Chapter 5

Five

Fieran hugged his mama as they stood on the platform at Princess Station in Aldon. All around them, other young men with bags and packs were saying farewells to families. Other new army recruits, gathering to take the designated train car to Bridgetown.

To one side, Merrik hugged his younger sister, his parents clustered around them.

"Do you have to go?" Tryndar swiped at his face, his hand gripped in Mama's.

Mama released Fieran, giving him that sad but calm smile of hers.

Fieran knelt in front of Tryndar, then gave him a squeezing hug. His brother normally wasn't big on touch, so hugs were rare. "I'll write lots of letters, and I'll be depending on you to write to tell me everything you've been up to."

Tryndar squirmed in Fieran's hug. "You are squishing me."

Fieran released him. He moved on to hugs with Ellie, Louise, and Adry. They all murmured farewells and stay safes and teasing Don't get thrown out of the army on your first day.

Then Fieran was facing his dacha, struggling to meet that silver-blue gaze that held far too much. Fieran's throat closed, and he couldn't think of anything to say.

Perhaps that was just it. There was nothing left to say at this point.

Dacha reached out and gripped Fieran's shoulders in an elven hug. When he spoke, it was only a single, strained word, as if Dacha, too, didn't know what else to say. "Sason."

The weight of that one elven word—the meaning behind Dacha calling Fieran son with that elven emphasis—just choked up Fieran even more.

An elven hug just wasn't enough. He stepped forward and hugged Dacha, even though Dacha, like Tryndar, wasn't big on physical shows of affection like human hugs.

For a moment, Dacha froze, his arms still awkwardly hovering in the air. Then he gave Fieran one perfunctory thump on the back in an attempt at the manly hugs that Fieran's human uncles exchanged.

Fieran thumped Dacha's back in return, then stepped from the embrace. If this farewell lasted too much longer, he was going to disgrace his dignity by doing something like crying. Tryndar was already crying, his face pressed against Mama's coat as she rested a hand on his hair.

Fieran slung his small pack of belongings over his shoulder. It didn't weigh much. He knew the army wouldn't let him keep much anyway, and there was no reason to take a bunch of stuff just to have it sit in a cupboard for months.

With one last nod to his family, Fieran strode toward the waiting train. Moments later, Merrik fell into step with him, his own small pack of belongings over a shoulder.

Fieran lightly leapt up the steps and entered the train car. Row upon row of forward facing wooden benches greeted him, most of the benches already filled with young men. Fieran navigated his way down the aisle, avoiding packs and elbows that protruded into the narrow aisle until he found an empty bench.

He slid onto the bench until he was next to the window, a draft of cold air tickling his neck from the places where the windowpane rattled in the frame. The frayed fabric on the bench seat barely counted as a cushion while a layer of grime skimmed the floor and the windows.

Merrik eased onto the seat beside him, his arms and legs tight to his body as if he were trying his best not to touch anything.

Fieran gingerly settled against the back of the seat. He was more cavalier about dirt than Merrik was, but the general stickiness of the place was disconcerting.

He'd traveled on the cheap seats of the train occasionally, but only for short trips. Even then, he usually paid for at least second class, if not first class. It wasn't like more expensive tickets were a financial hardship. For longer trips, he was usually traveling with his parents in their personal train, powered by Dacha's magic and designed to travel on both the steel rails of Escarland and the forest root rails of Tarenhiel so that it didn't need to stop all the way from Aldon to Estyra.

The train gave a whistle—using compressed air rather than steam—then the wheels ground forward. As the train crawled into motion, Fieran peered out the window one last time.

Mama, Fieran's sisters, and Aunt Patience were talking with a man and woman wearing work-worn clothing, the man's coverall's patched and the woman's dress an indeterminate color of greige.

Dacha had retreated to put his back to the wall of the train station away from the bustle, gripping Tryndar's hand. Tryndar shrank against Dacha's leg and plugged his ears as best he could with one hand and a shoulder as the train gave another shrill whistle. Uncle Iyrinder had taken up a spot a few feet away from Dacha, his gaze darting between Dacha and the others, his posture that of a guard on duty.

Then the train was gaining speed, and the station disappeared from Fieran's view, replaced with Aldon's brick buildings crowding all the way up to the train tracks.

A lanky young man with straw-blond hair sticking out in all directions and wearing a set of coveralls swiveled in his seat on the bench in front of Fieran and Merrik. He gaped around, his blue eyes wide as goggles, his mouth hanging open.

His gaze drifted over them, then snapped back to Merrik. He turned all the way around in his seat. "Are you elves?"

Merrik hunched in his seat, but it did little to hide his long chestnut hair and pointed ears.

"Half-elves." Fieran stuck out a hand. "I'm Fieran. He's Merrik."

