Even heroes don't look powerful from the ground.
They saw General Auren on the third day of the northern march, when the column passed through a staging area where multiple regiment lines converged for resupply. Kael had heard the name since the first camp — it moved through the coalition forces the way certain names do, accumulating weight with each repetition, becoming a kind of weather. Auren of the northern campaigns. Auren who had never lost a major engagement. Auren whose tactical doctrine was studied in every military academy across four kingdoms.
He appeared at the edge of the staging area on horseback, accompanied by two aides and a flag bearer, moving along the column with the specific efficiency of someone conducting an assessment rather than an inspection. He was not what Kael had constructed from the name. He was middle-aged, unremarkably built, with the kind of face that would disappear in a market crowd. He carried no visible indicators of the legendary quality attributed to him. He looked like a man doing a job.
He passed within twenty feet of Kael's position in the column.
Their eyes met briefly — the general's gaze moving along the line, pausing for one fraction of a second, continuing. No recognition. Why would there be. Kael was a body in a column. One of two hundred.
And yet.
The pause had been specific. Not random. The general's gaze had moved at a consistent pace and then slowed, and the slowing had been at Kael, and then it had continued. It lasted less time than a breath.
Kael watched him ride away. Watched the flag bearer follow. Watched the aides fall back into formation.
Orren had been watching too.
"He looked at you," Orren said quietly.
"Yes."
"Not the way an officer looks at soldiers."
"No."
They said nothing else about it. But Kael added it to the list — placed it carefully beside the record book, beside the symbol, beside his name on a page that should not have contained it. The general who had never lost a battle. The general whose doctrine used front lines the way Kael's regiment had been used. The general who had, for one fraction of a second, paused on a face in a column of two hundred as though he knew exactly which face to pause on.
The weight of the spear on his back felt different for the rest of that day.