body.’
‘You have done these things,’ said Tyrion. ‘And you do not seem to be any the worse for it.’
‘I have done these things and there are times when I wish I had not.’
‘And there are times when you’re glad that you have,’ said Tyrion. ‘I can tell.’
‘It is a complicated thing, doorkeeper.’
‘In what way?’ Tyrion asked.
‘Killing someone in combat is a complicated thing. It is not how you imagine it to be. It is wonderful and it is terrible and it is not at all what you expect.’
Tyrion looked at the older warrior. Korhien’s face was thoughtful and Tyrion could tell that he was choosing his words with care. He stared off into the middle distance as if remembering something that was important to him and which he wanted to communicate exactly.
‘It is like this,’ Korhien said. ‘When you kill someone in battle you have proven your own superiority over them. You are alive and they are dead and there is no more definitive proof than that. It is thrilling in a dreadful way. It is horrible and it is terrible but it is also thrilling. You feel more alive than you ever have before or quite possibly ever will again. You are very aware of the presence of death and how close it has come to you and that lets you know that you are alive in a way that nothing else ever will. Do you follow me?’
‘I think so,’ Tyrion said. ‘But what is so terrible about it?’
‘At that moment, nothing. But later you will find yourself thinking about what happened and about how you felt and about how the other person feels now.’
‘They won’t be feeling anything,’ Tyrion said.
‘Exactly,’ Korhien said. ‘They won’t be feeling anything at all and you will have ensured that. You will have made that happen. And after a while you’ll start to wonder about what you have done – was it justified? What right did you have to kill that person? Would it perhaps have been better if they had killed you?’
Tyrion could see that Korhien was not just talking in the abstract here. He had someone specifically in mind. He was thinking about things that had affected him deeply in his time. It was not so much what the older elf was saying that affected Tyrion. It was the way he said it.
Tyrion could not imagine ever regretting killing someone who had been trying to kill him. In a case of his own life or that other person’s, he would feel entirely justified in his victory. And yet something in Korhien’s tone gave him pause for thought. If the older warrior had found something in all of this that had affected him so deeply, at very least Tyrion felt it deserved his deepest consideration.
‘Do you wonder about such things?’ Tyrion asked.
‘All of the time,’ Korhien replied.
‘Why?’
‘I wish I knew. When I was younger they troubled me not at all but I have found that over the centuries I have thought more about them and I have found the easy answers harder to find.’
‘You are a warrior,’ Tyrion said. ‘It is your duty to kill the enemies of the Phoenix King.’
Korhien smiled. ‘I wish I was young again and everything seemed so simple to me.’
Tyrion resented that. ‘Have you heard any more about these attacks everyone is talking about? The servant girls seem to think Lothern itself will be besieged by an army of daemons any day now.’
Korhien shook his head. ‘It will not come to that. Not yet anyway.’
‘Then there have been more attacks.’
‘Yes. And many of them. Not a day passes without reports coming in by messenger bird, sending spell or word of mouth. The whole island-continent seems to be under attack by an army of daemons. And yet when our troops investigate, they find nothing. It is as if the attackers have vanished into thin air.’
‘The daemons are using magic,’ said Tyrion.
‘I see your genius for understanding military matters was not understated, doorkeeper,’ said Korhien sardonically. ‘Of course, the daemons are using magic.’
‘Why are they attacking the places they do? What do they want?’
‘No one knows and no one can see any pattern to it. Not even the cleverest of mages. The daemons appear out of nowhere, they attack, they slaughter like maddened wolverines and then they depart, taking nothing. It is a kind of madness, or so it seems.’
‘It is what you would expect from daemons,’ said Tyrion. ‘Who knows why they do what they do?’
‘Not I, that