Paks--chapter 31--END

Finally, the Duke gets the Honeycat cornered. There's a secret passage leading to the inner bits of the enemy's citadel, and the Duke taps Paks to lead the cohort that's going to sit on the Honeycat's bolt-hole, with the express orders that the Honeycat is to be caught alive. He mentions that the guy has a tattoo on his face, one of the symbols of a dark god.

Paks and the Halvaric commander start poking around to make sure nothing's going to bite them while they're climbing into their enemy's lair. They decide to wait. After a few hours Paks is awakened by her amulet. The Honeycat used magic to knock her unit out. She wakes them and they all surge forward. The Honeycat has a wizard, and Paks figures the wizard has disguised him as a woman in her nightdress.


Then Paks sees movement out of the corner of her eye. An obvious animal. Paks attacks the animal on the logic that a real wild thing wouldn't be anywhere near the battle. She's right, and is now in personal combat with the son of a bitch who killed her friends and fellow veterans. They trade blows for about a minute, and she decides the best way to catch him is drop and grab his knees. Someone else does something--described only as making the Honeycat scream--and he's down, caught and theirs.

The Duke has plans. These plans will not be nice.

The Paladin of Gird realizes that the Duke has these plans, and tells the Duke to kill the Honeycat...but do it simply, cleanly, and get it over with. Do not torture him. The Duke asks if the Paladin isn't aware of what the Honeycat did to his men. The Paladin is, but he's more concerned with doing what is right than what is fair. They argue about it, and the Paladin elects Paks to settle the dispute. It's her friends that died, and she's the one that caught him.

Paks says something absolutely beautiful.

"My Lord, I have not--I cannot--forget those friends. And he had them killed, and hurt--I want him dead, my lord...but we don't--we are not like him. That's why we fought. Afterwards--If it were me, I would kill him now. But I have no right to say." 

 How we punish crime and criminals is goddamn important. Not to prevent crime--that's one aspect of it--but to keep society from damaging itself. An Eye for an Eye just creates this eternal cycle of missing eyes, until everyone is blind. And in many cases the crime in question is not important enough to merit a great deal of retribution. However, when humanity shows its greatest depravity, that's when a merciful code of law and a merciful code of conduct becomes important. Not to protect the criminal from cruel and unusual punishment, but to prevent the morally right from becoming the thing they came to judge. That is why cruel and unusual punishment is a big deal. You cannot cause damage to another person without also causing damage to an important part of yourself. Punishing like with like only justifies the like. Punishing great depravity with a measure of mercy the depraved do not deserve, however, protects the merciful from becoming depraved themselves.

There's something more important than justice, and that is breaking the cycle that requires it. As long as we focus on making sure that everything is fair, we will continue to perpetuate the choices that make that justice necessary. The only solution is to do what is right, even when what is right is not what is just. In other words, my lovelies, it doesn't matter who starts it, or why it was started. The only way it will ever end is if it ends with you.

That is what Paks is saying, in a simple, uneducated way. She understands that the "fair" way to honor her friends would not actually honor her friends. It might give their murderer the ending he deserves, but it would also destroy utterly the company they served and the woman they befriended. These things would technically continue to exist, but they would no longer be things worthy of service and friendship.

And the Duke says "To hell with it. Just kill the bastard."

The death of the murdering son of a bitch gets less than a paragraph and that is exactly the amount he deserved.

Then Paks collapses from a poisoned blade that the Honeycat used in their battle. The paladin heals her, and in questioning her reveals the entire episode involving magic and her medallion. The Paladin asks her if he can see it, and when she does it glows blue for an instant before going out. The Duke and the Halvaric listen to her story, and go retrieve the rest of the magicked men.

The Halvaric leader suggests that both Paks and the power that helped Paks is deserving of gratitude. The Duke shrugs this latter off, because he has issues with Gird. He sends Paks to go tell her cohort that it is finally, finally, finally over.

She does. She describes how the Honeycat died--quick, one stroke to the head--and the reaction is a little mixed. Most of the newer recruits are aghast--how could he die so quickly?--but the real vets are all relieved, and one of them gives a little speech about how proud he is to serve in a company lead by people so strong. Paks doesn't say that the Duke wanted to drink the bastard's blood, practically, and lets the soldiers start spreading the story, both that the Honeycat's dead and that he was given the mercy of an easy death.

They plunder the city. The Honeycat's own gold pays for the campaign.

Finally, the paladin, the High Marshal and the Duke all tell Paks that she's invited to join the High Marshal--or at least the nearest grange--for training and possible candidacy for paladin training. Paks considers this for about three seconds, then decides that she'd rather just re-enlist in the Duke's company and have done with it. The first book in the trilogy ends with Paks returning to her co-hort, in a sort of "Paks's in her regiment an all is right with the world" kind of attitude.

Now, my boys and girls, we shall decide what the next book shall be. We can either do the next Anita Blake book or we can honor the fact that LKH FINALLY got off her ass and finished the next Merry Gentry book and do a book in that series. What's it to ya?

Paks chapter 29-30

Book update: It's coming. I'm still not comfortable announcing a date yet, but it's nearly there. Like a matter of a couple of days.

Sorry about not blogging as much lately. I'm dealing with some nasty personal shit, and it's been either write and edit, or blog. And I haven't wanted to blog much.

So, paks.

The next day they go back to the camp where they rescued Cal and find their own people. Dead and/or mutilated, though in the case of "or" death isn't too far off. This isn't modern times, and there's not much you can do for multiple amputations (AKA torture) and a belly wound when the best thing you can give somebody is something called "numbwine". They bury all the dead, make promises to kill the sons of bitches who did this, and move on.

Paks has decided she is looking very much forward to when they kill the Honeycat. Which ought to be rather soon.

They chase the guy around his country for a while, discovering yet more atrocities in the process. There's a couple of pretty haunting passages that are beautifully done, including one where Paks discovers a dead body and stands there for a minute before she gets someone to help her bury it. It's very, very briefly described, and most of the description is of paks's reaction, not the body, but the context is all you need. A seasoned veteran who has seen as much as Paks, including the mutilated bodies of her own friends, has to pause over the body of a stranger because someone else's cruelty has just exhausted her.

One of the corporals gets knocked out of combat, and Paks gets tapped to take over. She's very uncomfortable in this position, but she does her best for a few battles. The corporal who got wounded asks her how she likes command. She makes it very clear she considers it all temporary and the other two just laugh at her. If she was doing a shitty job she'd have been replaced, and if she's doing a good job that probably means she's going to get an official command slot of her very own, very soon. They then tell her stories about how they went through their first command slot and navigated the teasing and hurt feelings from those passed over for promotion. One story involves a prank one of the corporals pulled involving a magic sword that glows in the face of evil--and how he burned his hand on it because you don't fuck with magic swords. This is the same sword that got hauled out when Paks was dealing with the magic spider necklace many, many chapters ago.

Next chapter, they finally, FINALLY get the Honeycat pinned into a "city". I say that in quotation marks because it's really just a ruin that's so bad, nobody can tell what it is. But there's a flagpole in the middle of it with the Honeycat's flag, so they're calling it a city. That is mostly deserted, with very few troops inside. Nobody is happy about this. That's the kind of set up that screams "trap".

They mount an assault and, eventually, breech the wall. Not too hard, given that there's nobody guarding it. The Duke somehow winds up with Paks's company, which means we're probably going to see how things resolve instead of just getting the usual summery in the wounded tent.

Paks spots the ambush before anybody else, and there's a nice general brawl where all the bad guys try to get the duke and all the Duke's men try to get between them and the bad guys. One of them is carrying poisoned blades, something Paks only discovers when she clashes with the moron and he cuts himself on his own dagger. His dying words are to call her a bitch.

The Duke makes sure that nobody else got cut by the poisoned blades, compliments Paks on her sharp eyes--not too hard, the guy's colors are yellow and black, and you kind of see that from a few miles off--and they move on. Eventually the Honeycat flees the city entirely and they have to start marching again to follow.

On the road, Paks begins to feel Canna's medallion weighing her down. She feels so tired, she starts looking in random directions just to distract herself...and she sees another ambush before it has a chance to spring. The Duke's company can't fight their way out, so they square up, shields out, and the enemy basically gets to stand there and look as their enemy turns into a gigantic turtle. Sucks to be them.

And then it starts raining, so sucks to be everybody.

The Duke makes the exciting choice to--sit in the rain and wait for their re-enforcements to come. Which is the smart move, as they've sounded the alarm and they know their buddies are nearby, and the enemy isn't doing diddly-squat to fight them. Somebody finally shows up in the case of literal cavalry arriving, and the Duke uses the moment to bash through the enemy line and then make hash out of everything he sees in yellow. Again, they retreat into the woods.

At this point they begin wondering just how many men the Honeycat has left. It can't be too many, but they could have sworn he had too few men to spring an ambush like that.

The corporal Paks replaced is fine and dandy now, so she greatfully gives up command and resumes her place as a file leader. End of chapter.

Paks--28

POV cuts over to the guy Paks and company went out to rescue: Caliam "Cal" Halveric. He's captured, bound, and taunted into cursing at his captors, who threaten to both geld him and kill his sons. His daughters are not brought up--one of the very, very few benefits of a sexist society, I guess. Your daughters get a better chance to run--but he does take the time to worry about them. So there is that. He gets beaten into a pulp, basically, and shoved into a very small box.

He takes a moment, while in the box, to think about Paks's Duke, whose full name is Keri Phelan, and who served his father as a squire. Apparently the Duke is very, very, very scarred up from some kind of childhood abuse, and Cal's dad told him very firmly not to ever ask Keri where those scars came from, or to complain about them.

He gets dragged out of the box by rescuers, who confirm that the Honeycat's agents made good on their threat to geld him. You know, I really would not want to be that moron right now. There's stupid, and then there's stupid, and this kind of ranks up there as Darwin Award level stupidity.

