The room they were in must have been co-opted from someone. There were glasses of mulled wine on a single wooden table. Tapestries hung from the wall, and a closed portfolio that Skandra was certain held documents of middling importance. Tax documents. The thought made him smile, which in turn almost caused him to eat a mouthful of the clove he'd extracted from his coat. One of the wall sconces served to light it - which earned him a dirty look from Alvon. The man didn't approve of smoking. Skandra exhaled a stream of fragrant clove smoke into his face as reply. And that in turn caused Alvon to grimace sourly at Skandra. That wasn't the reason any of them had come here, so Skandra didn't say or do anything else. He merely let the smoke curl out from under his lip as Vedette and Ithacles dutifully filed in. The rage had passed - or maybe it was just buttoned up. Ready for the next thing to summon it from his flesh.
With self-important grace, Alvon produced a leather-bound journal. Dark brown in patches, and lighter brown in others, it wore every day of its use on its sleeve. This he dropped onto the table.
By virtue of proximity alone Skandra arrived at the journal first. Pages were marked with etched metal plates, all of them bearing the mark of Faustben. Half-obscured by the pages it marked, of course. Skandra let his fingers dance along those ballooned scraps of parchment. Almost like they were water-soaked and dried in the sun. The page was scrawled in ink, some of which had bled, but it was one of the marked pages. And what it had to say was not what he considered to be patriotic.
A soldier fights but does not ask why. At least, not of the lords he follows. Not one of my men has ever asked me why it is so vital to hold a hill, to charge a gap with a spear and two arrows per man. I tell them that it is vital and they believe. My king tells me it is vital and I believe. My father tells me it is vital, and his son wonders. My cousin has more honor than a thousand man, but honor is only a magnet for those who wish that they had it. To what end do I pile the mountain passes with corpses? Not the orc, which is only a stronger and more intelligent boar, but the man?
To what end do I fight? The only thing that the sword can promise is death. So when the father tells his son, his son has only questions, and no one to whom he may voice them. A soldier on the line has no answers, and a king upon his throne cannot be asked. And I wonder when my sword's first promise will come to pass. The promise that was made when I wrapped its hilt in leather, and took it in my hands, and showed my opponent its use. My own death.
Skandra was not a philosopher. He also wasn't a soldier, or a prince, or a man with a king for a father and a commander. But he wondered the same thing himself often enough, if not in such poetic verse. Skandra at least had the gift of fighting for himself and the things he chose to fight for. Chose to bleed for. Throw your own hat in the ring on your own whim and put in the biggest bet of all. Your life. Pathacles must have wished for such a chance if he wrote something like that. And despair was his reward, apparently, expressed only in a journal. Wordlessly Skandra stabbed his finger into the center of the page and slid it toward Ithacles.
There wasn't a great deal to say, except the obvious.