Author's Note: I felt badly about leaving Owen on the verge of battle, so I decided to regulate this fic to top of the list of fics I should update (there is kind of a method to my madness) even though I just updated it, which explains why I am updating relatively quickly this time. My Creative Writing professor also deserves credit because he randomly canceled class, and I had a few free hours that I wasn't counting on having all the sudden. Sure, I could have done schoolwork, but I am a lazy lioness who wanted to enjoy myself instead. I like this chapter better than last chapter, at any rate. Hopefully, you all will feel the same way. Without any further ado, here is the chapter:

Cursed

Owen's stomach twisted when his blade locked with that of a young man who appeared to be taller and more brawny than he was. Of course, the Scanran seemed to be a peasant, because, unlike Owen, he wasn't wearing any armor. That about evened the odds, Owen told himself as swords slashed all round him, horses whinnied, and arrows whizzed over his head from the ramparts.

Hoping with the back of his mind that the archers on the walls of Fort Mastiff had good aims because he didn't want to be shot in the back by his own allies like a cowardly traitor, Owen reminded himself that he didn't care about the odds. In fact, the harder something was to achieve, the more it was worth doing.

His opponent bounded forward, thrusting at Owen's left leg.

Reflexively, Owen lowered his sword and parried the blow, but did not make an assault himself, deciding to let his foe tire himself out. Then, when the peasant soldier had exhausted himself, he would lurch forward and end the duel.

When Owen blocked his move, the other soldier merely slid his sword up again and then swung at Owen from the side. Again, Owen parried, and, again, their swords collided. As their weapons clashed, he took advantage of the opportunity to step backward, his boot slurping as it landed on the muddy spring ground. A second after Owen retreated a few inches, his adversary launched the next barrage.

Gritting his teeth although Neal had told him on countless occasions that it was bad for them, Owen blocked every blow. At the end of the sequence, Owen noticed that his opponent's speed was flagging, and he grinned beneath his helmet. Ah, it was time to end the exercise, then.

Abruptly, Owen streaked forward, jabbing at his foe with his sword, and successfully slicing the other young man's right arm. Gasping in astonishment, the Scanran switched his weapon from his right hand to his left.

Good, Owen thought, seeing the reaction he wanted. Yes, all people who had received even basic military training had been taught to employ both hands during combat if they valued life outside the Black God's realm. However, most beings still relied on their right hand and arm more than their left during battle as in most activities. From what he had witnessed thus far, the Scanran was no exception to the rule, so a cut right arm would be a major liability for him.

His blood pounding in his ears, Owen leaped forward and thrust his sword at his enemy's right leg. The Scanran moved to block him, but was a shade too slow. A strip of fabric followed by a spurt of blood smacked into the mud. The next instant, Owen had plunged his sword into the cursing Scanran's heart.

He waded on into the fray engulfing the area surrounding Fort Mastiff before he could think about what he had done. If he started thinking about what he had done, he might hesitate next time. If he hesitated, he might find himself in a mass grave by this time tomorrow. That would not be jolly, that was for certain, and it would make Margarry cry.

There was time for no further thought about Margarry, though. He was twisting to launch an attack at a Scanran's flank now. The Scanran's eyes blazed with shock as he pivoted to face Owen and somehow managed to parry his first strike. After that, their duel fell into a battle rhythm.

All of Owen's focus was centered on his skirmish with the Scanran in general, and his opponent's weapon in particular. He devoted himself to slashing in to intercept it repeatedly and to seizing any chances to penetrate his adversary's guard. His brain disengaged, and his muscles and instincts took over. His hammering heart provided the cadence as surely as any drillmaster's commands.

Assault and block. Blow and counterblow. Attack and parry. Advance and retreat. Leap and spin. Slash and evade. Bind and counterbind. Broken time and recovery. Then start again. No pause for thought. No time for any indecision.

Owen had no notion of how long this drama reenacted itself before he slide around his opponent's guard long enough to slit the Scanran's throat.

Quickly, before he could see the blood add more liquid to the muddy earth, Owen moved on in the battle. Then, everything else faded into the background as he dedicated himself fully to a duel with another Scanran.

