coin. Give them something to believe in, and they will follow.”

  The silence stretched between them.

  Dimitri leaned back, his head resting against the canvas, his gaze tracing the ribs of the wagon overhead.

  The lantern flickered. Outside, the road went on, unwinding into the endless dust.

  Night slipped away unnoticed. The sky lay pale and depthless, the earth rimmed in a slow-burning glow, the horizon’s distant spurs picked out in embered gold. The caravan moved through the predawn hush, wheels grinding in the dust, the hollowed footfalls of the mules like drumbeats in the empty world. The caravan guard rode in loose formation, saddle leather creaking, rifles balanced in the crooks of their arms.

  Dimitri was sitting in the wagon’s bed, half-shrouded in the canvas gloom, his thoughts set to hard angles, when the first shot cracked the morning.

  One of the outriders went tumbling from his horse.

  The soldiers jerked upright, shouting, wheeling to face the hills that lay hunched and ocher-stained in the rising light. A second shot, a third. A dozen figures broke from the scrub, long shadows cast across the waste, guns raised and firing as they bore down in a chaos of hooves and dust.

  Dedue was already at the ready, rising from his seat, the sawed-off drawn from the folds of his coat, the stock fitted to his shoulder with the ease of long practice.

  But before he could fire, Dimitri’s voice cut through the fray.

  “Hold.”

  Dedue turned, his hands sure, steady.

  The gang was near upon them.

  Dimitri's eyes burned in the sun’s first light. “Shoot to wound if you must. But no man dies today.”

  Dedue did not question him. The hammer of his weapon remained still for a moment, then like an automaton spurred to life he raised it. His aim was fast and pure. In a spray of blood and a shrieking neigh, he sniped one of the ambusher’s horses out from under him, causing the ragged figure to fling forward and tumble like a boulder through the sand.

  His fellows, witnessing this and the line of soldiers mustering, perhaps now realizing the grand mess they had landed themselves in, scattered like frightened fowl. It was only the raw desperation of hunger preventing them from fleeing outright.

  One of the caravan guards braced against the wagon’s wheel, his carbine set on a bandit’s breast.

  He met Dimitri’s gaze. Spat. “Like hell I’m sparin’ these bastards.”

  Dimitri stepped into the line of fire.

  The man’s breath hitched. The barrel of his gun quavered.

  A heartbeat. Then another.

  Then Dimitri turned back to the bandits, unarmed, unafraid, his hand raised in command.

  His voice carried over the field like an iron bell.

  “Lay down your weapons.”

  Many did, though some did not. And for that, they were dragged from the dust with broken hands and bullet-torn shoulders, stripped of their arms, bound at the wrist with whatever rope or harness scrap could be found. Until all were knelt, twelve in total with faces bent earthward, the guardsmen standing grim behind them, rifle muzzles hovering between their shoulder blades. They had the look of men resigned. Of men who had seen this scene played out before and knew its only end.

  Dimitri stood before them.

  He looked over their faces—men of no particular stock, no single tribe. Sun-beaten whites, runaway Mexicans, freedmen turned thieves. Some young, some old, but all alike in that hard-worn, dust-honed manner that spoke of years spent at the edge of a blade.

  He breathed. Then he spoke.

  “I could kill you.”

  A small sound passed through the men. A hard swallow. A shifting in the dust.

  “It would be expected. It would be simple.” He paced before them, the slow and deliberate step of a man measuring not distance, but worth. “But I will not.”

  Silence.

  He turned to them fully.

  “We ride westward to build. A kingdom of our own making. Where men of all creeds, all origins, might labor side by side beneath one law. Not chained. Not starved. Not ruled by the old empires that saw fit to brand us as lesser.”

  He let the words settle. He let the men hear them.

  He knelt then, drawing a knife from his belt, and cut the bonds of the first prisoner.

  The man blinked.

  Dimitri held out his hand.

  A moment stretched. Then the man took it.

  One by one, the others followed.

  The soldiers bore witness to this strange resurrection. They watched as the men who had been marked for death rose to their feet, rubbing at their freed wrists, glancing between one another, uncomprehending.

  Claude leaned back against his saddle and huffed a laugh. “You’re going to get yourself killed one day, you know.”

  Dimitri turned to him, dust curling at his boots.

  His face was quiet, unreadable.

  “If a man cannot lead a cause for change,” he said, “then what legacy does he leave behind?”

  Felix sucked his teeth. “…damn idealist.”

  Dimitri only smiled, something fierce but quiet in his expression. As if he had glimpsed a horizon no one else could yet see.