We hang with Cal through the rescue, his companions and saviors mostly unidentified, until we get to the Duke's tent. Cal is mortified, now that his life is pretty much secured, that he's been gelded. The text is not clear exactly how much the Honeycat's people took, but given how ashamed he seemed to be I'm gonna go with "all of it". He also spends a lot of time figuring that he'll never get to command again, once word gets out that he's been "unmanned".

His dad shows up--and for the record, both he and the Duke look like they want to kill several things--and sets those fears at rest pretty damn well:

"Ask Aesil M'dierra if she ever needed balls to run a company--ask with a mile's head start, and the best horse in my stable--you might make it home."

Yep. Can't really say that balls count when a quarter of your best troops and allies never had any. Dad then promises to give Cal "That bastard's balls on toast" if Cal doesn't get there first.  Then both the Duke and Daddy Halvaric order the surgeons, clerics and mages to get Cal on his feet and functional today. Probably because the longer Cal thinks about what he just went through, the harder it is going to be for him to keep going. They protest, but neither the Duke or Daddy are having any.

Finally, Cal is left alone to eat and get dressed.

I would not want to be the Honeycat right now. End of chapter.

Paks--chapter 27

Book news, my lovely book-readers: First round of edits are done. I'll be doing a second read-through and edit today and tomorrow, and will be shooting for an early may release.

Also: COMPUTER IS BACK. ART SHALL SOON COMMENCE.

Now, on to Paks

Given that Paks has collapsed twice, has a severe concussion, and has mysterious god-things happening around her, everybody decided the best thing she could do while the Company is marching is get in a wagon and not get out of it until it stops for the night. One of her "newbies", who aren't really newbies anymore, drops by to tell her what happened while she was unconscious. We find out that the Honeycat's favorite color is gold, and that he put the stuff everywhere inside his place. He also tattooed his servants so they couldn't run away. Nice piece of work, that.

The Duke, meanwhile, has his hands full keeping some of his allies from setting everything they come across on fire. EVERYTHING. Paks is utterly horrified when she's told some of them are chopping down orchards so they can torch the wood. Again: This is why you don't be a shit-head during war. When your enemies finally catch up they do shit like this. The Duke tells them firmly to knock it the fuck off. Allies state that these are only peasants--and that's about as far as they get before the Duke and his commanders collectively dog-pile the morons and explain that you do not do this shit to people.

We also meet yet another mercenary company commander, Alured the Black. He feeds people while they're in his woods but doesn't seem committed to doing much else.

Then some of Paks's friends and some of the allied commanders start disappearing. A handful get dismissed as deserters by the same idiotic allies who were raiding, but Paks knows these people. They wouldn't disappear. The Duke finally summons her and a few others and tells them they're gonna go on a secret mission to save the captured. They don't have to go in the camp--there's already agents there--but they have to drag the wounded back. And they have to do it quietly.

Paks and her cohorts go out in a boat. She spends most of the ride worried about what's going to happen when they make it to their destination. But they're only met by somebody with a very, very, very wounded man. It's the surviving eldest son of one of the Duke's primary allies. She and another soldier help get the injured party to a boat.

End of chapter.

Paksennarion--thoughts on the subject matter

I'm gonna deviate from the chapter-by-chapter review real quick, and just talk about some of the stuff I've been reading lately. Mostly because the character in that last link makes for a really beautiful comparison with Paks, and...well, I'd like to get some thoughts set down before I move on with the reviews.

Most of those links go to critiques on a movement defined as Christian Patriarchy, a word that I never thought I'd be using to define anything. It's also known as "quiverfull". And it's fucking terrifying. It's also the world that I grew up in. The second-to-last link is to a book written by one of the board-of-directors for a magazine called Homeschooling Today, which pretty much ruled my childhood. Now, I was extremely lucky. My parents either disagreed with a lot of that nonsense, or else they were never engaged enough in that world to put a lot of emphasis on most of it, but I still got a lot of it via osmosis. Especially what some of those linked blogs call "Purity Culture". I had a promise ring, I was taught that sex before marriage was morally wrong, and when I was raped the very first thing a family member assured me was that the act was not a sin because actual penetration did not occur (this was also one of the reasons it took me a solid fucking year to even call what happened rape)

I also wound up working for a family. In the interests of not pissing off a lot of people, I'm going to call them the Matthews. Their real names are highly recognizable in the homeschooling/quiverful/Patriarchy movement. And working for them was...interesting. They had an extraordinarly large family and ran a tea room slash bookstore, originally staffed by the family but, as the business grew they employed a lot of people who weren't family and who weren't involved in their movement at all. One of them was an atheistic professional wrestler who kept the rest of us sane. It was a very frilly, perfect, pink world and he did not fit in at all. I did, mostly because I was raised on the fringes of that world, and my homelife was so very very fucked up I was eager to belong anywhere at all.

I did meet several of their daughters. One of them--I'll call her Megan--seemed to make several attempts to connect with me. There was a lot of pressure, both from the Matthews and from my family at home, to conform to a standard of behavior that I had effectively outgrown several years prior. The Worst Thing I Ever Did On The Internet happened during this time period. For the record, I still hate that I did that, wish I could take it back, and regret ever having that attitude. The only thing I can say in my defense was that I was desperate for any kind of positive reception, both from my family and from the Matthews, and one thing I knew very well was that any association with something as controversial as LGBT material would cause every "responsible" adult in my life to reject me, further criticize me, and continue to heap a lot of negative feedback on me. When you're raised in that lifestyle, you are constantly fed a diet of conditional love and live in a near-constant fear of rejection. You are told that your spiritual life is conditional on being exactly right in every thought--you're not allowed to even think about deviating from what the authority figures decree as acceptable. Everything about your life is controlled. Every. Single. Thing.

I have absolutely NO idea why I didn't buy it all hook, line and sinker. Especially because the face the Matthews presented was very, very attractive. Two loving, thoughtful parents, a whole bunch of brothers and sisters who (as far as I knew) never fought. A successful, extremely pretty business that was everything I'd ever wanted to run, and all I had to do was conform to their ideals to be accepted.

I think one thing that saved me was my mother's complete indifference to my reading material. Another was probably my faith. It's a weird idea, that a Christian's belief system can save them from a Christian belief system, but that's what I credit it to.  I went through a very long spiritual experience when I was a teenager about my love for fantasy books, and how much I wanted to write them myself, that basically ended with God dragging out the clue-by-four and making it very clear that he had no problem whatsoever with elves and fairies and dragons, so would I please get over myself already. So I came into the Matthew's world with a fort built out of Tolkien, McCaffrey, Lewis, Weber, you name it. Some of these weren't the best material in terms of feminism or politics, but the resounding awareness that God didn't care made any attempts at thought control bounce off like rubber bullets. One of the more telling incidents I had with the Matthews was when I asked why The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe wasn't among the books offered. I thought it was a natural, (The Princess and the Goblin was very much in evidence) but they explained that they found Lewis's theology to be heretical, and that too many of their customers--all of whom went to the same church--felt that the talking animals were demonic.

But the incident that makes me connect the Matthews and Quiverful with Paksennarion involved a John Ringo novel. There are many reasons why an eighteen year old girl shouldn't be reading a John Ringo novel, and many, many things that a Christian of any character would find objectionable, but the thing that Ms. Matthews disliked about the novel I had brought into her business was the cover. This cover.

I didn't understand what was wrong with it. The boobs are a bit prominent, but it's not risqué by anyone else's definition. The dude behind her is in exactly the same BDUs. I brought my books in covered by a paper bag, and just remained very puzzled. Why, oh why did Mrs. Matthews dislike this image so much, she threatened to fire me if I brought another picture just like it into the business?

And now I finally get it: It's a woman in BDUs. And for once, she's not an object of titillation (at least, not in my opinion). Instead, she's forceful, she's determined, she's competent, and she's going into war because she needs to. It's the kind of cover that I look at right now and go "DAMN I'd like to be her". And it wasn't that perfect, pink, prissy Victorian image the Matthews valued in their girls. This was a woman who would do things for her world and herself...and not one whose responsabilities to the world (and, for that matter, ambitions reguarding that world) ended at the front door of her home.

The image the Matthews wanted to portray to the world is best summed up by the Elsie Dinsmore Series, something that they sold in their bookstore as part of the "Life of Faith" book and toy line. Yes, toy line. Each set of books (about a different good, dutiful, faithful Christian girl) were paired with a doll, like the American Girl series. Only the books were bigger, the clothes were more frilly, and the contents between the pages were absolutely fucking toxic.

I've re-read the first two books in that series. Elsie is a little girl who is neglected by her father, dumped in with her plantation-owning extended relations, who also neglect her when they're not verbally abusing her. Her father comes back, extends the verbal abuse to emotional and, IMHO, physical abuse--withholding and restricting food. Elsie is also a very legalistic Christian. Saved, of course, but she also applies every single rule in the Old Testament to her lifestyle (something that most denominations agree renders that whole crucifixion thing null and void; there is absolutely NO discussion of Grace in these books) This leads to a showdown between Elsie and her father, who asks her to read a worldly book to him on a Sunday, while he's sick. She refuses because it would be dishonoring God, and he withdraws all of his affection, love and support until she agrees to obey him over God. This escalates over the course of the second book until he has removed her black nursemaid--the nearest thing to a mom this little girl has--to another plantation (Yeah, I'm not even going to start touching the racism in this series). Eventually the little girl gets sick--the book heavily implies it is from a broken heart--and the father stays away until she's hours away from dying, at which point he comes home, sees what a terrible asshole he's been, gets saved, and tells his daughter he will never again oppose God in her heart. Snuggles abound. If I remember right, the little girl then goes on to marry her father's best friend when she is sixteen and he is nearing his forties. And this doesn't even begin to touch the emotionally incestuous relationship between Daddy and Daughter. Nothing about this series is healthy. Not the spirituality, not the father-daughter relationship, not the husband-wife relationship that comes later.

