The Plainsmen had relied on their magic to turn aside our shot, to scare our horses, and generally to confound our troops. Our advance into their lands, gentlemen, is as inevitable as a rising tide, just as was our defeat by the Landsingers. And, just like us, the Plainsmen will either be swept away before new technology, or they will learn to live with it.”

“Then you think it is our right, sir, to just run over them?” Lofert asked in his earnest way.

“Raise your hand and wait to be acknowledged before you speak, Cadet. You’ve been warned before. Three demerits. Yes. I think it is our right. The good god has given us the means to defeat the Plainsmen, and to prosper where once only goatherds or wild beasts dwelt. We will bring civilization to the Midlands, to the benefit of all.”

I caught myself wondering how much the fallen from both sides had benefited. Then I shook my head angrily, and resolutely set aside such cynical musings. I was a cadet in the King’s Cavalla Academy. Like any second son of a nobleman, I was my father’s soldier son, and I would follow in his footsteps. I had not been born to question the ways of the world. If the good god had wanted me to ponder fate or question the morality of our eastward expansion, he would have made me a third son, born to be a priest.

At the end of the lecture, I blew on my notes to dry them, closed up my books, and joined the rest of my patrol to march in formation back to the dormitory. Spring was trying to gain a hold on the academy grounds and not completely succeeding. There was a sharp nip of chill in the wind, yet it was pleasant to be out in the fresh air again. I tried to push aside my somber musings on the fate of the Plainsmen. It was, as our instructor had said, the natural order of things. Who was I to dispute it? I followed my friends up the stairs to our dormitory, and shelved my textbooks from my morning classes. The day’s mail awaited me on my bunk. There was a fat envelope from Epiny. The other cadets left me sitting on my bunk. As they hurried off to the noon meal, I opened her letter.