Excerpt from the journal of Tornal Baylon. Bannerman of the Black Peaks.

  …We were the last to leave Lothrock Keep, and we fought the rearguard action for a week, moving slowly through the deep canyons, one company holding the enemy back while the other secured the next defile. Again and again for ten long days.

  The Orcs were well supplied and well-rested, and they harried us day and night, but we could not give in, for those who could not fight continued to flee to the safety of the high places of this world, where the Orcs could not hope to find them until the spring.

  Our men of the Lothrock Keep were steady, even in the face of the Orc shamans who fought with the strength of ten of their kind, like great bears, their roars bounced from the rocks.

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  No man won more praise than our general's own son, a boy who bested a great Orc captain and marked his face with bloody strikes.

  Most days, one man was given the killing herb. Some days it was two men, and other days it was none. Officers, banner men, spearmen, and archers. There was no need to call for volunteers, because General Price knew as we did that every one of us would proudly step forward. We marched on, and they ate the herb, said their last prayer, and lay down to die, as if fallen from starvation.

  Then the grim day came when the general chose himself, and though it pained us all, we knew it to be well done, for who would think us weaker than if we lost our great leader?

  General Price would take no killing herb. Instead, his death would spin lies of strife and betrayal.

  His son stepped forward and drove the knife into his father's back, and though he only had sixteen winters, we counted him a great man and a great leader. We would have followed him into the abyss. Some felt as if he walked already with one foot in that fell place…