1629, Fire Season, Movement Week, Wildday
Context
The group is heading North through the Grazelands. Session S5.O-15.
Events
As the group keeps onward to the North, Berra is having a day of walking. Humakt has made his natural infanteer into a geased one. A bit after a break for lunch, Berra angles in towards where Kolyey is, and says, “Walk for a bit, warrior?”
“Gladly,” Kolyey says. She dismounts and leads her horse.
Berra kicks her way through some long grass. “I been thinking. There’s a lot I can teach you that you already know, just need telling about. But there’s some stuff I think you need to work on too.”
“Like what?” Kolyey asks. She looks at Berra quizzically.
“Tell me about what honour is. Why do we care about it?” The Priestess shoots the question back quickly. She was obviously working up to speaking it.
Nayale casually drifts closer.
Berra gives a tiny nod to the youngest warrior present. It might be greeting, it might be permission to join in.
Kolyey appears confused. “I know about the Code of Humakt. I do my best to live by it. What other honor is there?”
“Well, you tell me.” Berra sets her shoulders slightly, like she is prepared to walk, and wait, a long time.
Kolyey thinks for a while. “There’s the oaths that healers take. They still aren’t Humakti, though.”
“Nah. This is like me telling you there’s a fight to get to, and you saying there’s a road. Why do we get there in the first place? What’s the reason for it?”
“Sorry.” Kolyey thinks for a while before adding, “Humakt is a god of hard truths. The code helps us be more like Him. It also helps us trust each other. I’m probably still missing your point.”
“Yeah. You’re leaning on the code. Why do we want to be like him?”
Nearby, Nayale opens her mouth to speak, but closes it again. The question was not directed at her.
“He’s the perfect warrior?” Kolyey says.
Berra winces slightly. “Alright. So I’m asking you what honour is, and you’re giving me examples of it. What do you think it feels like?” Her glance includes Nayale this time, but it is a glance, not a direct order.
“We want to be like him because he is the one who can be trusted with Death,” Nayale blurts. “An’ since we carry Death, we have to be like him. Truthful, an’ honest, an’ stoic, an’ unswerving from our path.” Words tumble from the young woman’s lips like she just couldn’t hold them back any longer.
Berra nods slightly, and looks to Kolyey for a reaction.
“Like hugging a sword: hard and occasionally painful.” Kolyey smiles and nods at Nayale in greeting.
Berra snorts, amused. “Right. What’s the basis of honour, d’yareckon? It’s a set of rules for how to behave, but how do we know them? How did Humakt know them?”
“Humakt learned from His experience with other gods and chose to be different.” Kolyey seems to be on firmer ground this time.
“Mhm. We know he never ambushed Kargan Tor, even if he’d have been able to win that way. Why’d he do it like that?”
“Because it was the more truthful thing to do?” Kolyey is confused again.
“Yes, I think so. At the basis of all of his behaviour is Truth. He knows the honourable thing to do, and he decides to do it as well. He could understand it an not do it, and that would be different. Knowing it and doing it aren’t the same.” Berra looks longingly at Kolyey’s horse for a moment. “It’ld be easier to ride than to walk.”
“And to wear armour all over,” Nayale adds with a meaningful glance at Berra’s unarmoured forearm.
Berra holds up her hand, nods. “Yep.”
“It would, but you promised Humakt that you wouldn’t,” Kolyey points out. “If we are to keep strict truth and fellowship with each other, we must do so with Humakt most of all.”
Berra looks proud. “Yeah. We’ve got to keep true to the Truth. The torch lights the way for us. Honour’s one of the things that it shows.”
Kolyey falls silent, probably thinking hard.
Berra gives Nayale a glance, and a wink to say she knows this is sinking in.
Nayale scans the horizon, looking for potential threats. After chewing her thoughts over, she says, “Orlanthi Honour isn’t the same as ours. Similar, but there are differences. My grandfather says that ambushing your enemies is an honoured tradition and that there’s nothing wrong with doing that. But, if our Honour is based on Truth, does that mean that Orlanth’s worshippers are wrong?”
“Yes,” says Kolyey with no hesitation at all.
Berra’s face says a lot, but her voice says nothing. She lets the conversation happen.
“Why?” Nayale frowns. “My grandfather is a good man. I mean, he can be tough at times, but he’s honourable!”
“Perhaps I should have said that the Orlanthi are different, different enough that they should not be trusted.” Kolyey actually looks apologetic.
Berra looks thoughtful, which means also that Berra stays silent.
Nayale does not reply, instead glaring a little at Kolyey.
“Well, ain’t that interesting? Because Orlanth’s priests and Wind Lords say they’re honourable, but does that mean honour’s different for different people?” Berra inspects a fingernail, scratching at it with her thumb.
Kolyey says after a bit, “I think that different people have different views, but Humakt has the only right view.”
“So, there’s one big thing here that I think you’re missing. We’re responsible for members of the Regiment, and for protecting the outside, but the Orlanthi are the outside. To them, they’re protecting the responsibility they live in. S’why we’re different.” Berra seems mostly sure about that, although she says it carefully, picking her words.
“Hmm.” Kolyey chews on that one.
“Honour means protecting the people you’re sworn to, and for some people the ways are different. Doesn’t mean they don’t have honour, just that they show a different part of it.”
“Is honor a multi-bladed sword?”
Berra considers. “It’s like many things. Light falls on it, and we see much, but we don’t see all of it, because we’re not Humakt. A truly honourable person might not do all the things he asks of some of us? But then they’d not really be a person any more. They’d just be… I don’t know, a weapon, or a god.”
Kolyey says, “I have no idea what they would be.”
“I do know that some Orlanthi would say it’s honourable to at least consider an ambush because their responsibility is keeping their people alive. But to me that means they think they can’t win in a fair fight. I’m not forbidden from it, y’see. So… does that mean he condones it in me?” Berra looks puzzled, but in a this-is-a-test way, not a real way.
“He trusts your judgment,” Kolyey replies.
“Yeah. A lot of the time what he tells us is to make us better at being his people. But for you, Kolyey, I want you to meditate on what the Code really means. Not the ways that you’re taught to behave, but the reasons that you’re taught to behave them. I mean, to do them.” Berra grammar good…
Kolyey answers, “Yes, Priestess.” She dutifully adds, “Thank you for the lesson.”
“The best lessons are where you tell yourself things,” Berra replies.
Kolyey nods, mounts her horse and rides off to take point guard position.
