He was met with that old, unyielding gaze.
It was the very look he had received that terrible night in the dark, after leagues upon leagues of frantic riding through the briars, with the usurper's huntsmen stalking close behind and the bloodhounds baying like demons in the mist. Merelao's heart had thudded in his small chest the way a child's does when confronted by a nightmare far too vast for his understanding.
He did not get why he was running, he was not getting why his father dead he had now to escape the capital.
"Why are we running?" he had wept then, his lungs burning with icy air, as his father's knight shoved the boy's head down behind a mossy boulder, peering out into the black woods. He had asked again, tugging at the man's bloody sleeve. And still Varo had offered no answer. He had merely turned and looked upon the boy with that heavy, solemn stare.
