Chapter 572: Humility And Hubris (Part One)
"So, even though you died," the vision of Ashlynn asked as she gazed at Ollie. "Isn’t this an ending you can accept?"
For several minutes, Ollie said nothing as he tried to process everything Ashlynn had told him. He, Harrod and Milo, along with more than a hundred other soldiers, had died to save the villagers and perhaps even the Vale itself from the Inquisition’s terrifying curse of the second sun. Owain, the leader of the invading army, had escaped with most of his men, but the losses he’d suffered had been ruinous and the losses suffered by the Church had been even greater.
"Am I supposed to accept that the best I could hope for in this situation was to die a heroe’s death?" Ollie asked, looking at the vision of Ashlynn with a complicated gaze as he tried to sift through the simmering stew of emotions boiling within his chest.
Perhaps it would have been easier to accept if he’d arrived in time to prevent Milo and Harrod from dying... if he’d saved his close friends along with the villagers then, even if he failed to kill Owain, he could at least say that he had done right for his friends and for Old Nan.
But when he thought about it, in the instances where he’d focused completely on solving the crisis within the village, he’d lost Old Nan, and when he fought against the Lothians, he lost Milo and Harrod. It was like the trial was telling him that he would have to accept someone’s death, one way or another.
"Was there really no way to save everyone who mattered?" Ollie asked. "Even if it cost my life, if I could have protected the people who mattered the most..."
"Of course there was a way," Ashlynn said, startling Ollie with how easily the words fell from her lips. "What would have happened if you had ordered them to remain here, perhaps with a dozen or so men, to keep the village safe if Owain attempted to send men to attack it while the battle was occurring."
"Lord Owain wouldn’t do that," Ollie said. "There would have been no point to ordering them to protect the village other than to," he said before his voice trailed off as realization struck him. "There would have been no point other than keeping them away from danger. But, they wouldn’t have wanted that. They would have resented me for keeping them safe that way," he said as he hung his head.
"It would have been worse for your men as well," Ashlynn pointed out. "They needed an experienced commander and while Harrod doesn’t have much experience, he knows more about soldiering than most of the men did. And Milo was the deadliest archer on the battlefield. No one else could have fired an arrow through a target as small as the visor of a knight’s helmet and he did it more than once."