‘Very good,’ Laurence said, setting it aside. He drew out the map of the North Sea coast, to consider it. There had been some raiding near Stickney, last week, and at an outpost near Cromer, one of the places the Fleur-de-Nuits would likely be landing with fresh troops when they could get across. ‘They must send out foragers there twice a week,’ Laurence said to Tharkay. ‘I will send you there with Berkley, which will free the rest of us to go after them at Stickney. If you begin near the outpost and circle outwards, you are likely to find the foragers soon enough; there ought to be no more than fifty men. They have stopped sending out larger bands. Berkley will approach from their forward direction, and you will cut off their avenue of retreat—’

‘I beg your pardon,’ Tharkay said. ‘I prefer not to.’

Laurence paused; his hand arrested in mid-air above the map.

‘Arkady, I am sure, will oblige,’ Tharkay said, ‘but someone else must captain him. I regret,’ he added, with a lash of irony, ‘I have not the luxury of setting aside the veneer of civilization; I must be a little more careful. A temporary viciousness may be pardonable in a gentleman, even admirable, but it would forever brand me as a savage. Laurence, what are you doing?’

The question was simple enough, and ought to have afforded a dozen answers. ‘Killing soldiers,’ Laurence said, at last, ‘most of whom are starving, and vicious, so they give us still better excuse.’

It had the poor advantage of being true. Giving it voice, Laurence tasted all its ugliness on his tongue. He sat down and put a hand over his mouth, and found his face was wet. He could not speak again for a little while, struggling to master himself. At last he said to Tharkay, hoarsely, ‘If you will not go, what will you do?’

He did not mean the question in the immediate sense, and Tharkay did not take it so. He shrugged in his restrained way, the movement of a hand only. ‘There is work enough in the world,’ he answered, ‘and little enough time.’

‘And no one to decide it, but yourself,’ Laurence said. ‘No authority but your own conscience.’

‘There are authorities to choose from,’ Tharkay said, ‘to suit any action. I prefer to keep the choice a little closer.’

It seemed to Laurence the most miserably solitary existence imaginable; isolated by more than distance or even disdain. ‘How do you bear it? The choice, and all the consequences thereof, alone?’

‘Perhaps practice has reconciled me; or,’ Tharkay said dryly, ‘perhaps I simply have less natural inclination to hold myself responsible for the sins of the world, rather than for just my own.’