David Dalglish - Dawn of Swords

The remaining elves drew their bows and aimed in his direction. Going against his every inner principle, Bardiya screamed over his shoulder, “Which is faster, your arrows or my hands? Put them down, or I’ll cave in his skull!”

He sensed their uncertainty, saw the tension of the men who held the family captive. Bardiya prayed Ethir was important enough for them to make such a compromise. It appeared as though he were. Bows dipped, and the elves stepped aside so Gordo and Tulani Hempsmen could shuffle their daughter out of the grove. He hoped they reached safety, that there weren’t more elves lying in wait around the grove.

Bardiya turned to his captive, who coughed and wheezed under his grip. Ethir’s expression was no longer quite so impudent. The elf looked frightened. Bardiya took a deep breath. Never before had the commandment of forgiveness been so hard.

“I do not know why you hate us so,” he said, “nor why you wish us harm. If my parents had lived through this, they would have hunted you down and placed your heads on spikes along the Corinth’s western banks. But I am not my parents. I am Bardiya Gorgoros of Ker, the land we have so named. Violence is not in my heart, nor in the hearts of my people. You will never again see us near your forest home, but hear this: should you ever step foot into these plains again with any intention but love and cooperation, I will strike you down. That is a promise, from one man of honor to another. Am I understood?”

Ethir nodded.

“Good.”

Bardiya released his grip, allowing the elf to fall. Ethir stood up shakily, brushed himself off, and flexed his arms. He whistled to his fellow elves, and one by one they disappeared from the thicket. Ethir was the last to leave, fixing Bardiya with one final, conflicted stare.

“You will not see us again,” the elf said.

“Before you go,” said Bardiya. “I must know. Please. Was this my fault, because of our misunderstanding about the birds?”

Ethir shook his head. “Birds? No, giant, there are things much greater than you moving through this world now. I will not weep for the rulers of House Gorgoros, but neither would I have moved against them if not for the gods. Put the blame on them, if you must.”

Before Bardiya could ask him what he meant, the elf ducked out of sight. Once he was gone, an emptiness flooded into Bardiya’s massive chest. The tree limb, the blood on it still drying, dropped from his limp fingers. Slowly he shuffled over to where his parents lay. He fell to his knees before them, rolling them apart so that he might gaze at their beautiful faces. He placed his hands on their broken, blood-soaked chests, and began uttering his prayers. In the back of his mind he knew it was hopeless, but in that moment he didn’t care. His father and mother, the people who had raised him, who had first imparted to him the glory of Ashhur and the virtues of peace and prosperity, were gone. No matter how much healing magic he poured out of his fingers, he could not reverse that.

Death was permanent-forever.

Tears flowed down his cheeks. He felt no hatred for the elves, but he wished he could dive into their minds. He wished he could hunt them down, drag them before the corpses, and plunge into them the sadness and ache he felt. But what could he do? What explanation was there for such madness? He scooped up the corpses, all seven of them, and positioned them in a line beneath the shade of the largest willow in the grove. That done, he knelt beside them and let loose his despair, weeping as he waited for the Hempsmen family to return with more of their people. Then they could begin the procession into the desert, where the bodies would be buried beneath the silhouette of the black spire.

Love and forgiveness, that is the key , he heard Ashhur’s voice whisper in his mind. Bardiya clung onto that mantra for all it was worth. The first man solely created by Ashhur, Bessus Gorgoros, was dead. As far as omens went, none could be darker or more ominous.

The liquid burned as it flowed down his throat, but it was better than the pain in his chest. He welcomed the calming numbness that followed, and even the nausea the liquor caused as it worked its way through his veins. In the end, though, it was no real comfort. Nothing was. Vulfram knew that the drunkenness would subside as it always did, and his thoughts would return to Lyana.

He dropped his head into his palms and worked at his eyes as if trying to pry them from his skull. He couldn’t sleep, could barely eat. It had been this way ever since that fateful day two weeks ago, when his lashings had stripped the flesh from his daughter’s back. On the rare moments he did stumble into unconsciousness, he was plagued with nightmares of Lyana’s future life as a Sister of the Cloth, of the abuses she would endure at the hands of the men who purchased her services, especially the young and nubile. More than anything he wanted to seek out the Sisters who had scurried away with her, perhaps even storm into their large vicarage in Felwood and free her. But he wouldn’t-couldn’t. Lyana’s punishment had been Karak’s decree, a decree given to him personally the evening before that fateful day. He could never turn his back on the word of his god.

Even if it killed him inside.

It was destroying his relationship with Yenge as well. When he was away, all he did was dream of home, and now that he was here, there was no happiness, no comfort. Yenge blamed him for their daughter’s penalty- him! — as if he were responsible for her wild behavior. “She was a girl in need of a father,” she said, “and you weren’t here.” Even Alexander and Caleigh grew distant, acting as if they were afraid to speak with him. His children meant everything to him, and seeing their wary glances tore at his heart. Every night he listened as Yenge wailed herself to sleep in the chamber down the hall, and every night he thought to go to her, to comfort her, but he never did. He stayed in his study, using the fireplace to warm his hands on each progressively chillier fall evening, wallowing in self-revulsion.

And it wasn’t only Lyana’s fate that inflicted him with guilt. Broward Renson was never far from his thoughts; Vulfram was haunted by the image of his oldest friend’s head rolling away from the executioner’s stone. He often cursed Broward’s name, but that was always followed by a moment of doubt. Why would his friend have partaken in an act that hovered between irresponsible and outwardly evil? And why hadn’t Vulfram possessed the patience to stop and ask? His friend’s cries haunted him. What might Broward have said if he’d stayed Vulfram’s blade? But Karak himself had ordered that the judgment be swift, meaning that Vulfram’s questions were a sign of doubt and cowardice, a lack of faith in his deity.

It was a destructive cycle of self-hate that saw no end.

He tipped back the jug of brandy and took another hard swallow. This time he choked on the bitter juice while pounding the table with his fist. His lips formed Yenge’s name, wanting to call out to her, but his throat remained still. He stumbled to the door of their bedchamber, pressed his ear against it, and heard his wife sobbing again. His fingers brushed the polished ivory door handle but stopped short of lifting it. Instead, he wandered back to his desk and slumped behind it. He pulled out a piece of parchment and then dabbed the tip of his quill into a tub of ink, but in his drunkenness all that came out was an illegible smear when the tip touched the page. He stared at the paper, hardly aware of what he was trying to write or whom he even planned to write to.

It is all my fault .

He tossed the quill across the room, crumpled the parchment, and cried. He only had one more day left before he had to head back to Veldaren and reclaim his position as Lord Commander. More than anything, he wished someone could heal his troubled mind before then.