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

It was one day among hundreds. The trainers drove their students mercilessly, and this
first year was constant marching, drills, hand-to-hand exercises, and training in basic weapons.
Those who complained or broke were beaten, as Pelagir had been, and some of them died
between the whipping posts. No one was allowed to mourn the dead.
Year 2 – CY 579
Pelagir’s second year of training was little better. The discipline was harsher, his instructors less
forgiving, and his training more dangerous than the year before. He bore scars from lashings for
failure to obey—or remember—the rules or the Code. It was better for him than for many of his
compatriots. Two thousand youths had been gathered from all the reaches of the Empire, and half
of them had been expelled for one reason or another. Some of them had died. They were fourteen
years of age.
Those who remained were harder, stronger. They studied harder and learned faster. They
understood that it was not their bodies and minds being tested but their dedication. Most of them
would fail and fall into a lesser position in the military. Some would serve in the High House to
which their family swore loyalty. Others might become mercenaries. They would be tougher than
many of their conventionally trained counterparts, but they would live with the knowledge that
they had failed the knighthood. Some, armed with this insight, took their own lives.
Pelagir didn’t have time to give them a second thought. He was trying to survive.
This year, amid the constant training in arms of all shapes and sizes, he learned Imperial
history: the mythical Golden Age, an age of casual miracles and everyday wonders, and its fall.
The horrific and destructive war, and the wonder-workers called “scientists” who fled to strong
men for protection from the rabble who blamed deep knowledge for the destruction of the Age.
This was the Great Uprising. More war, and the terrors of wizardry truly unleashed as the mages
worked to save their lords from their enemies, earning a greater place in the nightmares of the
common folk. Generations of struggle as small men fought with one another to make large their
dreams, and from these small men at last rose a great man: Martyn Strangaers, our first king, who
had the charisma, wit, and will necessary to bring the warring lords under his control. He
established a central government in the hilly town of Terona, his birthplace, and with his warlords
Colin McComb Oathbreaker, Book 1: The Knight's Tale
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