That cut into Narasan like the edge of a very sharp knife.
‘Absolutely not!’ Narasan told the pale-faced Gunda. ‘Just put it in a suitable container and bury it in the army cemetery. I don’t want to see it!’
‘I sort of thought you might feel that way, Narasan,’ Gunda replied through his tightly clenched teeth, ‘but it was my duty to ask. Quite a few things are starting to come out into the daylight now. Did you know that Duke Bergalta’s related to Adnari Estarg?’
‘No, actually, I didn’t. How did you find that out?’
‘That young officer Keselo tracked it down. He told me that Adnari Estarg and Duke Bergalta are cousins, and it was one of Bergalta’s servants who delivered Astal’s head here to the compound. As I remember, Estarg was very put out with you when you refused to fight those southern armies that came here and put that fellow Udar on the throne of the Naos, and I’m catching a very strong odor of church involvement in our recent defeat. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to find out that the money that paid all those scoundrels came out of the church treasury, and the whole thing was nothing more than a trap.’
‘And I was the one who was stupid enough to step into it,’ Narasan added glumly.
‘Don’t beat yourself over the head with it, old friend,’ Gunda advised bleakly. ‘There’s probably a big celebration going on down there, but I don’t think it’s going to last very much longer.’
‘We aren’t in any position to put a stop to it, Gunda. They tricked us, and then they killed a very large number of our men.’
‘You might not approve of this, Narasan, but Padan and I recently had a little talk with some fellows you might have heard about. They’re the ones who specialize in the business of providing the guests of honor at funerals. It won’t be long before three armies won’t have commanders any more and two ducal thrones will be empty.’
‘That’s hardly honorable, Gunda.’
‘Well that’s just too bad, Narasan. Their scheme went way past “honorable”, and if that’s the way they want to play, we’ll take the game one step farther.’ Then Gunda gave his commander a tight-lipped grin. ‘We could send flowers to the funerals, if you’d like, though. There’s a weed that grows along the coast near Castano that stinks to high heaven. That might just let everybody down there know exactly what we think of them.’
‘You’re a very nasty fellow, Gunda.’
‘I know. It’s a failing of mine.’
Narasan’s satisfaction with the clever scheme of his friends didn’t really last very long. Revenge didn’t alter the cold hard facts about the disastrous war in the south. To some degree Narasan had accepted Duke Bergalta’s offer because it had given him chance to put his nephew at the head of the army during the march through that mountain pass. On the surface, that had been a way to give Astal a greater degree of self-confidence, but the more Narasan thought about it, the more he came to realize that the foolish decision had grown out of his own egotism. He’d placed Astal in mortal danger as an act of stupid pride. His grief returned, and it was overlaid with a tremendous amount of shame. It had been his foolish decision that had killed Astal and twelve cohorts of his army, and no amount of squirming around could alter that painful truth. He was quite obviously no longer fit for command.
And so it was that on a bleak day in early winter he broke his sword across his knee like a stick of dry kindling, dressed himself in his most scruffy clothes, and set up shop as a beggar on the far side of Imperial Kaldacin.
Begging was a fairly simple occupation, and it gave Narasan a great deal of time for thought. His foolish decisions in the recent war were symptoms of the general deterioration of Trogite society.
Pride and greed had come to the fore, and honor had vanished. Narasan saw that as an obvious sign that the world itself was faltering and would soon pass out of existence.
Narasan took a certain comfort in that thought. If he were indeed living at the end of days, his grief and shame wouldn’t last too much longer, and then he could gladly go to his final rest.
3
The young foreigner was a very handsome man, and he passed Narasan’s place of business several times. His look of growing frustration intrigued Narasan a bit. Finally on a blustery winter day Narasan asked the young fellow what was troubling him.
‘I’ve been trying to find somebody here who’ll rent me an army, but I can’t find anybody who’s willing to even discuss it.’
‘Did you speak with the soldiers themselves?’
‘I didn’t think that was permitted.’
Narasan laughed. The young man appeared to be a hopeless innocent, but very sincere. Narasan explained a few realities and then asked him why he needed to hire an army.
‘There’s trouble in the wind at home, and it looks like we’re going to need professional soldiers to help us deal with it.’
Narasan found the notion of a war somewhere beyond the borders of the Empire rather intriguing. Recent events had made wars here at home seem extremely unpleasant.
Then Keselo came around the corner with yet another ploy to try to persuade Narasan to return to the army. Narasan refused, of course, and sent the young officer back home.
‘He’s a good boy,’ Narasan told the stranger, ‘and if he lives, he might go far.’ It occurred to Narasan that he’d quite often said much the same thing about his nephew, and his sorrow returned to tear at him again.
The youthful foreigner named Veltan appeared to be quite perceptive, and he immediately saw that something was tearing at Narasan’s heart. Without knowing exactly why, Narasan briefly explained why he’d chosen to abandon his military career. ‘Time’s running out anyway,’ he gloomily concluded, ‘so in a little while it won’t make any difference what I do. The world’s coming to an end, you know.’
‘I think you’ve seen what very few others have,’ Veltan told him, ‘but you didn’t go quite far enough. The world’s approaching the end of a cycle, not the end of time itself. Don’t despair, Narasan. Time has no end - or beginning either, if the truth were known.’
A sense of awe came over Narasan. This pleasant-faced young foreigner was not at all what he seemed to be, and the depth of his understanding staggered the imagination. Veltan rather deprecat-ingly shrugged off a number of his own peculiarities and got right down to the point. ‘I need your army, Commander Narasan,’ he said, ‘and I’ll pay gold for its services. If things go well, we’ll win, and winning’s all that really matters, whether it’s war or dice.’