The original publisher of the reformatted Elsie books and dolls is now defunct (the owner and operator got caught with his pants down, literally, and the entire operation folded last year) but they are still being marketed and sold by a different company. Which means there is a generation of girls being brought up to believe that devotion unto death to an abusive shit of a dad is best--and that God is exactly the same as Daddy.

The contrast between Elsie and Paks is pretty damn interesting, because (if you ignore the made-up paganism) the two characters both display the behaviors praised by everybody in the Quiverful movement. Both Paks and Elsie are virginal. Both Paks and Elsie are competent, dilligant in doing good (by their own definition) honest to a fault. Eventually Paks does take on a spiritual commitment, and displays the same devotion to that that Elsie does to God. And both do go through a trial of martyrdom (which isn't exactly the PC high point of Paksenarrion, either). But there's a very strong difference between the two, that makes Paks's story relatively healthy and Elsie's so fucking toxic it's unreal.

First, there's the purity angle, which really hasn't come up in Paks's story, and continues to stay under the radar for like, 90% of the rest of the story. Elsie is a virgin until she weds because...well, that was the culture of the age and that was "doing what was right". It wasn't a choice she made so much as something that was strictly enforced. Paks is a virgin because Paks doesn't give a shit about relationships or sex. The irony here is that there's an oft-quoted verse in Corinthians that, according to Quiverful people, commands women to marry so they are not tempted to have sex before marriage. In my interpretation (and, IMHO, reality) that verse is basically saying "If you want to have sex, get married. I would really rather you not, as it's easier to consider spiritual things when you don't have somebody else--especially children--in your life, but people have biological drives and if you're one of them, get hitched so that nobody can criticize your faith." The point of that passage, and a lot of the passages in the New Testament, is that you police your behavior, not because you're trying to earn forgiveness, but because you don't want to be a bad example and lead people away from Christ by being an idiot. It's not a commandment to get married. Paul very clearly says that it is better for someone who doesn't have a sex drive to just not have sex--mostly because you don't want to have sex--and that the people who do have sex drives should get married first because that way they'll be above criticism.

Then there's the devotion angle. Paks is devoted to her commanders, her comrades and, eventually, the form of spirituality she adopts. Elsie is devoted to her father and her God. Elsie is devoted to the point that it is domineering, obsessive, and very unhealthy. Elsie is an extraordinarly unhappy little girl. When she is happy, it is because someone has given her kindness--usually that her father has displayed his love for her physically. The emphasis on the physical relationship between father and daughter in this series is utterly fucking nauseating. Elsie is always throwing herself on her father, covering him in kisses, begging for a "caress", yearning to be kissed by her father, wondering aloud if her father would ever love her, and is frequently described as being desperate for her father's love and physical affection. Contrast with Paks, who was ordered by her father to enter into a physical relationship she didn't want to have with a man she didn't like. She held her dad off with her grandfather's sword and ran the fuck away.

The religion angle is trickier to debate. The religion surrounding Gird greatly resembles Christianity (the image of a god-man/saint) but the religion in the book is basically paganism. Imaginary paganism, but paganism. There's a universal polytheistic viewpoint that is not presented in the Elsie Dinsmore books. Instead, religion is universally Christian, and is the Protestant Evangelical Christianity of the early 1900s, when the novels were originally written. But the way they can be compared is in the effects on the women's lives.

Paks, for example, is raised without religion. She is aware of it, but has no devotion towards it. In the story so far, we've begun to see a slow movement towards it. At the risk of spoiling the entire book for you, Paks will continue to move towards a religious point of view. She feels called to it and responds to the call as best she can, knowing nothing about it whatsoever. Religion in her life is a positive influence, giving her strength to endure the difficult times and joy when she isn't having a particular struggle. But it's consistently presented as a choice, not an obligation. She eventually chooses a pantheon and follows its rules. But she does so, not out of a sense of obligation or a fear of punishment here or in the afterlife, but because she values the religion and the god(s) she chooses to follow. In a way, it is treated very much like a healthy romance. Paks never surrenders her autonomy or her right to choose. She consistently makes the choices. That these choices are usually in favor of her gods and sometimes not in her favor is, in itself a choice that she makes with full understanding. And this, in turn, provides the religion she follows with a fullness and reality. It makes her religion into something a person would choose to die for, not out of a sense of obligation or a fear of punishment, but because it's just worth that much.

In contrast, Elise is raised by a Christian slave and a Scottish matron to reguard religion as a duty and an obligation. She has to be Christian if she wishes to be good. And the form of Christianity Elise is expected to practice is overwhelmingly toxic. Old Testament verses are very frequently quoted, and the confrontations between Elsie and her father all hinge around doing things on the Sabbath--something that Christ directly addressed in the New Testament, in such a way as to make the entire argument moot even without the doctrine of grace. Which is not present anywhere in the Elsie Dinsmore novels. Every single page is about how you have to follow all the rules perfectly, or else. For those of you who are not Christian and have no idea what I'm talking about, it's the religious equivilant of being given a bone marrow donation, and then continuing to take blood transfusions because you're afraid the new marrow isn't enough, even though every single doctor tells you that the new marrow has you covered. Most of Elsie's actions are portrayed as a lack of choice: She is religious because she is presented with no other option. She is good, because a lack of goodness means a loss of favor. She loves God because she fears rejection and hell. When her father draws the line and demands she agree to follow him over God--in an extraordinarly improbable and convoluted series of events--Elsie effectively throws up her hands and decides that she's going to die instead. At no point does Elsie ever make a choice beyond the status quo.

Also: She's eight when this is going on.

The most telling moment, however, is the prerequisite martyr scene. I'm not sure we'll ever get to that scene in Paksenarrion, but I'll attempt a spoiler-free summery: Paks is asked to trade her life for the life of an important figure. One of them, either Paks or this figure, will be tortured for two days and two nights in a religious ceremony for a dark God. Paks makes the trade, we get about a chapter of utterly horrible stuff, and then God shows up and fixes everything. During this period, she takes everything they give her, continually prays for them, and never once lashes out at her tormenters in anger...though when it's over, she pretty much goes to town on the asses of anyone dumb enough to admit they were there. I still have not decided how I feel about this scene...but I've never been put in a position where I have to make a choice like that. It's a choice that is literally life and death, both for Paks and for the kingdom she's attempting to aid. But for all that, the one positive I see in it is that this is a political move, not a religious one. Ultimately, it is a choice that Paks's type of character would make, reguardless of religious beliefs, and it is treated, not as a display of obligation or duty, but as something a hero would do, above and beyond the call of duty. She does not need to do this. She's doing it because she can't do anything else.

Elsie Dinsmore's "martyrdom" scene is not over someone else's life. It's over her refusing to read a book to her father on the Sabbath. Somehow this manages to go from "Go sit in time out" to a religious ultimatum--follow either God or Daddy--and Elsie's action is basically to stand perfectly still, pray that God will change her Daddy, and wish to die before she gets shipped off to Catholic school. The advice adults give her--ADULTS--is to sit still and keep praying, and maybe God will fix things. Nobody ever tells her that her father is being abusive to her, and she is constantly and consistently portrayed as defending her father's behavior. Finally, in what is probably the single worst scene in the entire series, she becomes deathly ill for no reason other than emotional upset (Literally. The doctors in this book literally say this) and is sitting on death's door having terrifying halucinations about evil nuns. Daddy comes home, sees his beautiful daughter raving in the grips of a terrible illness, and repents, gets saved, and promises never to get between his child and God again. Elsie is literally brought back from the dead by her father's repentance. The book is literally saying that if you hold fast in the face of abuse, eventually your suffering and pain will make your abuser stop hurting you and everything will be roses. It makes all the sunshiny-rosey scenes with Daddy later all the worse, because nothing says that Daddy won't backslide. The abuse of Elsie continues, cumulating in her marriage to a man twenty years her senior who has known her since she was a little girl. It's less Pride and Prejudice and more Humbert Humbert.

This series is being marketed right now to very young girls.

Spirituality can be a good thing. Christianity is my choice, and it's one I've made without reservation. yes. I was raised in it. It's still my choice. But when it is presented with this level of toxic mind control, it's a highly negative, life killing factor. And it should always be practiced in a spirit of joy, not a sense of obligation or duty. If it's creating that sense, there's a problem. And if it's restricting your choices, it's either time to reassess theology or just jump ship entirely. God's big enough to be patient while you get your life in order.

Let's just say if I ever have daughters, they'll be reading Paksenarrion, not Elsie Dinsmore.

Paks--chapter 26

Not part of the review: I'll be posting updates re: upcoming books and such later on this afternoon. My personal computer is FINALLY on its way to the shop...and for some reason unknown to god and man the other computer decided it wanted to work yesterday. I have no idea what's wrong with it, why it wouldn't reboot itself for about a month, or why it spontaneously decided that TODAY IS THE DAY TO BOOT UP, but I am back in business (for now. It could decide that tonight is the night it doesn't boot again, because FUCK IF I KNOW. Electronics in my life have all the logic of an Anita Blake book)

The news I can give you: Edits on Liberty, the next Starbleached novel, are progressing well. The art should not take too long to do (assuming one of my fucking computers back home continues fucking working because FUCK IF I KNOW) (Seriously. WHY DIDN'T IT WORK LAST WEEK? WHY IS IT WORKING NOW?)

Okay. On to book.

We jump from Paks' POV to the command tent--which makes sense because Paks is in the infirmary. AGAIN.

