Honor Hertling is a character that I added to the draft of The Voyage of the Minotaur as I was finishing it.  As so often happened, I had a spot for a character and I decided to make her the sister of Hero and Hertzal Hertling.  Of course, since she’s a Hertling, it followed that her name would begin with H.  I named her in honor (grin) of Honor Harrington, the space captain featured in the books by David Weber.  I’ve read and enjoyed the whole series.

In fact I had the Honor Harrington books in mind when I wrote The Voyage of the Minotaur.  Of course these aren’t space books and are quite different from Weber’s books, but I liked the flow of the plot.  I copied the way that his story just moves along as you meet and then get to know the characters, and then BAM BAM BAM– the end of the story explodes and you see which of the characters you liked managed to survive.

Anyway, Honor Hertling barely appears in The Voyage of the Minotaur, but I gave her a small but important part in The Drache Girl.  In The Dark and Forbidding Land, I got to go back and build a foundation for that.  So, she appears more in this book than any of the others.  Here is her first part in book 2, when she shows up at Senta’s door to collect her sister.

Any further consideration of her mistress’s peculiarities was cut short by a knock at the door.  Picking up Zurfina’s discarded coat and throwing it onto the coat rack, Senta opened the door to find Honor Hertling and three armed militiamen, one of whom was carrying a lantern.

“Did you have fun?” she asked the four children.  “It’s time to go home now.”

“I thought my Da was coming to get us,” said Graham.

“He was needed at the saw mill, so I said that I would come and fetch you.  Of course Mayor Korlann wouldn’t let me out of the gate without an armed escort.”  She indicated the three men who were glancing cautiously into the dark spaces between the trees.  She waited at the door while Graham, Hertzal, and Hero gathered their things.

Honor Hertling was in many ways an older version of Hero, with a thick mane of raven hair and large, expressive, dark eyes.  Her lips were as enchanting as her eyes, but her nose, that feature that so often goes unnoticed in even the most beautiful, was the most striking thing about her.  It was perfect; neither too long nor too short; perfectly symmetrical and correctly sized for her face.  That nose brought together those lips and those eyes in a symphony of beauty on a face that had once been flawless.  But the flawless days had ended in Freedonia, when a soldier’s rifle butt had smashed down on that beautiful face and now a scar ran from her cheekbone to her chin.  It was not so horrible a scar that people looked away.  It was not so bad that their eyes were constantly drawn to it when they spoke to her.  It was noticeable though, and just as though a scratch is more noticeable on a steam carriage that is brand new rather than one that has seen some years of service, it was all the more noticeable and all the more tragic because of the otherwise perfect face which it marred.  And in Honor’s eyes, it ruined her.