Erdem found the coat in a pile of dirty snow outside the pub-house that had thrown him out for begging. He was gaunt, then, with bald armpits and cracking voice and teeth that sat unsteady in his gums; the coat was streaked with vomit, and still steamed a bit at about waist-height on its wearer, whose purse and throat alike were torn rag-edged and empty. Erdem spent a terrified hour wrangling corpse from coat, darting into alleys whenever a copper or other respectable made boot-crunch in the nearby snow. He feared his clacking teeth would betray his presence even from the alley—but if they did, no copper or other respectable much cared, and Erdem managed to relieve the dead man of his raiment. The thief who’d beaten Erdem to the purse had also grabbed the dead man’s sword, though not its scabbard, but in his boot there was a dagger chased with gold or something like it. Erdem huddled in the coat, anosmic from the cold, and scuttled to a storefront with a warm nook and a soft-hearted proprietor on Chadze’s artery.

He awoke to a cuff—a common enough waking, for an urchin, and he wrapped his arms around his head against a second blow. But the words behind the fist were new to him:

“On your feet, soldier.”

A hand gripped Erdem’s collar; he was lifted to his feet. He remembered the dagger, now, but left it wrapped and waiting. The man who’d picked him up had silver eyes with fading pupils, and a cropped red beard. He tossed Erdem one-handed into a line of boys with coats that matched his own—dark blue wool edged with gold embroidery that arced and tapered in like sickle blades or candle flames. The other boys stood tall and stepped in time. Erdem, starving, could barely shuffle fast enough. He was afraid he would be trampled if he fell.

Hours later, past the granite walls of Chadze and across the circling moat, past the opal cliffs and in a swamp whose name he’d never heard, his fear was proved correct, although it was not he who fell. Erdem did not see the boy ahead who fainted in the column, but he nearly tripped upon the bloodied corpse. A few steps later, he broke out of the line and doubled back to pull the body out. The dead boy had no face. Erdem wondered how many boots had ground that pulpy mass, as he pulled the boy’s own boots off, and the sword belt from his waist.

 He knew the cuff was coming, but he killed the urge to run. His teeth cracked together from the blow. 

“Get in line, soldier!” It was the silver-eyed redbeard, so much stronger than his slenderness let on, who questioned him.

“I need a blade and boots,” said Erdem, and waved a rag-bound foot.

“What happened to your issue?”

“I have no issue,” Erdem said. “I found this coat last evening, on a dead man. Blue wool and my rags are all I have.”

The silver-eyed man nodded. “Good enough. Just know that we’ll kill you if you run.”

“I understand,” said Erdem.

“You’ll have your blade and boots. Now get in line.”

#

Discipline was strong among the boys, but still they whined of cold and hunger. Erdem’s sleep was sound, his body warmer and more sated than it had been for weeks. When he awoke, his veins were bulging. He asked his tent-mate, Soner, why the change.

“The meat’s laced with a tincture,” Soner said. “It makes you strong. Your veins are getting thick to feed your muscles, and the longer you’re a soldier, the more silver your eyes get.”

“The man with the red goatee—how long has he been fighting?”

Soner shrugged. “There are just two types of soldiers in this column: Old and young. Redbeard is old. Don’t ever go against an old soldier. Their blood clots as soon’s you spill it and they can snap your neck like biting off a thread.”

“How much longer do we have to march?” asked Erdem. “Whom do we go to fight?”

“Two days,” said Soner. “How can you not know why or where we march? Haven’t you heard the talk of war with Vojda?”

“I don’t hear talk,” said Erdem. “I was living on the streets ‘til yesterday. I took this coat from a dead soldier, and then Redbeard took me.”

“That’s only fair,” said Soner. “Symbols carry dooms, that’s what they tell us. The snake and staff, the wig and robe, the coat of gold and blue.”

“They gave me meat and blankets,” Erdem said. “I’ll do what they require. What is Vojda?”

“You’ve never heard the stories of the Dragon-King of Vojda?” Soner asked. “His kingdom writhes under the shadow of his wing. His breath is foul, and chokes the life from men, and smells of rotting children. His gaze can break the mind, and his soldiers thirst for flesh like starving dogs. They were raised from childhood to kill. They feel no pain or fear; they march with wooden spears, bare-chested, and slaughter all they see.”

