“Men... performed better when they understood why they were being asked to carry out a task.”

“Horace, when you get older, try to avoid being saddled with an apprentice. Not only are they a damned nuisance, but apparently they constantly feel the need to get the better of their masters. They’re bad enough when they’re learning. But when they graduate, they become unbearable. [The Kings of Clonmel Pg.268]”

“‎Halt looked up at the trees above him."Why does this boy ask so many questions?" he asked the trees.Naturally, they didn't answer.”

“Halt waited a minute or two but there was no sound except for the jingling of harness and the creaking of leather from their saddles. Finally, the former Ranger could bear it no longer.What?”The question seemed to explode out of him, with a greater degree of violence than he had intended. Taken by surprise, Horace’s bay shied in fright and danced several paces away.Horace turned an aggrieved look on his mentor as he calmed the horse and brought it back under control.What?” he asked Halt, and the smaller man made a gesture of exasperation.That’s what I want to know,” he said irritably. “What?”Horace peered at him. The look was too obviously the sort of look that you give someone who seems to have taken leave of his senses. It did little to improve Halt’s rapidly growing temper.What?” said Horace, now totally puzzled.Don’t keep parroting at me!” Halt fumed. “Stop repeating what I say! I asked you ‘what,’ so don’t ask me ‘what’ back, understand?”Horace considered the question for a second or two, then, in his deliberate way, he replied: “No.”Halt took a deep breath, his eyebrows contracted into a deep V, and beneath them his eyes with anger but before he could speak, Horace forestalled him.What ‘what’ are you asking me?” he said. Then, thinking how to make the question clearer, he added, “Or to put it another way, why are you asking ‘what’?”Controlling himself with enormous restraint, and making no secret of the fact, Halt said, very precisely: “You were about to ask me a question.”Horace frowned. “I was?”Halt nodded. “You were. I saw you take a breath to ask it.”I see,” Horace said. “And what was it about?”For just a second or two, Halt was speechless. He opened his mouth, closed it again, then finally found the strength to speak.That is what I was asking you,” he said. “When I said ‘what,’ I was asking you what you were about to ask me.”I wasn’t about to ask you ‘what,’” Horace replied, and Halt glared at him suspiciously. It occurred to him that Horace could be indulging himself in a gigantic leg pull, that he was secretly laughing at Halt. This, Halt could have told him, was not a good career move. Rangers were not people who took kindly to being laughed at. He studied the boy’s open face and guileless blue eyes and decided that his suspicion was ill-founded.Then what, if I may use that word once more, were you about to ask me?”Horace drew a breath once more, then hesitated. “I forget,” he said. “What were we talking about?”

“Shall I call the others back in?"He nodded. "Why ask me? It's all of you who are making the decisions.”

“A hundred people is rather a large handful for the four of us to take on," Malcolm pointed out. "Do you have any ideas about how we're going to handle that task?""Simple," Halt told him. "We'll surround them.”

“I wonder," she said. "Does this castle have a moat?"A group of servants were busy emptying the privy buckets into the moat when they were startled by a sudden drawn-out cry. They looked up in time see a scarlet-and-gold clad figure sail out of a first-story window, turn over once and then land with an enormus splash in the dark, rancid waters. They shrugged and went back to work.”