Free The Black Prince: Part II by P. J. Fox

dispute over food. But most of the chronicles claimed that she loved him. But if her life with her brother had been difficult, her life with her new husband was hardly better; they were kidnapped, together, and forced into slavery by those same political rivals who’d killed his father. Somehow, though, within a handful of years he’d emerged as the leader of his kidnappers. And his conquests began.
    Those initial conquests had been backed by little in the way of resources. Temujn was young and, at in the beginning, without much support. But he’d faced the same problem that Hart had, that all conquerors had: he had to eat. His men had to eat. His animals had to eat. It was he who’d developed the flag system, understanding full well that the mind would win where the sword failed.
    The first few cities didn’t surrender.
    The rest did.
    Hart could only hope that those inside the walls would grow more imaginative.
    The sun rose, as he watched, along with the red flag.
    He retreated into his tent, to rest. There was nothing to do
but
rest. What he would not let others see, though, was any hint of impatience. Let them think that this, to him, was like any other day. Let them think, as so many already did, that ice filled his veins.
    He laid down on the pallet that passed for his bed, his hands behind his head. He’d left his boots on. War, he concluded, was a thousand thousand minutes of purest boredom punctuated by the occasional minute of purest terror.
    He hadn’t revealed this, even to Arvid, but he truly didn’t know what would happen next. His idea was still in the germination phase had only so far grown to include, in conjunction with the flags, do something vaguely threatening that would simultaneously communicate the seriousness of his intentions and leave them quaking in their boots.
    He’d told Rudolph that truly brave men were always afraid, in times like these. But a good leader was the only one who knew that he was. Although the truth was that Hart didn’t precisely know how he felt.
    Other than tired.
    Rudolph, he had to remind himself, was a child. A child who’d had the chance to marry whomever he wanted and had squandered it. Not because he didn’t care, as some might be tempted to assume, but because he cared too much. About what his mother would think. And his father. And his betrothed. And the church. So he’d tried to make the best of what he must have realized, some time ago, was a bad situation. Thinking he was achieving some arbitrary standard of
the right thing
.
    While thinking, too, that he had no right to decide the matter for himself. Men like Rudolph grew up not knowing that
right
was a mutable concept. In Hart’s experience, all men were trying to do the right thing. If you asked them. They merely disagreed on what that was.
    Hart knew how other men saw him. And he made no excuse for what he was. He, like Rudolph, had made his choices. He knew too that in doing so, he hadn’t curtailed his freedom. He’d never been free. He’d merely changed one set of restrictions for another.
    He wondered what Lissa was doing. The sun was fully above the horizon now, the light bright against the wall of his tent. He’d stayed up all night, waiting, while she was sleeping. Waiting, and watching. And wishing he was watching over her. Now she was rising, at home in Barghast. Not her home, truly, and not his; but the only place that had ever felt like home to either of them.
    She’d be taking her bath, he supposed. Having breakfast. Helping Thomasina with whatever ridiculous new project she’d undertaken. Was she thinking of him?
    That she might be seemed too good to be true. He wasn’t…a well man, and he knew that about himself. What most did not know, save Isla and perhaps one or two others, was that he never had been. In Enzie, he’d developed quite a reputation for hunting bandits. Indeed that he’d almost single-handedly kept the roads safe was a source of pride in him for everyone