In the command tent, the conversation was looping around and around. It was so tiresome Halt felt as though each loop was a lap he was running. At first, everyone but Halt, Gilian, Crowley and Will had either been unsure or against it. Soon, all but two Rangers were convinced that Ellya would make a terrific Ranger. They had seen that she was abnormally good at Ranger work, from practice and natural skill, but the two remaining Rangers, one pompous and stubborn, the other all around unpleasant, refuses to back down. The stubborn one just didn't want to admit he was wrong, and did feel superior to women. The unpleasant one had never had much luck with the ladies and had taken a deep rooted dislike to them because of it. The loop started again andHalt's eyes began to droop.
"She's the best untrained Ranger any of us have ever seen!" Will exclaimed for what must have been the fourth time.
"But she's a woman. They can't be trusted. And they are weak!" snapped the unpleasant one.
"She has proven herself to be anything but weak and men are just as prone to be unfaithful," said the scarred Ranger sitting in the corner.
"But..." The conversation slipped on at a mind numbing pace. Halt focused all his energy into not punching the idiots still fighting logic. He didn't think he could take much more of it.
Ellya was smiling her most charming and terrifying smile at the boy. He was to stupid to be terrified.
"What's your name? Mine's Ellya," she swayed slightly from side to side and used a childlike tone when talking to him, painting the perfect picture of an innocent youth. At least, she would have if she wasn't so well-armed and well-muscled.
"Thay," he said gruffly. He looked at her from the corner of his eye and decided she was actually pretty easy on the eye. "It's really a pity we have to destroy that beauty. She would have made a decent serving girl or servant of some kind," he thought. She was smiling at him so widely. Was she flirting with him? It sure felt like it to Thay. "Perhaps she thinks she can get out of trouble if I take a liking to her. If she hadn't stepped out of line for Bredhi simply telling her the truth about her place in life as a woman, I might be tempted to take her up on that idea." She kept looking at him. "It won't work, girlie," he thought to himself.
"How did you find my horse?" she asked him.
"You can move without being seen or heard by normal folk, but we can to, and we aren't normal folk." Ellya thought about that and decided she spent so much time being the hunter she didn't know how to make sure she wasn't being hunted herself. They broke through the trees into the clearing, a group of a dozen apprentices waiting, looking very angry.
"Huh," she said, her brow furrowing as she thought "I guess it was good that I didn't specify if it was one of my teeth that I'm bringing back, or one of theirs."
Halt finally couldn't take it.
"Enough!" he screamed as he slammed hid fist on the table. The pompous fool looked very affronted at being cut off so rudely. "Why did we even let you two join the Corps, let alone give you senior positions? Out there is someone who wants to be a Ranger, is physically capable, has invented a type of bow that could improve the Corps, has a brilliant mind and positively oozes natural talent. This choice should be simple." The pompous fool mumbled assent after a few seconds, but the unpleasant one tried one last-ditch effort.
"Physically capable?" he sneered.
"Physically capable to break your apprentices nose when he was harassing her." The room was still for two seconds before everyone burst out laughing. The unpleasant one questioned her self control and sanity, but it was to no avail.
"She's in just for that," wheezed Crowley through his laughter. Voting didn't work like that, but everyone nodded assent, chortling over the increasingly shrill cries of the unpleasant one.
"Little girls don't belong in this world! They belong in the kitchen or bedroom ma..." Halt punched him in the face, then caught him by the collar of his shirt as he fell, pulling his face red with blood to Halt's face, red with anger.
"Two things," he growled. "One, women, like Ellya or my wife, belong in any world they wan to be in. Two, she isn't a little girl. She's a Ranger's apprentice now." Halt let go off his shirt, causing him to crash to the ground, then went outside to tell Ellya the good news.