Forge of Darkness (The Kharkanas Trilogy 1)

The troop awaited the return of their captain, Scara Bandaris, who along with a half-dozen soldiers had gone on to Kharkanas, to deliver the Jheleck hostages. Left behind by the caravan, still rib-cracked, still face-swollen, still half-blind, Narad had stumbled upon this troop and they had taken him in, cared for him, given him weapons and a horse, and now he rode with them.

The war against the Deniers had begun, here in this ancient forest. Narad had not known such a war was even threatening; he had never been impressed by the forest people. They were ignorant, most likely inbred, and meek as lambs. They weren’t much of an enemy, and it didn’t seem to be much of a war. The few huts they had come upon yesterday had been what Narad would have expected. One middle-aged man with a bad knee, a woman who called him husband, and the children they’d begotten. The girl who’d been hiding in the hut might have been pretty before the fire, but she was barely human after it, crawling out like she did. The killing had been straightforward. It had been professional. There had been no rapes, no torture. Every death delivered had been delivered quickly. Narad told himself that even necessity could be balanced with mercy.

The problem was: he was having trouble finding the necessity.

Corporal Bursa told him that he and his troop had cleaned out most of the Deniers in this section of forest — a day’s walk in any direction. He said it had been easy as there didn’t seem to be too many warriors among them, just the old and mothers and the young. Bursa reminded Narad of Haral, and already he had felt his instinctive response to a man bad at hiding hurts, but this time he kept quiet. He had learned his lesson and he wanted to stay with these men and women, these soldiers of the Legion. He wanted to be one of them.

He had drawn his sword in the Deniers’ camp, but none of the enemy had come within reach, and almost before he knew it the whole thing was over, and the others were firing the huts.

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The troop awaited the return of their captain, Scara Bandaris, who along with a half-dozen soldiers had gone on to Kharkanas, to deliver the Jheleck hostages. Left behind by the caravan, still rib-cracked, still face-swollen, still half-blind, Narad had stumbled upon this troop and they had taken him in, cared for him, given him weapons and a horse, and now he rode with them.

The war against the Deniers had begun, here in this ancient forest. Narad had not known such a war was even threatening; he had never been impressed by the forest people. They were ignorant, most likely inbred, and meek as lambs. They weren’t much of an enemy, and it didn’t seem to be much of a war. The few huts they had come upon yesterday had been what Narad would have expected. One middle-aged man with a bad knee, a woman who called him husband, and the children they’d begotten. The girl who’d been hiding in the hut might have been pretty before the fire, but she was barely human after it, crawling out like she did. The killing had been straightforward. It had been professional. There had been no rapes, no torture. Every death delivered had been delivered quickly. Narad told himself that even necessity could be balanced with mercy.

The problem was: he was having trouble finding the necessity.

Corporal Bursa told him that he and his troop had cleaned out most of the Deniers in this section of forest — a day’s walk in any direction. He said it had been easy as there didn’t seem to be too many warriors among them, just the old and mothers and the young. Bursa reminded Narad of Haral, and already he had felt his instinctive response to a man bad at hiding hurts, but this time he kept quiet. He had learned his lesson and he wanted to stay with these men and women, these soldiers of the Legion. He wanted to be one of them.

He had drawn his sword in the Deniers’ camp, but none of the enemy had come within reach, and almost before he knew it the whole thing was over, and the others were firing the huts.

Where the girl had hidden was something of a mystery, but the smoke and flames had driven her out, eventually. Narad had been close by — well, the closest of any of them — and when she’d crawled out Bursa had ordered him to put the creature out of its misery.

He still remembered edging closer, fighting the gusts of heat. She was making no sound. Not once had she even screamed, although her agony must have been terrible. It was right to kill her, to end her torment. He told himself that again and again, as he worked ever closer — until he hunched over her, staring down at her scorched back. Pushing the sword into it had not been as hard as he thought it would be. The thing below him could as easily have been a sow’s carcass, roasted on a spit. Except for all the black hair.

There was no reason, then, that his killing her should be haunting him. But he was having trouble laughing and joking with the others. He was, in fact, having trouble meeting their eyes. Bursa had tried telling him that these forest folk weren’t even Tiste, but that was untrue. They were — the lame man they’d cut down could have been from Narad’s own family, or a cousin in a nearby village. He felt confused and the confusion wouldn’t go away. If he could get drunk it’d go away, for a time, but that wasn’t allowed in this troop. They drank beer because it was safer than the local water, but it was weak and there wasn’t that much of it and besides, these soldiers weren’t like that. Captain Scara Bandaris wouldn’t allow it; by all accounts, he was hard and ferociously disciplined, and he expected the same of his soldiers.

Yet these men and women worshipped the captain.

Narad was jealous of them all. He’d not even met the captain yet, and he wondered what he would see in this Scara Bandaris to make sense of this killing of Deniers, and this whole damned war. Narad had grown up on a farm lying just outside a small hamlet. He knew the reasons everyone gave when hunting vermin — the rats brought disease, the hares ate the crops and riddled the ground, and so all that slaughter was necessary. He knew that he should think of these Deniers in the same way, as an infestation and a threat to their way of life. Even rats minded their own business, but that didn’t save them; that didn’t stop them from being a problem; that didn’t keep the beaters and their dogs away.

He sat on a log outside the tent he had been given. Every now and then he would look down at his hands, and then quickly away again.

It wasn’t murder. It was mercy.

But he was an ugly man now and the world was just as ugly, and this face wasn’t his and if this face wasn’t his then neither were these hands, and yesterday was someone else’s crime. He wondered if that girl had been beautiful. He believed that she had. But beauty had no place in this new world. This world that Haral had delivered him into. This was Haral’s fault and one day he would kill that bastard.