| Mordred was furious.
I?ll rip out yer heart and feed it ter the dogs.
That was the message he?d left for Devante with his lieutenant, though whether Felix had passed it on to his captain, she wasn?t sure.
She?d just spent the last hour talking to Devante in the Keg and Anchor, trying to bring about an ending to this idiotic war.
Yet, whilst he?d calmed down enough to listen to her reasoning, he remained steadfast in his views.
Minoc, she knew, was a big black eye for the loyalists, and Devante sought redemption through his foolish war on Serpent?s Hold. It was not, he reasoned, part of the Kingdom now that Kaldor was there, and he sought to rectify that apparent wrong. The fact that Commander Jurrell had given Kaldor leave to use it as their base, and the fact that the Ruling Council had not dictated otherwise, cut no ice with Devante. He was on a crusade, and no amount of logic or Kaldorian history lessons would persuade him otherwise.
Cal sighed deeply as she climbed into bed, knowing that, for all she had tried, she had failed, and that the war would continue anew tomorrow.
Gwen, the pretty elf who had taken over VanQa?s tavern, and Devante?s lover, would be disappointed, but there was nothing Cal could do about that. The most she could do right now was to ensure that Mordred did not carry out his threat to start cutting off the Marksmens? fingers if they dared showed their faces in the Hold again.
Suffice to say, Mordred?s friendship with Devante was in tatters, and after the flogging incident last week, had now become a feud. She had told Devante that it was not Mordred?s idea to punish him, and that he had been under orders to do so. In fact, he had Mordred to thank that he hadn?t been permanently maimed, for Mordred could have opted to cripple him by removing some fingers or an eye.
Not that it mattered now. The war would continue, no matter what the cost to the Marksmen. Devante was a fool; a proud fool. And as long as he refused to admit he was wrong, his men would suffer. |