I Enlisted for My Father, Now the Wolf Army Answers to Me novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: Leave Day

On the first leave day, Sergeant Tolley wore a dress.

It was dark green and had too many buttons, and she stood in the barracks doorway daring anyone to say a word.

Wick said it anyway.

"Sergeant, you look like a very angry pine tree."

"One more word, Alderby, and you can crawl to the village on your crutches," she said.

"I'm just saying it suits you."

"It does not."

"It does a bit," I said.

She glared at both of us, and then she laughed, loud and helpless, and pushed us out the door.

Marrowfell was a market village at the end of the fort road, with one muddy street and a bridge over the Dree.

I had been a corporal for nine days and a recruit's friend for twelve, and I had forgotten what it was to walk among people who weren't soldiers.

We bought hot meat pies from a woman with a tray and ate them on a bench.

Mine was a little burned on the bottom.

I held it up to the light.

"What?" Wick asked.

"Nothing. Somebody told me I'd have a face for this," I said.

"A face for burned pie?"

"Apparently."

He didn't understand, and I didn't explain.

I thought about two big hands on my shoulders in an empty Yard.

I thought about it for most of the pie.

We took a table in the tavern by the bridge as the afternoon went amber.

It was low-ceilinged and loud and smelled of ale and wet dogs.

Sergeant Tolley told a story about a quartermaster who had once tried to sell the Host's own boots back to it, and Wick laughed until the crutches fell off the bench.

I stopped listening halfway through.

The door had opened.

Commander Stane stood in it in his plain brown civilian coat, which somehow made him look bigger, with the lamplight on his scarred jaw.

He found our table.

He walked over with his hat in his hand.

"Sergeant," he said. "Alderby. Corporal."

"Commander!" Wick tried to stand and knocked the table.

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