At the Queen_s command

"My wife is young. There will be time later."

"I reckon there's truth there." Nathaniel started working on another cartridge." You'll get started when you're back to Norisle, when we's just an adventure writ in a book."

"I didn't come for adventure." Owen frowned. "I came to do my duty."

Nathaniel chuckled. "And your wife, she didn't never suggest you getting rich out of this?"

Anger flashed through Owen. "She loves me. She wants the best for me, and I for her. The Altashee might think love to be madness, but I don't. Have you ever loved anyone?"

"I think, on this subject, Captain Strake, we ain't gonna be sharing no more words. I didn't mean to offend you concerning your wife. Needle you maybe, but offend, no. You've made your choices, I've made mine. Ain't no good our jawing about them."

"Agreed, and no offense taken."

"Thing you have to remember, Captain Strake, is that this here is a brand-new world. What-all they think across the ocean don't matter a whit here. Norillian tradition works, sure, but in a known land."

"Known land?"

Nathaniel smiled. "Norillians been in Mystria for two hundred fifty years or thereabouts?"

"That's about right."

"Now your family, your stepfather's family, they been around how long?"

"Since before the Invasion. Eight centuries."

"And afore that there was the Remian Empire, then the Mohammadeans and the Haxians. A good long time."

"Right."

"So all them kingdoms and empires, they've done fought over the same land for a long time. They make up rules. They keep the peace when they want peace. They make war when they desire war. All because they have a tiny land and everyone wants it."

Woods spread his arms. "Mystria is a big land. Bigger than you could imagine. We're ten walks from the coast. The Mystrian continent is three hundred more walks westward. Maybe five hundred, just east to west, and that many north to south. Don't nobody know. Ain't nobody ever made it all the way. So all them rules what keep people content in a tiny plot of land, they don't mean spit. Them rules is as useless as a law telling the sun, 'Don't shine.'"

"Then you think Mystria should become independent."

Woods smiled. "It's a notion. Keep things unspoiled, might be a good one."

Owen frowned. "You think people should be allowed to do what they want? No government? No authority?"

Woods tapped a finger to his temple. "This land is for strong people. You have a right to what you can do, what you can produce. Bountiful land, too. Give me shot, powder, a firestone, and some traps, me and mine will make out good. What I can't build, I trade for. Don't need money or taxes or some Fire Warden or other telling me what I can or cannot do."

"But what if a man comes along and decides to take what is yours? You're not suggesting that if you're not strong enough to hold it, he should have it."

"Ain't no need for a man to come take mine. Lots of empty hereabouts. He can just move on a-piece and make his own place."

"What if he's lazy? What if he doesn't want to move on? What if he decides to take a place from someone who is weaker than he is? What if he plunders and moves on?"

"I reckon he finds himself on the outside of a musket-ball."

"And if the shooter has made a mistake and hits the wrong target?"

Nathaniel shrugged. "Ain't saying things is perfect. It's just there ain't no government should come and take away everything you've worked for just on account of some voters decided they wanted it that way. Now you're gonna say that there's courts to deal with that. I'd allow as how you was right, if you could tell me a flash of gold might not influence a judge a time or three."

Owen laughed. "I will not argue that the current system is perfect, but at least it is a system. What you suggest is only a way that every man can die alone."

"Mayhap you're right, Captain Strake." Nathaniel shook his head. "But I'm thinking that sometimes that wouldn't be a bad thing at all."

Chapter Twenty-Three

May 15, 1763

Saint Luke

Bounty, Mystria

O wen slept in the long house alone, but close enough to the cook-fire and covered with a tanner pelt that he slept warm and comfortably. During the night he woke from two dreams in which he was talking to Bethany Frost. He couldn't remember the conversation, but in one of them they were walking hand in hand along the river near the Prince's wurmrest.

He wasn't certain what to make of that. He'd normally have dismissed the dream as meaningless. He'd told countless soldiers who'd suffered nightmares on the eve of battle that they meant nothing and predicted less. At the time he'd firmly believed that.