Trembling, he looked up and met her eyes. They were clear, but not languid. They held sympathy, but not empathy. This, he realized, was a woman who had learned how to protect herself. ‘If you ever need my help, Sheltatha Lore,’ he said, ‘I am yours.’

She smiled. ‘Be careful with such promises, tutor. Now, if you are incapable of making love, will passing a night in the arms of a woman please you?’

* * *

‘This one to finish her! She’s a beauty, Waft, and she’s all yours!’ The soldier’s voice laughed the words in Narad’s head. He measured his paces by them as the company moved through the smoke-filled forest. He sat hunched beneath them when the Legion camped for the night, his back to the cookfires, his hands reaching up again and again to probe the bulges and indents of his face. They echoed in the darkness when all had bedded down on damp ground and insects whined close to draw blood from whatever was exposed. In his dreams he felt her again, in his arms, her skin impossibly soft and still warm – he knew the truth of that no matter what they told him – and how she had yielded to his awkwardness and so made of herself a welcome embrace.

She had been past all hurting by then. He told himself this again and again, as if by incantation he could silence that soldier’s laughing voice, as if he could impose a balance between cruelty and mercy. But even this haunted him, since he could not be sure which was which. Was there pity and mercy in that soldier’s gleeful invitation, and cruelty in Narad’s answering it? Had he not sought to be tender, to show a gentle touch when taking her? Had he not thrown his body over hers to shield her from their laughter and their raw jests, their eager eyes?

What had they fed on that day, in that hall, when looking upon what they had done to that poor bride? Not once had he felt a part of it; not once did he imagine himself truly belonging to this company of killers. He asked himself how he had come to be among them, sword in hand, padding out from the night into a horror-filled dawn.

There had been a boy once, not ugly, not filled with venom or fear. A boy who had walked into town with his small paw nestled inside someone else’s hand, and that boy had known warmth and impossible freedom – with all the sands ahead smooth and clean. Perhaps, suckling on the tales of war, he had filled his head with dreams of battle and heroism; but even then, his place in every scene had been unquestioned in its righteousness. Evil belonged to the imagined enemies, for whom viciousness was sweet nectar sipped with wrongful pleasure, and all vengeance awaited those enemies by the toy sword he held.