The Heart of Dishonor chapters 7

Indeed, many faces of Western descent can be seen among their ranks."

"Men taken from their homes and made to fight," repeated Lakent. He turned to the gathered and challenged, "Who here can tell the difference between these poor slaves and the men Nesel wishes to conscript into the army? Men taken from their homes to be sent, against their will, into the hell of war?"

Nesel stood and calmly stated, "I can."

"Oh? How would you described these ‘conscripts,’ then?" he mocked , as if he were condoling a child.

Nesel gripped his table tightly. "You will show respect for me as I have shown respect for you in these debates, Bolare."

Lakent contemptuously said, "Continue."

"The slaves of the Shadow worshippers are forced to risk their lives, but far worse, are forced to risk their souls. Should they kill a man who does nothing but defend his own, they shall surely pay in the after-life. But conscripts of Octania shall save far more lives than they shall destroy, and so shall be favored in the end."

"The end does not justify the means, Nesel. Gaia does not care if your murder has resulted in a net gain, as if men were but goods to be sold at market."

A few scattered laughs rang throughout the Hall.

Nesel, his face burning with humiliation, spoke, forcing the words roughly through a filter of respectability. "That is true. But, even the Seers would agree that it is necessary to kill one who would kill you. And so shall the conscripts rout the Shadow worshippers utterly, and cast them into the sea before they should threaten Octania."

Lakent firmly corrected, "If they should threaten Octania."

Nesel turned and departed the hall, with Lord Iaen hurrying after. Nesel scurried through the halls and almost ran up the staircase, Nesel saw a local baron and forced himself to slow to a walk, slowly breathing and muttering Gaia’s Love as the man walked past.

When the baron faded from sight, Nesel slipped into a disused room and ran to a chair, which he picked up and smashed violently against the unforgiving stone wall. Nesel collapsed onto a rug and began to weep violently.

Iaen walked over the threshold quietly closing the door behind him. He put a hand on the young baron’s shuddering shoulders and asserted, "You did well, Nesel. You did well."

Daken and Rodul paced over the stretch of road above the quarry. They both were wearing simple brown tunics and trousers. Their horses, tethered to trees on the side of the road furthest from the quarry, were laying down placidly. Daken’s and Rodul’s Honor Blades and shields were strapped to the flanks of the roans. Daken’s shield bore a crest conceived by his great-great-grandfather when they first entered aristocratic life; it depicted an oak tree on a field of gold above a red stripe. His ancestor had made a fortune selling oak to be used in Yantsima’s blast furnaces, in a time when steel was needed but coal was rare. Oak, when cured properly, could fire steel just as well as the blackest coal. By contrast, Rodul’s coat was relatively new, and was a simple drawing of a Cauldron Dragon with a spear through his heart. Rodul’s father, Sir Cirice the Dragonslayer, was the leader of one of the few groups of knights who managed to bring down a drake at the infamous Siege of Dragon Gate, and had redesigned the family crest in his own honor.

Rodul said, "Well, that was a waste of time." He was right. Whoever had committed the murder had covered up all tracks for fifty feet in both directions.