Free The Sea of Time by P C Hodgell Page A

horsemanship. The Knorth, Niall, scored two hits; the Ardeth, three.
    “Beginner’s luck,” said Jame. “Wait until Erim’s turn.” She glanced sideways at the Ardeth Lordan, whose horse was again fidgeting. “Are you going to tell me?”
    “You’ll laugh. No one here takes me seriously.”
    Jame thought about that. All his life, Timmon had tried to measure up to the hero that he had believed his father Pereden to be. Peri had been her brother’s second-in-command and then leader of the Southern Host, but he had never been a randon. His reckless sense of entitlement had led him to march the Host into disastrous battle against the Waster Horde before he had betrayed it altogether. Timmon had only recently learned about the latter, to his chagrin. Now he was among randon who had served under his father and knew his fickle nature only too well, measured by the lives he had squandered.
    Timmon hadn’t helped the situation by his lackadaisical attitude at Tentir. Not that he had done badly there, but he had used his Shanir charm to slip out of any duty that didn’t interest him. People had noticed.
    The trick now was to hit fresh straw targets, preferably in the head or breast. The cadets were also being timed: twenty seconds to loose three arrows each. Distracted by the pound of oncoming hooves, the tortoises began to scatter. The horses swerved around them.
    Jame cheered a hit on Damson’s part and groaned when she missed the next two.
    Damson worried her. The Kendar girl could shift things in people’s heads, in one case having caused the cadet Vant to lose his balance and fall into the firepit where he had burned to death—all because he had teased her about her weight. Worse, the memory of her deed gave her pleasure. On the whole, she seemed to have no inborn sense of honor at all. If she passed her second year of randon training, she would become at least a five-commander, responsible for other lives. At the moment, she was Jame’s responsibility, and Jame didn’t know what to do about her.
    G’ah, think of that later.
    “I suppose you’ll have to prove yourself,” she said to Timmon, returning to his problem.
    “How?”
    “Take your duties seriously, for one thing. No more slithering out of things.”
    Timmon grimaced. The habits of a pampered lifetime were proving hard to break.
    A thought struck her. “D’you know the names of all your cadets?”
    “I know my own ten-command,” he said defensively.
    “And the rest of the second-years, not to mention the third-years and randon?”
    “Now, be fair. There are over one hundred and forty second-years alone here at Kothifir.”
    “And only eighty Knorth,” said Jame, proud that she had only lost one to the last cull compared to the Ardeth’s twenty. “But I know them all, and am learning the rest. Tori remembers every Kendar sworn to our house, alive or dead.”
    Timmon gave her a sidelong, defiant glower. “All two thousand of them, among the living alone? I heard that he forgot some.”
    “Only one. A Kendar named Mullen, who killed himself to make sure that Tori would remember him forever. He hasn’t forgotten anyone since.” As far as she knew, and as she devoutly hoped. Kindrie’s genealogical chart should come in handy on Autumn’s Eve, if Tori chose to avail himself of it. “The point is, would you fight, perhaps die, for a leader who didn’t know who you were?”
    Timmon wriggled.
    It was a telling point. Second-years faced no more official culls, which wasn’t to say that a wayward cadet might not be sent home in disgrace. On the other hand, at the end of the year, each house’s cadets voted on whom they would most willingly follow into battle. It would be highly embarrassing for a lordan to lose that ballot.
    “For that matter,” said Timmon, rallying, “consider all the time you spent away from Tentir playing with your Merikit friends. That caused talk too, and so are your little visits to Kothifir now.”
    Jame reflected