The Ancient by R. A. Salvatore

Author:R. A. Salvatore [Salvatore, R. A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780765357441
Amazon: 0765317893
Publisher: Tor Fantasy
Published: 2008-12-02T05:00:00+00:00

From the top of the wall above the main gate to the small chapel compound, Cormack stared out at the bloodstains. Not so far away, he could see the hair and pieces of scalp of one unfortunate Alpinadoran who had caught a rock on the head. A woman, he had been told by one of the other brothers.

He couldn’t see in much detail from this distance, but the small tuft of hair blowing in the gentle wind could well have been Milkeila’s.

The monk resisted the urge to throw up. She could be lost to him forever. She could lie dead at the beach, her head split apart. Because she had been out there, he was certain, standing strong among her kin, standing determined that the imprisonment of the three men would not hold.

Father De Guilbe was wrong, Cormack knew in his heart and soul. To proselytize in the name of Blessed Abelle was a good thing, but not like this, not under penalty of a dungeon cell. Even if the men in captivity agreed to recant their own faith and follow the ways of Abelle, even if they came to do so with all their hearts and souls, it would be a hollow gain for the Church, and certainly not worth this fighting.

Cormack put his arm up on the stone railing and rested his chin in the crook of his elbow, staring helplessly at the distant tuft of hair, hoping and praying that it was not Milkeila’s.

But even if his prayers were answered, it would do little to mitigate the realization that at least one woman, young and strong and full of pride and certainty to match Giavno’s own, had died this day who should not have.

Not over this.

“Brother Cormack!” He knew Giavno’s voice all too well these days. He slowly turned to face the man, trying to keep his agitation off his face.

“The fight has ended,” Giavno said from the keep’s main door, some twenty feet back of the main gate on the surrounding wall. “Be quick to your work. We need water to wash our wounds.”

Cormack motioned toward Giavno’s torn upper arm. “Have you been tended?”

“I go to Father De Guilbe,” the man replied, though his voice softened in response to Cormack’s honest and obvious concern. “He will use a soul stone.”

“Quickly,” Cormack bade him. Giavno nodded and disappeared inside the keep.

He is a good man, Cormack reminded himself. Despite his current anger at Giavno over the barbarian prisoners, despite his rage that it had come to this—a prolonged and lethal battle and siege—Cormack understood that Giavno’s heart was good.

But the man’s thoughts were misplaced. And if “good” men could precipitate this kind of foolish and worthless slaughter, then … The thought made Cormack grimace.

He pulled himself up and noted the commotion inside the courtyard that surrounded the main keep, where brothers ran to and fro to shore up the wall in places where it had been damaged, or where the work on it had never been good enough to begin with.

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