The horses had scattered. Only three soldiers remained alive. Arya was grappling with two of them some distance away while the third and final soldier fled south along the road. Gathering his strength, Eragon pursued him. As he narrowed the gap between them, the man began to plead for mercy, promising he would tell no one about the massacre and holding out his hands to show they were empty. When Eragon was within arm’s reach, the man veered to the side and then a few steps later changed direction again, darting back and forth across the countryside like a frightened jack -rabbit. All the while, the man continued to beg, tears streaming down his cheeks, saying that he was too young to die, that he had yet to marry and father a child, that his parents would miss him, and that he had been pressed into the army and this was only his fifth mission and why couldn’t Eragon leave him alone? “What have you against me?” he sobbed. “I only did what I had to. I’m a good person!”

Eragon paused and forced himself to say: “You can’t keep up with us. We can’t leave you; you’ll catch a horse and betray us.”

“No, I won’t!”

“People will ask what happened here. Your oath to Galbatorix and the Empire won’t let you lie. I’m sorry, but I don’t know how to release you from your bond, except . . .”

“Why are you doing this? You’re a monster!” screamed the man. With an expression of pure terror, he made an attempt to dash around Eragon and return to the road. Eragon overtook him in less than ten feet, and as the man was still crying and asking for clemency, Eragon wrapped his left hand around his neck and squeezed. When he relaxed his grip, the soldier fell across his feet, dead.

Bile coated Eragon’s tongue as he stared down at the man’s slack face. Whenever we kill, we kill a part of ourselves, he thought. Shaking with a combination of shock, pain, and self-loathing, he walked back to where the fight had begun. Arya was kneeling beside a body, washing her hands and arms with water from a tin flask one of the soldiers had been carrying.

“How is it,” asked Arya, “you could kill that man, but you could not bring yourself to lay a finger on Sloan?” She stood and faced him, her gaze frank.

Devoid of emotion, he shrugged. “He was a threat. Sloan wasn’t. Isn’t it obvious?”

Arya was quiet for a while. “It ought to be, but it isn’t. . . . I am ashamed to be instructed in morality by one with so much less experience. Perhaps I have been too certain, too confident of my own choices.”

Eragon heard her speak, but the words meant nothing to him as his gaze drifted over the corpses. Is this all my life has become? he wondered. A never-ending series of battles? “I feel like a murderer.”

“I understand how difficult this is,” said Arya. “Remember, Eragon, you have experienced only a small part of what it means to be a Dragon Rider. Eventually, this war will end, and you will see that your duties encompass more than violence. The Riders were not just warriors, they were teachers, healers, and scholars.”

His jaw muscles knotted for a moment. “Why are we fighting these men, Arya?”

“Because they stand between us and Galbatorix.”

“Then we should find a way to strike at Galbatorix directly.”

“None exist. We cannot march to Urû’baen until we defeat his forces. And we cannot enter his castle until we disarm almost a century’s worth of traps, magical and otherwise.”

“There has to be a way,” he muttered. He remained where he was as Arya strode forward and picked up a spear. But when she placed the tip of the spear under the chin of a slain soldier and thrust it into his skull, Eragon sprang toward her and pushed her away from the body. “What are you doing?” he shouted.

Anger flashed across Arya’s face. “I will forgive that only because you are distraught and not of your right mind. Think, Eragon! It is too late in the day for anyone to be coddling you. Why is this necessary?”

The answer presented itself to him, and he grudgingly said, “If we don’t, the Empire will notice that most of the men were killed by hand.”

“Exactly! The only ones capable of such a feat are elves, Riders, and Kull. And since even an imbecile could figure out a Kull was not responsible for this, they’ll soon know we are in the area, and in less than a day, Thorn and Murtagh will be flying overhead, searching for us.” There was a wet squelch as she pulled the spear out of the body. She held it out to him until he accepted it. “I find this as repulsive as you do, so you might as well make yourself useful and help.”

Eragon nodded. Then Arya scavenged a sword, and together they set out to make it appear as if a troop of ordinary warriors had killed the soldiers. It was grisly work, but it went quickly, for they both knew exactly what kinds of wounds the soldiers should have to ensure the success of the deception, and neither of them wished to linger. When they came to the man whose chest Eragon had destroyed, Arya said, “There’s little we can do to disguise an injury like that. We will have to leave it as is and hope people assume a horse stepped on him.” They moved on. The last soldier they dealt with was the commander of the patrol. His mustache was now limp and torn and had lost most of its former splendor.

After enlarging the pebble hole so it more closely resembled the triangular pit left by the spike of a war hammer, Eragon rested for a moment, contemplating the commander’s sad mustache, then said, “He was right, you know.”

“About what?”