He learned a few hundred years ago that sometimes the most useful thing he can do is to just let himself get killed. Merlin’s covenant with the earth didn’t grant him the strength of an ox, it didn’t make his flesh repellent to arrows or bullets. It just allows him to return from the dead. So death, for him, means less than it might do for others. And somebody has to be the first one over the walls, the first one through the breach, the first one out of the landing craft and up the beach. Should that be somebody who can only die once, whose family would miss them? Or should it be someone who
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