"Elijah, but most people call me Lije." The young man grinned, showing off a gap in his front teeth. He had a slight accent that Fieran couldn't place. "Where are you from? I'm from the south of Escarland near the border with Groyria. Never been farther north than Mount Husken until I joined up. Had quite the train ride to get to Aldon. Whoo-whee, but Aldon is a sight! Never seen so many people and buildings in one place! You could lose all of Frogg's Hollow in Aldon and never miss it."

Fieran eyed Lije. And everyone thought Fieran was talkative. This young man from the southern hills of Escarland could put him to shame. "Aldon is something. Merrik and I grew up just outside of Aldon."

"Have you ever visited Estyra? I hear the elves have trees as big as mountains." Lije was on his knees now, the better to peer over the back of his bench at them.

"Yes. The trees of Estyra are impressive." Fieran wasn't going to mention that when he wasn't in Aldon, he lived in a room at the elven palace of Ellonahshinel itself. Everyone in the unit was likely to find out Fieran was a prince with far too many useless titles to his name sooner or later. He would just rather it be later.

Lije didn't seem the bad sort. He didn't seem prejudicial about Fieran and Merrik's heritage. That was a mark in his favor.

"Are you brothers?" Lije pointed between them.

"Kind of." Fieran shrugged, even as Merrik sank further on the bench. "Our parents have been friends for a long time, so we're like brothers."

Lije nodded, as if that wasn't too surprising of a scenario. "Could have fooled me with that hair. Though yours is a lot redder than his. Never seen hair that red."

Fieran suppressed his sigh. He didn't mind his red hair. Not really. But everyone always insisted on commenting on it.

"So you're half-elves, huh? Are your papas the elves or your mamas?" Lije leaned his elbows on the back of the bench, even as the train shuddered into motion. "I've met a few ogres and half-ogres in Frogg's Hollow—they occasionally cross the border to trade in our town—but never any elves before."

"Our fathers are elves; our mothers are humans." Fieran stretched out his legs beneath the bench in front of him. With the lanky young man kneeling on the seat, he wasn't using the leg room. Fieran might as well take advantage of it.

"My parents are both human as human comes. Though family legend on my mama's side says there's ogre in the blood from some grandpappy or other." Lije settled more comfortably where he was, kneeling on his bench and leaning over to speak with them. "People say such awful things about ogres, but they aren't disgusting swamp creatures or anything like that. They're people too, you know. Just a little extra green. Not as green as the cartoons you see going around. They're more a kind of mottled green-brown."

Elves were generally well regarded and didn't engender some of the prejudices that the trolls or ogres experienced. But the elves still sneered at Fieran's human side and the humans mocked his stuck-up elf side. He simply couldn't win sometimes.

"I'd like to meet an ogre someday." Fieran sank even lower on the bench to attempt to lounge more comfortably. The lack of padding wasn't helping anything. His rear end was going to be asleep by the time they reached Fort Linder. "Are things between Groyria and Mongavaria as bad as the papers say?"

"Hard to tell." Lije shrugged. "But I'll say this, I haven't seen any ogres visiting in months now. They've just disappeared."

That wasn't good. At least if one was hoping there wouldn't be a war. From what Fieran had heard, ogres were reclusive. But not that reclusive.

His parents probably knew more of what was going on. Uncle Edmund, head of Escarland's Intelligence Office—as in, Escarland's top spy—certainly knew more.

The train was really picking up speed now, farm fields and tiny villages flashing by outside the windows.

Beside Fieran, Merrik dragged in a breath, his shoulders relaxing, in that sure sign that he had warmed up to Lije enough to finally join the conversation.

That was Fieran's cue to stop talking long enough for Merrik to get a word in edgewise. It often took Merrik a few extra moments to get comfortable with new people, and Fieran was more than happy to do all the talking until that point.

Merrik's tone was low, barely carrying over the clacking of the train wheels on the tracks. "I hope for the ogres' sakes that the papers are simply fear-mongering. The Mongavarian Empire is not known for treating races other than human very well. They don't even treat all human races that well, if the rumors about their march through the kingdoms south of Groyria are to be believed."

Fieran squirmed on the grimy, ill-padded bench. He probably should be thinking more about the consequences of war rather than his own eagerness to take to the skies and prove himself in battle.

It wasn't like his attitude was rare. The Kostarian papers were just as filled with calls for war as the Escarlish ones were. The trolls had never forgotten how, sixty-nine years ago, Mongavaria had sent poisoned grain into that kingdom, killing many men, women, and children before the poison was discovered. With how long-lived trolls were, most of those who had lived through that poisoning were still alive and young enough to go into battle to avenge those they lost all those years ago.

If Mongavaria invaded Groyria, they would not treat the ogres any better than they'd treated the trolls all those years ago.

"Yeah, me too. The ogres keep to themselves, but they're good folks." Lije's somber expression was swept away with a grin. "But if the Mongavarians do invade Groyria, we'll be ready, and we'll beat the stuffing out of them."

Fieran smirked, resting his head against the hard top of the bench and resisting the urge to let his magic play over his fingers. "Yes, we will."