Ashes and Hope
Life is suffering, and luck is merely a brief mirage in the desert of days. Even amid sufferings, a reasonable person moves forward, not because they believe in victory, but because in the very movement there lives some wild, almost perverse beauty—a rebellion against the absurdity of existence.
The news arrived at dawn, like lightning on a clear day.
The camp of the Monalia knights stirred—the air thickened with the smells of sweating horses and a distinct tang of fear. Men whispered to each other, women crossed themselves, children huddled in the corners of tents, sensing something amiss.
The Kriver Empire had liquidated the king. The queen. The entire staff down to the last stable boy. The word "liquidated" sounded businesslike, as if it were about closing a small shop, not the destruction of a three-hundred-year dynasty. The old world was dying not to the sounds of heroic fanfares—but quietly, like an autumn leaf.
There is a myth—the princess survived.
Myth is the right word. A thin thread of faith that we clung to like drowning people to a straw. Hope floated in the camp air like morning fog over a swamp—weak, ghostly, but stubborn. Someone swore they had seen her in the neighboring county. Someone heard from a merchant that she was hiding among the mountain peoples. Someone simply wanted to believe.
The real blow came later.
Loyent de Mortvel—the legendary commander, the terror of empires—had stopped the Kriver army at the castle. A feat worthy of ancient tales! Only this heroic act so brightly illuminated the grayness of the rest of the command that discipline cracked like a dry branch under a boot. Soldiers began defecting to Kriver—there, at least, they paid regularly in silver, not promises of glory.
The remaining knights huddled like sheep before a storm: "And what does Marshal Brandt de Mortvel think? What will the hero's brother say?"
A truly epic figure. The elder Mortvel doesn't rush into battle with head held high and a cry of "For the king!"—first, he studies the maps, calculates the losses, learns the price of victory. Wisdom or cowardice—who can tell?
That's when I rolled onto the stage.
"Why me?" I asked when the decision was announced.
"Scholn, you're the most decisive, and you've been left in charge here," the other knights said, but their eyes darted away. "Ride to the marshal, report as is. Time is of the essence."
I went. I wasn't burning with enthusiasm—that had long burned out, leaving ashes of cynicism and a bitter taste in my mouth—but someone had to. One thousand one hundred kilometers sounded like a death sentence. On a good horse—two weeks' journey. On my nag named "Wind"—until the second coming, no sooner.