Chapter 137. Blood and Gore

Geoffrey

Smoke carries the smell of burning bodies.

I hear a terrible silence where there had been the screaming of children. Everything is so awfully, terribly silent.

More smoke rises from the crops in the field, and the last of the women and children who had run in there to hide shriek in agony before there is, again, terrible silence.

I want to throw up, but can’t. I am the leader of the Rallegrad army, after all. It would show terrible weakness if I lost my lunch, especially a second time.

“Is this really necessary?” I ask the man King Maximus calls my steward. He seems to be more in charge of things than I am.

“Oh, yes,” Boris replies. “We must make them fear us. We do this now so we don’t have to later.”

“That doesn’t make any sense to me,” I tell him.

He sighs, clearly despairing of me ever being a king worthy of waging war. “What we’re trying to do is to scare the Shadowglade forces into submission. That’s why