“Dathor,” she said.
“Don’t go,” he said.
“Is that an order, commander?”
“A request,” he said.
“You are in no position to make requests of me,” she said. But she didn’t go. She came to stand next to him and looked out at the army encamped all around them, and she felt helpless and frightened and overwhelmed.
“I may have done all of this wrong,” he muttered.
Regret, again. Well, it didn’t matter. He could regret all he wished. Some things could not be mended. “What do you mean?” she said.
“Just… all of this. I’m not saying it was entirely my idea to invade like this, because it wasn’t. It was a number of people’s ideas. You know how that goes. When a number of people are presented with the same situation, our brains all work similarly and a number of people come up with the same idea.”
“Is that the way of it?” she said.
“Anyway,” he said, not answering the question, “Isuppose what I chiefly wanted was to be back here. Back home.” He looked up at the sky. “I missed the air here. You cannot breathe in Arzakh.”
“You cannot wish me to feel sorry for you. I do not. It was your decision to cross the pass after that woman—”
“It was not her decision to be herded across the pass and out of the country and treated like cattle,” he growled.
“Oh, not like cattle,” she said. “We have use for cattle.”
He sneered at her.
“What? Did you think I would not insult you after everything you have done?”
“Oh, has it been rare that you have insulted me, fair elf?”
“Yes,” she spat out.
He snorted.
“It has. I loved you, Dathor, and you know I did.”
“Yes, and when a person loves someone, of course, they never say anything cruel to that person, never do anything cruel.”
She was quiet.
“It should all be enough, I suppose,” he said. “I have had my revenge on him, and I did want that. I did picture it, this way that way and every such way, and now it’s done.”
“What? Not as good as you imagined?”
He laughed a bitter laugh. “Perhaps nothing is as good as we imagine. Perhaps it is rare that life serves us something so pleasant that it truly surprises us. Much more often, however, life surprises me with how positively awful it is.”
“There we are agreed,” she said. But he used to be the thing that surprised her with his goodness. He used to excite her and please her and make her feel as if she were alight in nothing but sweetness and pleasure.
Now…
“I am saying that I do not know if I want the orcs to win,” he said.
She turned to look at him, stunned. “What? You brought this army into our home, gave them leave to invade every corner of it and to take away all our food and to kill ever so many people, and you don’t want them to have done it?”
“I’m not saying that,” he said. “Findas is the problem, though,him. If you elves weren’t so soft, you would have ousted him yourselves, I think. We… if the orcs take over, I do not know if it will be good for the country.”
“You have no faith in your own race?”
