Parnard wearily headed straight to the barracks without stopping at the mess-hall to eat. Although he was hungry, for not a morsel of food had gone in his stomach all day, he was too tired to eat. Lately he was always tired, irritable, and anxious. A rest day had been denied to him again. He unbuckled his clumsy leather armour, throwing it into a heap on the floor, stripped off his sweat-soaked garments, and forced himself to draw a bucket of rainwater out from the cistern. He dumped it over his head and inhaled sharply. The shock of icy water did not clear his confused thoughts, and he stood naked, dripping and shivering in the center of the empty barracks. No one else was there, it being mealtime and early in the evening. Parnard’s blank, hollow eyes wandered all about, fell on the straw pallets, and on the bare floorboards they rested upon, and on the stub of tallow candle beside the pallet that was his bedding. It seems rather hard to be a soldier, he thought, but I have got to be one after all. But I know one thing: if I ever live through this and get home, I will never leave it again! With a fierce jerk of his head, he tossed his wet hair out of his face, and dried himself off as best he could with a rag the size of a handkerchief. He fished out a clean shirt and pair of leggings from his trunk, and pulled these on quickly. He wanted nothing more than to stretch himself out on his bed and ease his spirits with a little journal writing before anyone returned to the barracks. Then it would be time for rest, and the next grueling day of field-training would soon be upon him. He sighed, and stuck a hand inside the slit that he had cut in his mattress, feeling around in the hard-packed straw for his journal. To his surprise, it was not there. Perhaps he had lain down upon the wrong bed again in his weariness. He got up and searched the pallets on each side of him, then turned over all of the pallets, and looked in all the trunks and corners, but found no books or papers whatsoever, finally determining that his fellow soldiers were the dullards he always suspected them to be, and that his journal was nowhere inside the barracks.
At that moment, Culufinnel entered, and gave the command to stand at attention. Parnard scrambled to his feet, and tried to stand as rigid and upright as he could. Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw that his brother had a most unusual expression on his face. He groaned inwardly, thinking that Culufinnel had come up with another form of training to torture him with during his last moments of waking thought. Culufinnel halted in front of him and looked him full in the face. Parnard’s eyes grew wide with realization and fear.
“I expected this,” Culufinnel said, waving the journal to and fro underneath his nose, as if daring Parnard to snatch it from him. “I knew you were up to something, sneaking off without supper, three times this week! It is not like my brother to miss a meal. Yes, I found your little book. How dare you write such garbage! I thought I could make something out of you, but you willfully remain a careless, lazy wastrel, useless, an utter disgrace to the family!” He threw the journal hard at Parnard, who ducked aside and caught it just before a corner of the binding struck him in the eye. The action stirred his numbed senses: Parnard felt a great anger rise up, and he thrust a finger in his brother’s sneering face.
“You read my journal, you - you - you detestable hypocrite!” he stammered out. It was all he could manage to say at first, but more words spilled out of his mouth, completely out of his control. “Ha! Well, pretend to know me, brother, but ware! - those who judge will be judged themselves. At least I do not make public examples of others’ behavior, when yours is just as bad, and at least I do not hide behind a scrubbed-white façade of cold-hearted and lofty ideals, such as glory, and valour, and temperance, while forgetting others that are just as important. It is time for your schooling, brother! Today I speak of charity: charity to one’s brother, and mercy, for without mercy all judgment is but cruelty, and compassion, compassion for the suffering of others, my suffering! And if you possessed any one of these traits in the slightest, you would see how unjust and cruel you act towards your blood kin, and recognize how pitiless you have been to your brother, who only wishes to leave this wretched place, and never have the misfortune of looking upon your arrogant and insipid face ever again!” Culufinnel took a staggering step backward, like someone punched by a heavy blow. This outburst was unlike anything he had ever seen of his younger brother, whom he regarded as a weak, timid scatterbrain who only half-listened to what he had to say.
Much, much later, Parnard considered that perhaps he should have ended there, and not have said anything more, but he could not rein in his runaway tongue; his rage was not spent. It must twist the knife that was buried deep in his brother’s heart, as if an evil spell had been laid upon him. He found himself saying, “How doth our father fare, O Squire Culufinnel?” Seeing his brother blanch white as paper at these words, Parnard threw his head back in triumph and laughed madly.
Culufinnel gave a wild cry and seized his javelin with both hands. He made to plunge it deep into Parnard’s chest, and he would have run him through, had not others in the camp heard their shouting. Hastening up, the Malledhrim soldiers flung themselves upon Culufinnel, grabbing him by the wrists and around his waist to hold him back as he continued to struggle. He could barely be restrained, and Parnard fled in terror from those hate-filled eyes. The front gates were wide open as a patrol had just returned, and a riderless horse was standing nearby. He hopped upon its back and dug his heels hard into its sides, galloping out of the fortress of Thangúlhad as fast as the hart flies from the horn.
