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. THAT IS WHY YOU HAVE ARMED YOURSELF
WITHOUT RECOURSE TO SQUIRE AND TO
CEREMONY. THAT IS WHY YOU ARE GLAD THAT THE
ROOM IS DARK, SIR HEROS, SOLAMNIC KNIGHT OF
THE SWORD. But there was no blame in this, Bayard, no
blame except for the old and honored folly that would make
a man ashamed to breathe when his companions breathed
no longer, and with that blame what the blame could not
banish - a pride in Sir Heros that he could feel the shame,
that such folly was both old and honored.
From the window of the corridor they looked
diminished, frail in their armor and swords and pikes as
they assembled, stamped the cold from their feet, and fell
into line behind the mounted knights. I could single out
Breca in the foremost column, standing a head taller than
those around him, and once I believe he glanced up at the
window to where I was standing, the flatness of his eyes
apparent even from a distance, even through the shadows of
the wall and the dark air of the morning. And perhaps
because of that darkness there was no expression I could see
on his face, but there is an expression I remember, may
have imagined in this permanent and greater darkness from
which I speak to you.
For if an expression could be featureless, void of fear
and of dread and finally of hope, containing if anything only
a sort of resignation and resolve, that was Breca's
expression and those of his companions, saying (if such a
blankness, a nothing can say anything), THIS IS NOT AS
BAD AS I IMAGINED BUT WORSE THAN I EXPECTED,
and nothing more than that when the doomed gates opened -
the very gates he had called indefensible a short week
before he marched out onto the plains and into the lifting
darkness
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