When he was in battle mode as he was now, all that mattered was the fight. His world was narrowed to his body and his sword, which had become a mere extension of his body, and the weapon of his foe. All he cared about was blocking blows from his opponent and making strikes of his own.

In battle mode, he lost all awareness of time, because time was no longer significant to him. That was why, in his head, the duel with the Scanran could have lasted either a century or just a moment. In battle mode, he wouldn't even have noticed the Scanran trumpet call out for a retreat if the soldier he had been fighting hadn't suddenly fled.

Owen was about to chase after him, accusing the Scanran of being the worst sort of coward, when a gauntlet grasped his shoulder. Spinning around rapidly, Owen saw that Lord Wyldon had somehow come up next to him in the course of the battle.

"Don't bother giving chase, Owen," Lord Wyldon said, flipping back his helmet.

"But they're fleeing in a rabble," protested Owen, blinking. Maybe Wyldon was going blind or senile if he had missed this. "We can get rid off more of them."

"I know we routed them, but that doesn't matter," Lord Wyldon answered in a clipped voice. "We may have won the little battle, but I fear we have lost the big one. You can hunt rabbits another day, but for now it's time to return to the fort and get some real work done."

As Owen, Lord Wyldon, and the battered but victorious Tortallans returned to Fort Mastiff, Wyldon explained, "Walden Tanner just approached me. His Gift sometimes allows him to have glimpses into what is happening during the present somewhere else, and he says he saw the defenders of Giantkiller being slaughtered by the Scanrans and some of their metal monsters."

"So we have to go relieve the men at Giantkiller," Owen concluded as they rode through Mastiff's gates.

"No." Wyldon shook his head, his eyes on the Tortallan soldiers who were helping their wounded companions into the healers' ward. Owen's gaze fell on the injured as well, and he noted with a sinking feeling that victory sometimes felt like defeat, because there were always people who were hurt and killed in every battle. Only the numbers changed whether it was written as a success or a failure. "I suspect it is too late for that. We go to see what we can collect from the remains of the fort. We go to see if we can track down some of the Scanrans who attacked the fort and if we can rescue any hostages they might have taken."

"Oh." That was all Owen could say. Put like that, their next action didn't sound so glorious. Then again, so far his experiences up north had essentially shown him that war wasn't glorious. It was ugly and harsh; the only good thing about it was that it was honest. It revealed who was brave and noble, and who wasn't.

"Take Windtreader—" Wyldon began.

"Happy, my lord," Owen cut in.

"Excuse me?" Lord Wyldon raised an eyebrow, looking as if he suspected that the battle had finally driven his squire berserk.

"His name is Happy, sir," Owen said.

"Happy, then," Wyldon conceded impatiently. "Take Happy to the stable. Get him some food and water. You are riding out with Davis' squad, the rest of Company Eight, and me to investigate what happened at Giantkiller. The other Companies will remain here to guard Mastiff in case of an attack. I don't think that the Scanrans will try another, especially as the one here was probably just a distraction, but it never hurts to be certain. Be at the gates in an hour to rendezvous with Eighth Company and myself."

With that, he rode off, probably to issue more commands to ensure that Eighth Company would be prepared to depart when he wanted to leave and that everything would flow smoothly while he was gone. Watching his knightmaster ride away, Owen had to admire the man. There was never any doubt in how he carried himself, and Owen wished he could move through his own life with that same assurance.

Yet, he couldn't. Time and again, he found himself saying or doing the wrong thing. That knowledge that he could do the wrong thing sometimes made him uncertain about how he should act next. It was times like this that he thought he was a coward and that all the pages and squires who babbled on about how brave he was were lunatics. It was times like this when he suspected that all he ever did in life was put on a mask of courage. Of course, maybe Wyldon's confidence was a mask as well. Perhaps everyone went through life with a mask on. Maybe putting on a good mask that nobody could see through was all anybody could expect a person to do and what life was all about.

