Total pages in book: 222
Estimated words: 210715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1054(@200wpm)___ 843(@250wpm)___ 702(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 210715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1054(@200wpm)___ 843(@250wpm)___ 702(@300wpm)
“Like you and your father, Pelegrin joined the Defenders. The knight orders spend a great deal of time discussing the knightly virtues, while training their squires in violence. And yet, they never address what happens when those two halves of knighthood come into conflict.”
He furrowed his eyebrows. “I do not follow.”
“Pelegrin was knighted at seventeen and given his first command at eighteen. He was very young. His view of the world was simple, but I don’t need to tell you that war is complicated and messy. It demands brutality and sacrifice. Pelegrin was put in an impossible situation, and he had to make a decision that conflicted with everything he had been taught to believe. It haunts him. He dreams of it over and over. He thinks he failed the legacy of your father and failed himself as a knight.”
Berengur stared at me, his face shocked.
“He’s deeply damaged by what he endured. He let the war touch his soul, and he felt too much. When he looks at his hands, they’re still covered in blood, and he’s searching for a way to wash it off.”
“Where is he?” He didn’t say it like a demand. It was almost a plea.
“He has chosen to recuperate at a monastery. He hasn’t taken vows and has no plans to do so, but he conducts himself as a monk. He does manual labor. Growing things in a garden soothes him. He is accepted by the other monks, and the abbot, who is very experienced in these matters, is helping him to come to terms with his past. It’s a simple life and that is all he can handle right now. He is healing, slowly, gradually, but he is healing. If you go there and force him to return to your castle, you will take the little bit of peace he’s found from him. He will obey you, but one day you will walk into the great hall and find him hanging off a beam.”
Berengur drew back.
“I urge you with everything in my power to let him recover. When he is ready, he will return to you on his own.”
Silence fell. I drank my tea.
“You truly believe he will take his own life?”
“Yes. He’s already thought about it. He hasn’t done it because it would be selfish, and he doesn’t want to hurt you or your mother.”
In the book, Berengur found his brother, and his mother begged Pelegrin to return to their castle. He did. He ate, he bathed, he seemed to be functioning, but he rarely spoke, and then there was a scene where he stared at the beam of the great hall for way too long. Then, in the chaos after the crown prince’s assassination, Arvel, the head of the Defender Order, wished that he had Berengur by his side, but the earl was gone to “tend to his family in mourning.”
Pelegrin had hanged himself. I was absolutely sure.
My father hadn’t come unscathed out of his service. I knew a lot about PTSD and the damage it brought, but convincing Berengur that I was right without modern psychology and veteran suicide statistics on my side was tricky. I had to put it in a framework he would understand.
“We place such a crushing burden on knights,” I said. “We tell them they’re supposed to be heroes, defenders of the realm, people of superior character. Then we send them into a slaughter and force them to butcher. They experience fear. They exist in constant vigilance, always ready to fight for their lives. It exhausts their body and soul. They watch their friends bleed out and die, and they have no time to grieve. Nobody warns them about this. Nobody sings songs about a young man trying to push his guts back into his stomach, or being so scared that the world turns dark, or being knocked off your horse and drowning in a muddy field in heavy armor while riders stomp on your back.”
The two men in front of me were very still.
“We do this to them and then we expect them to return to a peaceful life as if nothing happened. Some of them get a taste for the killing and can’t let it go. Some of them learn to distance themselves from their war selves. Others, like Pelegrin, need help and time.”
“What did he do?” Berengur asked.
“He was put in charge of a border village that was a vital point in the supply chain for the front line of the Halaros conflict. The village sympathized with the Crimson Empire. The Emperor’s agents promised them ten years free of taxation if the region raised the Crimson Banner.”
Come to our side, everything will be great, we have cookies. Of course we won’t tax you. What are you even talking about? By the way, we’d love to sell you an ocean property in Nebraska . . .