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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hypersmurf" data-source="post: 1202011" data-attributes="member: 1656">I actually prefer the anecdote that describes Sethra Lavode, though...Allow us, for the purposes of illustration, to pick one of the accurate stories to express Sethra's character.  She was Warlord under the Lyorn Emperor Tiska during the Thirteenth Cycle, when rebellion broke out along the coast to the southwest, in response to the combination of wheat shortages from the north and the interdiction on shipping that Tiska had declared in response to piracy from the Longburry Islands.  It seemed to Sethra, who was aware of all the circumstances of the rebellion, that it would certainly continue to spread unless put down at once, so she set out at the head of the army just as it was - without waiting for additional conscripts or negotiating with mercenaries.This quick mode of acting placed her, some few months later, at the head of some eight hundred cavalry and two thousand foot soldiers, facing seven thousand rebellious, heavily armed, and well-commanded Dragonlords, Orca, and Teckla on Bernen's Field.  Sethra rode up alone to the enemy lines and, in full sight of her own troops, took from her brow the Warlord's Headdress, which had been the symbol of ultimate command since the First Cycle, and threw it into the enemy's line.  The first reaction, of course, was great joy on the part of the enemy, and despair in Sethra's own army, but then she returned to her own lines and declaimed, "The enemy seems to have acquired a holy relic of the Empire.  We cannot expect them to return it from kindness or duty, wherefore, my loves, I am about to order a charge, and if you care about my honor and the traditions of the Empire, you must not think of holding back or retreating until this relic is in our hands once more."Three hours later the Warlord's Headdress was again upon Sethra's brow, and the rebellion was broken and scattered.  While we would hesitate to say precisely what this anecdote expresses about Sethra's character, we are certain at any rate, that it ought to tell the reader something.Steven Brust, Five Hundred Years After.-Hyp.</blockquote>

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