"No." I said coldly at an end, with these close minded friends, suddenly turned enemy.
"Then get out of here and may God have mercy on your traitorous soul and forgive you for the noble blood spilled that you're at fault for!" Chantry said roughly in conclusion.
I stood up so abruptly that my chair fell over backward and I kicked it out of my way viciously to slam into pieces against the desk, then I almost tore the double doors of the council room off their hinges, because I had shoved them so hard. They slammed shut behind me.
I was mad!
They spoke of betrayal, what did they know of it?
I had been the one betrayed here today and because of it my honor was now in shreds. They had taken my respect and thrown it in the gutter and trampled all over it!
In my anger my fist shot out and smashed a red terra-cotta flowerpot. It fell in pieces to the stone terrace steps that I was going down. Its pretty flower arrangement lay strewn about, as potting soil stained the pristine surface of the steps.
I starred at the destruction for a moment. The poor flowers hadn't deserved their fate, just as I hadn't mine. I thought about scooping the flowers up, but it was useless as there was no longer a containment vessel for them, or for that matter, me.
The flower's brief time in the sun and appreciation in the eyes of their beholder's was over. Now they would just wither and die, as they lays uprooted and strewn across the hot steps, as the sun beat down mercilessly on their exposed roots and bruised foliage. All ability to be of good purpose was gone from them now.
Bitterly, I turned away and made my way down the rest of the stairs still mad enough to kill, because of the enormity of what has just been taken from me this day. It was as if I had sacrificed everything on behalf of my family, only to be scorned and rejected by them, because of trumped ludicrousness.
What they insisted and railed against me was so wrong!
Company G had killed thousands of the enemy and we had halted the advance into the city to a snail's pace. How was I to blame for anything let alone the loss of so many of our own agents against such superior numbers?
In short it seemed like a no-brainer to me and yet why did they hold me responsible for the loss of so many men?
I had fought valiantly, doing everything I had out of honor and I was excoriated by my own kind as something worse than the gunk one would scrape off the bottom of one's shoe and discard as soon as possible.