'That doesn't matter,' Dennis snapped, and the look in his eyes made it clear that he would not tolerate another word from the black-robed priest. 'Well?'
'Yes, sir,' Richard replied weakly. 'It was me.'
'Why?'
'I thought I was well concealed.'
'If that old man could spot you, be certain a Tsurani trailbreaker would have seen you. You are a danger to yourself and to my command. I'm sending you back. You can tell your friends what you want. I suggest you find a position with a nice comfortable mounted unit down in Krondor. No brains needed there, just ride, point your lance, and charge. Then you can be a hero, like in the songs and ballads.'
'I wanted to serve with you, sir,' the boy whispered.
'Well you did, and that's now finished.' He hesitated, but then his anger spilled out. 'Go take a final look at that grave over there before we leave,' he said with barely-contained fury, his soft voice more punishing than any screamed insult. 'Now get out of my sight.'
The boy stiffened, face as pale as the first heavy flakes of snow that began to swirl down around them. The he nodded and turned about, shoulders sagging. As he rejoined the column the men around him looked away.
The priest took a step forward.
Dennis's hand snapped out, and a finger pointed into the old man's face. 'I don't like you,' Dennis announced. 'You were a bumbling fool wandering around out here where you had no business. Damn you, don't you know there's a war being fought out here? It's not a war like the ones that fat monks and troubadours gossip about around the fireplace. I hope you got a good belly full of it today.'
Two of my 'fat friends', as you call them, are prisoners of the Tsurani this day,' Father Corwin replied, and there was checked anger in his voice. 'I volunteered to serve with the army as a healer. I just pray I don't have to work on you some day. Stitching together flesh that has no soul is bitter work.'
The priest turned and stalked away. The middle part of the column, made up of the stretcher-bearers was starting off and Corwin joined them.
Gregory chuckled softly.
'What the hell is so funny?' Dennis snapped.
'I think he got you on that one. You did go a bit too hard on the boy.'
'I don't think so. He almost got us all killed.'
'He made no mistakes, I was but ten feet from him. I made sure he was well concealed.' As if thinking of something, Gregory added, 'That priest has unusually sharp eyes.'
'Nevertheless, the boy goes back.'
'Is that what Jurgen would have done?'
Dennis turned, eyes filled with bitterness. 'Don't talk to me about Jurgen.'
'Someone has to. There's not a man in your company that doesn't share your pain. Not just over losing a man they respected, but because they bear a love for you as well, and now carry your burden of sorrow.'
'Sorrow? How do you know what I feel?'
'I know,' Gregory announced softly. 'I saw what happened too. Jurgen made his choice, he left himself open in order to save the boy. I would have done it, so would you.'
'I don't think so.'
'You and your Marauders have become hard men over the years, Dennis, but not soulless ones. You would have tried to save him, even at the cost of your own life, as Jurgen did. The lad has promise. You might not have noticed, and I'm not even sure he remembers it, but he did kill the first Tsurani that closed on him. The one that almost got him came up from behind.'
'Nevertheless, the boy goes.'
'It'll kill him. We both know the type. Next battle he'll do something stupid to regain his honour and die doing it.'
'That's his problem, not mine.'
'And what if he gets a half-dozen others killed as well? What would Jurgen say of that?'
'Jurgen is dead, damn you,' Dennis hissed. 'Never speak to me of him again.'
Gregory stepped back, raised his hands, then shook his head sadly, and walked over to the grave. Looking down at the rich brown earth being covered by the falling snow, he whispered, 'Until we stand together again in the light.'
Then he went to join the company. Tinuva fell in by his side and the two of them headed up the trail in the opposite direction, double-checking to make sure that nothing was following the unit.
Dennis was left alone as the last of his men abandoned the clearing.
The heavy flakes swirled down, striking his face, melting into icy rivulets that dripped off a golden beard which was beginning to show the first greys of middle age.
When all were gone, and he knew no one was watching he walked up to the grave, reached down and picked up a clump of frozen earth.
'Damn you,' he sighed, 'why did you leave me like this, Jurgen?' Now there was no one left. Nothing but a flood of memories.
The holdings of the Hartrafts were not much to boast about; forest lands lying between Tyr-Sog and Yabon. A scattering of frontier villages on the border marches, a rural squire's estates that the high-blood earls, barons, and dukes of the south and of the east would have scoffed at, or tossed aside as a trifle in a game of dice. But it had been his home, the home of his father and his father's father.
Jurgen had been a young soldier for Dennis's grandfather, old Angus Hartraft, called 'Forkbeard', who had first been granted the lands on the border for his stalwart service against the dark things that lived to the north. Jurgen had also been his father's closest friend. And when his father died on the first day of the Riftwar, when the Tsurani flooded into their lands, it was Jurgen who had saved his life the night their keep was taken.
Dennis stared at the grave.
Better I had died that night, he thought, and there was a flash of resentment for old Jurgen.
Gwenynth, his bride of barely six hours, died that night. His father had ordered him to take her through the secret passage out of the burning chaos of the estate's central keep. He had fought his own desire to stay with his father and had taken Malena through the tunnel. Then outside the escape tunnel, just as freedom had been in reach, a crossbow bolt had stilled her heart forever. He had briefly glimpsed the assassin in the flickering light from the burning keep, and the image of the man as he turned and fled burned in Dennis's memory. Jurgen had found him kneeling in the mud, clutching her lifeless body. He had fought to stay with her, until Jurgen knocked him out with the flat of his sword, then carried him down the river to safety.
Fifteen men from the garrison, including Jurgen and Dennis, survived that night. Carlin, the next to last had died just a month earlier from a wasting of the lungs. Now, of those fifteen men, only Dennis was left.
So now you're dead old man. Died because of a damn stupid boy and a fat old priest. It would be like you to die for that, he thought, a sad smile creasing his features.
The 'Luck of the Hartrafts', it was called. No glory, no money, no fame. Just a retainer of a family with a minor title and nothing else. And then, in the end, you get a spear in your back because of a clumsy boy.
Yet, he knew that Jurgen, old smiling, laughing Jurgen, would not have wanted it any other way, that he had been more likely to die for the sake of a stupid squire than for any king. In fact, if it had been the mad king in far Rillanon, he most likely would have leaned on his sword and done nothing, figuring that such high and mighty types should take care of themselves.
A breeze stirred, the wind moaning softly through the rustling tree branches. The snow was coming down hard now, hissing, forcing him to lower his head.
Opening his hand, he let the clump of earth fall onto the grave. There was nothing left now of the past except a half-forgotten name and a sword strapped to his side. His father, Jurgen, Malena; all of them were in their graves, and the graves were all returning to the uncaring forest.
'Dennis?'
He looked up. It was Gregory.
'Nothing behind us, but we'd better move.'
Darkness was closing in. Tinuva was barely visible but a dozen paces away, waiting where the trail plunged back into the forest.
