Merry watched Dernhelm pace a small circle around their tiny, out of the way fire. The young man hadn't gotten any less mysterious in their journey. He never talked, and no one talked to him. Occasionally he and the captain of the company they rode with exchanged looks, but they apparently had some sort of understanding, because he never came over to them, and he made no notice of Merry even when he was in plain sight.

Still, there was something about the young man that Merry felt himself warm to. Perhaps the feeling that Dernhelm, like him, was alone in this battle. Or that flash of hopelessness, that wish for death, that he'd seen in the young man's eyes earlier.

"Why do you go to fight?" he asked suddenly, speaking softly though no one was within earshot of the two of them.

Dernhelm's pacing stopped, and he looked down at Merry. His helmet stayed as ever on his head, shielding half his face. His eyes shined out from the metal glinting in the firelight. "I go to fight because war is on us," he answered in that oddly high, gruff voice.

"But do you fight for a family? For honor? Or just because you feel we all must fight?"

There was a pause. Dernhelm slowly returned to their packs and sat. "Perhaps a mix of all. Our families are all at risk now. Our honor as well. And if we don't fight we should die."

"Yet those aren't your reasons, whether they're true or not."

Dernhelm looked at him for a moment, as if trying to sense if Merry knew him from somewhere. An odd look, suspicious but not unkind. "Perhaps not. Perhaps I simply fight now because there may never be another time."

"Then you want to fight?" Merry thought about that. "When I was young and listened to stories from my uncle about his adventures and the dangers he'd gone through, I thought I'd very much like to do something like that for myself. But now I realize that that was just childish thought without sense. Now I have fought, and I find the idea of going into more battles terrifying."

"But you came here. You wanted to come."

Merry smiled faintly. "I'm terrified, but...what is left for me if I don't go? My cousin and his friend are gone to meet their deaths in some horrible land. My best friend and...and one whom I've come to care about very much...they are already at this war we're marching to. I've listened to the bravest men say we're all going to our deaths, and if that's true, and I should lose all those people who've gone ahead of me, then it's much better to suffer a few long minutes of terror and warfare than to live on for however long we might live, alone and ashamed and without my friends around me." He stopped then, blushing. "But maybe you'd think that's silly. That I don't long for valor of my own. I'm not brave, not the way you and these other men are."

Dernhelm laughed, wry. "We are no less terrified than you, master holbytla. None of our reasons could be called more or less noble than yours. Indeed, you might think some of us truly petty. Myself, I fight to prove to myself that I can. That the people I come from aren't swine and drunkards without any possibility of honor. I have lived in a stagnant land for far too long. Battle gives me hope where I had none before."

"Hope for death, but a good death." Merry frowned. "That's not hope."

"It is," he replied stubbornly. "Why else does anyone go to battle? If they all believe they're going to lose this war, then what noble reason does an army have to march into death?"

Merry shook his head sadly. "I don't know. None of it makes sense in the end. All the hatred and fear and killing over...what? Because of some black figure in a far-off land who would rather rule a dead earth than exist as less in a live one."

Dernhelm nodded. "But there have always been wars to fight, and there always will be. If we were to win this one, another would be waiting around the bend. Why should any of us want to postpone our time to die?"

"So that we can have time to live, I suppose." Merry sighed. "Death is inevitable even without war: it's the living that gives it all a point. To live and love."

"Love." Dernhelm's rough voice went hard. "Another pointless quest."

"No. Painful and awful, but there's a point to it, in the end."

"You love someone who has gone to their death?"

Merry nodded. "I do."

"I do as well," he said quietly. He glanced at Merry. "It is a bitter thing."

"You'll call it what you may. I don't know. All I can speak for is myself, and all I can say is that I would rather live with this fear and doubt in my stomach than to go on without ever having felt this way towards someone else."

Dernhelm shook his head, but didn't reply.

They fell into silence, and Merry gazed into the small fire and wondered where his friends were now, and what was happening in all the lands they had traveled through and left behind.