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

improvised, and he did not hope. He trusted to his training and his ability to carry him through,
but he shed no tears if he failed. This culling of his spirit, his native intelligence, and his stoicism
in the face of pain and humiliation made him eligible for the rank of Elite.
This also made Pelagir a target of his classmates. Though the students were forbidden to
kill or maim one another, their instructors tacitly encouraged the harshest possible competition.
They believed that the smarter and stronger students would be best served by cultivating
paranoia, remaining wary for traps and betrayals at all times, and that the lesser students would
learn to work together to bring down the leaders. Their traps fell into a variety of categories, but
these physical and mental gambits often were complete failures and occasionally were disasters.
The other candidates, male or female, though intelligent, were not in the class of their superiors,
and their efforts sometimes rebounded on them, with deadly results. When at last they realized
they were completely outmatched by the better students, the lesser students rejected all contact
with them, and this was the most effective betrayal of all.
Worse yet, the best candidates couldn’t trust one another. They were in competition for
the ten Elite slots, so they met with their peers only on the practice field and in the classrooms,
where they struggled to prove themselves in the eyes of instructors. They were otherwise in
almost total isolation.
This, too, was planned. It had been the custom for hundreds of years.
Year 4 – CY 581
Two hundred students. Of the hundred missing, twenty-six had died. Sixty-one had tested out
early to squirehood in the Knights Lesser. Thirteen had been withdrawn by their families—
though difficult, it was possible, especially in the case of students with no prospects in the
knighthood. Those thirteen might do well in the regular armed forces, but they would always
recognize their failure to enter the knighthood.
One hundred seventy-three of the remainder were destined for the Knights Faithful, and
their work now determined their rank within the order on graduation. The last twenty-seven were
in competition for the ten Elite spots, and nobles from the great families came to watch them in
training. The candidates who failed to achieve Elite status were automatically part of the high
Colin McComb Oathbreaker, Book 1: The Knight's Tale
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