I stood beside Flint in the darkness, the Blood Bond thrumming between us like a second heartbeat. His transformation was complete. His loyalty, absolute.

  But standing there, feeling his warmth, I couldn’t escape what the bond had awakened. Not just power. Memory. Rising like floodwater behind a failing dam.

  Loyalty. Brotherhood. The weight of command.

  I’d felt this before. Different circumstances, different war, but the same bone-deep certainty that some bonds transcend death itself.

  Georgia.

  The name came unbidden, and with it, the cold. Not the California night’s chill, but the soul-crushing freeze of that winter outside Savannah. The memory pulled at me with the same relentless inevitability as the tide.

  I’d kept it locked away, sealed behind iron walls built brick by bloody brick. But tonight, with Flint’s Anima mingling with mine, those walls couldn’t hold. The Blood Bond had opened something in me, a door I’d kept barred for good reason.

  I closed my eyes, and Georgia claimed me.

  The god-forsaken winter campaign outside Savannah would never leave me. I remembered the rain soaking everyone to the bone, then freezing, covering the world in a glimmering shell of ice. It froze the mud around our boots and our feet within them.

  I don’t know if it was days or weeks in that frozen hell. Time had lost all meaning. Rations were a distant memory, and the scorched-earth war had robbed the countryside of anything to be gleaned. I’d known men who could face down death with fearless valor, but freezing starvation broke them like no rebel could.

  They simply refused to move. The life had already vanished from their eyes. Their spirits were long gone, leaving only weary bodies behind to eventually fail.

  Frostbite claimed a heavy toll, taking fingers, toes, ears, and noses alike. Fever raged through the camp, hastening the death of starving men already weakened beyond recovery. The cries of those men, praying for the Lord to take them, never left me. Their sobbing pain, from fever, starvation, the bitter cold, never relented. Our camp was a dying ground.

  I remembered sitting by a sputtering fire, the sodden wood hissing and smoking more than burning, trying to ignore the rattling coughs and moaning of dying men. My troop, half its strength withered since Atlanta, sat around me at the fire. Gaunt, skeletal faces huddled around the pathetic flames, their sunken eyes devoid of hope. The foul stench of the camp permeated everything: rotting wool, swamp mud, filthy unwashed bodies, human waste, that unmistakable festering rot of dead men. Despite all that, the most pervasive aura was the soul-withering despair. Looking at my men, knowing they relied on me to lead them out, I knew God had abandoned us. I wondered if we were already dead, if this was our penance for taking part in this folly.

  We’d been ordered on a broad sweeping foraging mission, flanking the central column, hoping to find farms or storehouses with remaining supplies. We were deep in rebel territory, far from reinforcements, when we came upon a plantation house set back from the road. Nestled in a grove of ancient oaks, seemingly untouched by the war. The place looked pristine, almost out of place. That put me on edge. No smoke from the chimney, no barking dogs, no pickets. Nothing.

  “All around defense,” I ordered, dismounting Flint. He was just a green colt then, but steady and brave. On my order, the men dismounted and created a defensive circle. I signaled my clearing team to advance to the house with me, the other men to stand overwatch.

  Sergeant Williams, a proven fighting man older than me, kicked in the front door. The smell hit us first, thick as a wall, seeping into our pores. The pungent stench was thick, coppery, cloying. There was smoke somewhere, but not from burning wood. Something greasy, oily, wrong. Most of us gagged, retching on the spot. To his credit, Williams stood his ground, though his knuckles were white on his rifle stock, while the rest of us recovered.

  Inside that house was a vision of hell. Not a battleground; a charnel house. The farmer, his wife, and their children, scattered throughout the house in pieces, like dolls torn apart at the joints. Hacked apart in a scene of grim mutilation.

  This wasn’t the work of soldiers; not even Wheeler’s raiders would do this. This was personal. This level of viciousness had to be. We found the overseer in the stables, done the same way. The field hands who hadn’t fled, dismembered in their cabins, strewn about, no regard for their humanity. Men, women, children. It made no difference to the devils that did this. Axes, pitchforks, knives, anything else they could find were brought to bear.

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  Bile rose again, hot acid in my throat. The same helpless rage that had consumed me when Vane took Micah.

