I opened my mouth and snapped it shut. We’d stopped at a square widening in the wall that would probably become the basis for a flanking tower. In the field, on the right, a man hung on a cross. Bloody, his clothes torn, his face a mess, he sagged off the boards. I would’ve guessed he was dead, except he was staring straight at Roland, his eyes defiant.

“Father!”

“Yes?”

“A man is being crucified.”

He glanced in that direction and a shadow flickered through his face. “So he is.”

It was the same look Julie gave me when she thought she had gotten away with stealing beer out of the keg but forgot about the empty mug on her desk. He had forgotten about the man he was slowly killing.

Julie glanced behind her, at the empty field. Okay, that’s about enough of that. I had to get her as close to the exit as I could now.

“I require privacy,” I told her. “Go back and wait with Derek, please.”

She bowed, turned, and walked away.

“You give her too little credit,” Roland said.

“I give her all the credit. I also never forget that she’s sixteen years old.”

“A wonderful age. Full of possibilities.”

Possibilities that you have no business contemplating. “What did he do?”

Roland sighed.

“What was so bad that you decided to torture him?”

Roland looked after Julie. “The problem with warlords is that the position is fundamentally flawed by its very nature. A general who is unable to lead is useless, but to lead, he must inspire loyalty. When the troops rush the field, knowing they may lay down their lives, they look to their general, not to the king behind him. Sooner or later, their loyalties become divided. They abandon their king and look instead to the one who bled and suffered with them.”

He looked at the human wreck on the cross.

“Is that one of Hugh’s men?”

“Yes.”

“What did he do?”

“He refused my orders. I told him to do something and he told me that he was a soldier, not a butcher. The great hypocrisy of this pseudo-moral stance lies in the fact that if Hugh had given him the same order, he probably would’ve obeyed. I merely reminded him that he draws his breath at my discretion.”

And he’d ordered him tied to the cross. So the death would take longer. “That’s barbaric.”

Roland turned to me with a small smile. “No. Barbarism usually produces swift death. Cruelty is the mark of a civilized human. I still have a hundred Iron Dogs in this location. He’s an excellent visual aid.”

And that was it right there in a nutshell. Nothing was off-limits as long as it let him accomplish his goal.

“How long has he been up there?”