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

Interlude: Out of the City
Pelagir bent low across the neck of his steed and whispered into its steel ear. The machine leapt
forward, streaking across the farmland. He shot a glance behind him and saw the city in flames.
His doing, he thought, and perhaps his undoing. But then . . . he looked down at his bundle, the
baby girl, and his jaw hardened. He had made his choices. He carried the future. He bore the
princess Caitrona, by now surely the last of her line. He was headed for the King’s Forest. Miles
of countryside and farms stretched ahead of him, interrupted here and there by towns and
hamlets: Knollside, Warsend, Colm, Highridge Glen, and more, strung like drab jewels along the
roads. The sun settled ahead of him as the city burned behind.
Year 1 – CY 578
Pelagir’s first year of training was not turning out as he thought it might.
The freedom of which he had dreamed during nights in bed at home had been replaced
with a harsher discipline. He lay in the darkness of the high-ceilinged dormitory with the west
wind overturning the peace of the night outside, and he thought of the endless days ahead of him
echoing the days he had left behind: days of standing motionless under the hot sun and cold rain,
days of menial chores, days of backbreaking weapons work, days and days and days and days.
This was not freedom. This was slavery, and toward what goal? Service. Service to fat men
making stupid decisions, and he would be expected to rectify their mistakes with blood. He had
sold himself to death at an enemy’s hand, or at the executioner’s, or the little death of disgrace.
He had traded his father for the people who had created his father.
He thought he had buried his heart long ago, but now he discovered it bleeding on the
pillow beside him, and he wept bitter tears—bitter but quiet, because showing emotion was
punishable by a morning whipping.
When he awoke, his pillow was wet, and they took him to the courtyard and whipped him
in front of the other students. And then they sent him to stand in heavy armor in the hot sun for
the day.
Colin McComb Oathbreaker, Book 1: The Knight's Tale
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