The balance had shifted, the old rules were dust. Jan Vlasov had come to the town of his birth after years of campaigning to find nothing was as he remembered it. The citizens did not cheer as the regiment marched through the streets the way they had upon their departure—in fact, there were very few citizens to be seen. One house in every four or five was an empty shell, doors and glass pilfered and the rooms clearly bereft of furniture. It seemed that the city had suffered the same fate as the regiment: three years ago, five hundred men had set out to join the prince’s contingent. Now, eighty-seven returned, and those who hadn’t looted riches now wore motheaten rags and scavenged breeches. Vlasov had expected his homecoming to be very different—he had expected his rise through the ranks to culminate in a medal pinned on his chest by the mayor. He found only desolation.

The regiment was formally dismissed and paid out in the town square, a few half-interested faces watching from windows and shops. A blessing from the town bishop steeped in disillusionment and weariness capped off the ceremony, and Vlasov began to wend his way home, pike held to his shoulder by his left arm, his right hand resting easily on the handle of his dagger to dissuade bandits. It was strange, he thought, that he should stay ready for a fight in the peaceful town where he was born and had grown into a man. All the same, he’d learned the danger of towns that suffered the deprivations of war, especially when those deprivations came from sources other than battle.

His home rose up before him. It still had its windows and doors, but the place seemed different. It was as though there was a film of filth over the building, even though it was no cleaner or dirtier than he remembered it being three years ago. He banged three times on the door and announced himself. When no one answered, he tried the latch and it opened. Inside, most of the furnishings—acquired by his father and grandfathers in their lives as self-made merchants—were missing. In the parlor was a single high-backed seat, and in it sat his eldest brother, Milutin, his stony eyes following Jan as he entered.

“You’ve fallen on hard times, Mico,” Jan said.

“You don’t know the half of it. Mother died last winter,” His words were devoid of emotion. He didn’t seem able to stand up and embrace his youngest brother as Jan had expected, hoped.

“What happened?”

“To mother, or the house?”

“Both, I suppose.”

“A fever, and a war. For both of them. The spring after you left another levy was called, and another, and it kept on and on. At first they wanted only the healthy young men like you. Then they asked for the boys and the elders. Now? Now there are only children and heirs like me. Well, them and the women. I think mother would have pulled through if she had more than me to look after her.”

“You can’t blame yourself,” Jan started.

“I don’t.”

“Well, what choice did I have? They would have got me sooner or later, anyway, if what you say is true.”

“Yes, but if you’d stayed a year maybe Peter would still be here, at least. Maybe even Niko. Instead, they’re gone, and I don’t think they’re likely to come home.”

“I made it, why not them?”

“Half the kingdom is buried in nameless graves or starved to death in the streets. Look at me, Jan. The world has ended for me. It has ended for everyone here. Soon, when you come to know how bad things have got, it’ll end for you, too.”

Jan Vlasov did not believe his brother. Could not. The vivid memory of praying for God’s mercy when facing a charge of heavy cavalry and receiving it—ramming the point of his pike neatly through the thinnest gap in a knight’s armor, between the helmet and neck guard the instant before he would have been cut down—told him that to lose hope was voluntary, the act of a coward. He turned away from Milutin in disgust and wandered the house. The hearth where father had told the children stories, and the bedroom where he died a content and pious man. The room where he and his brothers slept as boys, the room where they drank and japed and argued as men. Memories as strong as souls themselves soaked into the plaster of every wall, ringing and knocking and laughing like motes of dust in the air. No, what had been true once must be true again.

He looked out the back door into the alley and saw his mother and his brothers, exactly as they had been the day he left. He watched them turn black and indistinct and coalesce into a great gaping void. He lay trampled beneath the hooves of a heavy cavalry charge. The balance had shifted, and the old life was dust.