Madness. Of all God’s punishments, it was the most terrifying. Guy’s father had succumbed to it in his later life, and it was said to run common within a family. There could be no worse fate, to lose oneself. To have a lifetime of memories and reason fade away. Guy had experienced a touch of it once, when he had fallen into that muddy hole as a young recruit, and been unable to scramble out. He remembered what it was like to feel sanity slip away, to think about suicide in a way that honestly felt like a logical answer. No disease, no violence, was worse than losing one’s mind.

It was not only mankind’s sickness to bear. A place could have it, too.

“WE’RE COMING CLOSE TO the tipping point, I think,” Guy said, their horses picking their way off-trail through the unrelenting bracken. It was not noon yet, and the sun pierced through the forest’s sparse canopy to scatter pillars of shadow in every direction. Surrounded at all times by a thousand hiding spots, but always unnervingly exposed themselves.

“What’s the tipping point?” Marshall asked.

“Let me ask you this. Which is more effective, ambition or intelligence?”

Marshall snorted. “That’s easy. Intelligence. Ambitious young men do some awfully stupid things, that’s when they come to me in gaol.”

“Certainly,” Guy considered, “but men with intelligence tend to keep to themselves. It’s usually wise to play it safe, but playing it safe doesn’t accomplish much. The ambitious risk more, and often fail, but to those that succeed goes the power.”

“By such an argument,” Ferrers brushed off a twig that had landed on his shoulder, “there would never be men of intelligence in power. But that is not the case.”

“Not at all,” Guy answered. “There comes a tipping point when wise men must act, when it finally becomes the wiser move. Look at our history of sheriffs. FitzRanulph was a smart man and he led for fifteen years. After him was Murdac, a good man but a bit impulsive, sheriff for six years. Next, de Lacy, a strategic imbecile, more worried about creating some legacy for himself than understanding what Nottingham needed. Two years. Now this Wendenal, with all ambition and no experience. This is the way of the world. The just are replaced by the ambitious, because the ambitious seize opportunity. Eventually, only the most ruthless claim power through bloodright. That is the tipping point history shows us, when men of intellect must step back into the arena, to put a stop to the downward slope of greed.”

Somewhere unknowably ahead, a heavy branch cracked and tumbled down, snapping the air until silence again filled the void.