that it seldom qualified as the most oft given excuses-- revenge and retribution.
Akaru was worked hard and treated cruelly for four years, until Garnak, then a young and renowned warrior, intervened and taught him to be a soldier so that he would be judged by his deeds rather than his lineage or appearance.
True to his nature, by the time he was sixteen Akaru had earned himself much renown for his cunning and his excessive daring. Men who had treated him like dirt now praised him, and tried to cultivate his friendship. Seeing through their hypocracy, Akaru shunned them as they had shunned himself, and there were few besides his own fellow soldiers whom he trusted implicitly. Those few whom he trusted most were wise to the common enjoyment of cruelty in their fellows; elders,
men, women and children alike. Cruelty was the trait he had grown to despise above all others, and he gave it no quarter. Too, those he trusted most were the few who weren't liars about the truth: that most people, given the opportunity and the ability to act with impunity, will revel in the misery of others while lying to all that will listen, including themselves, that cruelty inflicted upon the less fortunate is condign. This realisation inadvertently made Akaru Lund's greatest asset, for
he epitomized not only the necessity of morality in leadership, but the precious rarity of morality itself. `People are not born moral creatures,' he averred from hard experience. `Morality is something that is enforced by those who have learned a better way.'