Reblogged from Tallis Steelyard:

People do make a habit of surprising you. They cheerfully climb out of the neat little boxes you put them in and persist in doing things you’d never expect.

Take, for example, the great mercenary captain, Pardo Fuen. His name was used in Partaan by mothers to silence querulous children. His sacking of Maladan Keep will live long in the annals of martial endeavour. From the arrival of his advance guard outside the walls, to his men commencing to loot the keep as the body of its previous owner and notorious accumulator of bad debts swung from his own gallows, was a mere three hours.

Yet the great love of Pardo’s life was dancing. Not merely the dances in arms that many of our warriors do to maintain their fitness and skills, but every sort of dance. The man who could vault onto the back of his warhorse in full armour was also the most graceful man I ever saw in a ballroom.

Somehow like attracts like, and his officers and many of his men-at-arms shared his passion. So whilst his arrival in Partaan was greeted with joy by his employers, this was as nothing to the joy experienced by the hostesses of Port Naain when his condotta arrived back in town. After all the biggest blight on many an entertainment is the sad fact that the hostess would have innumerable ladies wishing to dance, and a sad deficiency of men either willing or capable of dancing with them. The arrival of the Fuen Condotta was an invaluable reinforcement to the social life of the city.

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