I have a lot of friends who served in the regular army for a long time. Quite a few of my friends from that time went on to become full-time soldiers. But you live in a world that is entirely army. Your whole world is pretty much that military service, and it's very hard to do other things and to break out of that environment.

Nick shook his head and found to his surprise that he did have tears left after all. He wasn't surprised by a talking cat. The world was crumbling around him and anything could happen.

He was obviously a very arrogant ragamuffin, and younger than she was, to boot. And he was wearing a necromancer's bells! Apart from that, he was quite handsome, which was another black mark as far as she was concerned.

So are you saying that somebody went to all the trouble to make you a crypt a thousand years ago on the off chance that you might turn up one day, walk in, and have a convenient heart attack?

But think of how much worse it would be to sit here, not knowing. Until the Dead choke the Ratterlin and Hedge walks across the dry bed of the river to batter down the door.

There is always a choice, even if the alternatives don't appear to be equal.

Clearly the Old One had the capacity to kill - or easily deliver some sort of final ending that sounded remarkably like death.