  I looked away from the rotting carnage and saw my men’s faces. Faded, pale semblances of the men they’d been just minutes before. Young troopers, mostly farmers, barely old enough to shave, eyes widened by horror. Some stared blankly, following the men near them like lost children. Others glanced about, eyes darting from shadow to shadow as if the killers lurked there. One lad retched in slow motion, bile dripping down his front, coating his uniform. Another trembled so violently he could barely hold his rifle. Sergeant Williams said a prayer for the souls of the departed, his voice rough with emotion.

  They were breaking. Sure as anything. Panic and fear were more contagious and deadly to an army than dysentery. We were miles from support, deep in enemy territory. If my men broke here, we’d never make it back. This would be our end.

  Someone had to hold the line. Someone had to hold the banner high. I wore the Captain’s bars. It could be no other.

  I did the only thing I could. I took the lessons this war had given me and held them close. The bloody fields of Shiloh and Chickamauga’s slaughter had taught me about the relentless grinding horror of war. This campaign, the March, had perfected the eradication of men, taught me how to continue despite it all. I had found a cold center point that chaos and horror couldn’t reach. I walled off all emotion, pushing it down with practiced discipline.

  I took each moment of pain and built a wall around it, brick by brick. In time, I had a fortress forged of discipline. My mind, a tower of iron will, defied the world. A war-forged rampart, dispassionate and resolved.

  I had learned to see horror, acknowledge fear, recognize pain, grasp it, wield it. A blade with no handle, damaging and bleeding me each time I used it, but I had no other choice. In time, it hurt me less.

  Seeing my men falling apart, I drew on that. It was no longer a fortress to hide in or a weapon to lash out with. It would be my bulwark of strength, quenching the fires of fear, tempering them into something I could use. I would lock down every other emotion until the objective was all that remained.

  The Cold Iron would be my well of strength. I would not break. I would show them the way. My voice, devoid of inflection or emotion, was pure command. “Williams, secure the perimeter. Search for survivors.” The men snapped to, began following orders with mechanical efficiency. “Corporal, document this scene. Quickly, then burn it,” I said finally, looking at the house. “Nobody will ever find this. Burn everything. Move!”

  I was steady and calm when I delivered the report to the Brigade Commander that evening. I included details, stark and unemotional, without hesitation. My men saw how I carried myself, knowing I’d been there with them. They tried to follow my lead, perhaps out of respect, maybe out of fear. Regardless, they needed someone to be a rock for them when the world turned to bloody mud. I resolved to be that man. I would hold the line. I would carry the banner and the ghosts.

  Nightmares became my constant companion. My mind was tearing itself apart, and I was drifting away from my humanity. At night, I suffered, but when the men watched, the Cold Iron held. My discipline never faltered. It wasn’t bravery. It wasn’t a choice. It was the price of survival.

  I opened my eyes. The cabin. The California woods. The present.

  Not Georgia. Not anymore. But the fortress held. That iron core forged in frozen mud and horror. It had kept me standing then. It would keep me standing now.

  My hand rested on Flint’s neck, his warmth anchoring me to the here and now. He felt my distress through the bond and pressed closer, offering silent comfort. He understood. He’d been there for some of it, though not the worst.

  The worst I’d carried alone. Until I’d learned to carry it differently. Until I’d learned to build walls around the pain and make those walls into something useful. Unbreakable.

  Cold Iron.

  I straightened, drawing a breath I didn’t need but took anyway. The habit of the living, clinging to the dead.

  The past was done. Georgia was ash and ghosts, but the lesson remained. I’d survived worse than Vane. Survived worse than this curse. I would survive what came next.

  Flint snorted softly, feeling my resolve through the bond. He nudged my shoulder, gentle, patient. Waiting.

  How long had I been standing there, lost in Georgia’s frozen hell? Minutes, maybe. Felt like hours.

  I patted his neck, grounding myself in his solidity. “I’m back,” I murmured. “Time to move.”

  The California woods were silent around us. Moonlight through redwoods. No artillery. No frozen mud. No dying men.

  Just the mission.

  I swung into the saddle, leather creaking, stirrups finding my boots, just like old times. The familiar motions anchored me to the present.

  “Let’s get back to the Doctor,” I said, gathering the reins. “Now, we prepare for war.”