Tannaheh got to his feet. "So, if either of you want me, I'll be either at the pharmacy or in my room. If I'm asleep, don't worry about waking me. I wake easily, but I can go right back to sleep again without trouble."
He went out. "Forgive me if there's some reason it's not a good idea," Amid said, "but shouldn't your Dorsai with the spaceship be signaled so that he can take you off in case we do get found and taken, up here? Old Earth and all good people can't afford to lose you." "The signal to Simon is the laying out of a cloth," Hal answered. "We don't want to do that now, just when we're trying to make this ledge look uninhabited from the air. There's no need to worry. He was to shift in for a quick look once every twenty-four hours, in daytime. He's got sense enough to know something's up if he sees the ledge suddenly looking as if there's no one here and never has been. I'd guess he'll land in the mountains tomorrow night like he did once before, and climb down to us the morning after to see if he's needed." "You can be sure of that?" "Reasonably sure," said Hal with a grin. "Just as I'm reasonably sure that word is bound to leak to Amanda, wherever she is, and she'll know whether and when to come back here, herself. " "I'm pleased," said Amid. "I feel a responsibility, having you here." "You shouldn't," said Hal. "I came of my own free will, on my own decision." "It's a great advantage to us, having you with us when something like this happens," said Amid. "We'll be deeply indebted to you." "Nonsense!" said Hal. "I'm indebted to you, and I'll be more so when I've got what I want out of Jathed's Law." "Jathed's Law is available to anyone who can use it. In no way could you be considered to be indebted to us for that... however," said Amid, clearing his throat, "as far as Amanda Morgan's concerned, you're quite right that she'll hear about the search very shortly. There aren't enough soldiers to keep our people from going to and fro with word of anything interesting, between our small towns."
CHAPTER 24
Hal woke at his usual time, something less than an hour before dawn. He had only had some five hours of sleep, but that would be sufficient for the day to come. He rose, showered and dressed, out of the habit ingrained in his boyhood as Donal, in completely clean clothes. Any morning with the chance of battle meant a clean body and clean clothes if that were possible. Many other things besides needle guns could make wounds, and soiled clothing pushed into a wound could carry infection deep into the body. There was little to no chance of his being hurt this day, but old habits had been triggered.
They made him sad and the sadness wrapped around his shoulders like a cloak as he began the day. There was no respite in the time word of his uncle James's death had come to him in Donal's boyhood, until the present moment, the birth of each day had brought a dragon to fight. Long since, now, he had thought he would have found the nest in the human soul from which such dragons came and have destroyed it, ending them all. But still they came. Once again he was at a morning on which he dressed with the possibility in mind of having to fight for the lives of himself and others. It was as if nothing had been accomplished from his youngest years until now.
Perhaps there was no such thing as ending it. Perhaps the best he could settle for was to meet each new dragon each day, do the best he could with it, and count that as victory. At least he would have fought the breed while he could. He would have done his duty. But what was duty, if that was all that was done?
Back into his mind came a book he had read when he was young. He remembered a verbal exchange in Conan Doyle's novel Sir Nigel, written at the beginning of the twentieth century and laid in the fourteenth century. The fourteenth century had been a time when "duty" was a common word among the upper classes, in its French form of "devoir. " The words he had just remembered were part of a passage in which there had been an angry exchange involving Sir Robert Knolles, the leader of the group of English men-at-arms and archers to which Nigel Loring, then still only a squire, belonged. It was a dispute between the experienced Knolles and a hot-headed but inexperienced young knight, Sir James Astley, concerning a skirmish into which Astley had gotten himself and those with him.
"...I have done my devoir as best I might," said Astley. "Alone, I had ten of them at my sword point. I know not how have lived to tell it." "What is your devoir to me? Where are my thirty bowmen cried Knolles in bitter wrath. 'Ten lie dead upon the ground, and twenty are worse than dead in yonder castle... ' "
No, to fight another dragon every day might make a good show, but it made no difference. Because as long as the nest remained, the number of dragons would be endless. To fight a new each day showed responsibility, but nothing else, and yet, responsibility was part of the whole answer he sought. Just as the Law of Jathed was also part of it, if only he could grasp the full depth of its meaning. The Law rang again in his mind now, as it had rung when he had first come to the ledge here and heard it, but still it rang far off and muffled, not with the close, clear message that would signal an understanding of it, within him. Not yet-for that.