You are going to die.
It was a whisper that lived in the marrow of his bones, more persistent than the wind, more honest than any treaty. It sat behind the maps, behind the grand stratagems, behind the pride and the carefully groomed arrogance.
It was the absolute, crushing certainty that one is merely a speck of dust caught in the gears of a machine built by other, equally desperate men.
To stop and listen to that voice was to invite the void; to be swallowed by the staggering realization of how small a man truly is when the tide of something made by men begins to turn.
Yet, as the cold, sharp kiss of autumn air swept across the courtyard, it could not chill the heat of the hand currently clasped in his.
