The heavy oak doors of the solar groaned open, and the sight he had craved through half a year of blood and ash finally materialized before his eyes. There they stood: his wife and his daughter.
How many times had he conjured their faces in the dark, using them as an anchor before willing himself to do the things that needed to be done?Sleeping in ditches, eating shit, and passing sleepless nights to manage the war?
Throughout the worst of the campaign, he recalled very little of the actual butchery, he had been moved by a cold, systematic rage more than anything else. Yet, as he looked at them, the graceful, haunting words Merelao had uttered in the crimson mud of the Ford came roaring back into his mind.
It is known that the appetite of conquerors is ravenous.
He tried to press the memory down, to forget the slick feel of the reins in his hands and the sound of cracking bone, but it was like trying to hold river water in a clenched fist.
