Free Herald of the Storm by Richard Ford

say he was sorry, but Markus was immediately up on his feet and at the door. Nobul didn’t even have time to call out before Markus had wrenched open the door and run out into the night.
    Nobul could only watch him leave.
    The coins were still in his hand. They seemed to burn in his palm like he was holding a searing brand, reminding him of his guilt. With a feral growl he flung the coins across the room where they bounced and scattered.
    Slowly, with each breath, he calmed, the rage cooling, his eyes tightly shut. For another man, a weaker man, they might have been shut to quell the tears of his regret, but Nobul had done all his crying twelve years ago. He had no tears left.
    He closed the door and went to the hearth to sit in the chair. Her chair.
    Rona had been young when they met. Too young for Nobul, or so everyone had told him. At first he’d ignored them, just happy that she had shown him any attention, happy that they were together. He’d never met anyone like her before, anyone so innocent and sweet and kind. Eventually though he had listened to the voices: his old friends, or what Nobul had in the way of friends, and also her parents, though they had never spoken ill of him to his face. He’d responded by trying to put her off, tried to explain he was no good and she should find someone better, someone younger. It hadn’t worked at first, not until he got drunk one night and into a bar fight. Then she had seen the real Nobul Jacks, the fast Nobul Jacks, tough and ruthless. Yet two days after, when all the dust had settled, she’d come back to him. He hadn’t been able to turn her away, and he had promised, as she asked, not to fight any more.
    They were married north of the city, just the two of them under an old elm tree. Just them and the druid, a wedding looked over by the Old Gods just as she’d wanted. They returned to the city and hadn’t been back more than a day before Nobul got the call up. There had been rumblings in the south for months. The Wardens of the South had come back with reports that there were Lion Men abroad, beating the drums of war with their eye on the Free States. As an ex-mercenary Nobul was expected to fight, expected to offer his sword arm to the cause, despite the promise he had made to Rona. He had no choice.
    Before he travelled south with the armies, he promised Rona he would come back, promised he would return with everything he went with still intact. Nobul had asked nothing of her. How could he? She was young, and if he died she would have to move on, find someone new to take care of her.
    War against the Aeslanti had been worse than any of them could have thought. They’d heard the tales that the beast warriors of Equ’un were giants who lived on the flesh of men. The truth had been much worse.
    The Battle of Bakhaus Gate was legendary now; a thousand brave men holding the pass against a horde of roaring monsters. Fighting valiantly with the flags of the Free States held aloft with pride.
    Reality was somewhat less glorious – it always was.
    They had been closer to ten thousand, every one of them pissing in fear. No one gave a fuck about flags or pride or glory, they just wanted to run, and they would have if they hadn’t been more afraid of their commanding officers than the enemy. The vast host they faced had been enough to make them question that fear though, and their loyalty to officers or even the king. An armoured sea of bestial daemons, waving massive blades and roaring louder than a thunderstorm, had swept towards Bakhaus Gate.
    But somehow they had won.
    Nobul kept his promise to Rona, and brought himself back with all parts still working, but what he had seen down in the south, the slaughter and the cruelty, had deadened him inside. Deadened him to her joy at having a baby and deadened him to watching that child grow. Instead he had learned a trade, a hard punishing trade – and busied himself with it heart and soul. What heart and soul he had