The Weight of Nothing

Marcus Thorne's sword had grown heavier over the years. Not the blade itself, good steel doesn't change but the weight of memory it carried. The weight of everything he'd done with it. Everything he hadn't done.

The tavern's ale was watered down and bitter. Marcus swirled the dregs in his cup, watching the thin liquid catch the morning light. His body ached with the familiar pain of too many battles and too few soft beds.

The tavern keeper watched him with the knowing eyes of a man who'd spent decades studying men through the bottom of their cups. Marcus met his gaze once, saw the quiet judgment there, and looked away. The keeper had his measure. They always did, eventually. There was something about tavern keepers they could smell old blood, no matter how much time or ale you used to wash it away.

His purse held exactly six small silver coins. Not enough to drink away the dreams that had woken him before dawn. The ones of Millbrook, of smoke and screams and the weight of his commander's purse afterward. Of telling himself that orders were orders, that someone else would have done it if he hadn't. That at least he'd been efficient about it.

Through the tavern's grimy window, he studied the village with a mercenary's practiced eye. Poor place, barely worth raiding. The granary was the only stone building three stories of granite that had probably cost the village a decade's worth of harvests. Smart investment though. In a world where orc raids and bandit attacks were common as rain, food stores were worth more than gold.

The houses clustered around it like chicks around a hen, connected by muddy paths that would turn treacherous in a fight. A single well served the village center. Two streets, if you could call them that, intersected at the granary. Decent fields beyond, summer wheat already harvested and stored. The forest pressed close on the northern edge too close. Amateur mistake. Should have cleared another hundred yards of trees at least.

The first screams caught him mid-swallow.

For a moment, he wasn't sure if they were real or memory. Then the tavern keeper's daughter burst through the door, terror turning her young face ancient. "Raiders! From the woods!"

Marcus's body moved with the instinct of forty years of warfare, bringing him to the window. Orcs. His enhanced perception caught every detail with crystalline clarity. Twelve initially, more at the tree line. Crude weapons mostly, but he noted the gleam of stolen steel. Their markings spoke of mountain holds, of old blood. They'd done this before.

The smart play was obvious. His horse was behind the tavern, already saddled. The road east was clear. In an hour, this would all be behind him. Another memory to drown. Another village to forget.

But the girl still stood in the doorway, frozen like a rabbit before wolves. Like that other girl, in that burning village whose name he'd never bothered to learn. The one he'd ridden past because the job was done and his purse was full and it wasn't his problem anymore. Her face haunted his dreams for twenty years.

"Get everyone to the stone granary," he heard himself say. "Bar the doors. The walls are thick there."

She ran.

His sword cleared its sheath with familiar ease. The grip was warm, like it had been waiting. Like it knew. The blade caught the morning light, and for a moment he saw his reflection fragmented in the polished steel. An old man's face. A coward's face.

The first orc died before it saw him, his blade opening its throat in a spray of dark blood. Clean. Efficient. Just like Millbrook. His enhanced strength guided the blade through flesh and arteries with practiced precision, he'd learned long ago exactly how much force it took. No waste. No flourish. Just the economical motion of a man who'd spent decades learning the most efficient ways to end lives.

The second orc managed a clumsy swing that he slipped past, hamstringing it with a backhand stroke. Its enhanced constitution meant it didn't fall. These weren't common bandits, but System-strengthened warriors. No matter. He'd killed better. The blade found its spine as it turned, another clean strike. Textbook really. He'd taught that move once, to fresh recruits who still believed in glory. Before he'd learned to see each battle in terms of risk and reward, of cost and profit.

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They came at him in waves after that. His heightened perception caught every detail. Fourteen remaining, three with stolen steel, two with bows. The orcs moved with the coordinated precision of veteran raiders. Experience meant predictability.

His body responded to decades of gathered power, each movement amplified by the System's gift. An orc's axe whistled where his head had been, too slow. Their enhanced strength meant little when they couldn't land a blow. His counter-strike took its arm at the elbow. The next one died reaching for a throwing axe at its belt.