He didn't know, and he wasn't going to worry about it now. It was another one of those questions that would have to haunt him late at night when he should be sleeping. It couldn't trouble him now. Now, he had to care for his mount.

As this occurred to him, he led Happy to the stables, where he brushed his horse, fed it an apple, and offered it a bucket of water.

"You like the name Happy, don't you?" he asked his steed, as he stroked the animal's nose once he had finished tending to it.

In response, the horse whinnied and flicked its tail. Whenever he addressed Happy, Owen liked to imagine that was an affirmative.

"I named you Happy because I like happy things," Owen said simply. "There aren't many happy things in war, though, are there?"

Again, the horse whinnied and swished its tail around as if it were shooing off invisible flies.

"That's okay, though," he whispered. "That makes you all the more special, right?"

This remark was greeted with another whinny and swish. This time, the tail brushed against the wall, and Owen chuckled, "That tail of yours could be a real weapon. I reckon it will kill someone soon, even though that will probably be by mistake."

The instant the words emerged from his lips, he regretted them. Killing reminded him of the lives he had taken today, and it also forced him to envision what he would see when he arrived at Fort Giantkiller. Garish images of streams of blood on buildings, crimson mud, mangled bodies, scavenging birds, hungry flies, and ravenous Stormwings flooded his mind, and it took a major act of willpower to shove them out of his head.

Needing a distraction, he fumbled around in his pocket and pulled out a bag of nuts covered with a sticky, sweet sauce. How they had managed to stay in his pocket during the battle was a mystery, but he was glad they had. They had arrived yesterday afternoon in a package from Margarry, and he had been planning to share them with Davis' squad while they were patrolling.

"I guess that if I fed my mount, I should feed myself before I faint," Owen decided aloud, shoving a handful of nuts into his mouth as he spoke. It was perfectly acceptable to talk with your mouth full of food if no one was around to hear.

Happy's neck stretched forward and the horse tried to gobble up the nuts in the bag. Quickly, Owen jumped back, scolding, "These aren't for you! They're for people."

Happy snorted.

"I still don't believe you're human," Owen said, grinning. It was times like this when he knew that he really did love Happy. Then, he sobered. "We'd better go now, Happy. We don't want to be late to meet Wyldon and the others. A knight who is tardy costs lives, and I think enough people have died already, don't you?"

Happy whinnied and flicked his tail as they left the stables, and Owen decided that he would have to teach his horse to recognize rhetorical questions.

When Owen, Lord Wyldon, and the Eighth Company rode into Fort Giantkiller, Owen eyes lit on a scene so gruesome that his imagination hadn't even been able to devise anything half as horrible to torment him with on the journey there. The dead, so mangled that they were barely recognizable as the people they had once been, were strewn everywhere.

Every corpse was cut up by weapons, and bent in some impossible pose or other. The bodies in the shade were swarming with flies, while those in the sun were swelling. All the corpses had flesh picked from their bones by animals and Stormwings. Owen tried not to contemplate how the bodies on the ground had been massacred or how they had been desecrated once they had been killed.

Bile rose in his mouth, and he struggled to swallow it. He wasn't going to heap another indignity on the dead by vomiting all over them. Hoping to gain control over his obstinately churning stomach, he looked around at the ruins of what had once been a solid, dependable fortress. None of the buildings were intact, for every structure had walls that had been burned or scarred with sword hits.

From a league off, he heard Lord Wyldon assigning the squads of Eighth Company to search the barracks, mess hall, and offices of the bastion for reusable objects, any potential survivors of the debacle, and clues as to which direction the enemy had left in. Numbly, he entered a barracks along with Wyldon and Davis' squad.

As they combed methodically through the building, Owen's heart grew even heavier as he realized that the barracks must have housed refugees waiting to be transferred to Kel's camp. The objects left behind suggested that, at any rate, he thought, as they kicked through the debris of ordinary lives.

He saw a bruised black pot and pictured a mother stirring porridge in it for her family. He saw a boot and envisioned a man trudging through the mud with it on. He saw a scorched roll of bedding and imagined a little girl drifting off to sleep on it. He saw a wooden toy soldier with faded paint, pictured a young boy playing with it, and wished suddenly that he himself had never been to war, so he could still believe it was glorious. All of the people these objects had belonged to were being held captive by the Scanrans now.

