CHAPTER FIVE
Nebesta’s FinestVoran surveyed the slaughter-fields from a promontory. Bodies twisted out of recognition. Two buzzards fighting over a corpse. A banner of gold and purple streaked with mud, trampled into the green of young grass. A cracked shield pillowing a head with no lower jaw.
It should leave some impression on him. Something. At least revulsion. But Voran felt nothing. Seeing years’ worth of battlefields on a weekly basis did that to a person’s soul. If he even had a soul left in that cold, barely-beating heart of his.
In the middle of the field of the dead, strangely separate from the rest, lay a youth barely out of his childhood. His was a faint smile in a face white as milk. His mail was barely tarnished from use, set like a jewel in a casing of spotless clothing i
