The Devil's Deuce (The Barrier War) Read Online Free PDF Page B

and safety of the entire nation?”
    Danner frowned.
    “A country that’s saved at the expense of every basic
principle of liberty really isn’t one worth living in, sir,” Danner said
seriously. “Who’s to say what infringement the government will next decide is
necessary? If they can do the one, why not another? At some point, an
individual’s rights have to be subject to the good of the nation, or there’s no
society, but where that line is drawn is the telling point that defines a free
society from a repressed one.”
    The Blue paladin said nothing, but nodded slightly in
approval.
    - 2 -
    Later in the week, Ashfen tried to
exact his revenge for having been shown up in class, not by directly attacking
Danner, but by causing problems for his friends and stirring other trainees
against them. Ashfen worked behind the scenes with
several trainees who had known xenophobic tendencies, playing on their
human-only beliefs and poisoning them against Danner’s group.
    “You heard him in class the other day. He favors the safety
of demi-humans over humans when there’s a war going on. He thinks they’re more
important.”
    “He spends his free time with a gnome. We’ve all seen him
being dropped off in that buggy by the squeaky little demi-human.”
    “He probably thinks denarae are equal to humans, too.”
    Two nights in a row, Danner found offensive messages
scrawled in human offal on the wall in the area where he and his friends slept.
Rather than respond or retaliate in any way, they had Trebor find the
supposedly anonymous perpetrator and left a bowl full of the waste scraped from
the wall sitting at the foot of his bed. They never said a word about it, and
everyone wondered how they knew with whom to leave the remains. After the
second night, it never happened again.
    Instead, Michael was tripped three times crossing the
practice yard, apparently through clumsiness. Marc had drawers banged painfully
into his side and chairs backed into him in the library. Twice people tried to
sneak up on Flasch to pull some stunt, but the sharp-eared former thief heard
them and found unobtrusive ways to deter them. Trebor’s towel and clothes were
stolen while he was cleaning himself in the bathhouse, but he simply kythed to
Danner, who brought him a spare set of clothes and an extra towel.
    The only ones who remained unmolested were Danner and
Garnet. Danner figured they were just too scared of Garnet to seriously
consider acting against him, but it took him a while to figure out why he
wasn’t the target of any pranks. Eventually he realized that Ashfen and the others wanted to drive people away from him
by making it known that associating with Danner – and his friends by default –
would lead to such treatment. Indeed, people seemed to go out of their way not
to be seen as too friendly with Danner, a fact which pained him greatly.
    Danner’s unique heritage set him apart in his own mind, and
at the time when he most needed to be reassured he was still a normal part of
human society, people were being driven away from him as if he were a plague.
Normally it wouldn’t bother him, but for once in his life Danner needed
reassurance that he was not something freakish, or at least not so different
that he was ostracized. His friends provided him his only comfort. They stood
mute in their acceptance of Danner, as though the idea of him not belonging was
not even worth talking or thinking about. In the meantime, they bore the
antagonism with stoic silence.
    The one form of retaliation Garnet did suffer came late in
the week, when rumors began circulating that he had criticized Morningham’s
fighting and thought the Red paladin was too old to really fight. Because of
their special connection to the Red paladin, Danner was sure Morningham would
know the rumors were false, but from his reaction, Danner began to have second
thoughts.
    That Heptday , Morningham
approached Garnet, bowkur notably absent as he carried a naked blade