The clang of wood on wood carried through the yard. Zak and Reece circled one another beneath the gray spring light, their gambesons dark with sweat and rain. The mud had half-dried in the warmer days, leaving the ground soft enough to take a fall, hard enough to bruise pride.

  Maxwell stood at the edge of the ring, arms folded, cloak hanging in patient folds. His voice carried like gravel over still water. “Too tight, Reece. You’re guarding the blade, not your ribs. You want to die quick, keep that up.”

  Reece adjusted his stance, grimacing. Zak grinned and lunged, his wooden sword smacking against Reece’s guard with a hollow thock. Reece stumbled back, mud splattering his boots.

  “Better,” Maxwell said. “Still too polite. I told you both—the man trying to kill you won’t care for manners.”

  Zak laughed, breathless. “Can’t help it, Master. He looks too innocent to hit properly.”

  Reece shot him a glare. “Then stop missing.”

  Their blades met again.

  Toby watched from the side of the yard, one foot on the training rail, arms resting on his knee. The rhythm of the sparring was familiar—the rise and fall, the circling steps, the quick bursts of sound when wood struck wood. It should have felt like home. It didn’t.

  He had trained almost every day since they’d returned from the battlefield. He’d risen with the bell, run the drills, polished armor, oiled his blade, learned the routines of a soldier who pretended not to be waiting for something larger. But the waiting was the part that gnawed at him.

  Each morning he swung his sword and wondered what it was worth—all these cuts into air, all these lessons in patience. Sire Ray had died fighting for everything he believed in.

  Maxwell said that was mastery, that was purpose. But when Toby closed his eyes, what he remembered most was the feeling of being useless while a greater man did the work that mattered. He wanted to be useful. Needed to be.

  “Eyes forward, Toby,” Maxwell said without turning.

  Toby straightened, flushing. “Aye, Master.”

  “You drift more than the wind,” Maxwell said. “If you’re watching, learn something from it. Zak—again. Make him work for it.”

  Zak obliged, grinning as he feinted high, then swept low. Reece jumped the blow, barely keeping his footing. The mud gave way under him and he went down hard.

  Zak offered a hand. “Graceful as a drunk goose.”

  “Next time you’re the goose,” Reece muttered, taking it.

  Maxwell’s voice cut through. “Neither of you are geese. At least geese can bite. Reset.”

  They obeyed, resetting the distance, wooden blades raised. Toby watched them move, their breathing rough, their focus simple. He envied it—that clarity.

  His own thoughts tangled too easily now. Every lesson reminded him of what he hadn’t yet learned. Every swing of the sword made him feel the hollow space between where he was and where he wanted to stand.

  He’d seen mercenaries in the yard just days ago, polishing their steel, laughing around the fire despite the rain. They were rough, yes, but they had stories—real ones. Scars that proved they’d lived through more than drills and obedience.

  It had crossed his mind, more than once, that he could join them. He was strong enough. Skilled enough. He’d fought and survived a battle that would have broken better men. What was left here for him, except repetition and waiting?

  The idea had come late one night, unbidden, while he stared at the ceiling of the squire’s dormitory listening to the rain on the shutters.

  Ride with them, it whispered. Earn your mark in the world, not in the yard.

  He’d almost believed it. But now, standing here—hearing Reece’s laughter, seeing Zak’s renewed fire, watching Maxwell’s steady presence at the edge of the ring—the thought felt like something dangerous. Not wrong, but dangerous.

  Kay had trusted him. Kay, who bore the weight of the keep on his shoulders as if he’d been born with it there. Kay, who still found time, twice a week, to train beside them despite councils and messengers and the endless work of keeping Highmarsh alive.

  Toby owed him more than a departure in the dark.

  “Zak wins again,” Maxwell called as Reece went down for the third time. “Barely. I’ve seen fish fight with more grace. Switch partners.”

  Reece groaned. “Who do I fight now?”

  “Toby,” Maxwell said without looking.

  Toby blinked. “Me?”

  “Yes, you. Unless you plan to keep standing there and thinking yourself into uselessness.”

  Zak grinned, handing Reece a hand up. “Good luck, mate. He’s been itching for blood all morning.”

  Reece snorted, raising his sword. “Then I’ll give him a bruise to remember.”

  They faced off. The yard smelled of wet earth and sweat. Maxwell took two steps back and nodded. “Begin.”

