Oathbreaker, Book 1: The Knight's Tale - Colin McComb

When the 4,000 knights (a mixture of Elite, Faithful, and Lesser) hit the Siullans from the
rear, we thought at first that the sky had opened and delivered the angels of Kattriya to save us.
Our knights laid into the Siullans with a bloody will, avenging our losses and pain with a fanatic
fervor. Although their defeat was inevitable, the Siullans fought to their last breath, determined
not to surrender to our dubious mercies. Of course, we were in no mood to show mercy. We
slaughtered them wherever we found them. It was a grim night’s work.
By morning, we had established hospitals for the soldiers wounded in the terror attack,
and the knights had volunteered for the dangerous work of clearing the tunnels. Bloodlust was in
their eyes, and Hawkins was wise enough to allow them free rein in exorcising it. The Knights
Elite of the Third had taken heavy losses in the attack, more so than any other unit; they had set
up their command camp directly over a lode of underground explosives, and the limbs of a good
portion of them were strewn over the landscape when the attack began. The knights were also the
quickest to recover, and if it were not for the fast thinking of their commander, I’d have had to
face down a good number more of the Siullans at Hawkins’s tent. The outcome of the battle
might have been decidedly different.
I thought that my performance the night of the battle had gone unnoticed, but I should
have known better. Hawkins called me into his tent, and he personally promoted me, giving me a
squadron of my own troops to command with the promise that he’d keep an eye on me. He
guaranteed me a medal when we returned to Terona. I had left the capital as a messenger. I
returned a hero. My father was disappointed, though he struggled to hide it, and I knew that I had
left the path he had chosen for me.
It is two in the afternoon already, and I cannot believe that I have had this long to write.
You might ask why, if my time is limited, have I spent so much of my time writing about the
past? It is a good question, and a fair one. My answer is this: we see the events of today being
written in the pages of history. Small incidents unfold onto a massive scale. Loyalty in the past
becomes the mechanism of betrayal.
The knights saved us then. They could save us now, if they only knew where to strike, and if I
trusted their captain enough to tell him of the plot against the king. But the engineer of this rot in
Terona plays a subtle game, and deep. The knights see the hand of someone in the diplomatic
service, which of course is the polite name for our spies. Yet their commander realizes that if he
sees a spy’s work, surely it cannot be a spy—at least, not one of the spies we have trained, for
Colin McComb Oathbreaker, Book 1: The Knight's Tale
15