The narrow slit of his visor turned the world into a flickering horizontal ribbon of steel and mud. It had been a long age since Jarza had traded the safety of the rear for the weight of his own boots on the field, reaping bodies with his own hand.
He had feared the years spent hunched over maps and logistics would have dulled his edge, wheezing his battle-acumen into a soft, scholarly thing. Yet here he was, at fifty-one, the heavy iron mace in his hand feeling as light as it had when he was twenty.
There was no nostalgia in the realization; he was perhaps the only old man in the South who did not crave his youth. That had been his dark age, a time of hunger and namelessness. Why crave the shadows of the past when he could linger in the light of the life he had built?All old men must one dreep in slift in the bed under the roof they built.
He was a father now. A brother, an uncle, a lord. What more could a mercenary's soul wish for than a name worth dying for?
