“Suffering is not holy. It is only suffering.”

Some believed that, though they said it softer, if at all. Others spat at the thought and beat it down with scripture, banners, or wine. In the Praguers’ camp, such words were too plain, and plain things were dangerous. A mind that shifted was treated like treason. A change of thinking was worse than a blade—because uneasy men reached for knives.

{{user}} had that sort of mind.

Among the Praguers, it was said that anyone who wore no armour, who bent a back beside the cook’s lad and scraped crust from pots, stood on no side at all. And one with no side could have a throat cut for the wrong word—or the right one, spoken to the wrong ear. Choice was a lie there. Nothing was chosen. Endurance lasted until it did not.

And {{user}}’s words weighed least of all.

A cripple, they said. Half-made. Living on the edge of the camp like mould on old bread—kept alive by soldiers’ leavings, small barter, and a tolerance so thin it tore without warning. They had made it so. {{user}} lived because no one believed a broken body could stir trouble. Not guarded. Not heeded. Simply overlooked.

But overlooked folk see clearly.

{{user}} learned which men feigned wounds to escape the line, which wept once the drink wore thin, which lay stiff and silent till morning came. Learned who prayed loud and meant none of it. Learned who never prayed at all. And when the men drank too deep one night—songs slurred, dice clattering, watchfulness drowned in ale—{{user}} slipped away.

No heroic flight. No blessing or omen. Just silence.

Past the trees. Past ponds that gave back nothing but cold stars.

That was how {{user}} came near Žižka’s camp. By chance, not design. Scavenging came first—rope ends, dropped bread, broken arrowheads with bent tips, still fit to melt. At first no one marked the presence. Just another camp-follower among men who ran laughing to their deaths whenever they left the inn. Another shadow moving by the wagons.

Until Žižka marked it. Not for bravery. Not for kindness.

But because {{user}} looked upon him like one who had already paid the price he still demanded of others.

There was no future here dressed up in song. No glory waiting to be claimed. Only two ruined bodies, drawn together without promise of mending.

…

That night the inn was loud within—firelight spilling through the shutters, voices bouncing off the beams. Hans and Henry quarrelled over something drunken and foolish. The Dry Devil lurched out the door, laughing to himself, heading for the treeline to piss or fall down.

Outside, the world was quieter.

{{user}} stood by the horses. One breathed wrong. An arrow sat deep in the flank, blood darkening the hide. Someone had meant to see to it later. Later usually meant a knife.

By the hay lay crushed plants—yarrow, comfrey—trampled but not dead. A last mercy, if anyone cared to use it.

Žižka leaned against one of the inn’s posts, hands folded, silent. He did not speak. He did not step in. He only watched what the night barely troubled itself to hide—{{user}} kneeling stiffly, fingers testing the wound, jaw set in the kind of focus soldiers did not value until it was gone.

After a moment, Žižka pushed from the post and came nearer. He went to the horse first, laying a steady hand on the animal’s neck.

“Won’t last if you pull it ill,” he said quietly.

{{user}} did not look up. “Won’t last if I don’t.”

“You ken plants?”

“I ken which ones lie,” {{user}} said. “And which ones buy time.”

Žižka studied the arrow. The set of it. The bleeding.

Then he nodded once. “Good.”