“Sir Clyde!”
The voice broke through the mist. Marreck came striding across the mud, chewing on a crust of bread and looking like he’d slept less than an hour.
“You look like hell,” Marreck said, grinning. “Did you fight the bottle or your conscience last night?”
Clyde raised a brow. “Can’t it be both?”
Marreck barked a laugh. “Saints preserve me. You’ll end up the first man in history to drink himself into sainthood.”
“Wouldn’t that make me the second?”
“Fair. The first was my uncle Garen. We buried him with a cask.”
Clyde almost smiled at that. It was easy with Marreck. The man had a way of cutting through the air of reverence that followed Clyde like an unwelcome shadow. Around him, Clyde wasn’t the King’s hound or the Lord’s favoured knight. Just another soldier with mud on his boots and aches that never quite faded.
The clang of steel rang out nearby. A few of the younger knights were already sparring in the training ring, blades flashing dull silver through the mist. Renn was among them—barely grown, all quick limbs and wide eyes, trying his best to look older than he was. His sword arm was decent, his footwork better, but his gaze kept flicking toward Clyde like a compass that refused to point north.
“Boy’s going to sprain his neck looking at you like that,” Marreck muttered. “You’ve got a fan.”
Clyde ignored him and stepped closer to the ring. “Renn,” he called.
The lad turned so fast he nearly dropped his sword. “Sir! Morning, sir!”
“You call that a stance?” Clyde asked mildly. “You’ll fall over the moment someone breathes on you.”
Renn scrambled to correct himself, flushing red. “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”
Marreck leaned on the rail. “Gods, he’s terrified. You could tell him the sun’s coming up, and he’d apologize for it.”
Clyde sighed. “He’s green. I was the same.”
“You were worse,” Marreck said cheerfully. “You glared at anyone who spoke to you for the first six months.”
“That was strategy.”
“That was arrogance.”
“Worked, didn’t it?”
Marreck laughed again, the sound warm as a hearth in the cold air. “Aye. And look at you now—leading drills, scaring the whelps, pretending you don’t care that they like you.”
Clyde didn’t answer. But when Renn hesitated again, glancing over for approval, Clyde stepped into the ring.
“Come on, lad. Show me what you’ve got.”
The other knights drew back to watch. Renn swallowed, nodded, and raised his sword. The first strike was cautious; the second had more weight. Clyde met them both easily, shifting just enough to parry. The rhythm of it—steel, breath, step—was familiar, soothing. He remembered being fifteen and too proud to show fear. He remembered older men watching him and saying,He’ll be good one day, if he lives long enough.
He’d lived. He wasn’t sure it was the same thing as being good.
Renn was lucky he’d made it to his 20’s before being tossed into battle. Less lucky for this to be his first.
Renn’s boot slipped in the mud; Clyde used the opening to twist the boy’s blade free and send it skittering across the ring. Gasps rose around them. Renn froze, chest heaving, face flushed. Then, unexpectedly, he grinned.
“Again,” he said.
Clyde blinked. “You sure?”
“Yes, sir.”
