Whatever beliefs about the nobility of war that Simon still retained died during that long day on the frozen lake. In the midst of such terrible carnage, with fallen friends and enemies alike scattered about, maimed and bloodied, some even made faceless by terrible wounds; with the crying and pleading of dying men ringing in his ears, their dignity ripped away from them; with the air rank with the stenches of fear-sweat, blood, and excrement, it was impossible to see warfare as anything other than what Morgenes had once termed it: a kind of hell on earth that impatient mankind had arranged so
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