Crowley shook his head. "I sometimes wonder if it was a good idea having Halt train apprentices. He seems to teach them no respect for authority." "Oh, he teaches us to respect authority," Gilan said innocently. "He just teaches us to ignore it when necessary.

Shut up, Axl!" he whispered fiercly. "If you want to break your neck, do it quietly or I'll break it for you.

Fanatics," Halt said. "Don't you just love 'em?

Will raised both eyebrows. 'Well, you learn a new thing everyday,' he said reflectively. 'In your case, that's no exaggeration,' Halt said, completely straight-faced.

And with his arm around the younger man's shoulders still, he led him away from the bow and back to the small group by the tiller. Halt glanced up as they approached, caught a look from Gilan and had a pretty good idea what they had been talking about. "Where have you two been?" he asked, his tone light. admiring the view," Gilan told him. "Thought you might need a hand from the two wisest heads on board.

You know, one of these days, I'm acctually going to take offense if people keep throwing out these slurs. And then things are going to get rather ugly. When we Skandians do take offense, we do it with a battleax.

But then, in his lifetime, Halt had often ignored what was technically legal. Technicalities didn't appeal to him. All too often, they simply got in the way of doing the right thing.