honor

last night, as i lie awake in bed, early, cause i ended up driving 13 hrs today, i starting thinking through books i've read...

well, in one of them, called The Edge on the Sword, a story is related that really inspires me... first off, there's a girl in this story, she's pretty cool, but there's a person who's far cooler, he's a man sent to protect her by her king father... this man, i've forgotten his name, but his story is roughly still implanted in my head:

well, he wears these pieces of rough, plain metal around his neck and wrists, and once the main character figures out that they're slave irons, she freaks out... she's pissed, she goes to her dad and demands an answer, and this is how he explains it (according to my memory, go read the book)... this man was once a soldier, lead a company of men... well, his land was attacked by the Danes (Saxons? someone in england...) and they were surrounded... they had captured the town, but not the last fortified area... this is where the man was fighting, slowly, they picked off his men, or his men deserted, etc... because they were pansies... so they bring this man's wife to him and explain that she's been captured and is a slave, and if he just gives up, they both can have their freedom, but he refuses, he swore an oath to protect his king, so he fights... weeks and months go by and, finally, to get this man to just give up, they bring his king, in shackles, to him to explain that, truly, the land has been lost... and in punishment for him not just giving up earlier, they kill his wife and kids in front of him, make him a slave, and send him so far into the country that he can never escape, and that's where the main character's dad, the king, rescues him from, by buying him from slavery and making him a tutor and protector of his daughter... so, later, this girl asks her protector why he wears the irons still... and he explains that his wife and children will always be free in death, but he will always be bound to his honor, the one thing he can never give up and still call himself a man... he says he's going to do something, he does it...

awesome guy, i really like him... go read the book, it's kind of a girly tween book, but the writer of it did some serious historical research and it's really good, honest...

(the next post definitely needs to be more manly than referencing The Edge on the Sword...)