The Tournament

In his thirty-fifth year of life, the paladin ran into a major difficulty. He came across a lonely boy, out in the mountains, who claimed he’d been cast out by a harsh father who favored his brother over him. The paladin enjoyed the young man’s company and hoped to train him as a successor, so he swore an oath of friendship to this boy.

But when they emerged from the mountains, the Paladin discovered that this boy was a nobleman. And, worse, he was an anointed knight. Yes, this boy, Deanor, was actually Ser Andras the Knight.

And, even worse, this boy expected to pick up his usual pursuits: feasting at manor houses, bedding scores of women, and going to tournaments.

The Paladin was adamantly against all these things. He personally was celibate, vegetarian, and mostly slept out in the open. That was the source of his power. And although the Paladin did not have a well-formed political philosophy, he felt like the nobility were bad. He didn’t necessarily have a replacement for the nobility—he just thought the world would be better off without them.

“But without a class of guardians, who would protect the people in a time of war?” Ser Andras said.

The Paladin, Erdric, didn’t have an answer. Privately, he felt like the people could easily learn to protect themselves, but he was aware that this wouldn’t be particularly convincing to a nobleman.

Still, it was extremely painful to be at this tournament, watching these grown men prance and preen in their armor.

And amongst these boys, Ser Andras was one of the most embarrassing participants, because he wasn’t even a good fighter. In the morning, he rode haplessly, losing tilt after tilt, and barely escaped being unhorsed.

"You are like all the villagers," Ser Andras said afterwards to the paladin. “You look down upon knights who barely hold their seats, but you fail to realize the immense training and courage it takes to ride straight towards an enemy lance.”

"The horse does the riding,” Erdric said. “You only sit upon it.”

“But to spur the horse into action—it takes such courage. You’ve no idea.”

“Your courage is not the issue,” Erdric said. “The problem is that you are always losing. The point of this competition is to win. There is no value in losing. It endangers you, endangers your horse—all to no purpose.”

"The fault lies