Jon Hale did not retreat from the reek; he stepped into it.
He walked across the flagstones until he was standing directly beside the vinegar cask where Cael Ardent remained huddled. When he leaned down to retrieve the dented pewter mug from the shadows near the knight’s boot, the smell coming off the imperial champion hit his throat like the fumes from an unventilated brass foundry.
It was a thick, coppery stench, sharp as vitriol, overlaid with the nauseating sweetness of rancid animal lard. The odor did not belong to a battlefield an hour old; it belonged to a corpse that had been baked inside a sealed oven. Every pore of Cael’s skin seemed to exude a pale, greasy vapor that hung in the cold cellar air, carrying the scent of burned blood and scorched marrow.
“Stand up, Cael,” Jon said, placing the dented mug back upon the trestle table.
The knight did not move. His gauntlets stayed clamped over his ears, his shoulders twitching beneath the heavy fluted steel of his pauldrons. “Leave me in the dark, Hale. If the memory is gone, the memory is gone. The Ash Host will breach the north trench by noon, and I need three hours of quiet before I mount.”
