On Mon, 4 Aug 2003, Philip Hart wrote: > >Shortly after we meet Tazendra, she has a brief duel with a Hawklord. >He puts up a pretty meagre defense. I don't in retrospect understand >how T could bother with one wimpy Hawklord. Later we see her provoke >a Dragon whom she doesn't deign to fight alone by asking him to find >a few friends. > I believe I have an explanation. Indeed, if you are willing to read on, you will see that I have two, and if you so wish it, I believe that with some effort I might in fact be able to bring forth a third. So if you wish to see these famous explanations, please be so kind as to read on. Tazendra, you perceive, is a Dzur. That is, she was born a Dzur, and raised a Dzur, and no doubt was trained in the art of the sword by another Dzur. She is bold, and she tends to leap into action with a certain reckless abandon. However, this does not prevent her from thinking about her actions afterwards, and perhaps resolving to make certain changes to said behavior depending upon her thoughts. That was not the explanation, but merely the background. The following is the actual first explanation: I believe that when we first see her in that inn, she had just started out to search for her destiny. She had not yet fought any true duels, but merely sparred with her teacher(s). No doubt her teacher(s) had impressed upon her that as a Dzur, she must always be aware how much better she was than the other Houses at the fighting, but I can easily see her forgetting this in the excitement of her first true fight for her honor, which had, after all, been grievously insulted. However, she easily defeated her opponent, and I suspect that as she pondered her easy win, she remembered her teacher's admonitions as to the proper behavior for a Dzur, and resolved to pay better attention to the Dzur credo the next time an opportunity for a duel came up. Thus, the next time she had a chance to play, she mindfully and graciously offered her opponent a greater advantage against her. The second explanation, which you may prefer since it does not require any assumption of Tazendra's neophytehood in the realm of deuling, is simply as follows: When she first dueled, she wished to win, and to let others see her win, but winning was her primary goal in that instance (also, it occurs to me that since the stakes were so low - a non-fatal duel - she scorned to offer any advantage to her opponent). The second time, though, she had a specific goal in not merely winning, but in addition, she wished to strongly impress the handsome young Hawklord who had happened to catch her eye. Naturally, she wished to increase the odds against her so that her eventual success would be all the more impressive, so she suggested to her opponent that he gather some of his friends to help oppose her, no doubt casting amorous glances at her paramour all the while. The third explanation is one I believe you have heard me make before, which is to say, to keep in mind that all this is coming third or fourth hand from a narrator who does not so much apologize for his lack of complete accuracy, indeed, for his total unreliability, but rather, he unabashadly revels in it. History, indeed! Bah!