"I—" Paks choked a moment and went on. "Sir, I want to stay. If that is what—but will Gird accept it?"

"We can talk of Gird himself later, Paksenarrion. What we, the Marshals, are looking for is something less than what Gird may ask. Is it something your Duke told you, that makes you dislike Gird so? Or have you another patron you haven't told us about?"

Paks shook her head. "No, sir. It's nothing like that; all I have been told of Gird I admire, and here you teach that Gird is a servant of the High Lord, not a god to worship instead of him. But—" She could not explain the obscure reserve and resentment she felt, and worked her way toward it haltingly. "When I was in the Duke's Company, I knew Girdsmen. Effa was killed in her first battle—but that doesn't matter. I think it was when Canna was captured and killed. She was a Girdsman, but it didn't help. She died, and not in clean battle, even though we were trying to reach the Duke, and tell him about Siniava's capture of the fort. If Gird saved anyone, why not Canna, his own yeoman? Why me?"

"You don't like the notion that great deeds reward the hero with a quick death?"

Paks shook her head more vigorously. "No, sir. And hers wasn't quick, by what I was told. Capture, and a bad wound—that's no reward for faithful service. And she was the one hit at the fort itself, by a stray arrow. Why didn't Gird protect her then? She kept us together, led the way—it should have been her chance, that last day, not mine." She felt the old anger smouldering still, and fought it down. "And more than that—the captain said it was probably Canna's medallion that saved me from death in Rotengre—but I'm a soldier. Why didn't Gird save the slave, or the baby? Why did they have to die?" Now more scenes from Aarenis recurred: the child in Cha, the frightened rabble in Sibili, Cal Halveric's drawn face, old Harek dying after torture. And worse things, from the coastal campaign. She set her jaw, feeling once more that old sickness and revulsion, that helpless rage at injustice, that had driven her from the Duke's Company to travel alone.

The Training Master nodded slowly; she could see nothing mocking in his face. "Indeed, Paksenarrion, you ask hard questions. Let me answer the easiest one first. You ask why Gird did not save his own yeoman, and the answer to that is that Girdsmen are called to save others, not be saved." He held up his hand to stop the questions that leaped into her mouth. "No—listen a moment. Of this I am sure, both from the archives and from my own knowledge. Gird led unarmed farmers into battle with trained soldiers—do you think they won their freedom without loss? Of course not. Even the yeomen of Gird—even the novice members of the Fellowship—have to accept a soldier's risks. Above that level, as yeoman-marshal, Marshal, High Marshal, and so on—and as paladin—Girdsmen know that their lives are forfeit in need. Gird protects others through the Fellowship—he does not protect the Fellowship as a shepherd protects sheep. We are all his shepherds, you might say."