ka_sera_sera: (old drama shock with hat 2)
Roland Deschain ([personal profile] ka_sera_sera) wrote in [community profile] thecapitol 2015-09-19 02:56 am (UTC)

For a couple seconds after Signless' fists have clenched Roland's rhythm - because there is a rhythm to this sort of talk, there always has been - falters, his calm, hard expression falls into plain surprise. This is the part where Roland's bondsmen usually fought in some way, with fists or words or even only their expressions. Found some way to remind Roland of his cruelty. He'd braced for that without even thinking about it, and like a boxer already bracing for some heavy blow, now the blow's failed to come Roland finds himself off his balance.

There's a twitch of Roland's fingers, a tightening of his grip around Signless' shoulders in the half-instant before he realizes Signless has almost skipped that stage entirely, is instead of giving in to anger or resentment, already really thinking about it. Which would make sense if Roland stopped and thought about it. He does not; too important to compose himself quick, fall back into the rhythm and the mindset to really look through Signless' answer.

"A little," he says, after a moment. "But so must every leader be, lest his men lose confidence in 'im. A man who's led even once never loses that, I don't think. Not quite. Signless, I'm not going to tell you there's no need to be an example here. That's not the real problem, is it? What I'm going to do is to ask you which example it is you ought to be. Your men and your women - those in the past of your world, any in the future of this one - have followed your ideals just as you follow them. Many of them fall from that path just as you fell, and have just as little idea as you do now how to get up off their knees and find that path again."

"If you would be an example, live your beliefs as they are. Live them as others must live them, tread on the same steps that they must tread. How can you show a man the way if you must take yourself where he can't follow?"

"I wonder what you'd have told a man in your old life who faced the same troubles you're facing," Roland says, thoughtfully. "I wonder what you'd tell him now."

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