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tiny sense of relief that it must have been a sudden death, perhaps with no pain. He felt an odd, unexpected ache; the boy was still so young.
    He stared at the three of them, looking like nothing so much as a family sleeping side by side. He knew the world spun on, and no one but he, and perhaps one or two people in the distant north, would note the passing of Bandamin and his family. Jorgen, the last scion of some obscure family tree, was dead, and with him that line had ended forever.
    The luggage master looked at Kaspar as if he expected him to say something. Kaspar looked down on the three bodies for another moment, then put heels to his horse’s sides, turned the gelding, and began his long ride northward.
    As he cantered from the battlefield, Kaspar felt something inside him turn cold and hard. It would be easy enough to hate Okanala for violating the strictures of “civilized” warfare. It would be easy to hate Muboya for taking a man from his family. It would be easy to hate anyone and everyone. But Kaspar knew that over the years he had issued certain orders, and because of those orders hundreds of Bandamins had been taken from their homes, and hundreds of Jojannas and Jorgens had endured hardships, even death.
    With a sigh that felt as if it came from deep within his soul, Kaspar wondered if there was any happy purpose to existence, anything beyond suffering and, at the end, death. For if there was, at this moment in his life he was sorely pressed to say what it might be.

FOUR
N IGHTHAWKS
    T he soldiers moved quickly.
    Eric von Darkmoor, Duke of Krondor, Knight-Marshal of the King’s Army in the West, and Warden of the Western Marches, stood behind a large outcropping of rocks, observing his men moving slowly into position. Silent silhouettes against rocks bathed in deep shadows cast by the setting sun, they were a special unit of the Prince’s Household Guards. Erik personally had designed their training as he ascended through the ranks of the army, first as a captain in the Prince’s army, then as Commander of the Garrison at Krondor, then Knight-Marshal.
    The men were once part of the Royal Krondorian Pathfinders, a company of trackers and scouts, descendants of the legendary Imperial Keshian Guides, but nowthis smaller elite company was called simply the “Prince’s Own,” soldiers whom Erik called upon in special circumstances, such as the one that confronted them this night. Their uniforms were distinctive: dark grey short tabards bearing the blazon of Krondor—an eagle soaring over a peak, rendered in muted colors—and black trousers with a red strip down the side tucked into heavy boots, suitable for marching, riding, or as they were employed now, climbing rocky faces. Each man wore a simple, dark, open-faced helm, and carried short weapons—a sword barely long enough to deserve the name, and an estoc, a long dagger. Each man was trained in a specific set of skills, and right now Erik’s two best rock climbers were leading the assault.
    Erik let his gaze move up to the top of the cliffs opposite his position.
    High above them sat the ancient Cavell Keep, looking down upon a path that diverged from the main draw, a path known as Cavell Run. A small waterfall graced the rock face near the keep, landing in a pool in an outcrop halfway up the cliff, then falling again to the stream that had originally formed the run. As such things are wont to do, the course of the stream had changed over the years, and some event, geological or man-made, had forced the streambed down the other side of the draw, leaving the original creekbed dry and dusty. That pool was their destination, for if the intelligence Erik possessed from nearly a hundred years ago was valid, behind that pool existed a secret entrance, the keep’s original bolt-hole.
    Erik had brought his soldiers into Cavell Town before dawn, quickly hiding them as best he could, a difficult task in a town so small, but by noon the townspeople were