A day remained until the appointed hour—lonely like the last leaf. Under Scholn, the horse Wind breathed heavily, a companion from childhood years when a twelve-year-old boy was first entrusted with a steed. Then summer smelled of honey from wild grasses, and the thin-legged horse looked with eyes of mountain lakes. Now a wound oozed on its side, staining the silvery coat the color of faded poppies.
Strange thing—loyalty. People betray for a handful of coins, but animals carry devotion to the last breath, like precious cargo entrusted by gods. Scholn felt every convulsive movement of Wind, and his soul filled with wormwood bitterness. Maybe that's wisdom—not questioning the meaning of service, but simply carrying it, like a tree carries leaves?
The road wound past a field where four years ago life boiled—not the kind born from seed, but the kind spilled in hot streams. Now the field was silent like cursed. Bare earth, pitted with black craters. The soil itself, worn by iron and fire, refused to bear anything but dust and dirt.
Many Monalia knights opposed the alliance with Kriver after the conquest of Zaher. The Zaherians were bandits—sowed nothing, fed on others' blood. Because of them armies rose. In half a century of wars, together with them they crushed five kingdoms and an empire that crumbled at the first blow. With each victory, Kriver became more insatiable, and Monalia bogged down in a bloody swamp. They, sons of the fatherland—this burned inside. Bitter irony: wanted to protect their world, became a sword in others' hands.
Scholn tormented himself with the question—how to tell Marshal Brandt the truth? They lost everything. The king, his brother, two sacred artifacts. And remnants of their own soul. The whole way he sorted words, but they formed either a report or an inarticulate howl. How to elegantly report a catastrophe?
Night descended on the earth like a soft coverlet, and at dawn fog spread over the camp like ghostly breath—breath of forgotten gods. Tents whitened in the mist like gravestones, and dying fires flickered with last hopes of lost battles.
The camp of Monalia knights sprawled at the border with Railon—a living organism ready to explode with steel and fury. The air was thick with smoke from fires and something elusively alarming—the smell of approaching trouble.