Exile's Honor

:You do have the first class in the morning,: Kantor reminded him, :I believe it would be wise.: Then, very quietly, :You are a man of much honor, Chosen.:

Alberich started. Then, slowly, smiled.

'I hope I may be,' he said after a moment, 'I only hope I may be.'

6

ALBERICH contemplated a substantial pile of books waiting beside his chair in the sitting room with a sigh. If he'd seen half that number of books in the past several years, he'd have been very much surprised. Lessons. Classes! At his age—

Still, only fool wishes to stop learning. And he needed these classes if he was going to understand these Valdemarans.

He had two of these classes (not three!) for now, both of which entailed an enormous amount of reading. In the interests of preserving his authority as Dethor's Second, however, he was not having his classes, his lessons, with the rest of the Trainees. That idea had been suggested and discarded within two days of being officially appointed and functioning as the Weaponsmaster's Second—four days after actually accepting the job. Dethor had been the one insisting on some alternate form of tutoring, though; Alberich hadn't had anything to do with that particular decision. Not that he'd been particularly enamored of squeezing himself into a desk beside a lot of children. It wasn't just that it was undignified, it was that he needed to impress those same children with his authority, and he wasn't going to do that if he was bumbling through classes as one of their 'peers.' Evidently Dethor felt exactly the same, and had gotten rather testy about it.

In fact, he hadn't even seen the Collegium yet. All of his time had been spent in or around the salle; when he wasn't kicking youngsters into shape, he was catching up on the thousand and one little things that Dethor hadn't been able to get to for the past few years since the bone-aches got into his hands. He tried, Sunlord knew, but he had to do things slowly and the work built up faster than he could do it. And often enough, he couldn't do it at all.

There was a shed full of practice armor and real armor discarded by the Guard and Heralds that needed only a bit of mending to be useful again. Shoulder plates and elbow and knee protection just needed broken leather straps or the padding replaced, the bit of chain lying about could be repaired with a few new rings and some patient weaving. Practice armor of leather and canvas generally had to have the same treatment, or tears mended. It took a little bit of skill and strong fingers, nothing more.

Then there were practice weapons in need of mending, and archery targets to be salvaged. The things that got mended soonest tended to be in the sizes that everyone could use, which left children who were smaller, taller, or thinner than the usual struggling with poorly-fitting armor. He was fixing the odd-sized items first, and had the satisfaction of seeing at least two of his smallest pupils looking comfortable in practice.

In the shed he had also uncovered two or three crates of oddments. The oddments were very odd indeed and, unlike the things needing mending, had been packed carefully away. Alberich hadn't had a chance to do more than look into the crates, but it almost appeared as if the Weaponsmasters of the past had been collecting and storing anything that ever came into their hands that might have been a weapon, on the chance that someday, someone might be able to add it to the weaponry lessons.

Now, Alberich just might be that someone, for Weaponsmaster Aksel had learned a great many strange forms of weaponswork over the years, and had passed it all on to Alberich—at least in the form of knowing what a particular piece was for and how it was handled, if not in expertise. He wanted very badly to go delving into those chests... but the Collegium had other ideas for his so-called 'free time.'

Those lessons, for instance. The first of which was History; not only of Valdemar, which he had expected, but also some of the history of their neighbors. It was a good thing that the understanding of the written language had come part and parcel with the spoken word, or he would have been floundering. Though how something that looked like a horse could come to know how to read—or have any reason to—was beyond him. At the moment, he wasn't asking many questions of his world; he was just taking things at face value and trying not to think too hard about them. It wasn't that he didn't want the answers, it was that the answers only led to more questions, and those to more in their turn. He needed to budget his time carefully; he needed to concentrate his mind (and his questions) on the matters at hand.

His History tutor was yet another Herald, a little bird of a man called Elcarth, who had probably read more books in the past year than Alberich and any two other Karsite officers combined had seen in their lives. He did have a knack with history, though, being able to get at the story behind the history—and breezing right past the things that didn't have a lot of relevance to what was going on in the world at the moment. He'd concentrated on the Founding of Valdemar in regard to Baron Valdemar's issues with the Great Empire and his decision to flee with his people, then skipped over all the years between settling and the coming of the Companions with a dismissive 'hardship, suffering, sacrifice, the usual sort of tales of our heroic ancestors that you'd expect to see, and you can read about it all later.' Then, stopped on the tale of how Valdemar had prayed to all gods for help in ensuring that his Kingdom was well led after his death. The answer had taken the form of the Companions... which had given Alberich a double shock, for Elcarth had unearthed a dusty account of the event, too tattered and ancient to have been created just for Alberich's benefit. If it didn't date all the way back to King Valdemar, it was old enough to have been copied directly from a document of that time. And in that account was the supposed litany of all of the gods that Valdemar had prayed to. One of them had been Vkandis Sunlord....

Which implied that either Valdemar had been familiar with Alberich's God, or the author of the account had been. Now, in either case, the further implication was that Vkandis would be favorably inclined to Valdemar and her