In the heart of Castle Aramor sits a small private library known as the Royal Athenaeum (or, as Brasti used to call it, “that funny little round room where the King liked to take noblewomen to show them how clever he was.”) Not long after the Dukes took the King’s head, they looted most of his books—probably because they too had noblemen and women to impress with their brilliance. However if you search long enough among the refuse that the Dukes left behind, pushing aside the unswept dust and thick cobwebs, you might chance upon an unimpressive-looking tome entitled On The Virtus of Knights.
Now, you might suppose that such a book would be one of the very first that any pompous ass of a Duke would desire to see sitting proudly on his mantel. After all, what nobleman doesn’t bloviate, self-righteously and to considerable extent, about the honor and loyalty of their Knights? (Not to mention the money spent on them.) Surely such a book so auspiciously titled On The Virtus of Knights ought therefore to have been desired and fought over by the Dukes.
Alas, the cover of this particular tome happens to be rather worn and rubbed, its color faded, and its considerably foxed pages imbued with a not-especially-pleasant smell of moldy leather overlaying that of the rotting paper.
Had one of those Dukes chosen to pick up the book, however, he might have noticed that the author was a man named Arlan Hemensis, and even the briefest time spent on research into that name would have yielded the fact that Arlan was a former clerk of a minor noble’s household who had spent many of his later years in prison as a result of a dispute with a Ducal Knight. The Knight in question had been aggrieved over the old man’s steadfast refusal to pay for a replacement tabard after the blood of Veren Hemensis, Arlan’s only son, had stained it beyond redemption. The tabard had been bloodied during the Knight’s duel with young Veren . . . it mattered not one jot that the boy, who was only seven and a half years old, thought he had been playing when he challenged the Knight to the duel. After all, the duel is one of the Ducal Knights’ sacred obligations.
When Arlan was finally released from prison at the age of sixty-seven, he lived just long enough to write his little book.
On the surface, the book lauds the honor and effectiveness of the Knighthood, though a more detailed study might raise a few questions in the minds of more cynical readers. My favorite passage is the very last one, which reads thus:
So grand is a true Knight that even should one be slain on the battlefield, his armor pierced by, let’s say, a dozen arrows, his helmet struck so hard that the steel that once protected said Knight’s skull now crushes it, sending brain matter dribbling down the other side of his head . . . even then, Gentle Reader, as the remnants of his broken body fall crashing to the ground, the great clanging sound his armor makes is so rich and noble in tone that one might be forgiven for longing to hear it again and again.
And, too, it must be said that while the deaths of a thousands peasants might pass unnoticed by history, when such perfidious wretches as would attack their betters do, by some chance, take down a Knight, his armored body casts a very long shadow indeed.