“I suppose so. At least being able to go on, and fight, and not be mastered by fear.”
“Right. But the essence is the going on. A liking for excitement and danger is like a taste for walnuts or mushrooms or the color yellow. Most people have a little—you may have noticed how small children like to scare themselves climbing trees and such—but the gift varies in amount. It adds to the warrior’s ability by masking fear. But it’s not essential, Paksenarrion, even to a warrior. The going on, the enduring, is. Even for the mightiest warrior, a danger may be so great, a foe so overwhelming, that the excitement, the enjoyment, is gone. What then? Is a warrior to quit and abandon those who depend on his courage because it isn’t fun?” Paks shook her head. “No, and put that way it’s obvious. You may remember such times yourself. It’s true that one who had no delight in facing and overcoming danger would not likely choose to be a warrior, except in great need. But consider your own patron Gird. According to legend, he was no fighter until need—his own and his neighbors’—drove him to it. Suppose he never enjoyed battle, but did his best anyway: does that make him unworthy of veneration?”
“No, sir. But if what you say is so, will I always be like this? And can I fight again?”
Master Oakhallow gave her a long considering look. “And how do you define this? Do you feel yourself the same as when you came here?”
Paks thought a moment. “No. I don’t. I feel I can go on, but I still wish I were the way I used to be.”
“It was more pleasant, doubtless, to feel no fear and be admired.”
Paks ducked her head. “Yes, sir, but—I could do things. Help—”
“I know. You did many good things. But if we consider whether you will stay as you are now, we must consider what you are now, and what you wish to be. We must see clearly. We must have done with daydreams, and see whether this sapling—” he touched her arm, “—be oak, holly, ash or cherry. We can grow no cherries on an oak, nor acorns on a holly. And however your life goes, Paksenarrion, it cannot return to past times: you will never be just as you were. What has hurt you will leave scars. But as a tree that is hacked and torn, if it lives, will be the same tree—will be an oak if an oak it was before—so you are still Paksenarrion. All your past is within you, good and bad alike.”
“I can’t feel that, any more. All that happened before Kolobia . . . I can’t reach it.”
“That we will change. It’s there, and it is you. Come, you are strong enough to walk today; the sun will do you good.”
As they wandered the grove’s quiet trails, he led her to talk about her life, bit by bit. She found herself remembering little things from her childhood: watching her father help a lamb at birth, rubbing it dry, carrying her younger brother on her shoulders from the fields to the house, listening for wolves’ wild singing on winter nights when they ventured near the barns. It seemed that she was there again—where she could never go—clinging to the hames on the shaggy pony as her father plowed their one good field, or catching her fingers in the loom as her mother wove the striped blankets they slept under. Seen so, her father was not the wrathful figure of those last days at home, but a strong, loving man who made a hard land prosper for his family.
“He cared for me,” she admitted at last, staring into the fire that night. “I thought he hated me, but he wanted me to be safe. That’s why—”
The Kuakgan nodded. “He saw danger ahead for you as a fighter. Any father would. To think of his child—his daughter—exposed to sword and spear, wounded, dying among strangers—”
“Yes. I didn’t think of it like that. I wanted danger.”
“And danger you had. No, don’t flinch. You’d have made a very bad pig farmer’s wife, wanting to be a warrior. Even now, you’d make a bad pig farmer’s wife.”
“Not for the same reason.”
“No. But your pig farmer—what was his name?—is better off with whoever he has.”
Paks had not thought of Fersin Amboisson in years. She had never wondered whom he married instead. Now his pleasant, rugged face came back to her. He had looked, but for being a redhead, like Saben.
“I hope he found somebody good,” she said soberly.
“The world’s full of good wives,” said Master Oakhallow, and turned to something else.
Day by day the talk covered more and more of the years. Her first days in the Duke’s Company, her friends there, the trouble with Korryn and Stephi (which seemed to interest the Kuakgan far more than Paks could understand—he kept asking her more and more details of that day—things that seemed to have nothing to do with the incident itself.)
And as she talked, her life seemed to gain solidity—to become real again. She felt connected once more to the eager, adventurous girl tagging after older brothers and cousins, to the determined young woman running away from home, to the young soldier fighting beside trusted companions in the Duke’s Company. This, it seemed, was her real self—bold, self-willed, impetuous, hot-tempered, intensely loyal once trust was given. She began to see how these same traits could be strengths or weaknesses in different circumstances. Trust given the Duke would lead to one thing; given to Macenion, to a far different outcome.
“I never thought, before,” she said, as they sat one day in a sunny spot. “I never thought that I should choose. I thought others were either good or bad, and nothing in between. Vik warned me about that, once, with Barranyi, but I didn’t understand. It’s still me, isn’t it? I have to decide who is worthy of trust, and even then I have to decide each time if something is right or wrong.”
The Kuakgan nodded. “It’s hardest for fighters, Paksenarrion. Fighters must learn to obey, and often must obey without question: there’s no time. That’s why many of us—the Kuakkganni, I mean, now—will have nothing to do with fighters. So many cannot do both, cannot give loyalty and yet retain their own choice of right and wrong. They follow chaos, whether they know it or not. For one like you, who has chosen, or been chosen for, a part in the greater battle, it is always necessary to think as well as fight.”
Paks nodded. “I see. And I didn’t, did I? I did what I was told, and assumed that those I followed were right. If I liked them, I assumed they were good, and forgot about it.” She paused, thinking back. “Even when I did worry—when I wanted the Duke to kill Siniava quickly—I couldn’t think about it afterwards.”
“Yes. You pushed it out of your mind and went back to being a plain soldier. You were challenged again and again, Paksenarrion, to go beyond that, and think for yourself: those incidents with Gird’s symbol you told me about, but—”
“I refused. I went back. I see.” Paks sighed, and stretched suddenly, reaching toward the trees with her locked fists. “Hunh. I thought I’d never refused a challenge, but I didn’t even see it. Was that cowardice, too?”
“Have we defined cowardice? Why did you refuse? If you refused simply because you were certain that you should be a follower, that’s one thing. But if you were afraid to risk choosing, risk being wrong—”
“Then it was. Then while I thought—while everyone else thought—I was brave, maybe I—”
“Maybe you were afraid of something, like everyone else. Don’t be ridiculous, child! You’re not perfect; no one is. What we’re trying to do is find out what you are, and what you can be, and that does not include wallowing in guilt.”
Paks stared at him, startled out of her gloom. “But I thought you were saying—”
“I was saying that you consistently refused to make some choices. That is something you need to recognize, not something to worry about in the past, where you can’t change it. If you want to, you can decide to accept that challenge from now on.”
“I can?”
“Certainly. I’m not speaking, now, of returning to soldiering. As a fighter, you’re tempted to see all challenges in physical terms. But you can certainly decide that you, yourself, will consider and act on what you see as right and wrong. Whatever that may be.”