Mother of God. François cursed thickly under his breath, and stumbled a little as he made his way back into the barracks--still with the common soldiers--bastards! Kincade would catch it from him, sergeant or not. Kincade and Mochrie. François was, indeed, not the sort to pin his grievances to names; in truth, he tended to pin them to himself. But the burden of self-abnegation had grown far too onerous long ago... so he'd learned to blame the world, to blame authority; to blame anyone, in short, as long as it wasn't himself.

His nose bled sluggishly. Pain. Pain leaked through his body like lukewarm soup. His arms, held up in the pillory all day, ached about the joints. His uniform was turn and dusty. His mouth tasted as though he'd eaten his way across an arena of sand, and for the first time in a long time, François was thirsty for water instead of alcohol.

He hadn't filled his own canteen, of course, so he limped delicately toward a nearby bed and yanked another man's full water-skin from a post hanging beside the mattress. Then, with a groan, he flopped backwards onto the bed and leisurely kicked off his boots. It wasn't his; he didn't care. As if any of these green boys could do him harm, even when he was in this state. He was as young as some of them, but far more intelligent, and none of them had the benefit of twelve years of sword-training.

François felt weak with hunger; weak with pain; weak with thirst, though a long, gulping swig of the flask helped with that. The rest he splashed on his face, cleaning the caked blood from his upper lip. And then, oblivion.

He awoke an indeterminate amount of time later, startled by a nearby noise. He jolted upright, his hand on the dagger up his sleeve, and blinked blearily at his botherer.