Blood turned the mud black beneath his feet. His blade moved like a thing alive, finding gaps in crude armor, striking at vulnerable joints. Not the showy swordwork of his youth, but the lethal precision of a man who had survived a thousand fights by learning which strikes were worth the energy they cost. Just like that village in the north. Just like the river crossing. Clean. Efficient. The coin always spent the same.

A wild axe swing caught his left arm, opening a line of fire. Getting slow, old man. System enhanced flesh knit together even as he moved, stemming the blood loss. He answered with a thrust through the attacker's eye socket. Behind him, he could hear the sounds of villagers running, crying. The watch drum began its frantic beating from the granary tower.

His breath came harder now. Six orcs lay cooling in the mud. The rest had pulled back, regrouping. More shapes moved at the tree line, reinforcements arriving. His enhanced sight picked out details through the morning mist. Eight more. No, ten. Armed better than the first wave.

The math was simple. The kind of calculation he'd made a hundred times before, in a hundred other places. Even with System enhanced abilities, the odds were turning. His horse was still there. The road still clear. Twenty years ago, he'd have laughed at the thought of running. But twenty years ago, he'd still believed his own lies about duty and honor. Now he knew better. Knew exactly what kind of man he was.

He'd run before. From fights where he had nothing to gain. From battles where his purse was already full. He'd stayed for the others. Stayed and done what needed doing. Stayed and been efficient about it. The coin had always spent the same.

An orc's roar split the air but this one came from behind him, where the houses stood. Where the granary stood. Marcus turned and saw one of the raiders had circled around. A child's scream cut through the morning air.

The sound struck something in him. Not conscience, he'd burned that away years ago with strong drink and stronger lies. Not duty or honor or any of the pretty words he'd once hidden behind. Something older. Simpler. A memory of the man he'd thought he would be once. Before.

His legs moved. Not toward his horse and the open road, but toward the granary. Toward the screams. His sword felt lighter now, somehow. Like it had been waiting for this. Like maybe it had known all along.

The next few minutes were a blur of steel and blood and desperate movement. The System made his muscles sing with gathered power as two orcs fell before they could reach the granary door, their blood painting the stone steps. A third died trying to drag a woman from her home, its spine severed by a stroke he hadn't used since the siege of Hawkridge. The fourth got past his guard, its System-enhanced strength driving an axe deep into his side, but Marcus barely felt it. He had found that place beyond pain, beyond fear. Beyond the weight of memory.

They came at him with everything then. Their own enhanced strength and speed made them formidable, any one of them could tear an ordinary man apart. But he met them on the granary steps, using the elevation to his advantage. His sword moved in patterns learned in a hundred battles, taught by deaths he'd dealt and wounds he'd taken. Not fighting for glory now, or coin, or even survival. Fighting for something he'd forgotten existed. Something that felt like redemption.

His sword was red to the hilt. Blood ran freely down his side, but he stood straight. Stood tall. Behind him, through the granary's thick door, he could hear children crying. In front of him, the remaining orcs gathered for one final rush. His vision was growing dark at the edges, but his blade had never felt lighter.

"Come then," he whispered, and for the first time in decades, his voice carried no bitterness. No lies. "Come and see how a coward dies."

Epilogue

They buried him on a hilltop overlooking the village. The blacksmith carved a simple stone marker which read: "Marcus Thorne - He Stood." Nothing more. The village women laid wildflowers on his grave. The men stood silent, heads bowed.

Among his possessions they found six small silver coins, a whetstone worn smooth by years of use, and a folded scrap of parchment. On it, in faded ink, was a list of names. No one asked what the names meant. Some things are better left unknown.

For years after, old Willem the tavern keeper would place a cup of ale on the bar each autumn, on the day the orcs came. "For Marcus Thorne," he would say, when asked. "A man who died better than he lived." He'd seen enough soldiers pass through his tavern to recognize the look in Marcus's eyes that morning. The look of a man who'd spent his life running from himself. Who had finally, in his last moments, stopped running.

The village children sometimes played near the grave, the younger ones asking about the weathered words on the stone. Their parents would tell them a soldier was buried there, one who had saved the village long ago. But as the years passed, even this faded, until there was only the stone, its words growing fainter with each winter's rain.

And perhaps that was tribute enough.