He thought back to Tutor Sagander’s nonsense – the appalling lessons the old man had thrust upon Arathan on the first days out. The self-righteous could argue unto their last breath, so certain were they of their stance, and yet with outrage would they view any accusation of being self-serving. But smugness filled the silence after every pronouncement they made, as if condescension were virtue’s reward.

The Borderswords were men and women who had rejected the stilted rigidity of Kharkanas and sought out a rawer truth in the wild lands upon the very edge of civilization. They claimed to live under older laws, the kind that bound all forms of life, but Rint wondered now if the very sentiment had been forged on an anvil of lies. Innocence withered before knowing eyes just as it had once withered behind them. The first foot set upon virgin ground despoiled; the first touch stained; the first embrace broke the bones of the wild.

Outside House Dracons, it had been Ville – or was it Galak – who had bemoaned the slaughter of the beasts, and yet dreamed of taking the last creature by spear or arrow, if only to bring an end to its loneliness. That was a sentiment breathless in its stupidity and tragedy. It arrived as punctuation, and only idiotic silence could follow. And yet Rint knew the truth of it, and felt its heavy reverberation, like a curse to haunt his kind down the ages.

He would fight for justice. And, if need be, he would expose to the Borderswords the sordid delusion of their so-called neutrality. Life was a war against a thousand enemies, from the sustenance carved from nature to the insanity of a people’s will to do wrong in the name of right. His hands trembled, he now knew, from the blood they had spilled, and their eagerness to spill yet more.

There was a truth that came with standing as would a god, with eyes fixed upon the destruction his malign will had wrought. To be a god was to know utter loneliness, and yet find comfort in isolation. When one stood alone with nothing but power in one’s hands, violence was a seductive lure.

And now, dear Ville, I long for a spear to the back, an arrow to the throat.

Give me war, then. I have walked from complex truth to simple lie, and I cannot go back.

It is no crime to end a life that sees what it has lost.