Honor

The man had been dead for hours. His foul stench began closing in on my nostrils. I backed away from the corpse. Dried blood etched the snow around him. He was young, perhaps only sixteen.
As shock subsided, I began to feel pity for the man. A single arrow protruded from his chest, directly on his heart. A wound that could easily kill someone like him… but it wouldn’t have killed me, and for this I felt guilty. I back up a little more and felt Adam’s hand rest on my shoulder. I placed my hand on his, as a solitary tear was shed from my eye. Even if I hadn’t known him, He died for a war that I knew better than myself.
I looked up at Adam, knowing that he felt the same way. He looked away and his eyes closed tight, tears forming at the corners. I knelt down in the snow. Wetness surged through my beige jodhpurs. I traced my hand across the man’s face, starting at his slightly parted mouth, up until I reach his blankly staring eyes. I closed them with a gentle motion. I stood up and turn to Adam the instant pain in my thighs and calves reminding me of how long I had gone without rest. Adam nodded silently and went to untie the two horses from their tree posts. The wind whipped my brown hair around my face.
“Adam.” I whispered softly. He hadn’t heard me. “Adam,” I repeated louder. He turned towards me. “Adam you really should...” I turned back to the dead man and stared at his face. It was so pleasant, so soft and unafraid. So young. Too young to die the way he had.
“Linaya, you know I can’t, I don’t have the strength to do it properly.” He led the horses to where I stood. “To burn him in a white flame would attract the enemy, they know that magic, the way it looks, smells, travels, I can’t. They would know it was us for sure.”
I felt guilty, I knew Adam was right, but I thought it would be worth it to see that this man, boy really, was paid his due respect by being burned in the white light of uncorrupted magic. Adam was the only one I knew who was so pure that he could use that particular breed of magic. I, myself had been touched by evil too many times to perform it correctly.
I sighed. We didn’t have much of a choice. I climbed up on my black stallion, as Adam mounted Firehien his white thoroughbred.
" Sorry." he whispered as we rode away through the snow.
"Yeah, me too." I sighed. "I wish I could do white magic like you, I would have preformed it." He stop his horse in front of me and looked back with a stern gaze.
"Linaya, even if you were able to preform that type of magic, I would not have let you. It would have attracted the enemy, and as your mentor, I cannot allow it." He kicked Firehein forward and we rode in silence for a few hours, taking the trail forward, and not looking back.