Erdem shrugged. “I’ve fought off starving dogs,” he said, “with no arm’s length of steel; and I’ve lived through midnight’s shadow with no embroidered coat. Vojda seems as good a place as Chadze.”

The trumpet’s squeal resounded through the swamps, and the scent of breakfast filled the tent, and Erdem and Soner went out to greet it.

#

Erdem’s biceps did not grow in two days’ march. The road grew easier with stomach full, but the sword grew no less heavy, and there was no time or energy to train. Erdem would enter battle green and likely leave it red. But he had had nine meals, with as much tough meat as his weak teeth could chew, and three nights’ warm sleep, and words from boys who did not spit at him or curse him. His heart could not believe that it would last; and, his past considered, he did not fear a sharp and speedy end. Let him adorn the wooden spears of Vojda. Let him feed a starving dog.

The army met with no resistance as it crossed the river Voj; and when the city towers were in sight, it shifted west, toward Vojda’s northern mountains. Erdem looked behind him as they climbed the foothills, and he saw a snake of blue and glinting gold against the rock. It stretched past the stand of redwoods he had seen an hour before. His army was a landmark, but no wooden-speared, bare-chested soldiers came to fight. And, up ahead, the column fed into a narrow mountain pass, rich with caves and ledges, but no noise of death or cry of ambush echoed back. Erdem trotted up to Redbeard and tugged the old soldier’s sleeve.

“Get in line.”

“We saw the city hours ago and passed it,” Erdem said. “We move through land that makes us easy targets, but we come upon no soldiers. And my body is no stronger than it was three days ago. I don’t know where we’re going, but we do not go to war.”

The red-bearded soldier took Erdem by the bicep and swung him up onto a rock, then lithely followed. From his vest he drew a skinning knife; then he squatted and thrust his face into the urchin’s. “Who told you we do not go to war?”

“You did,” said the boy, unsmirking. “I only guessed.”

“That scrawn Soner—this isn’t his conjecture?”

“It’s mine alone,” said Erdem. “I only thought of it when we entered the pass. We should be getting slaughtered up ahead—we should be suffering assaults from arrows, falling rocks, bombs, pots of pitch.”

“You’re right, of course,” said Redbeard. “Chadze’s walls can fall to only two things: Dragons who fly over them and citizens behind them. They are six feet thick but balance on a filament. If no dragon threatens, the citizens will ask what need there is for walls, and the moats will fill with granite so the sun may warm the streets. Then Chadze will be doomed, like a crippled rabbit caught outside its hole. And so we nurture Vojda. Your comrades-in-arms go to the noblest of deaths: They feed the dragon whose existence justifies the walls of Chadze. He is doddering, and if he cannot eat men he will collapse. The potion makes your muscles bloodier and softer for his teeth.”

“It strikes me,” Erdem said, assuming he would soon be killed, “that you talk of saving walls from citizens, rather than the reverse.”

“Dragons’ eggs are long-brooding,” said the soldier, “and resilient: They can survive and hatch at any time, in any place a dragon might have been. We feed the dying dragon to prepare against his son.”

“In any case,” said Erdem, “you’ll gut me soon unless I prove my worth. I wish to do so.”

“You’d best be at it,” said the soldier with the silver eyes, and inspected the knife’s edge. “I warn you, though, I do not spare life lightly.”

“You’ll like this,” Erdem said, and he leaned in and said a thing.

#

That thing is why we call him Captain Erdem, gentle child, and why he eats veal every night; and that thing is why he wears the silver lenses that give him the look of strength and rights of rank; and that thing is why you and I labor of an evening, in the winter, when the call for soldiers sounds again. That thing is why we take the used and mended coats that Redbeard orders piled at Vojda’s cave-mouth ere the soldiers go to die, why we comb the streets for corpses that have come to rest where urchins might encounter them, and we dress those freezing carcasses as soldiers that we know they never were. For a soldier’s coat is warm against the winter, and an urchin has no fat to warm his bones; and symbols carry dooms, as I said one chilly morning to a boy who knew no homeland, only hunger and its lack.