I won't think of things like that, he informed himself sternly. Yet, he couldn't bring himself to stop imagining these things, as painful as they were to consider, especially when his eyes landed on a crib. A scorched piece of linen trailed out of it, and the bile burned up his throat again.

"There is nothing to be found here." Wyldon's voice barely penetrated the ice that filled Owen's skull. "Come along."

Davis' squad left the building, but Owen remained rooted in place, as frozen as his mind.

"Owen." That was Wyldon speaking again, but his usually brusque voice was soft. "Come."

At the sound of his name, something inside Owen thawed again, and he found that he could exit the barracks.

He, Lord Wyldon, and Davis' squad met up with the rest of Eighth Company outside the gates, where Wyldon split up the squads again to examine the terrain surrounding Fort Giantkiller for signs of where the Scanrans had fled with the refugees.

As he searched for tracks in the mud that would hint at the direction the Scanrans had taken, Owen found himself alongside Walden and he asked thickly, "Did you foresee this?"

"Nay," Walden replied tersely, shaking his head. "My problem is that I can't foresee these things. If I could, then I could do somethin' to prevent them or warn people about them. I only see flashes of things like this when they are goin' on."

"I don't suppose that you saw which direction the Scanrans fled in," Owen said, a trace of hope entering his manner.

It was a hope that Walden instantly squashed, however. "Nay, I didn't. My Gift is useless, Squire Owen. It only shows me things that I can't change that I don't wish to see. All I saw was Scanrans slaughtering our men. I wouldn't have even known that the massacre was occurring at Giantkiller if I hadn't seen the Company insignia on the men whom I witnessed being killed and hadn't known that Company was posted here."

"It was awful enough seeing the soldiers' remains in a group like this." Owen shuddered. "It must have been even worse to see them die alone, and then to have to travel here to see exactly what happened to those who were slaughtered."

"Ye know what, Owen?" Walden cocked his head at Owen as they moved on with their investigation.

"What?" Owen asked, frowning over a track. His scowl deepened when he saw that the track looked very old—too old to follow.

"Ye're the first person ever to say somethin' like that to me," Walden said, and Owen stared at him. Pity rippled through Owen as Walden went on, "Most soldiers are scared of my powers, because they reckon that my peculiar Gift—or Curse as I call it in me mind—is unlucky. In my home village, everyone, including me Father, thought I was a freak. My mother was the only one who didn't think that I was nature's idea of a practical joke-- she was just disappointed that I didn't inherit her healing Gift."

"You aren't a freak," Owen stated at his most vehement, "and you aren't a disappointment. As a matter of fact, you're loads braver than I am. You were all alone when you saw those soldiers killed, and I froze up just looking at the debris the refugees left behind."

"Ye have courage," Walden reassured him. "Ye moved on. That's all courage be, if ye ask me: movin' on even when ye are spooked."

"I still don't think I am as brave as you, but if you ever want to talk to me about something your Gift shows you, I'm all ears. You shouldn't have to deal with those visions all alone unless you want to." As he established as much, Owen pulled out the bag of nuts Margarry had sent him, immensely grateful that Happy hadn't managed to gobble them up, and held it out to Walden. "Here. Have some. A little sugar might get rid off some of that perpetual paleness of yours."

"Ye know I don't get care packages from me family or from the sweetheart that I don't have, so I can't repay you in kind with food or somethin'," Walden warned him, not taking any nuts.

"That makes the gift all the better, then." Owen still held out the nuts.

"Maybe nobility does get passed down through the generations of nobles, after all, then." Walden smiled slightly and popped a few nuts in his mouth. Then, his smile was extinguished as he gazed over his shoulder at Fort Giantkiller and murmured, "Maybe nothing is ever lost."

Trying to picture all the spirits of all the dead soldiers he had ever known at peace in an afterlife as they couldn't have been in life, Owen muttered, "I like that idea. I like it a lot."