He glanced at Thomas as he swayed to his feet, his gaze falling on the wound on his arm and the bruise on his forehead, then looked at the bloody mess on the stairs and the fallen blade, roughly understanding what had happened.
"Not bad, boy," Einar said, patting Thomas on the shoulder. The force was not heavy, but it still made the already dizzy Thomas sway. "Ruthless enough, and reckless enough with your own life. You're made for war."
The Sauron veterans beside them looked at Thomas, and the distance in their eyes lessened a little, replaced by a measure of recognition.
To the Sauron, courage and a fierce disregard for death were the qualities most worthy of respect.
Thomas panted heavily, leaning against the cold stone wall, feeling as if every bone in his body had come apart. The wound on his arm burned fiercely, and his temple throbbed.
He looked at the corpse on the ground, rapidly going cold, then raised his head to glance toward the top of the stairs. Recalling that life-or-death struggle in the space of a lightning flash and a flint spark, a surge of lingering fear and nausea rose in him—but more than that, there was the collapse of surviving disaster, and... an indescribable, strange shudder after taking an enemy's life with his own hands.
The fighting inside the tower had completely ended. Apart from them, not a single defender remained alive. The stairs leading down beneath the walls had long since been seized as well, and amid a heavy "creak," the massive city gate was slowly opened from within.
Outside the city, in the darkness, there came the low, suppressed sound of footsteps and hoofbeats surging in like the tide. Svein's main force had arrived.
Wintersburg, this border watch-fort, had fallen