Honor Bound Trilogy Box Set by Jon Kiln

Author:Jon Kiln [Kiln, Jon]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Published: 2016-05-27T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11: Dark Men Do Dark Things

The soldiers gathered on the plain across both sides of the roadway, facing east. The horses and wagons were loaded for war.

Nisero recognized the looks of fear and excitement on the faces of men from ordinary walks of life conscripted into service. Their full complement of training had probably been a speech about war and service to the King, if even that much. Their immediate officers probably had little more war experience. These men were gathered for numbers and the intimidation of mass.

If actual bloodshed began, the men would be little more than pawns. Nisero was not sure that the eastern kingdom wasn’t doing the same thing. They had been at war with their neighbors for far longer, so chances were that the former farmers and merchants’ sons that still lived within their ranks were far more seasoned than these green civilians in borrowed war garb.

The typical hope of such displays was to bring foreign kings to the negotiating table. Men would then return to their farms and families, claiming to be disappointed that there was no fighting, having no knowledge of the terms of the peace. In reality, they were exhausted from their terror and relief. Then, they told lies over ale of how many enemy heads they removed on the field of battle.

Nisero was not sure how well this tact would play, if the eastern kingdom did march on the border. He did not recall the last time any king had come to war over the murder of his son and heir. The lieutenant did not know the ways of kings like the ways of common men, but he had to imagine that the blood ran hotter and the taste for vengeance would be harder to sate.

He had only witnessed a handful of large scale displays used to sue for peace in his time. None of those had compared in size to these ranks of farmer soldiers. The Elite Guard had been more often sent on pursuits and strikes where peace was only to be found on the other side of violence, and sometimes not even then.

Nisero bowed his head inside his hood. He and Berengar made their way through the conscripted ranks’ camp behind the staging area of the regular army. The risk of being identified was far less than among men with whom Nisero had served and even commanded in various campaigns. With the recent effort to track him, he was not sure how much less the risk was though.

He wondered if Captain Forseth and the surviving Guard were present. He wondered about Arianne’s husband, Dreth. At the very least, none of them seemed to expect Captain Berengar and Lieutenant Nisero to be walking through the midst of the King’s army.

Nisero’s mind drifted to the words of Lord Caffrey on the floor of his library not two days earlier. Conspiracies, lies, murder, and betrayal that might go up as far as the King himself was included in the accusations. The

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