Korgas found himself paralyzed. For all his bluster, no words came. What answer could a man give to an ultimatum that had been laid across his throat like a razor?
To rage against it was to invite the extinction of his lineage. To make good on his threats was to watch the foreigners paint the hills red with Valakii blood. Yet, to retreat with a bowed head was to be branded a coward before his own household guard, men who lived and breathed by the code of the warrior. He stood in a suffocating hole, hoping against hope that the shadows of the afternoon would hide his trembling hands.
He remained a man without an answer, but in the brutal logic of war, silence is its own form of surrender.
Jarza accepted the concession.