  Toby didn’t rush. He waited, watching Reece’s stance, the way the younger squire favored his right leg slightly. He feinted once—testing the Maxwell feint they’d learned over winter—drew the guard, then swept in low. Reece recovered in time, the swords cracked, quick and sharp.

  Reece stepped back, eyes narrowing. “You’re faster.”

  Toby said nothing. He pressed again. Every movement carried the edge of focus he’d been missing all morning.

  Maxwell’s voice came through like gravel again: “Don’t chase. Control.”

  Toby listened. He found the rhythm in the fight. The sound of breath, the weight of the blade, the measure of each heartbeat between strikes. When he moved, it was clean. He caught Reece’s shoulder with a tap that stung through the gambeson.

  “Point,” Maxwell said.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  They reset. Again. The drills stretched on until the mist turned to sunlight and back to mist again. Each round bled the frustration out of him a little more, left only fatigue in its place.

  When Maxwell finally called halt, Toby’s tunic clung to him, and his arms trembled with exhaustion. Zak flopped onto the fence rail, laughing between gasps.

  “Saints save me. I think I’m hollow now.”

  Reece sank down beside him. “You were hollow before we started.”

  Toby let himself laugh—just once—before silence reclaimed him. His thoughts circled back to the mercenaries, to their scars and stories. But the feeling that had driven that thought—the restless need to prove himself—felt smaller now. Less urgent.

  He looked at Maxwell, who stood with arms crossed, watching them not as a commander, but as a man who’d seen boys become soldiers before.

  “You’ll get there,” Maxwell said quietly. “All of you. Just don’t rush to be more than you are. The world has enough ghosts who tried that.”

  Toby met his gaze and nodded once. The words settled deep. He wasn’t a knight yet. He wasn’t ready for the road—not yet. The kind his mother had warned of, the kind that takes more than it gives and turns pride to dust if you meet it too soon. He wasn’t ready to chase coin, or fame, or the kind of freedom that costs more than it gives. But he was here. And for now, that was enough.

  They served the evening meal early against the rain. The hall glowed with low firelight, the kind that made smoke hang like thoughts in the rafters. Men spoke softly; wooden spoons knocked bowls; the clatter of trenchers came and went like distant surf.

  Toby sat with Zak and Reece at the squires’ table, close enough to the high board to feel the weight of it, far enough to remember his place. The food was simple but solid—barley stew thick with root and onion, a strip of salted pork set on coarse bread, a wedge of hard white cheese that fought the knife. The stew steamed; the bread drank it. He ate because he’d trained, and the body wouldn’t let him feign grief as hunger.

  Up at the high board, Kay sat where his father had. The chair looked too large for him and yet, somehow, didn’t. He wore no circlet, only a clean doublet and the falcon brooch at his collar. Lawrence murmured beside him, sliding small parchment slips across the table with the precision of a man counting the realm breath by breath. Kay read, nodded, spoke low to a runner, and the boy vanished like he’d been pulled by a string.

  Toby watched him and felt the strange twin pull of pride and ache. The boy he’d sparred with was still there—the quick eyes, the tight control—but something denser had grown around him. Pressure made mineral. He never lifted his voice. He never hesitated. When he didn’t know, he asked. When he knew, he decided. The hall looked at him the way men look at a line of shields they hope will hold.

  “Stop staring at the high table,” Zak muttered around a mouthful. “You look like a stray dog eyeing a roast.”

  “I’m thinking,” Toby said.

  “You always are,” Zak said. “Try eating with it.”

  Reece gave a small, helpless laugh. “Let him be.”

  Before Toby could answer, Kay stood. The quiet hushed further. He didn’t strike his knife on a cup or make theater of it—he simply lifted a hand, and silence filled up to meet it.

  “Master Maxwell,” Kay said. “Squires. With me.”

  Chairs scraped. Maxwell rose from his place along the wall as if he’d already been standing. The squires followed—Toby first without meaning to be. They climbed the two shallow steps to the high board and stood before the chair that had been Sire Ray’s. The fire behind Kay threw a steady light across his face, making his eyes look harder than they were.

  “We’ve a matter near the southern wood,” Kay said. “Between Graymill and what was Brindle Hollow.”

  Toby felt his ribs tighten at the name, but he kept his chin level. Once, he’d called those trees the northern wood—the tale of every story he’d ever heard. From Highmarsh, the woods were south. The world turned, and names turned with it.

