Aksel, a powerful little man as flexible as he was strong, probably knew more about fighting styles and weapons than any twelve ordinary fighters in the Sunsguard. His first words to Alberich were, "Berthold thinks you have it in you. If it's there, we'll bring it out together."
Alberich had never known just what "it" was supposed to be, but Aksel offered instruction and approval in equal measure, and Alberich had drunk it in as thirsty ground drank rain. They were the finest two men that Alberich had ever known....
And they taught me what honor was. Which might be why, when Dethor had asked what he most valued, it was "honor" he had seized on instantly.
He had learned from their example as much as from anything they actually said to him.
Honor was never taking the easy way when it was also the wrong one. Never telling a falsehood unless the truth was painful and unnecessary, or a lie was necessary to save others. Never manipulating the truth to serve only yourself. Protecting the weak and helpless; standing fast even when fear made you weak. Keeping your word.
Perhaps that was all part of the problem; serving the Sunpriests had turned him away from the path of honor. How was it protecting the weak and helpless, when he and his troops were turned aside from their duties on the Border to shepherd a tithe collector and his treasure boxes from village to village? How could he keep his word when those about him were making idle promises that he was expected to fulfill, promises that again, took him away from real duty to satisfy some idiotic whim or moment of vainglory? How could he speak the truth when the truth would simply have gotten him thrown to the Fires?
In the simpler world of the cadet corps, no such compromises had ever entered into his personal equation. They only came when he left that world.
Perhaps that was why Aksel and Berthold hadn't left it, themselves... perhaps they had known, in their heart of hearts, that going out into the world would only begin a long train of broken vows.
Vows like the ones he broke when he accepted his place here, his position as the partner of a Companion.
But a vow went both ways. He had pledged himself to the service of Karse and the God; only later were vows required that he pledge to obey the word of any priest, and he'd had misgivings, but it was too late to try and back out at that point. At that same ceremony, though, there had been another set of vows—the priest who administered the oaths to the new officers had pledged on behalf of all priests to regard the new officers as Vkandis' chosen, to stand beside them if accused, and succor them in need.
And he had quickly learned how little they honored those oaths.
The Sunpriests broke their vows to me long before I ever broke mine to them. Did that mean the pact between him and them was also broken? Was it wrong of him to feel that their betrayal released him from his oath? Or was he just trying to rationalize his own sins?
He realized, belatedly, that all this pacing was probably keeping poor Dethor awake. A glance outside showed him that the moon was well up, and there was plenty of moonlight silvering the grass outside; more than enough for him to pace all he wanted to without tripping over something in the dark.
With a silent apology, he let himself out through the salle, pacing across the wooden floor by the light entering through the clerestory windows, opening the outer door and stepping out into the waiting embrace of the night.
The chill air carried a hint of damp and a scent of grass; from the distance came the sounds of voices, too far off to be more than a murmur. But the very cadences were strange to his ear, and he felt an involuntary shiver of alarm he couldn't suppress.
Oh, these Valdemarans! Not four marks into his first real day among them—he couldn't count the time spent with the Healers—and look what had happened. They had told him the one thing he longed to hear, and had not realized that he longed to hear it—that he was needed. They offered for his inspection a gaggle of green children, good children, and told him that these young people would go out, unprepared, against the kind of animals he had fought against—unless he helped train them. And how—how—could he not have responded to that?
To defend the weak and helpless—how much better could he do that by training others to do the same job? How could he allow anyone to send the weak and helpless—well, all right, the half-trained—out to throw themselves down and be trampled on, when he knew he could remedy the situation?
There was nothing dishonorable about taking that job.
There was nothing honorable in refusing it.
Yes, but these are not your people... so where does your honor come into it? Or is there some reason why it doesn't further break your vows to train Valdemarans? But then came additional questions. When he already knew, from the evidence of his own experience, how utterly wrong some of the things he'd taken as truth were, why should it? When had that definition of "honor" ever demanded absolute adherence to the Sunpriests of Karse?
Just because the Sunpriests would have put any Valdemaran they found to the Fire and sword—well, he knew how wrong the Sunpriests could be. He had found a Sunpriest here, an upright man who everything in him cried out to trust, who had told him in no uncertain words that the Valdemarans were good and true, and that it was his duty to Vkandis Himself to ally himself with them. So where did that leave his vows and his honor?
He did not realize how fast he had walked, or how far, until an angry snort brought his attention back to his surroundings.
He looked up, and found he was in the middle of a meadow or clearing, ringed with trees. From where he stood, he could see some lights, a few, through the trees to his right, but otherwise he could just as well have been in the middle of a meadow in farming country.
The snort had come from a very large, white, four-legged creature just under the trees in front of him. It moved out into the moonlight, and quickly resolved itself into a familiar shape.
A Companion. It wasn't Kantor; it wasn't stocky enough, and besides, it didn't "feel" like Kantor. There was, in fact, a disturbing absence of feeling about this Companion, as if there was a wall between him and it.
A moment later, it was joined by a second—then a third, a fourth, and a fifth. They moved toward him, slowly, but deliberately, and he hadn't spent most of his life around horses not to recognize the menace in their movement. Every muscle was tense. They weren't so much walking as stalking toward him, their narrowed eyes glittering in the moonlight. There was no mistaking their hostility, and he was the object of it.
A chill ran down his back as he turned slowly, preparing to go back the way he had come—only to find his path to escape blocked by another pair of Companions. He turned back, to see that the rest had spread themselves out, and were encircling him in an all-too-familiar pincer movement. A moment later, he was surrounded.
They were huge creatures, and came armed with their own hooves. Their weight—an ordinary horse in a panic could easily kill and trample a man—a trained warhorse was as formidable an opponent as any warrior that rode him. How much more dangerous would Companions be, who had minds and intelligence of their own? His heart hammered with a surge of fear, and his throat tightened.