It's kind of interesting to me that Paks ending every fight by passing the fuck out doesn't bother me half as much as it does when it's Anita doing the collapsing. It does still bug me, mostly because it's repetitious as fuck and it means Paks usually misses the climax of whatever fight she nearly died fighting in...but that's kind of the point, and the difference between these two characters. The macro plot ATM has absofuckinglutely nothing to do with Paks' personal story. In the overview of the story, Paksenarrion is a bit player. A cool one, but she doesn't even hold minor command rank. Yes, she usually misses the end of every single battle, but in her personal story, she meets her climax, does a good job, hits human limits and that's that. She is a VERY limited character from a certain POV, because she's got no pretensions to superhuman strength or endurance. Humans can endure a lot, but everybody's got a point where their system goes "Alright. We're done", and in a medival setting without ANY KIND OF PAIN MANAGEMENT WHATSOEVER (just...think about that for a second, kids. THINK ABOUT IT. No morphene. No Percocet. Not even Tylenol. You get a headache? Deal with it. You get a toothache? Sucks to be you. ) that limit is pretty damn close. Paks rises to the occasion when she needs to...and she pays the price immediately afterwards, that price usually being a prolonged period of unconsciousness.

To compare that to Anita Blake...the difference is that AB DOES have pretensions to superhuman ability. Superhuman strength, superhuman healing factor, magic up the yin-yang and back. She survives shit that would have killed someone like Paks. So having her go out seems less "human limit" and more "Fuck, I don't want to write any more of this." Also: Anita Blake once passed out because she couldn't handle her own orgasm.

(That said, the surgeon taking care of Paks this time around should really have freaked a bit more when Paks went out from that concussion. She didn't fall asleep. That's losing consciousness and that is NOT good.)

So anyway, we're in the command tent. The Duke and the High Marshal are there, as well as a bunch of other faces. The High Marshal explains that his interview with Paks was to see if she was a good guy or a bad guy. He explains that sometimes people survive blows from the servants of dark gods because the survivor serves the same god as the attacker...and that these servants like to wear the symbols of the more people-friendly gods in a spirit of mockery.

The High Marshal then gives a long speech about Paks, and Gird, and the possible connection between the two, that can best be summed up by "fuck if I know". He then tells the Duke, who has "no love for the fellowship of Gird" that it's possible something will call Paks away from him, because the fuck-if-I-know is strong with this one.

The Duke takes it about as well as you'd imagine. Eventually, though, he gets to the point: Paks has served her first enlistment, she can leave whenever she wants to. Also, apparently the Duke thinks Gird is a greedy son of a bitch who wants every fighter in the world to be his, and a bunch of other unflattering things. Dude has issues with God, is what I'm saying

The High Marshal praises the Duke. The Duke tells the High Marshal, effectively, to pull the other one, it's got bells on. The Marshal offers to travel with the company as far as Volja and the Duke says he wouldn't mind the Marshal coming, but he'd be uncomfortable with the marshal leaving, seeing as how the Honeycat still has a lot of agents around, and the High Marshal is a pretty fine target.

The marshal leaves. One of the folk in the room, Dorrin, tells the Duke about the incident in Rotengre when Paks tried to save a family and the "family" attacked her with a poisoned dagger. The duke lets people speculate, then shuts the conversation down. She's his soldier as long as she wants to be, so either tell him that something else has happened with "that blasted medallion" or leave the subject alone.

Dorrin begins complaining about another commander. The Duke assures him that dude is gone by the end of the campaign.

End of chapter.

Paks--chapter 25

So Paks and co finally make it to one of the Honeycat's main citis, Silibi. Or something like that.

We get a summery of the siege that manages to be exciting at the same time. It takes two days for Paks and the others to sneak a siege engine up to the walls in the dead of night (it's a different engine each night. The effects of rain on a battle field are pretty interesting). The bad guys are lobbing fire at them during the day. They can't see shit at night, which is good because neither can Paks. Finally they get everything in place and make the assault.

Paks fights very well, but gets clobbered on the head by something that severely dents her helmet. Then she gets hit in the arm and leg. There's a spectacular light show as "clerics", a word that has not appeared before, fight each other. Paks only finds this out later, at the med tent, where she passes out as soon as they get her helmet off. The docs are worried, but not overmuch once she wakes up.

She recovers enough to go back to battle the next day, though the doctors make her wear a larger helmet, at least. She gets advice from the others, discovers that there are "clerics" everywhere, and then gets her first good look at a paladin of Gird. And of course, he's a knight in glittering mail riding a literal white horse across the battlefield with light streaming from his upraised and powerful fist, and Paks has never seen anything so awesome in her life. And she fantasizes for a second that maybe she could be in that glittering outfit, on that magnificent horse. And then chastises herself for being silly and goes back to real fighting.

Finally, the Phelani and the other Companies make an assault on the defender's temple, which is when folk from every religion mentioned so far turn up and stand shoulder to shoulder and start doing battle with people who, quiet honestly, look like they were rejected from a death rock band for being "too metal". Paks' own fight gets closer and closer to the paladin, and finally she finds herself in place just when the bad guy makes a swing the paladin can't counter. Paks steps in, raises her sword, there's a great flash of light, her sword shatters, she falls into the bad guy because she's blinded (and probably still concussed) and she passes out while someone kicks her (probably because someone kicks her because concussion)

The surgeons take care of her in the tents. I have to assume most of the fighting is over, because the High Marshal of Gird is there, rather than at the front lines. He starts peppering Paks with questions about what she believes, and specifically why she's resisted the attempts to convert her to Gird. She says one, she can't believe a man can become a god, two, she doesn't think that a God that likes fighting will be protecting much, and three...the two best girdsmen she knew, Canna and Effa, are both dead from wounds gained in battle when they damn well ought to have been protected. What kind of God does that?

The High Marshal corrects her with his version of the story of Gird: That he was a farmer who taught other farmers how to fight, they overturned their ruler at the time, and instead of becoming a king Gird made his followers take care of the helpless instead. He fought the forces of darkness and was taken up in a cloud of glory, and the Girdsmen reguard him as a saint, not a god. Then he explains that the axemen Paks clashed with was a preist of Liart--a god that thrives on torment--and that his weapon was enchanted, and that Paks damn well ought to be dead right now, so it's very interesting that her medallion of Gird flared up at just the right moment to save her ass, given that she doesn't believe in him AT ALL.

Paks agrees, less because that's interesting to her and more because she's concussed with a burned arm and an awful lot of primitive painkillers in her system.

The Marshal withdraws and Paks goes back to a monitored sleep.

Paks--chapter 24

Paks spends the first day of their new siege watching the siege work. She's torn between being glad she's not doing it and being bored out of her mind. A rider shows up and heads for the Duke. She tries to get close enough to listen in, which means she's close enough to be picked to go get the leader of the Halvarics and drag him back to the Duke's tent for news. It turns out the guy remembers her as the soldier who almost didn't give her parole.

Nobody finds out what the courier brought, so it must be important.

Several days later, one of Paks' recruits tells her he spotted someone coming over the city wall. Paks uses this as a Teaching Opportunity, specificially on Why We Do Not Talk About Things. They haven't had a chance to camp in a peaceful city, so Stammel hasn't had his chance to give the "Don't get drunk and blab" speech, or to beat the concept of operational security into the newbie's heads. Paks quickly explains that winning usually means having a surprise or two up your sleeve, and if you blab to the wrong person--and you never know who the wrong person is--you lose your surprise. The new person is alarmed and even a little insulted, but he gets the point.

About a day later an entire group of people breech the wall from the other side and go to talk to the Duke. Two of 'em get shot by the defenders, so the rest defect. There's a lot of fighting going on within the city, even though the Duke's people haven't make it into the city yet. Sounds like the city itself doesn't like the Honeycat anymore.

The inside people pull the Honeycat's colors down and fly the colors of an unknown party, but it's gonna be either the Duke or the Halvarics, and either way that means Paks and company have friends on the inside. Eventually her troops make it inside, but by then most of the fighting (for the Duke's people) has ended anyway.

After assisting a boy with a lost puppy--no, really. Kid lost his puppy--Paks gets to catalogue the warehouse. Fun. One of her recruits got to raid a jeweler and allows Paks and the other newbies under her to pick a decent helping of sparklies from his haul. Nice of him. The same recruit also wants Paks to pull strings to get him back to fighting. Seems he broke his arm and he wants the surgeons to put him back into play. Paks won't go for it, and Stammel shows up to back him up, then pulls her aside. Apparently they took on new people, and Stammel wants Paks to watch them. And he means watch, not just shepard. They could be good men, but they also could be plants.

That means Stammel really trusts Paks. Not just her fighting strength but her head. You don't give the potential spy to somebody who's got fewer brains than a turnip.

And of course Paks newest charge is a sexist idiot. His first serious question to Paks is "Are you sure you aren't a cook?" to which Paks says "yes" and nothing more. Probably because we don't want to kill him until this plot plays out. Idiot.

I do like, however, how very, very little sexism there was up until we started hitting the southern areas. Yes, there was the Korryn incident, which was really shitty, but everybody came down on him like a load of bricks. Up until this point, women have been treated like fighters. So much so that it hasn't called attention to itself. Paks is here to fight, and that's all. It's only now that she's got something she has to prove, and it shows very well how absolutely unfair that attitude is. Paks is a veteran. She's survived multiple tours on the front line of battle. She made the run from Dwarfwatch to Rotengre and told the Duke what happened. She's the goddamn reason the Duke is down there in the first place... and this little piss-ant is daring to insinuate that Paks is less of a soldier because of her gender.

He also mouthed off in front of Stammal, and it's probably another display of his high opinion of her that he didn't pop the idiot the second he did so. He figures Paks can sort out her own problem. And I think popping stupid would less be a "Protect the woman" gesture and more of a "you do NOT disrespect my friend"...thing.

She takes New Stupid to see Siger, who takes one look, asks a couple questions, and decides that Paks is just the one to put him through his paces. This is probably going to be fun.

It is.

Siger has Paks form a shield line with him, and lets all the newbies line up opposite them. The newbies are all like "it's not fair, it's just one old man and a girl." And the newbies hold their own for a while, until New and Stupid almost gets a touch on Paks and grins at her. Then she cleans his clock for him and gets the "You're not bad...for a girl" speech in return. New Stupid isn't going to improve.

And that my darlings is how you do a girls-can-play-with-boys sort of scene. No dick measuring, no bravado. The girl's got nothing to prove, and she just does her job and does it well and does not give one flying fuck about your opinion. Ah, Paks, how much I do love thee...

