Valeri, Harald, Gidwin, Tommy, and Hakon had a training routine they rose at dawn to follow every day. First, they gathered in the courtyard and ran across the village to the foot of the nearby mountain. There lay heaps of stones the farmers had pulled from their fields while plowing or clearing the land. They filled large baskets with the stones, slung them onto their backs like packs, and ran up the mountain.

People starting their work early watched them with smiles or simply stared, while children sometimes bounced up and down in the distance, cheering them on. Gidwin was the fastest, followed by Tommy, Valeri, and Harald. Hakon carried no basket in the first place. Instead, he brought the food.

Their thighs and calves felt ready to burst, and time and again they reached a point where exhaustion threatened to choke off their breath. Still, they ran, overcoming their bodies through sheer will, as though forging a spearhead that could pierce anything. After about an hour of running uphill, they reached a spring. A little farther on, through the undergrowth, they could watch the sun rise over the distant eastern horizon.

Golden light shone upon the five youths. It felt as though the sun's energy were seeping into their exhausted bodies.

The incident at the horse market had left Tommy with two deep sword scars across his face. In place of his old, irritable arrogance, however, his eyes now held a little more courage and depth. If two scars were the price, had he gotten off cheaply?

What had happened at the horse market had stirred something in each of them. That meant change, and perhaps an opportunity to grow.

Even Harald, who had seemed so utterly childish, had grown quieter. His characteristic innocence had not disappeared entirely, but he was the one who had been abducted. It would have been stranger if he were completely unaffected.

Hakon had stopped wearing his helmet after becoming a page. With the layers of grime washed from his face, he was as sweet-looking as a porcelain doll.

No, he was not really a little child. He was around the same age as Valeri and Harald. Despite his pure Nord ancestry, he was unusually slow to grow. While Valeri was above average in build for his age and Harald was about average, Hakon was decidedly below it.

It was just as well that he had become a page rather than a squire, even at thirteen. He was still learning the most basic things about everyday life: washing, speaking properly, and keeping himself presentable. Frankly, until then, his appearance and behavior had been little different from a beggar's.

Finally, there was Valeri, who still heard the countess's words ringing in his ears.

["I'll be your mother."]

Those words had shaken him more than any magic spell, and they continued to stir him gently, like lingering aftershocks.

At the time, he had wanted to throw himself into her arms and call her Mother. Even so, he had been forced to push the offer away. It was not only guilt. However real their feelings might be, a relationship formed that way could only be a lie.

The sun had risen fully. Dawn faded, as though its work were done.

Looking at the risen sun, Hakon said, "Why is it that no matter how far east we run, we can never find the house where the sun sleeps?"

"Because it sets out from heaven," Harald answered.

"Oh. So we'd have to die to get there."

"Long live His fucking Majesty."

Praising the king, the man who guided the kingdom's subjects to heaven, Tommy promptly stripped off all his clothes and jumped into the spring.

SPLASH

The others, Valeri included, stripped and jumped in after him. The water was cold enough to chill their bones, but they soon grew used to it. They washed, played, and did their laundry all at once, then lit a fire, set a pot over it, and threw in whatever they had to make stew.

They ladled it into their bowls and ate cautiously, blowing on the hot broth. They picked out the solid bits with their fingers, exclaiming, "Hot, hot!" as they ate.

Tommy and Hakon seemed quite close. They teased each other and looked after one another. Hakon's attempt to rescue Tommy from Rekton's gang with that tiny body of his seemed to have brought them together, though it had not actually helped much.

Once they had finished the stew, they washed their bowls and hands in the spring. They dried their clothes as best they could by the fire, then put them on, damp or not, and headed down the mountain. By the time they reached the castle, everything had dried, whether from the morning sunshine or the heat of their bodies.

When they arrived, however, a stranger was standing in the courtyard. Judging by the horse beside him, he had ridden there. His clothing and the expensive-looking tack suggested he was no ordinary man.

There was something exacting about his face. Though lean, he did not look like someone to be trifled with. Valeri recognized him as a swordsman at once.

The letter V and the oak tree embroidered on his clothes marked him as a man of House Viðing. That was none other than Duke Sven's house. In other words, the man before them served Duke Sven.

He studied the five of them as they entered the castle grounds. They stared back without a word. Tension hovered on the verge of forming.

A moment later, Earl Æthelred emerged from the castle and asked without preamble, "Who are you?"

He knew the man came from the duke's household, but as the master of the castle, he was asking a stranger to identify himself.

Rather offensively, the man did not offer an immediate greeting. He looked the earl over before bowing his head.

"My greetings, Earl of Winslow. I have long heard of your illustrious reputation, and it is an honor to meet you. I am Geir Rotmund, a humble household guest of His Grace Duke Sven, head of House Viðing, overlord of all Eldeira, lord of Nordlanding and Krischer, liege to the Earls of Winslow, Windale, and Revi, and commander of forty-two knights. I have come as an envoy to convey His Grace's words."

It was a lengthy introduction. Put simply, Eldeira was his duchy, while Nordlanding and Krischer were earldoms he also held and governed directly. The forty-two knights included his personal knights, border knights, and manorial knights: in other words, he could mobilize forty-two knights at once. Allowing two or three supporting combatants per knight, including squires, plus roughly ten soldiers, forty-two knights meant a force of some five or six hundred men.

