On Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 04:28:46PM -0700, Chris Olson <Chrisf.Olson at Sun.COM> wrote: > Scott Schultz wrote: > > Here's the entire passage (courtesy of Drageara book search): > > "I was there, Vlad, when Kieron was backed into a corner by an ex-Dragon > > named Dolivar, who had been Kieron's brother before he shamed himself and > > the whole tribe. Dolivar was tortured and expelled. I share the guilt there, > > too, as does Sethra. Sethra was supposed to hamstring the yendi, but she > > missed-deliberately. I saw, but I didn't say anything. Perhaps that makes me > > responsible for my brother's death, later. I don't know..." > Well, one cannot hamstring a yendi (the animal), in a literal sense, as > they have no legs. The sentence can be taken different ways, but I > always thought it was a slight against whomever she was talking about. > Like calling a Dragon a teckla. > But it's Steve, so who knows. ;) I've always interperted that passage to mean that Sethra was supposed to hamstring Dolivar ("the yendi", because he was a sneaky ex-Dragon), but did not; and her (deliberate?) act of mercy in leaving Dolivar uncrippled enabled him to found the Jhereg and get them included in the Cycle, and then later resulted in one of the brothers dying -- possibly at the other's hand. -- Homepage: http://matthew.infodancer.org/ Politics: http://triggerfinger.org/ Literature: http://speculativefiction.org/ Public Key: http://matthew.infodancer.org/public_key.txt