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I knelt in the mud, feeling it soak through the metal and into the fabric of my breeches. His head lay still in the slosh of mud and blood, the stew of war. Like rats, poor folk clambered over bodies in search of coins and good luck trinkets. I curled my arms around the boy's head, resting my face against his hair mattered in blood. The crows adored him more than his people now, silent bystanders to my grief. My ears rung with the future screams of his mother as I lay him down. I left him there. I walked away. My squire, my future, my son.
ns 15.158.61.7da2