It turns out that the Honeycat likes to keep women fighters as a hobby--show them off at feasts, and then do the predictable with them--and that's part of why New and Stupid is so disrespectful of Paks.

Paks spends the last few chapters thoroughly quashing his ideas about the proper role for women, including the fact that she doesn't want to marry...ever, and never has. She adds in that a quarter of Duke Phelani's company are women, which I think is the first time a concrete number has come up.

Idiot accepts this, and the chapter ends.

Paksenarrion--chapter 23

The Duke marches the company up to yet another castle. Paks observes everything and Elizabeth Moon showcases amazing self restraint by not describing the arrow slits above the gate "murder holes". The owner of this castle is old enough to get to call the Duke "Young Phelan" without getting his clock cleaned for it; the Duke is very respectful of this person. The only time he tells the guy off is when he first asks if the women need separate housing, and then implies that maybe having that many women in combat is immoral. The Duke very quickly states that his women are his soldiers, same as the men. Paks' cohort is lead to their barracks. Everybody gets to enjoy watching the count's rather sexist staff stumble over the fact that there's lots of women in the Company.

(Speaking of which, an interesting etamology re: Woman. "Man" means human. Not the gender, necessarily. It's the "wo" that gets tacked onto it that designates a different gender. Basically sticking that "wo" in there means "Something other than human". So yeah, the word "Woman" is intensely sexist.)

Anyhoo, Paks also brings up that Count Sexist also isn't calling the Duke by his title. One of the other soldiers explains that the guy isn't disputing the Duke's title, mostly because the Duke hasn't asked him to acknowledge it. Somehow this is respect on the Duke's part, and it makes me wonder what this Count guy has accomplished that everybody around him is being very, very tolerant of the fact that he's an utter fecking moron.

The next day they march out and work on defending this place from the Honeycat. The Duke most notably does not allow any looting of the random villages they wander into. This continues from town to town until they get word that a large chunk of the Honeycat's army has surrendered to the Golden Company, and told them that the Honeycat is most likely in his own cities. It's time to go squish them.

They get so enthusiastic that several people fall into a fairly basic trap--stake pit hidden behind a barricade--before Stammal can warn them off. Most of them are newbies, though a couple of the injured are vets. The enemy gets away while Paks and her fellows deal with the stake pit. The chapter ends with Paks eyeing the first city this chapter that doesn't belong to Count Sexist Aristocrat. I do not think this city will be standing too much longer.

Paks--chapter 22

So Paks starts training her recruits. The trainer she had came with the newbies, mostly because the Duke didn't leave ANY of them behind and the dude had "nothing to do". He tells her which of her newbies need the most work, and where, and she gets right down to it. Three of 'em listen when she tells 'em they need more work. One of them says that Siger, the trainer, told him he was coming along well.

Paks smiles. And then she beats the confidence out of him and explains exactly what he did wrong.

Then Siger comes over, they pair off, and he beats the confidence out of Paks. Who is absolutely delighted because it's brand new sword work for her to learn. He disarms her, she manages a trick she picked up in battle, and gets a touch on him with her dagger. Everybody applauds, and the newbies look absolutely terrified, as newbies should. She promises that they'll get better.

She keeps tripping over the new Saben, though. She tells the newbies a little about her Saben, and they nod and remain absolutely clueless.

After some reshuffling of the cohorts, the Duke moves them out. Time to hunt the Honeycat. They meet up with the G0olden Company on the road, a mercenary troop run by a woman. Paks considers what this would be like, running her own Company. Eventually, they split back up and head to their next rest point. More worldbuilding ensues until we get to an inn, where Paks and her buddies rest, eat, and drink. In about that order. Two of them stay longer than the others and come back drunk. Paks uses this to explain to her newbies why drinking when marching is a very bad idea.

After another couple days, they're ordered to draw swords and be ready to both march quickly and be ready to fight. The Halvarics have already clashed with the Honeycat's forces, so technically Paks's fight is easier than theirs was. The other side is already bloodied and tired, and Paks's side is fresh as a daisy, relatively. It still takes approximately three seconds for one of her newbies to go down with a broken arm, which she promptly steps on because Battle. One of the other two gets hurt too, so they're both off to the surgeon's tent. When the fighting stops, one of the other cohorts is ordered to persue the enemy, and she gets to go check on her newbies and eat. She gives them the down and dirty--that they did well, but they need more training and "be glad that was your shield arm". And then one of the surgeons goes over to her and chews her out for not getting her own wounds cleaned out the first chance she got.

Next day, they get to take the enemy camp apart. Exciting

They march and find the Halvarics holed up in a tower. They settle in for a siege, but don't have to wait too long. The other guys climb over the wall while Paks is on sentry duty; it takes a while for the rest of the camp to wake up so she's on her own for a decent amount of time. They manage to stay alive, but don't take the tower. Paks then wonders how they'll manage this campaign. The Honeycat isn't with this army, and there's an awful lot of 'em for them to be a set of throw-aways. Vik then tells her a story involving a man and a barrel of ale, and the chapter ends with him telling her the point: When you bite off more than you can chew, take a minute to cut it down to size.

Book update and Paksenarrion chapter 21

Well, kids, now my BACKUP computer has fried itself. The good news is this will probably motivate my housemates to help me get one of the two fixed. I had a discussion with the computer savvy friend-of-a-friend and it's probably the power supply in that one too. Which makes very little sense to me because the backup is only a year old...but it's also an all-in-one, which to me seems like it'd be more likely to have overheating issues, given that it's got less space to work with.

The better news: I do still have access to a computer and my working files, and will be able to continue to write and edit at a sane pace. In the same vein, The next Exiles book, which I intend to serialize a'la Dragonbreath, is one third of the way done, which means ya'll's first chunk is complete. The bad news: Due to the nature of the backup-of-the-backup, I don't have access to a full version of Word, which means I can't format the final files, and I have no access whatsoever to any art programs at all.

THAT SAID: I will shoot for a mid april, early may release date for the next chunk of Starbleached. As I said, I can edit just fine. The friend-of-a-friend will be able to replace the power supply in at least one of our busted computers and I am going to try very hard to get one of 'em working by the end of next week.

So there's that. Now. Book

Chapter 21 starts off with a "Fix the busted morale" feast for Paks' company. Now that they're home, they're sleeping in their old barracks, and there aren't enough people to fill half the beds. Company commanders understand that this is an immediate reminder of the shit they went through at Dwarfwatch, so it's time for a party, speeches, and awards. Everybody who survived Dwarfwatch gets a ring, including Paks. That's the award. The speeches are, basically, "Death to Honeycat", which gets the only real response out of the crowd.

We're introduced to a bunch of the other companies over a briefly summarized winter, and then Stammal and the other sergeants bring in the new recruits. The usual showing off by the vets is accomplished in short order, and Paks gets assigned a few newbies to show around. She manages to remember her own first year without dwelling on her dead friends, which is probably a big accomplishment all on its own. Then Stammal drags her off to have a drink and to get her version of Dwarfwatch out of her.

She agrees, but not before Vik introduces her to his newbies. One of them is named Saben.

The vets get a couple days off, so everybody's heading to the village. Paks puts them off because she and Stammel are heading off for that drink.

She gives them a very choppy version of her hike to find the Duke, neatly avoiding any mention of Canna and Saben past a very general "We" and "They". The other vets quickly switch the conversation over to their own accomplishments. The recruits ask to hear her version in full, and she politely declines, then gets a little more pointed when one of her shadows starts pushing. They get it and shut up.

Stammel lets her know that the recruits were trained in an awful hurry and have even less training than she got, because the Duke is in an incredible hurry to start marching. They small talk for a while and then Stammel takes Paks to the inn and gets her quietly drunk before pulling the whole story out of her. Probably the best therapy she could get, given the time this is set in. He also brings up the issue of sex with Saben, and correctly picks up that Paks feels very guilty that she and Saben never slept together. He tells her that it's natural for friends to want to give everything to friends, that it's obvious Paks doesn't want sex, that it's probably the hardest choice people can make, and that she doesn't need to feel guilty for not sleeping with her best friend before he died.

The entire thing is fucking gorgeous.

Then he asks about the medallion, because it's truly unusual for Canna to have left it to Paks. She brings up the incident with Canna's shoulder. That it was infected before, that nothing happened when they prayed over it, but that from that point on it improved to the point that she could draw a bow a few days later. Stammel gets kind of freaked and suggests that Paks finds a marshal or a preist or something to get the whole story out. He then moves on to advice about the newbies, and the chapter ends with them polishing off the ale and heading back to the keep.

Paksenarrion--chapter 20

Chapter twenty opens with Paks dealing with her greif. She does alright, but the text makes it clear that this is not easy:

She could not talk about it to anyone. She knew that Vik and Arñe watched her, and almost hated them for it. She heard a Halveric ask Barra if she and Saben had been lovers, and did not know which was worse, the question or Barra's scornful negative...For the first time, she wondered what it would have been like to bed him. It was something he had always wanted, and now there was no chance. But if she had—if it hurt more, to lose a lover— she shook her head , and went doggedly on with work she hardly noticed. Better not. She had never wanted to, and surely it would be worse to lose a lover. It was bad enough now.

There is something utterly fucking heartbreaking about that paragraph. It's obvious that Paks really valued her friendship with Saben, equally obvious she had utterly no desire to have sex with him.

It kind of reminds me of the three words the Greeks used for love--Philios, brotherly, Eros, romantic, and agape, usually translated as unconditional. It's scenes like this that make me think of how often we rob the concept of love by making it just that thing that happens before you have sex. You have sex because you want to have sex. Paks loved Sabin unconditionally. She didn't want to screw him, obviously, but she's lost a few friends by now and it's clear this loss cuts much, much deeper than just the death of a good friend. She's lost the best companion she's had so far, and the only way she can deal is to keep on working.