  “Rumors from the woodcutters,” Kay went on. “Not bandits. Not elves.” He flicked a glance to Lawrence; the castellan inclined his head once. “Something else. A creature. They’ve stopped cutting the southern drift. Supply is thinning. If they abandon the stand entirely, we’ll feel it before midsummer.”

  “What creature?” Maxwell asked.

  Kay’s jaw worked once—a sign only men who knew him would catch. “No sure account. A shape in the trees. Tools shattered, wagons turned over. Two men missing. One found… half of him found. I won’t send peasants back to be ground between fear and need.”

  Maxwell nodded.

  “I would ride myself,” Kay said, honest as an oath, “but I can’t split the garrison further. Ser Dylan rides west for news of Hudson; Ser Sid’s out on the river running the funeral services. And if the news returns good, the Grey Pikes break camp—they’ve received another commission lined up, far north.” He looked at Maxwell, then at the three boys who weren’t boys. “So I’ve no men to spare left—except you.”

  Reece swallowed. Zak’s mouth opened, then shut. Toby felt something rise in his chest that would have been joy if it didn’t taste like iron.

  “You’ll scout,” Kay said. “Confirm what you can, and send word by rider if you need numbers. If it’s a thing steel can answer without burning the countryside, answer it. If it’s bigger, you hold until the men I send reach you.”

  Maxwell’s voice was even. “When do we ride?”

  “Dawn,” Kay said. “Travel light. One day out, one day back if the saints are kind.”

  Lawrence slid a small leather packet across the table to Maxwell. “Writs for Graymill’s reeve and the wood-yard chief. They’ll quarter you if needed and account for supplies.”

  Kay’s gaze lowered to the squires’ belts. “And put the sticks away. You’ll take proper steel.”

  Toby’s mind went instinctively to the leather-wrapped hilt in his room—the elven blade, sharpened and balanced so perfectly it made lesser swords feel like farm tools. The weight of it steadied him and hummed with the memory of smoke and vows.

  “For the falcon,” he said before he could stop himself. The words came low, but Kay heard.

  “For Highmarsh,” Kay corrected softly. “And for those men who swing axes instead of swords and make all of this possible.”

  Toby bowed his head. “Aye.”

  Kay’s expression changed—not softened, exactly, but warmed by a degree. He looked what he was—a young man who had practiced being older and found, to his surprise, that the fit was close enough to pass. “I won’t gild it,” he said. “I’m sending you because I trust you, and because I have no one else to send. You’ll do the job and come home. That’s the command.”

  Maxwell dipped his head. “We’ll bring you truth, at least.”

  “Bring me yourselves,” Kay said.

  He turned to Lawrence. “Issue fresh mail to the squires, and cloaks that aren’t already rain. Have the stable-master check their mounts don’t spook at shadows. And send word to the chapel—we’ll take blessing before they ride.”

  Lawrence’s quill scratched, already writing as he nodded.

  Kay looked back to them. “Eat more. Then sleep. At dawn, take your leave without noise.”

  Reece found courage enough to ask, “And if it’s… not something steel can answer?”

  Kay’s mouth set. “Then don’t pretend it can. Shadow is safer than glory. I want you alive.”

  Maxwell’s eyes flicked to Toby and away again, a warning and a promise both. “We know the work.”

  “You do,” Kay said. He hesitated, then added, almost under his breath, “And thank you.”

  They bowed and stepped back from the high board. As they turned, Toby met Kay’s eye and, for a heartbeat, saw past the iron. There was a boy there still—tired, grieving, stubborn—choosing the harder of two duties because someone had to.

  Back at the trestle, Zak exhaled a long, shaky breath. “Something in the woods,” he said, trying for humor and nearly finding it. “Could be a very big pig.”

  “Or a very small ogre,” Reece offered.

  Toby tore a final piece of crust and soaked it in the stew, eating because he wouldn’t have time to be hungry in the morning. His hands were steady. His thoughts were not. The road south cut through his mind like the line of a blade.

  The hall resumed its murmur around them—spoons, talk, the creak of benches. Above, the falcon banner stirred once in a draft and hung still again. Toby imagined the shape of the elven hilt under his palm and let the weight of steel answer the pull in him.

  He didn’t know what waited for them in the southern woods. He knew only this—he would ride under the falcon, and he would not turn from what the work required. If it was a thing that could be ended, he would end it. If it demanded more men, he would see them summoned. Duty first. Ambition after.

  He lifted his cup, water catching firelight, and drank.

  “Dawn,” Maxwell said quietly.

  “Dawn,” Toby answered.