Breden, like you, had a powerful natural knack for inspiring and convincing others—but of course neither she nor any other helot had been taught any skills of rhetoric. You, on the other hand, had taken to the discipline like breathing, ever since your first session with your cousins' oratory tutor.
"You want to convince more helots to start talking freely?" you enticed the group. "Well, there are ways of making an argument—cadences, structures, imagery—that the great rhetors of Karagon and Shayard have been refining for generations…."
"Tricks," Radmar summed up, but his scorn affected you much less than the avid expression on Breden's face. Blind Yebben Skinner, Elery's twin, had a natural way with words, and Pin also soaked up your lessons with delight. You fought to keep from laughing each time the helot child took a declamatory stance and began piping out the speeches of Oenone Magna.
To your embarrassment, the helots also soon found out about your greatest area of weakness:
ne afternoon you found the group covertly practicing self-defense with staves and clubs. "Show us some of that fancy bladework that you aristos learn, kurios?" Radmar asked, tossing you a roughly sword-length branch.
"In truth," you ventured, "my House wasn't rich enough to have me properly trained…." You half-heartedly tried some of the poses you'd been shown by a friendly young noble. They felt decent enough, but it took Elery all of five seconds to disarm you with her staff.
Ears burning at their suppressed smirks, you retired to the sidelines and watched them ruefully for the rest of the afternoon. When they ended with an all-on-all melee, it looked like pure chaos to you; if a real brawl broke out, you have to admit you'd have no idea how you or they could win it.
As the season turned, your weekly meetings with the young helots began to seem almost routine. Then the day came when you went up to the de Rose hut and found no one there. Scouring the wooded marsh frantically for any sign of Alastors, you finally spied a familiar silhouette atop an old fence, a few hundred yards from your normal meeting place.
"Kurios," Breden acknowledged your approach dully. She was staring at the late afternoon reds and oranges in the swamp water.
"Where is everyone else?"
"Lying low." As she craned her neck to regard you, you noticed the tension in her jaw, the hands clenched futilely in her lap. "You haven't heard?"
"Heard what?" you said, perhaps a little defensively.
"The Pelematou?" At your blank expression, she looked away again. "One of their helots, Poric Weller, was caught with a fistful of mullow."
You began to understand. "Ah. He was eating it with some lass?" Helots were strictly forbidden the herb mullow; it went against their collective duty to maintain their numbers.
"Some lass?" Breden laughed bitterly. "Poric and Radmar were happy together, kurios. No need of mullow there. No, he was bearing it to Lady Pelematou's son Georden. Naturally, the young man didn't want to admit to his mother that he was breaching chastity. So when Poric let slip his name in the beating, he cried slander."
You felt your throat tighten. "The penalty?"
Breden turned hollow eyes on you. "They took his tongue, kurios. Broke half the bones in his body, too. Radmar is caring for him now, and none of the others will venture out of the camp. Especially the women who might now be accused of eating mullow with Poric."
1) "I'm so sorry," I offered, feeling sick to my stomach.
2) "If Radmar were here, I'd offer condolences," I said steadily.
3) "This isn't the end," I insisted, trying to hearten her.
You are Hugh de Huguenot, aristocrat of the Shayard Rim.
Traits
Charisma: You are inspiring, eloquent, and naturally charming. (2)
Combat: You're unlikely to win a fight or lead others to victory. (0)
Intellect: You have decent reasoning skills and basic knowledge on a range of topics. (1)
Ruthless: 30% Compassionate: 70%
Skeptical: 50% Devout: 50%
Homelander: 69% Cosmopolitan: 31%
Anarchy: 0
Author
Topic: Let's Choose in Choice of Rebels: Uprising (Read 12476 times)