Eventually, Paks has to decide between not caring about her fellows ever again, or caring about them even more--caring about them enough so that the next time, she'll be able to save them. And she decides to do the latter.

She looked at her own hands, broad and strong, skilled— she could still protect, with those hands. She said nothing , and the tears came again, but somewhere inside a tightness eased.

And then they find a tunnel leading from the camp where they found Canna and Saben straight into Rotengre. And I would imagine the people in that city are about to have a very, very, VERY bad day.

Paks is assigned to the wall, the distraction that will let several companies get through that tunnel without any major resistance. She makes it to the top of the wall and, along with several others, gets into the gate tower before it can go into full lockdown. They get the main gate open in short order. Meanwhile the Duke has gotten his people through the tunnel and Paks, once again, finds herself on guard duty well behind the actual fighting.

You'd think all the standing around and watching shit would be boring, but I kind of like it. It's not because Paks is a chick, it's because this is what soldiers do. They stand and watch shit and hope that the shit doesn't start moving, and that if it does, that they can make it stop moving before it escalates to "kill or be killed". And guarding the gatehouse of an unfriendly city is a pretty fucking important job.

And then she does get taken into the city when they take the keep, and one of the vets teaches Paks how to loot.

....she's not real enthusiastic about it. Oh, she grabs enough, but she's not destroying furniture or ransacking overly much. Her attitude is basically "This is cool, this is worth something, this is pretty, and I don't really need too much more than that".

Eventually she gets sick of sack duty and they send her to manage the civilians. A man probably defending his family almost kills Paks in a scene that's presented pretty dispassionately. She's the invading force, she's torn these people's lives apart. We're still on her side, but we're seeing the shitty side to this whole war thing. The family could also have been disguised soldiers--they were all carrying poisoned weapons, and none of them survive long enough to tell. Paks gets a dose of the poison.

They treat her, and make an interesting discovery while searching the bodies.

Under his outer robes he wore a massive silver chain with a curious medallion. As Kir slid it out, the captain swore. Paks peered at it , wondering what was wrong. As big as a man's palm, it looked like a silver spider, legs outstretched on a web.

This is the sign of the Webmistress, and it's enchanted as fuck. They scramble to find a cleric, then get the idea to have Paks shove Canna's Gird medallion on the thing. It doesn't do enough, so Paks has to go off and find a preist. Nobody is happy about having found the fucking thing.

Eventually they've sacked everything they can sack, turn the city over to the coalition of merchants that hired them, pack up and start walking back out again. There's a reminder that a lot of people died, and the chapter ends.

Paksenarrion--chapter 19

The Duke marches on the fort where Paks and company surrendered. He's got Paks with him and we go through a very quick run down of tactics before they run the fort. And when they do, let's just say it's a bad day to be wearing the Honeycat's colors.

She thought of Canna and Saben, and felt a wash of anger erase the last nervousness. I'm going to kill you, she thought as her rank reached the pikes. She ducked under a pike to slash at the enemy. One in the second rank chopped at her; she dodged without thinking and darted between the front pikes while he was still off balance. Her sword almost took his head off. She felt without looking that her companions followed her example, felt the first quiver of yielding as the pikemen realized that these swordsmen were not held off by the bitter tips of their weapons... She fought on; it didn't matter, she was going to kill these scum until she died.

And this, friends and readers, is why you do not treat your prisoners like shit and you fight fair. Because it might feel good to roll the other bad people over, but eventually you're gonna piss off a good person past what they can handle and when that happens, my dears, they will END you. And I'm now STRONGLY nostalgic for the Honor Harrington series because FUCK did you not piss off Honor. (She only got that pissed three times. Two times, she killed the sons of bitches responsible via legal combat, and they absolutely deserved it. The third time she had to be physically restrained because killing wasn't justified. Even though the sons-of-bitches abso-fucking-lutely deserved to be killed horribly and nobody would have minded seeing 'em die. If you want to live long in the Honorverse, don't hurt Honor's people. Just don't.) (Which is why I am WAITING for the next honor book. Somebody killed (GIGANTICALLY CENSORED TRAUMA INDUCING SPOILER) and if they do not get turned into VERY small pieces within very short order I will be VERY put out with the universe.) (Oh, and speaking of which, my dears, the first Honor Harrington book is free. You are welcome and I will be here when you need to cry.) (Which you will) (Frequently)

It turns out that the Halvarics and the duke's men held the fort--barely--so the Honeycat's people basically got jammed into a meatgrinder.  The survivors are VERY happy to be liberated. Also: arming your trained captives when your enemies come to hurt you? REALLY good idea. No, seriously. It saved a lot of lives. Again: This is why you treat prisoners with dignity and respect.

There is still no sign of Sabin or Canna. I think from here on out it is assumed that they are dead.

They find the Duke's commanding captain dying of gangrene on a bed. They have a conversation where the captain apologizes profusely for losing and the Duke assures him that he did nothing wrong, and the Duke is very proud of him. The Captain asks what the losses will do to the Duke's company.

"Do?" The Duke stared at the wall a moment, then smiled at Ferrault. "Ferrault, when I'm done with him, neither Siniava nor his friends nor his followers will have a hut to live in or a stone to mark where they died. I'm going to destroy him, Ferrault, for what he did to you and the Company. We've already destroyed the army he brought north this year, and that's only the beginning."

Paks, who has been walking around this entire time with a bone bruise and a cracked rib from the fight, is FINALLY made to go sit down and rest. When she wakes up, the Duke rounds up the survivors--it doesn't take long, though most of the command structure is dead--and gives 'em a speech that is basically what that says up there. He gets a bit more elaborate, though:

"Yes," he said firmly. "We can do that, and we will. You already know other companies are with us: the Clarts, the Halverics, Vladi's spears. More will join us. I pledge you, sword-brethren, that until this vengeance is complete, I will consider no other contract, and all I have will support this campaign." The Duke drew his sword and raised it in salute to the Company. "To their memory," he said. "To vengeance." And the Company growled in response : vengeance.

To recap: These morons have pissed a bunch of mercenaries off so hard that a mercenary company, which is essentially a corporation that thrives on paid murder, is going to go WITHOUT PAY until the Honeycat and his people are squished. And not just go without pay, but dedicate ALL of its reserve resources to the squishing.

They. Are So. Very. Dead.

Then the Duke hauls up individual soldiers--both genders representing--to distribute awards for valor. Eventually he hauls Paks up to the front.

"You have no captain to speak for you," he said. "Nor sergeants , nor corporals. Yet your deeds speak aloud without their aid. I cannot pick and choose among you; I will have made for each of you, from these spoils, a ring to commemorate your deeds. But those to whom you owe your lives, who brought me word of your peril: even among such honor, they deserve honor. Three started: Canna Arendts, Saben Kanasson, and Paksenarrion Dorthansdotter. "Here is a ring ," he said, "that I think best represents your deed. Three strands, for the three who started together, braided into one: the one who succeeded, the message, for returning to the place you began.

Paks reflects for a moment that this is NOT how she wanted to win glory--not over her friends' graves--and the Duke moves on. He tells them who they are to regroup under--their commander, and HIS commander, are both dead, and most of their cohort is too--and then dismisses them for the evening.

And then the Halvaric's commander shows up. The dude whose son the Honeycat shot out of the saddle for shits and giggles.

Again: THIS GUY IS SO VERY DEAD.

 They sort out VERY quickly that nobody is ANYBODY'S captive and move on to the "let's go hunt down the shithead" arrangements. Also funeral arrangements, because a lot of their people are dead now.

And then we get a rather nice plot bomb during the actual funeral.

Then the Duke signalled his piper, and a tune Paks had never heard before seemed to drag all the sorrow and anger out of her heart with its own bitterness. It was the "Ar hi Tammarion," the lament written for the death of the Duke's lady by the half-elven harper at the Court of Tsaia , and not since then played openly. Paks did not know the history of the song, but felt its power, as the rough wind dried tears she had shed without knowing it.

Tammarion, if you remember, is the woman mentioned during Paks' trial. She's also the woman that Paks has been compared to favorably on more than one occasion. INTERESTING.

They march back to Rotengre. The soldier who gave Paks a rough time on her return trip shows up and is VERY apologetic, and Paks is graceful about accepting his apology. Offers of ale are made, which Paks refuses. Then the Duke calls her up because he might have news about Sabin and Canna. And it probably isn't good.

It isn't.

The surgeon says Saben had taken a hard blow to the head, and probably never woke up. He died soon after they were found. Canna was not badly wounded in the fight, but when the brigands realized their hideout had been found, they tried to kill all their prisoners before they fled. Though she was still alive when the militia got in, she died several days later, here in camp. She knew you had made it, and that we'd defeated Siniava's army on the road and gone on north. The surgeon said she wanted you to have her medallion, and wanted you to know you did the right thing. She was glad you made it through; he said she died satisfied."

She gave Paks her Gird medallion, which is odd because usually those get sent back to the granges, the Girdish form of churches. The Duke also recovered the little horse she'd given Saben. He packs the rest of Sabin's things up to send to his family. He gives her a drink and sends her out of the tent to steady herself. She finds the other survivors of the cohort and collapses.

"We were so close," she whispered, as tears ran down her face. "Only a few more miles, and they—" She could not go on. Arñe got up and put an arm around her shoulders; they all sat together a long time in silence.

End of chapter.

Paksenarrion--chapter 17+18

Paks and company get surprised by a boy minding his pigs. They elect not to kill him and get directions to civilization. They get to a house, and send Saben up to get food and directions, while they watch from the trees. The woman of the house first tries to get him to come inside, then PUMPS him for information--are you alone? Where's your home?--and she's being REALLY congenial to a random dude who probably looks like he rolled in the mud, given that Saben, Canna and Paks have all been sleeping rough the last few days. Saben finally tells her that he deserted his unit for a girl, and the two armed men the women was hiding inside the house book it out the back door while she goes to get the food. Paks's nerves go up higher. The armed dudes start crawling along the house and the fence line, watching Saben the entire time while they stay out of his line of sight.

