Into a Dark Realm. Raymond E. Feist

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СКАЧАТЬ played out.’

      Kaspar said, ‘I know nothing of the politics here, but there are times when an armistice is a face-saving gesture and times when it is a necessity, the only alternative to utter ruin. Victory has fled, and defeat awaits on every hand. Have your Maharajah marry one of his relatives off to one of the King’s and call it a day.’

      The General stood up and offered his hand. ‘If you find your friends and get them home, Kaspar of Olasko, you’re welcome in my tent any time. If you come back, I’ll make a general out of you and when the time comes we’ll push down to the sea together.’

      ‘Make me a general?’ said Kaspar with a grin.

      ‘Ah, yes, I was the commander of a brigade when last we met,’ said the General, returning Kaspar’s grin. ‘Now I command the army. My cousin appreciates success.’

      ‘Ah,’ said Kasper shaking his hand. ‘If ambition grips me, I know where to find you.’

      ‘Good fortune, Kaspar of Olasko.’

      ‘Good fortune, General.’

      Kaspar left the pavilion and mounted his horse. He walked the gelding down the side of the hill towards a distant dell through which wandered a good-sized stream.

      He felt a rising disquiet as he approached the luggage wagons, for he could see signs of battle all around. The traditions of war forbade attacking the luggage-boys or the women who followed the army, but there were times when such niceties were ignored or the ebb and flow of the conflict simply washed over the non-combatants.

      Several of the boys he saw bore wounds, some minor, some serious, and many were bandaged. A few lay on pallets beneath the wagons and slept, their injuries rendering them unfit for any work. Kaspar rode to where a stout man in a blood-covered tunic sat on a wagon, weeping. A recently-removed metal cuirass lay on the seat next to him, as did a helm with a plume, and he stared off into the distance. ‘Are you the Master of the Luggage?’ asked Kaspar.

      The man merely nodded, tears slowly coursing down his cheeks.

      ‘I’m looking for a boy, by the name of Jorgen.’

      The man’s jaw tightened and he dismounted slowly. When he was standing before Kaspar he said, ‘Come with me.’

      He led Kaspar over a small rise to where a company of soldiers were digging a massive trench, while boys were carrying wood and buckets of what Kaspar assume was oil. There would be no individual pyres for the dead; this would be a mass immolation.

      The dead were lined up on the other side of the trench, ready to be carried and placed atop the wood before the oil was thrown over it and the torches tossed in. A third of the way down the line the man stopped. Kaspar looked down and saw three bodies lying close together.

      ‘He was such a good boy,’ the Master of Luggage said, his voice hoarse from shouting orders, from the battle dust, the day’s heat, and strangled emotions. Jorgen lay next to Jojanna, and next to her lay a man in soldier’s garb. It could only be Bandamin, for his features were similar to the boy’s.

      ‘He came looking for his father almost a year ago, and … his mother soon after. He worked hard, without complaint, and his mother looked after all the boys as if they were her own. When their father could, he would join them and they were a joy to know. In the midst of all this—’ he waved his hand in an encompassing gesture, ‘—they found happiness in just being together. When …’ He stopped and his eyes welled up with tears. ‘I asked for the … father to be detailed with the luggage. I thought I was doing them all a favour. I never thought the battle would spill over to the luggage-train. It’s against the compact of war! They killed the boys and the women! It’s against every rule of war!’

      Kaspar took a moment to look down at the three of them, reunited by fate and fated to die together, a long way from home. Bandamin had been struck a crushing blow in the chest, from a mace perhaps, but his face was unmarked. He wore a tabard in the blue and yellow of Muboya. It was faded and dirty and slightly torn. Kaspar saw the man Jorgen would have become in his father’s face. He had an honest man’s face, a hard-working face. Kaspar thought Bandamin had been a man who had once laughed a lot. He lay with eyes closed, sleeping. Jojanna appeared unmarked, so Kaspar suspected that an arrow or spear point had taken her in the back, perhaps as she ran to protect the boys. Jorgen’s hair was matted with blood and his head rested at an odd angle. Kaspar felt a tiny sense of relief that it must have been a sudden death, perhaps with no pain. He felt an odd, unexpected ache; the boy was still so young.

      He stared at the three of them, looking like nothing so much as a family sleeping side-by-side. He knew the world spun on, and no one but he, and perhaps one or two people in the distant north, would note the passing of Bandamin and his family. Jorgen, the last scion of some obscure family tree was dead, and with him that line had ended forever.

      The luggage-master looked at Kaspar as if he expected him to say something. Kaspar looked down on the three bodies for another moment, then put heels to his horse’s sides, turned the gelding and began his long ride northward.

      As he cantered from the battlefield, Kaspar felt something inside him turn cold and hard. It would be easy enough to hate Okanala for violating the strictures of ‘civilized’ warfare. It would be easy to hate Muboya for taking a man from his family. It would be easy to hate anyone and everyone. But Kaspar knew that over the years he had issued certain orders, and because of those orders hundreds of Bandamins had been taken from their homes, and hundreds of Jojannas and Jorgens had endured hardships, even death.

      With a sigh that felt as if came from deep within his soul, Kaspar wondered if there was any happy purpose to existence, anything beyond suffering and, at the end, death. For if there was, at this moment in his life he was sorely pressed to say what it might be.

       • CHAPTER FOUR •

       Nighthawks

      THE SOLDIERS MOVED QUICKLY.

      Eric von Darkmoor, Duke of Krondor, Knight-Marshall of the King’s Army in the West, and Warden of the Western Marches stood behind a large outcropping of rocks, observing his men moving slowly into position. Silent silhouettes against rocks bathed in deep shadows cast by the setting sun, they were a special unit of the Prince’s Household Guards. Erik personally had designed their training as he ascended through the ranks of the army, first as a captain in the Prince’s army, then as Commander of the Garrison at Krondor, then Knight-Marshall.

      The men were once part of the Royal Krondorian Pathfinders, a company of trackers and scouts, descendants of the legendary Imperial Keshian Guides, but now this smaller elite company was called simply the ‘Prince’s Own’, soldiers whom Erik called upon in special circumstances, such as the one that confronted them this night. Their uniforms were distinctive: dark grey short tabards bearing the blazon of Krondor – an eagle soaring over a peak, rendered in muted colours – and black trousers with a red stripe down the side tucked into heavy boots, suitable for marching, riding, or as they were employed now, climbing rocky faces. Each man wore a simple, dark, open-faced helm, and carried short weapons – a sword barely long enough to deserve the name, and an estoc, a long dagger. Each man was trained in a specific set of skills, and right now Erik’s two best rock-climbers were leading the assault.

      Erik let his gaze move up СКАЧАТЬ