Vinas Solamnus by J. Robert King

Author:J. Robert King [King, J. Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Lost Legends Volume 1
Publisher: TSR
Published: 1997-08-07T04:00:00+00:00

Meus Pater

I obliterated them today, Father. Historians will look back at the Crossing, as it will henceforward be known, and recount how the elves lay like humus across the forest floor and the human rebels fled like hares before a pack of dogs. They will say that two thousand traitors were slain today, ten times the honored dead of Ergoth. I have learned enough about how histories are written to know what they will say.

Even my greatest loss – sixty-four of my eighty-three supply wagons – will be seen as a necessary chastening of the young Ergothian commander. It will be told how Vinas Solamnus addressed his division, saying he had not accepted the loss of the wagons and had decided it was their duty to take back from the land of Vingaard tenfold what that land had stolen from them.

That’s what the histories will say. They will speak of the glorious victory at the Crossing.

These small losses have given me the tool by which to turn my division into a gods-justified pillaging machine. We will despoil Vingaard and bring it to its knees before the castle walls are even in sight.

But what of that which has been lost? What of nobility and purpose? What of honest valor and innocence?

I impaled a man today and held him aloft on the end of my sword. I enjoyed watching him die.

How silly of me to think I would need to exaggerate the brutality of this force and its commander. If Vingaard learns only a quarter of our true depravity, they will surrender immediately.

I have lost everything in this victory. Even Gaias lies in a half-drowned stupor among the other wounded. Had Luccia not recognized his tunic, floating among the jam of logs, he would have been lost entirely. Titus does not know if the colonel will ever awaken.

Now, all that remains for me is the empty hope that I can end this brutal business as quickly as possible. I pray the slaughter will be atrocious enough that it will not be allowed to continue, one way or another.

My soul aches to lie in the grave, or if not that, to defeat these people so that then, under the auspices of victory and civil government, we can save them.

And save ourselves.

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