Not. Good.

Finally, Saben turns to leave, and the woman shouts "Help theif" which sends the armed guys running in her direction. Paks breaks the tree line and clashes with the guys with swords, Canna gets herself a hidden bowman, they all take care of the problem and set to interrogating the woman who set up this half-assed ambush.

They get a "DON'T search my house!" that sounds a bit too much like "DON'T throw me in the briar patch!" so they figure there's more in the house and go up for a looksie. Paks and Canna take care of the trio they find, get food, and come back out, tie up the woman and then head out. Eventually they find a road they recognize.

Chapter Eighteen:

They missed the armed band until they were face to face. Eight heavily armed brigands in scale and chain mail, with good swords at their sides, seemed to spring from the trees to surround them. Two had shields.

Whoops.

They fight until Paks takes a tumble down a riverbank, and Saben tells her to run for it. She's lost her sword, but she's clear of the fight, so that's exactly what she does. Eventually she makes it up the banks and takes off into the woods. She makes it to the road and then, FINALLY, makes it to the duke's company.

And immediately gets called out by somebody who doesn't know her for being a fucking mess. Because when you survive, you're not usually shining like a daisy. Eventually they make it to somebody who knows Paks--Barri, the abrasive female recruit from way back with the shitty attitude about rape. Paks insists she has to see the duke--NOW.

Nobody goes along with it--they figure she broke her parole--until she mentions the Honeycat. She's not too coherant--she's exhausted and she's been running for several days by now, not to mention she is absolutely, in every sense of the word, filthy. The Duke gets the handful of coherant fragments Paks can put together, realizes the Honeycat is on his way, and starts moving.

She also tells him that Sabin and Canna were attacked somewhere up the road, and feels like an ass for not saying anything earlier. By this time they got some kind of stimulant into her and she is a little--VERY little--more coherant. She collapses for good not too long after sending help for Sabin and Canna.

When she wakes up, she hears a squire criticizing her and the Duke defending her. That doesn't sound so good. She goes out and they pump her for more information, including how the Honeycat is marching on the Duke's position. The commander of the guys who took the fort the first time around is listening in on the conversation. It sounds like the Honeycat killed a lot of his people too, and he looks pissed. 

 The Duke marches out, but he leaves Paks behind because she needs rest, and because the scribe can get all the information she has to offer, which is really more valuable than her sword right now.

The Duke gets back. He saved some of the prisoners, but not all of them. Paks doesn't ask who survived, as that's a touchy subject and she can probably pry it out of somebody less scary. She gets permission to head out with him the second time around, though she is to rest whenever she needs to.

Chapter eighteen ends with the Duke making revenge plans, but not before he tells Paks that she has done a very, very good job.

Paksenarrion--chapter 15-16

So Paks and her friends are trying to get back to the City of Robbers so they can tell the Duke that the rest of their garrison, and the dudes who took them hostage the first time, have all been taken hostage AGAIN. Only by way worse dudes, so this time the Duke might want to step on it.

It's also really likely that she, Saben and Canna are lost. They're kind of trying to figure that out right now. They get their bearings when they find the road...which is overrun by enemy soldiers almost immediately. Not good. Even better--they can't ask for food without endangering whoever they buy from, because they're wearing the Duke's colors, but they can't ditch the colors either, because then they'll be taken for bandits.

They eventually creep up on a farm to steal food, only to discover that the bad guys were there first, and the first thing they did was kill, maim and otherwise  violate the farmers.  They're also cooking a cow, which they abandon in a hurry because they have to high-tail it back to the garrison full of hostages. Because they'll be leaving soon.

Canna tells Paks not to think about what might be happening to their people. Paks can't stop thinking about it. Saben is still weepy over the farmers' families because they're a lot like his family too.

Reprovisioned, they take a second to look over Canna's wound. It doesn't look too bad, but she's got an open wound through the shoulder, and she's been crawling through the mud. They clean and treat it as best they can, and the chapter ends with them setting off.

Next chapter, they manage to make it through the night; Canna's wound is getting worse. Paks asks Canna if Gird, Canna's god, wouldn't heal her. Canna is aghast that Paks knows Gird does this sometimes. Apparently it's trade secret, and anyway it takes a Marshal or a Paladin--first mention of the latter--to heal.

"We could try," said Paks. Canna stared at her
. "What are you, a paladin in disguise? You aren't even a Girdsman." 
"No, that's true. But we need you to be well and strong."

 "I'm— oh, all right. If you want to. It can't do any harm."

They try. Something happens, but it's real vague and all Canna volunteers is that she can breathe a little easier now. She's doing well enough to suggest that maybe all the crossroads will be watched, and they'll need to be extra careful. They clear a few patrols, then run smack into a mounted rider. Paks handles it by throwing her pack at him, then running at him with her dagger. It's the only weapon she's got. Canna comes up from behind and kills the guy, while Saben takes care of the horse so it doesn't return to its stables riderless.

Canna's wound is doing better, though Paks is a little more banged up from the fight. They spend the next several days dodging patrols and fires--from villages and settlements the bad guys murdered and torched--and the chapter ends with them deciding that splitting up is still a really bad idea.

Paksenarrion chapter 14

Just so you know, the next few chapters made Young CW cry.

So Paks, Saben and Canna are off picking berries. Paks has Probable Feelings for Saben, Saben has Serious Feelings for Paks, and Canna is Just Cool in General. As Young CW had never encountered GRR Martin, she had no idea how bad this combo is re: plot matters. I hope you brought kleenex.

The Halvarics sounds Obvious Alarm. Paks is not yet practiced enough to understand that Obvious Alarm means You Fucking Run For The Nearest Weapon And God Help You If You Are Slow. Her buddies also stand their like idiots and watch a massive collum of People march on the fort. They don't start moving until the enemy start shooting their own people, and of course by now the only place they can run is for the nearst pile of brush. This gets Canna shot in the shoulder. Bonus points for her, she makes no noise whatsoever. But now they're in the middle of an ambush with one third of their party mortally wounded. Good going Paks.

 They pull the arrow from Canna's shoulder. Somehow this manages to neither kill nor cripple her (There are several major veins, arteries and nerves, not to mention bones, in that very small, cramped space. If an arrow isn't lodged in a bone, odds are it's lodged in something even less arrow-friendly.)

Also: the enemy clearly wants to rape the women in Paks's little party. Nice.

So now they have to hike to Rotengre with a wounded girl. So they do the smartest thing they can: Stuff themselves with food. No, really, this is smart. Food is important, and they've been gathering berries for hours. Vitimine C is strong with berries, it'll ward off infection in Canna and it'll give Sabin and Paks the energy to make it to the city. NEVER underestimate the value of food.

They also have cheese and meat, which are apparently Fantasy World Staples. They give these to Canna because they figure she needs them.

tone. "I know neither of you are Girdsmen, but— I wish you would join me in prayer. At least for the confusion of our enemies." "That I'll go along with," said Saben. "But won't Gird be angry if non-Girdsmen pray in his name?" "No," replied Canna. "He welcomes all honorable warriors." She reached into her tunic, the cloth rustling as she moved, and pulled out her holy symbol. Paks heard the faint chinking of the links of the chain. "Holy Gird, patron of warriors, protector of the weak, strengthen our arms and warm our hearts for the coming battles. Courage to our friends, and confusion to our enemies."

I really, really love this. I DO believe that God answers even the prayers of non-believers and it's kind of awesome to see that kind of thing in print. (It's also why I find LKH's faith-based protections offensive. God wants to preserve people, IMHO; making their safety and salvation be dependent on how strongly they believe seems kind of self-defeating in my book. He fucking DIED for you. He can weather your non-belief just fine) Anyhoo, it gives God (in whatever form) an existance beyond the faith. Gird, in this case, is less dependant on your legalism. He cares more about how much help you actually need right now.

They weather the first night intact. They make it almost to dawn when they hit the enemy's first patrol. Not good. The best part is they identify the hostage-taker as the Honeycat. Which isn't exactly a positive.

They have a breif arguement over who is in command. Canna wins, with Paks as a second. And then this happens:

"Another thing— if one of us is caught , or killed, or— or whatever— the others must go on. Someone has to get to the Duke, no matter what, or the whole thing is wasted. Clear?"

Paks and Saben protest, naturally. It's all for one, one for all, right? Canna is quick to set them straight:

"We're warriors first," said Canna firmly. "That's what we're here for. If you accept my command, you must accept this. We're warriors , and our duty is to our Duke. He's the only one who can help the rest, anyway. I'd leave you— I wouldn't want to, but I would. And you'll leave me, if it comes to that, rather than let the whole cohort be lost, and the Company after it."

I kind of want to marry this.

The chapter ends with Paks hearing some kind of drum.

Paksenarrion--chapter 13

Just a one off tonight kids. Got a lot of stuff to take care of tomorrow.

On the plus side, the next Starbleached book (Working title: Fortitude) is drafted and in its cooldown phase. I'm now working on the next Exiles book. So you finally have something to look forward to!

So our chapter opens with Paks marching to the seige. It becomes real clear that the bad guys know the Company is on its way. Lots of the vets are groaning. We get a nice list of all the cities Paks is marching through before she gets to her destination:

Even from a distance, Rotengre looked more formidable than the other cities, more like an overgrown fort: high, steep walls, massive towers, all out of proportion to the breadth. It was shaped somewhat like a rectangle with the corners bitten off; its long axis ran north and south, with the only two gates on the short ends. Paks decided that the tales must be true— it was a city built for trouble, not for honest trade.

They march, their allies join them, and the folks in Rotengre withdraw into their city and slam the gates shut. The seige has begun.

The descriptions can basically be summed up thusly: Paks is so bored she'd rather be digging latrines than standing at front line duty. Because seiges are boring as fuck and everybody hates them. It's also fucking hot. So when Paks gets ordered to hike up north to relieve a garrison, she's like "Cool beans. I'll go" and gets right to marching.

