‘I’m sorry, sir,’ said Lanfer Gosten. ‘I didn’t think . . .’
‘Don’t apologize, Lanfer,’ said Mulgrave. ‘You did nothing wrong. Now follow your orders and search the dead.’
‘Yes, sir. What’s wrong with him?’
Mulgrave did not reply.
They made another twenty miles before dusk, acquiring supplies from a small village. Gaise paid in coin for the food. Mulgrave avoided him for most of the journey, but as they came towards the woods in which they were to make camp he rode his horse alongside the young warrior. ‘That was not a noble deed, sir,’ he said.
‘Tomorrow we will cut to the north-west, then follow the line of the river. There are settlements along the way. We will need to leave the worst of the wounded. They are slowing us down.’
‘Put aside your anger, my lord.’
‘You are not my priest, Mulgrave.’
‘No, sir, I am your friend.’
‘Then be a friend. I need no lectures on nobility. Not today.’ Gaise spurred his grey gelding and cantered on ahead.
Now as he sat by the fire Mulgrave was worried. He believed -hoped would probably be more accurate – that the murder of Cordelia Lowen had temporarily unhinged the young noble. Yet was that true? Gaise had spoken to him in the past of his fear of becoming like his father; of the constant need to hold back the demons in his soul. Had those demons now been unleashed?
Mulgrave had been raised in Shelsans. There he had learned of the strange duality that, by turn, enhanced or diminished the souls of men. ‘All people are capable of great love and great hate,’ his father had said. ‘We are all, in spiritual terms, both angelic and demonic, constantly at war with ourselves. To understand this is to overcome it. Do not seek to justify hateful thoughts. Merely accept them as part of the flaws of humanity, and move beyond them.’ His father had been a gentle, loving man. When the Knights of the Sacrifice butchered the people of Shelsans Mulgrave had been filled with the desire to visit the same destruction upon them and their families. Yet he had not. He had held – as far as he was able – to the path his father laid out.
I should never have come to this war, he thought. It has corrupted my soul.
His thoughts turned to Ermal Standfast. The little priest had fled Shelding because he had known the horror that was to come there. He had fled in terror. Many men would brand him a coward and despise him for it. Mulgrave did not. If all men were like Ermal then there would be no wars, no soul-blinding hatred, no acts of murderous revenge. He sighed. And there would be no heroism, no unselfish acts of courage, no strength to face the grim harshness of life. If all men were like Ermal, who then would leap into a raging torrent to rescue a child, or walk into a plague house to tend to the sick and the dying?
Taybard Jaekel moved alongside him, handing him a tin cup containing hot tisane. Thank you,’ said Mulgrave.
The soldier nodded and moved away. Mulgrave drank the tisane, then stood and walked around the campsite, moving among the wounded men. They had lost more than a hundred in Shelding.
Forty others had died today. Less than five hundred remained, and many of these bore wounds.
A horseman came riding up the slope. Mulgrave stepped out to meet him. It was Able Pearce, a young man from Eldacre, the son of a shoemaker, Mulgrave recalled. Pearce slid from the saddle.
‘Any sign of the enemy?’ asked Mulgrave.
‘No, sir. I rode into a village and went into a tavern. The talk there was of Luden Macks having killed the king.’
‘What?’
‘The word is that Luden Macks broke the truce and sent a small force to Baracum. The king and his entire family were killed. Lord Winterbourne led his forces against Luden Macks and killed him in revenge.’
‘That is nonsense.’
Able Pearce shrugged. ‘They got the story from soldiers who had passed through.’
‘Get some rest, Pearce. I’ll find the general and pass on what you have said.’