Way Of The Clans

Turning back to the bandit, he saw the man trying to heave his bulk upward. With no further reason to toy with him, Aidan kicked him in the side, sending him back to the ground. Assuming the look of contempt taught him by Go

Aidan did not care to savor the act of killing. It was necessary but repulsive to him. Quickly, he brought the bandit's knife down toward his face. The man tried to turn his head sideways, but Aidan knocked it back with his pistol, then he plunged the knife into the victim's open mouth, forcing it deep. The bandit's eyes widened in pain. Blood followed the knife blade out of the man's mouth, then—watching the horror in the dying man's eyes—Aidan finished him off. With the same casual, almost indifferent motion the bandit leader had used on Gly

Looking around him, Aidan saw that the battle was over and that they had won it. The survivors among the outlaw band were ru

For a moment, he saw the scene as it might have looked from the viewpoint of the enemy. The bandits had lost a fight with a raging horde of children.That would damage the pride of the survivors. It was the first battle, other than pla

When Aidan arrived at the side of Gly

Their other sibparents had seen to it that Gly

Though Aidan had despised Go

One day Go

"Silly child," Go

"No, sir. I did not know that. I—"

"None of your excuses. Warriors do not try to find reasons for their failures. That is not the way of the Clans." The way of the Clans, another catchphrase, was one all the sibparents used. "As you do in so many other ways, you show yourself not ready even to imagine yourself a warrior. I doubt that you will go that far, for all your fancy achievements. And you will not answer now, quineg?"

"Neg."

"Now here I will show you what to do. It is called imping."

Go

Taking the first needle and holding it up to the light streaming in from the open doorway, Go

"There. That will suffice until Warhawk's next molting. The needle is treated so that it will attach to the inside of each feather and hold it securely. Now, let's do some of the others."

Aidan and Go

For three years afterward, Aidan dreamed of the man he had killed in battle. Variations on the act made the dreams even more frightening than the actual experience.

In some dreams, the victim fought better and was not so easily killed. In the ones from which Aidan woke up in a cold sweat, the victim was about to win.

The other graves he and Marthe searched for and found that day were of the sibko's dead, the ones who had died in trials or been the victims of disease or accident. These were few, however. Most of the now-absent members of the sibko had simply failed tests and been sent to other areas where they were integrated into other castes. No one ever really lost face in Clan society. Any momentary shame was made up for by assuming a useful life in another caste.

Now there would be shame, Aidan thought, as he tuned back in to Dermot again. It is a bad thing to have to leave a sibko before training, but it was a lifelong embarrassment to be dismissed from warrior training. True, one could join a new caste like the earlier flush-outs from sibko training, but the knowledge would always remain that one had been on the verge of becoming a warrior, the highest caste of all. People who talked to you, however cheerfully and respectfully, would never quite be able to forget that you had suffered the ultimate ignominy, the removal from warrior status. The few failed warriors whom Aidan had met while growing up had seemed to be exoskeletons covering no body, as if the inability to be warriors on the outside had dried up the i