They get to the fort just in time for it to get put under seige.They let things run for about an hour and then start talking surrender. Mostly because they are mercenaries and they don't give a fuck about holding it, they just don't want to die.

Donag nodded at the siege engines rolling down the slope toward the bridge. "We will sooner or later. We can hold it a week, maybe, if we've water enough. But we'd take heavy losses, and they'd break through in the end. Tir's guts, I wasn't looking forward to being a captive again."

That last sentence makes me giggle like a little girl.

Donag explains that they'll be counted, tallied, probably given a pretty generous parole, and held onto until the Duke pays ransom. The biggest rule is "Don't fuck the enemy, it's bad manners and beneath our dignity when we're their prisoners. Wait until after we get ransomed." Sounds nice and almost bloodless, right?

...yeah, I have been cringing in anticipation of this next sequence of events.

There's an interesting moment when they are ordered to disarm. Paks does not want to surrender her sword. For a moment she imagines rushing the enemy, then elects to lay her sword down gently, rather than just dropping it. It's kind of pretty, and it defines her character for others, later.

 As Paks slipped her dagger from its sheath, she felt a heavy cold weight dragging at her. She was not even tempted to use the dagger. It seemed that nothing could ever be right again. To stand unarmed in the midst of armed troops, defeated without a fight, was the worst thing she could imagine. But with the others she marched back, under guard, to await events.

Paks is also reluctant to agree to the terms of parole. One of the enemy captains talks her into it by explaining that, between mercs, it's all just a kind of game, and there's no honor lost in surrendering right now. Then he goes into lecture mode and gives all the newbies a good, long education in why Respecting Each Others' Prisoners Is Important. (basically, so you don't get treated like shit when it's your turn in the shackles. Which they're not using here, because respecting each others' prisoners is important.)

They are eventually allowed to leave the keep and pick berries. Paks does this as often as she can. This makes sure that she, Saben and Canna are outside of the city when the next shoe falls.

End of chapter.

Paksenarrion--chapter 11 and 12

Okay, updatey things first. The next starbleached book is almost finished. I have about two scenes left. Suffice to say that Antidepressants FUCKING ROCK, and I'm wandering around going "Is this normal? Is this how normal people feel? Is something wrong? Did they put me on too high a dose? Are there rainbows shooting out of my ass? WHAT IS THIS?" At one point I asked my mom, who has more mental health training than I do, to go down the manic episode checklist, and at the end of it she was like "No, you don't have a problem. You're just normal." We're watching me kind of close and I'm going back in to see my caseworker later this week and the doctor later this month, but so far it's like WOW.

And that's what chemical depression is, children. It's not a feeling, it's not something you can think your way through. YOUR BRAIN IS SICK IT IS NOT WORKING CORRECTLY.

Also, I'm in the process of arranging for a summer job, as once the school year ends I will be out of work. There is an AMAZING chance on the table right now that has (as far as I know) absolutely nothing to do with writing or art but everything to do with potentially crafty things and positivity and working with special needs people all summer long. I have no idea what that'll do to other things I had planned for the summer (Derail them, most likely) but an awful lot of me is like OH MY GOD I CANNOT AFFORD NOT TO DO THIS.

So anyway...really good book.

Paks rejoins her company. They routed the enemy, but re-enforcements are arriving and the other side is gonna have another go. Paks takes a minute to look at her allies, including their livery, which is described really well and seems pretty realistic.The next battle happens and Paks does rather well.

Eventually Paks asks why they're fighting over the same stretch of ground without trying to take the other guy's camp. Her shadow, who is still an asshole, explains:

"Why don't they want to fight and win?" she asked one night.

 "Don't complain," said Donag. "If they wanted to win— I suppose you mean Foss Council?— it'd be our blood on the ground, and not their militia's. Think about it. They want to win , but what they want to win is whatever it is they're fighting about: where a border is, or a caravan tariff , or something like that. If they can convince Czardas to yield on that, without us having to cut our way through the entire Czardian army, so much the better."

Yep. Nobody got a horse in this battle, my friends, except the people paying money. So they'll make a lot of noise and some people will get dead, and eventually the two parties who actually do give a fuck about things will wind up at the negotiating table.

Kind of dispiriting, isn't it?

Tactics go back and forth, and eventually that's exactly what happens: The treaty gets signed in favor of Paks' employers, rather than the other guy's, and most of the Company survives to be glorified caravan guards for the rest of the season. Paks gets paid.

Apparently the currancy in this relm is not only gendered, it's also pretty sexist.

Anyhoo, Paks is going to try to save most of hers up so she can pay her father for the dowery that never was. Frankly I'd let Dad swing, seeing as how he paid it before he got his daughter's consent, but Paks loves her family, so she's gonna squirrel most of it away.

And then most of the veterans take most of the recruits off to show them how not to get robbed in a tavern. Or rather, how to pick good taverns so they don't get robbed.

"Is Foss so dangerous?" asked Saben. "And who'd attack us? We're armed," said Paks. "It's exactly that attitude ," said Stammel severely, "that loses good fighters every year. With the Company , you're good. But alone, in an alley with thieves— no. If you're lucky you wake up in the morning with a lump on your head and no money. Unlucky, you find yourself in a slaver's wagon with a sack over your head and a brand— or maybe just dead. You youngsters don't know the first thing about cities —well, maybe Vik and Jorti do— and that's why you'll come with me this time."

There's a nice scene in one tavern where a guy cat-calls Paks, who freezes for multiple reasons, and Stammel explains that she could kill the idiot, and he should know because he trains her. The guy promptly shits himself and goes away. Then there's a shopping scene that finally gives us a decent list of this world's gods:

She found the surprise for Saben several shops down. Here were trays of religious symbols, carved of the appropriate stone or metal. Most she did not know. The crescent and cudgel of Gird were familiar, and the Holy Circle, and the wheatsheaf of the Lady of Peace. The sword of Tir was there, both plain and cleverly set with a tiny jewel in the pommel. But whose was the leaping fish, or the tree, or the arch of tiny stars ? She looked at tiny golden apples, at green leaves, at anvils, hammers, spears, fox or wolf heads, little human figures clothed in flowers (swirling hair made the loop for hanging). Here was the antlered figure of Guthlac, and the double-faced head of Simyits, a harp for Garin, the patron of harpers, and shears for Dort, the patron of sheepshearers and all in the wool trade. Then she saw the little red stone horse, and remembered Saben's words that day in the stronghold. She looked up and found the shopkeeper watching her. She glanced around; Saben was in the next shop, pricing combs for his sisters.

The chapter ends with her giving Saben the horse, and him giving her a comb he tricked her into picking out herself.

Next chapter: Paks and Saben are talking during guard duty about their plans for the future. Saben eventually asks if Paks would like to be more than friends.

"Saben, you know I—"
 "You don't want it. I know. Not from me or anyone. Well, I'm not asking: just if you did ever change. If it was just Korryn, I mean." 
Paks ducked her head lower and stared at the ground. "No. Even before. I just don't feel that way."
 He sighed. "I'm glad it wasn't Korryn. Don't worry; I won't bother you." 

She looked up. "You never have."

Short, sweet, to the point, and IMHO it shows that this is an awesome friendship. Saben would rather not ruin it by pushing for sex. Even though he really likes Paks. And then he basically spoils major plot points by teasing her:

Saben nodded. "Lady Paksenarrion, in shining armor on a great war-horse, with a magic sword—don't laugh at me, companion! Here I'm giving you a good-luck prophecy and you laugh at me. Ha! See if I ever warn you about overhoning your blades again."

Eventually someone--not them--spots the Duke coming in. Apparently the Wolf Prince has been hitting the wounded of every mercenary company he can find, and the Duke would really like to make that stop. He doesn't take Paks, though, so we have to wait for Barra to them all about it. Basically, they attacked his stronghold and broke it,saw the condition the servants and prisoners were in, and decided killing every soldier loyal to the Wolf Prince, as well as the Prince himself, was the absolute best thing they could do.

Vik comments at how Barra's difficult to deal with. Paks defends her on the basis of Barra being a good fighter. Vik then goes into a FUCKING BEAUTIFUL speech about how you can't be that black and white--if you don't learn to judge people by who they are, and not just on how much you like them, or want to like them, you can get hurt pretty badly.

You've told us you always wanted to be a fighter, a fighter for good, right?" He waited for her nod before going on. "Well, you're so intent on that— you don't see other things. You see people as good or bad, not in between; as fighters or not, and not in between . And since you're basically a good person, you see most people as good— but most people, Paks, are in between— both as fighters, and as good or bad. And they're different. If you don't learn to see them straight— just as you'd look at a sword, knowing all swords aren't alike— you'll depend on them for what they don't have."

Paks and the other recruits are now past their first year. There's a long sequence to show how she's matured, and how she's accepted by the Company as a veteran. The next batch of recruits come in, and Paks finds out about the trick they played on her the first day she arrived:

"Just hang about as if you didn't know they were coming," said Donag, grinning . "Keep close to the yard. When the captain yells, throw yourself into position, fast. Whoever's closest, go for the front; never mind your usual position. What counts is speed. They don't know where we're supposed to be, and they'll be too scared to notice. Be sure to keep a straight face— they'll be funny, but don't laugh."

Stammel is not her sargent anymore. Instead she gets a difficult-at-first female sargent who Paks eventually warms up to. Then they get their next contract:

This year's contract was very different. "It's a siege," explained Donag, who had used his own mysterious contacts to find out. "The Guild League cities are joining to siege and assault another city, halfway across Aarenis. They're hiring several companies as well as their own militia. I think our contract's with Sorellin, but the others are supporting it."

The city they're fighting is a haven for theives. The bad news is it'll probably last a long time. The Good news is, unless they hire the Honeycat the theives won't have any support at all.

Yeah. Guess who the theives are going to hire.

Anyhoo, the chapter ends with Paks feeling rather confused, but upbeat: At least she'll be marching to someplace she hasn't seen before.