Margaret Weis - The reign of Istar

Moran expected hazing and abuse, but the novices seemed cruder than those in past years. To some extent, Tarli was to blame. Tarli's presence, Moran corrected himself. Novices always attacked those different from themselves, and Tarli was so different…

As if Moran had conjured him, Tarli appeared in the barracks window. "Good evening, Sire. By the way, I did you a favor."

"Favor?" Moran was learning, already, to be leery of Tarli's initiative.

The boy nodded. He must have been standing on tip toe to be seen from below. "I made you more of those short lances like I used today."

"Did you, now? Wait. Made them how?"

"From the other lances. I told you they were too long. I broke them into thirds, mostly… some halves for the larger boys."

"You broke the lances?" Moran gasped. Huma, pray for us all! "All of them?"

Tarli shifted uncomfortably. "I did my best. Besides those on the rack, I found just the one storeroom full — the one with the lances in colors. Was that all?"

Sweet Paladine! "The ones in colors… You mean red, silver, and gold? For parade dress, for the full knights?" Moran shook his head, not wanting to believe. "Those were locked up."

Tarli waved a hand. "Don't thank me. They weren't locked up that well. It was easy." He dropped from the window; he must have been standing on a stool. "Good night, Sire."

Moran dashed, panic-stricken, to the weapons store. He spent the evening going through the lances and confirming that they could not be reassembled.

The treasury would cover replacing the lot, but the paperwork would be a quest in itself.

In the end, Moran gratefully accepted Rakiel's offer to write the requests to release funds. Rakiel's help almost, but not quite, made up for the cleric's sour I-told-you-so smile.

"Breaking and entering should be a handy skill for the boy's future. Tell me, can the treasury really afford to train a bastard AND a vandal?"

"The treasury," Moran snapped, "could afford to replace the entire manor."

"Really. Just with the funds available to you?" Rakiel raised an eyebrow, not believing. "Well, let's hope Tarli isn't that ambitious."

Rakiel moved a spy across the grid. "So what are they calling him?"

Moran munched a breakfast roll. " 'Kender Stew.' They claim he's not human." He moved a footman, casually speared the spy. "They've hung his pack above his reach, and they call him an animal and chain him up. I'm not supposed to know."

Rakiel stared at him, shocked.

Moran buttered another roll. "Oh, and the tall one, Steyan, is 'Mount Nevermind.' Night before last, they sawed partway through his bed legs and, when his bed broke, made him stay up fixing it. Maglion, the fat one, is 'Gully Gut.' They make him eat table scraps and pretend that he's part gully dwarf and that they're doing him a favor."

"Aren't you going to stop them?"

Moran looked surprised. "Why would I? I spend all day drilling them to death, then chew them up and spit them out. They're frustrated all the time. They take it out on each other at night."

He pointed the butter knife at Rakiel. "Then, one night, one of them will start to think about the Measure. Really think about it. He'll be afraid, but he'll stand up to the others and say, 'This is wrong. We shouldn't do this.' The next day they'll all be living the Oath."

Rakiel's expression was dubious.

"It happens every year," Moran assured him.

"And in the meantime," Rakiel retorted, "you let them torment each other, even when they pick on your own — "

"My own what?" The butter knife was still a butter knife, but suddenly the blade glittered in the light from the window.

"Nothing," Rakiel said with a nervous smile. "I can't imagine what I was thinking."

As with all unceremonious business of the knights, the classes were taught in the language known as High Common. Only the beginning part was in the old tongue. Moran took a place in the first row of novices as they said, "Est Sularus Oth Mithas" and sat.

Moran stood between Tarli and Saliak, who had ended up sitting next to each other for the term. Neither boy wanted to look cowardly by moving away from the other. Besides, Saliak often enjoyed himself by punching and prodding Tarli when the older boy thought Moran wasn't looking.

Instead of moving to the table, Moran sat on the bench and turned to Saliak after the recitation of the Oath. "Why did you say those words?"

"You make us," Saliak answered nervously.

Someone giggled.

"Why do I make you?"

"Because the Oath is important," Tarli said.

Moran turned the full force of the Mask on the boy. "What makes it important?"

Before Tarli could answer, Moran snapped his head around to the second bench. "You, Maglion. What makes the Oath important?"

Maglion turned bright red. "Wh-what it means…"

"No." Moran stood, walked to the front, slowly and deliberately.

"The Oath," he said quietly, "does not mean anything. The Oath IS everything. Day, night, waking, sleeping, honor is your life.

"Once you know that, you can no more do wrong than you can rise from the dead unaided." He eyed Maglion coldly. "Do you understand?"

"Yes." But Maglion sounded unhappy.

"You do," Moran agreed, "and maybe you don't like it"

The boy turned even redder. "Well — I mean — so, if a knight has been insulted, let's say wronged repeatedly" — he took great care to look away from Saliak — "then a knight should fight the person that wronged him? A duel? For revenge, I mean?"

"For honor. Never for revenge."

"If you're fighting him, either way, what's the difference?"

Moran leaned forward, hands on the table. "Suppose someone tormented you for months and you challenged him and demanded an apology. If he didn't give one, you could fight him. But if he apologized sincerely, you'd have no choice but to accept it and not fight. That's the difference."

Steyan muttered under his breath.

"Is that a problem?" Moran asked quietly.

The tall boy scratched his head, looked from side to side for help, and finally said, "It's hard."

"It is." Moran intentionally dropped the Mask and spoke as a simple human being. "Honor, when it's easy or you can't avoid it anyway, tastes better than food or drink. When you don't want it, it eats at you, day and night."

Tarli, looking unusually solemn, said suddenly, "What if one kind of honor fights with another?"

Moran did not reply immediately. Finally he said, slowly and carefully, "Learn this, and learn it well. There is only one kind of honor. Don't ever believe that a conflict with the Oath or the Measure means that there's a conflict of two honors."

He relaxed. He alone knew what a crisis of faith that sort of question produced in a man. "There are, however, conflicts between kinds of duty," he added.

Late in the summer she said playfully, "Are you a family man?"

"I've told you." Moran had shown her his family tomb, recited most of his ancestors' history.

She poked him in the ribs teasingly .

"I mean, would you be good to a child, no matter who the child is, or what it's like?"

"Of course I would."

She waved her arms, laughing at him, but there were tears in her eyes, too .

" I mean look after and train, and see to its needs. Do you promise, even if that child comes between you and something else you want to do ?"

Her laughter faded .

" Please — "

Unhesitatingly he said, "I'd do all that and more. no matter what I had to give up ."

He picked her up easily and kissed her repeatedly. He promised that he would always, for her sake, "Look after and train" children .

Looking back, he realized that his promise had made him the best teacher the knights had ever had .