They wrote songs about the heroes of the Battle of Blackwater Crossing. About Daric the Bold, who held the bridge alone for an hour against twenty men. About Lyra Silverbow, whose arrows found the hearts of every enemy commander. About Thorne the Mountain, who broke the enemy line with his warhammer and turned the tide of battle.
No one wrote songs about Tomas Reed.
No bards sang of how he survived that day, how he'd survived a hundred battles before it, and how he would survive a hundred more after. No tales were told in taverns of his average height, his ordinary strength, his unremarkable speed. No legends grew around the man who was neither the first to charge nor the last to retreat, who neither led men into battle nor cowered from it.
Tomas Reed was a soldier, one of thousands. His name appeared on no rolls of honor, his deeds recorded in no chronicles.
Yet while Daric the Bold now lay paralyzed in a monastery, attended by silent monks who changed his soiled sheets; while Lyra Silverbow had lost her right eye and three fingers to a raider's blade; while Thorne the Mountain had drunk himself to death on the anniversary of the battle for seven years running—Tomas Reed still drew breath. Still fought. Still survived.
The gods, if they existed, had not blessed Tomas with exceptional skill or strength. Fortune had not favored him with noble birth or uncommon wit. He was not the chosen one of ancient prophecy, bore no enchanted blade, commanded no mystical powers.
He was simply a man who had learned how to stay alive.
And in a world of war, that was the rarest skill of all.