Free The Final Quest (The Parsival Saga Book 3) by Richard Monaco

allowed.
    “Well, how many then, fellow?”
    The other raiders were poking around the deserted huts behind Skalwere and Finlot. The sour knight stood silently near the mule.
    “Should I name those already in the grave?” Vordit wondered.
    “Were we to wait on that tally,” the dour knight said, “we needs must stay past our own deaths.”
    “So this town is empty?” Howtlande said, exasperated. “You low-born sons-of-bitches weary me. Is it empty or nay, thick brains?”
    “Not so long as we be in it,” Vordit pointed out.
    “Enough of this nonsense.” Howtlande was losing his temper as Finlot and Skalwere returned.
    “No one about,” Finlot declared, a trace breathless. “No food … no folk … empty huts, fires cold on the hearth …”
    The second group of raiders (with the women and the cart) could be heard now in the darkening stillness. The wood creaked and strained, shockingly loud. Everything seemed to be sinking, receding as the last red glow was sucked away into the faintly luminescent hollowness of night.
    “All fled on,” Flatface said. “We stayed.”
    “Why?” asked the knight. “You prefer the peace and quiet?”
    “No,” said Vordit.
    Howtlande was frustrated and impatient.
    “Answer questions as put, you dogs,” he suggested.
    “You sound like a nobleman,” Flatface thought aloud.
    “All of us are most noble,” the knight said. His armor was a vagueness like a lost gleam on dark water.
    “We stayed,” said Vordit, “to care for the dead ones.”
    Finlot was squatting, leaning on his braced spearbutt. Skalwere had his back to the conversation, apparently staring into the last deepening smear of blood-colored light.
    Contempt ate silently at him. Except for that knight who rarely spoke the rest were cowards and carrion who in his homeland would live best by begging or mending nets. Men needed an iron code. The code was becoming clearer and its importance paramount. These people had nothing to bind them but the whims of their feelings. He’d kept the code and would keep it, they’d remember his example, because by now his single slip was blurred over by reasonings and circumstance and time. He never really looked at it anymore, one small blurring in a long, clear lifetime …
    “Why bury them?” Finlot wondered.
    “Someone had to,” Flatface felt.
    “But that’s daft, you foolish bastard.”
    “Well,” Howtlande offered, grinning faintly, humped up, a massive blot against the sunset, “there’s that which sticks to the fingers, eh?”
    “Don’t put nothing on me mother,” Flatface said. “I were no bastid, you bastid!”
    “Well,” Finlot allowed, “still it be daft.”
    “Then why?” asked the knight. “Duty?”
    “What?” wondered Flatface. “Daft? We just stayed. Why not?”
    Skalwere kept turned away.
    Duty , he thought. Duty … What do these ragged swine know about that?
    Howtlande was watching the oncoming cart and pale mule rise out of the vast, tidally advancing night. The brighter stars were softly wet-looking. No moon yet.
    “Say what you fucked and bloody please,” Vordit suggested. “If I was you I’d press on me way. The death ain’t gone from noplace till there’s none left to die.” the last red tint had just faded from their faces.
    “I’d not have stayed,” Finlot said, reflectively, “as wise as you make out to be.”
    Skalwere finally turned around.
    “Why don’t you talk for another hour or two?” he said. “The moon has yet to rise.”
    “Get these gravediggers into line with the rest,” Howtlande suddenly seemed to break out of a reverie. “We’ll have plenty of work for them ere long.” Then to the mule, kicking it lightly: “Stir your bones, you baggy-assed son-of-a-bitch!”
    Finlot ushered the two along with cocked spear. A slight breeze came up and swished the still trees.
    “Somebody had to stay,” Vordit muttered. “Otherwise what’s the sense?”
    “What sense?” Finlot wanted to hear.
    “We lived