With his vassals' forces included, the entire Duchy of Eldeira could muster roughly a thousand men. That meant armed fighting men, not peasant levies—some three or four times the force a single earl could field.

At any rate, that was the usual form of a noble's formal introduction, but there was no need to recite it at such length when visiting a vassal as an envoy. Besides, the man himself was merely a household guest without a single official post. Above all, arriving unannounced at this early hour showed a lack of respect for his host.

Sure enough, Earl Æthelred eyed the envoy with evident dislike before reluctantly saying, "Come in."

He was the duke's envoy, after all.

The man cast a brief glance toward Valeri and his companions, then followed the earl into the castle.

Watching him, Valeri could guess what had brought him here. Not immediately, perhaps, but he would offer one pretext after another to take Harald hostage.

Valeri's actions had changed a few things around him, but the overall course of events seemed unchanged. Duke Sven's peculiarly perverse persistence paid no heed to minor variables.

Valeri sensed that the time was approaching to repay his debt to House Winslow and leave.

The meal was modest fare to offer a guest: thinly sliced ham, wild berries, and wine. As something to eat with a drink, it was not bad.

Geir spoke without touching the food or wine set out for him.

"I heard the news. About what happened to your son. You must have had a terrible fright. Please accept my deepest sympathies..."

"Get to the point."

Earl Æthelred cut him off. His eyes seemed to be telling the man to get out already.

"The point... Yes, very well. That saves me some trouble too. A royal command has been issued. The Einherier are to recruit new members."

At the words "royal command," Earl Æthelred's eyebrows twitched.

The Einherier were the king's royal guard, and each member was called an Einheri. Long ago, when the gods were alive, the name had referred to warriors preparing for the final war. Literally, it meant one who fought alone, or a one-man army. Indeed, although the royal guard was an organization, its members operated individually rather than fighting together.

There was a saying: if a knight could take on a hundred ordinary men, an Einheri could take on a hundred knights. Such strength was beyond human limits, giving rise to stories that they had received fragments of the gods' power when the gods died, or awakened to the power of runes.

The War of Founding had been some fifty years ago, and the War of Beasts some thirty. Whenever a major war broke out, the Einherier took part, willingly or otherwise, and survivors passed down eyewitness accounts and tales of their exploits. They were described as scarcely human: splitting the ground with a single stomp, severing a horse's neck with one stroke of a sword, or spewing lightning and fire.

It was difficult for anyone who had not lived through those wars to believe. There were so few of them that even many who had experienced war did not believe the stories. The current king's Einherier numbered only about ten.

But they had also been present during the succession war before Valeri's return, and he had seen them firsthand. He had witnessed their unbelievable might, powerful enough to turn a losing battle around single-handedly.

Every one of them, however, tended to be stubborn and uncompromising, seldom obeying anyone but a king or prince. They often brought isolation upon themselves and met miserable ends. There were also some who did not belong to the royal guard, living quietly until war swept them up. Valeri knew who they were and roughly where they were living now.

"I've heard of them. I don't know the details. What do you want me to do?"

Earl Æthelred's tone asked what the recruitment of the Einherier had to do with him.

"Recruitment into the Einherier takes place only by royal command. Rune mages are dispatched throughout the kingdom to select candidates. Dukes and margraves are obliged by royal command to assist them so that they can make a proper selection. Simply put, that means gathering talented individuals. Surely you take no offense at a royal command?"

"..."

It was plainly a scheme to take Harald away under the pretense of selecting talented people. Invoking a royal command, however, left the earl all but cornered. But Earl Æthelred was not a man to submit so easily.

"How could I dare defy a royal command? What puzzles me is that His Grace received this command, not I."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that I will select suitable people and send them to him. His Grace will not be choosing whom to take."

"... To produce an Einheri is the highest honor a house can receive. Moreover, a grant of new lands or elevation in rank from His Majesty would be a foregone conclusion. Renown throughout the kingdom would be an added benefit. Would you turn down such an opportunity?"

"What opportunity? How do you know whom I intend to send?"

Geir realized his mistake. He had revealed his intention to take the heir. He had heard often enough that Earl Æthelred was no pushover, but the man was proving even more formidable than expected. He was a step above the illiterate Earl of Windale in intelligence. Of course, ignorance presented its own difficulties.

Frustrated, Geir drained the wine he had left untouched. Then he thought of the best move he could make from this disadvantage. They had known each other's intentions all along anyway. It did not matter.

"Then allow me to conduct an instructional sparring match. Talent is hardly something one needs to hide, is it? His Grace sent me to carry out the royal command. If you simply send me back, insisting you will handle everything yourself, I fear His Grace may be displeased."

Earl Æthelred, too, slowly drank his wine. There was a hint of a threat in those words, but they were not entirely wrong. The duke had sent an envoy; dismissing him with an assurance that he would handle matters himself could certainly offend the man.

Their relationship as liege lord and vassal placed the earl at a considerable disadvantage from the outset. He could only do the best he could within those constraints. Open defiance was difficult.

Earl Æthelred set down his cup.

"Very well."

Geir's eyes gleamed at the answer. Killing that bastard whose martial prowess had lately become the talk of the region, under the pretext of an instructional match, would be an achievement in itself.

With the bastard gone, there would be a viable pretext to take the heir. He trusted the duke to deal with the aftermath. Perhaps His Grace would even reward a job well done with a gift and an official post.

His frustration giving way to renewed composure, Geir smiled faintly.