Summary:

The right thing to do with an unjust war is to lose it. The right thing to do in a battle is to win it. Ilya Rozanov has won every battle and lost the war, which ought, by some reckoning, to leave him twice in the right.

He is sent across the sea as the hostage instead, handed over to the very kingdom he spent eighteen months burning in his father’s name. If the heavens keep accounts, they keep them badly.