The council chamber smelled of beeswax polish and wet stone. Spring rain traced slow lines down the window slits, softening the edges of voices and armor. Lawrence had laid a neat grid of tablets on the long table—grain tallies, levy rosters, timber accounts from Graymill, a cramped page of writs awaiting Sire Kay’s seal. Ser Dylan stood at the far end, hands clasped behind his back, posture easy as a doorframe yet somehow immovable.

  Sire Kay finished reading a parchment, pressed the warm seal into its ribbon, and slid it toward Lawrence. “For Ser James at Mossford Keep. Timber allowances extended through midsummer. If the western road floods again, his wagons take the northern banks.”

  Lawrence nodded, the smallest approval in the arch of one eyebrow. “Noted, my lord.”

  Sire Kay turned to Dylan. “You will hold the keep while I am out. Two days if the roads are kind. Four if not.”

  Dylan’s mouth twitched—not a smile, more a remembering. “I have held it in your father’s name, my lord. I will hold it in yours.”

  Sire Kay set both palms on the table anchoring himself. “If Hudson breathes in our direction, I want to know before the wind changes. Post two riders at Amberwood’s fords. Rotate them every dawn.”

  “Already done,” Dylan said. He glanced toward the window and the rain. “And if the crown finally remembers we exist?”

  “Then you will answer as you always have—with the truth,” Sire Kay said. “We cannot make men and coin from air. We can make order.” He tapped the ledger nearest Lawrence. “Graymill’s reeve has men back in the southern stand. Pay the widows first. Let the living see what loyalty buys.”

  Lawrence’s quill paused, then scratched a line in the margin. He looked up. “You are asking me to pay before taking receipt.”

  “I am telling you to,” Sire Kay replied, mild but not soft. “They bled for our winter fires. We will not haggle with grief.”

  Lawrence’s gaze weighed the young lord a moment, then he dipped his head. “As you command.”

  The room breathed. For a heartbeat, Sire Kay looked exactly his age—a line of fatigue passing under his eyes like a shadow of a cloud. He straightened and turned to Dylan fully. “If messengers arrive while we ride, open and answer in my stead when judgment is plain. When it isn’t, stall with courtesy until I return. If Lawrence tells you it is administrative, it is. If he tells you it is political, it is poison—bring a second cup.”

  Lawrence’s mouth did the rarest thing—almost smiled.

  Dylan’s voice gentled, that gravel softened by affection he rarely let show. “My lord… you do not need to ask if I will obey. You do need to remember you are not a wall. You are seventeen. Walls are older.”

  Sire Kay met the knight’s eyes. “You told me once a wall is just a line of men who refuse to move.”

  “And I told you that the line breaks, unless someone behind it knows how to mend it,” Dylan said. He glanced toward the door, where a squire’s shadow flickered and vanished as if embarrassed to be eavesdropping. “You are young. That is not a sin. It only means you must keep learning as if it were your job—because it is.”

  Sire Kay nodded, accepting the blow like a sparring tap. “Then let me go learn it in the field I will one day command.”

  “You will never lack for fields,” Dylan said dryly. “Just promise me you will not mistake errantry for glory.”

  “On my name,” Sire Kay said. He looked to Lawrence. “Disburse two days’ pay to the garrison at dusk. I want no grumbling while I’m gone.”

  “Done,” Lawrence said, already moving tablets into new stacks. “I have prepared writs for Limepost—supplies, quartering, authority to requisition river boats if required.”

  “Good,” Sire Kay said. He lifted his cloak from the chair back, shook a few tired raindrops free, and fastened it at his shoulder. “Then Highmarsh is in the best hands I can leave it with.”

  Dylan stepped close, all ceremony forgotten for a breath. He gripped Sire Kay’s forearm—a warrior’s clasp. “I served your father because he earned it. I serve you because you will. Come back with the men you ride out with.”

  “That is the plan,” Sire Kay said, and for the first time that morning his mouth found an actual smile. “And if the plan breaks?”

  “Then Ser Maxwell will hammer it flat again,” Dylan said. “Go. Before Lawrence finds three more things that cannot wait.”

  Lawrence lifted a blank tablet without looking up. “Four.”

  They all chuckled—even Lawrence, in his pinched way—and the tension bled out of the room. Sire Kay bowed to the castellan, nodded to Dylan, and turned for the door. For a heartbeat, he paused and looked back, as if he were seeing the chamber from the outside for the first time—the table where his father had sat, the window where rain had always been rain, the men who had decided long ago to carry more than their share.

  “Highmarsh endures,” he said softly.

  Ser Dylan answered at once. “Because we make it.”

  Sire Kay went to find his horse. Outside, the rain had thinned to a bright thread by the time he reached the stables. Horses stamped and tossed their heads, eager for a road that did not climb walls. Ser Maxwell was already there—cloak pinned, helm hanging from the saddle horn, expression like a whetstone: plain, hard, useful.

  “Mounts are fresh,” he said as Sire Kay approached. “Feed packed for two days. If the river’s grown teeth, we’ll skirt her along the old cart track.”

  “Good,” Sire Kay said, tightening the strap on his glove. He lowered his voice half a step. “Master Maxwell.”

  “My lord.”

  “I want the road to be honest,” Sire Kay said. “No courtesies that dull a lesson. While I ride with you and the squires, treat me as you treat them. The Art does not care for titles, and the road does not bow.”

  Maxwell’s eyes creased, not quite amusement, not quite approval. “You are asking me to scold a lord like a boy.”

  “I am telling you to,” Sire Kay echoed his line from his chamber, and it landed not as arrogance but as an invitation. “If I flag, drive me. If I soften, harden me. If I command foolishly, tell me and tell me plain. If I cannot bear that from you, I have no business bearing steel for anyone else.”

  Maxwell looked at him the way a mason looks at a stone that might, with effort, be a cornerstone. “My lord, I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  “Good.” Sire Kay glanced to the yard where the squires were leading their mounts out—Toby steady and quiet, Reece counting packs under his breath, Zak telling a story to his horse that made the animal’s ears pin back in disbelief. “They think we are riding north because I have free time.”

  “You never have free time again,” Maxwell said, matter-of-fact.

  “Then it is stolen,” Sire Kay replied. “And we spend it buying safety for Limepost.”

  Maxwell tightened a girth with an economy of motion that made leather whisper. “Why bring them? You could send me with ten men and be done.”

  “Because they are to be knights,” Sire Kay said. “And knights who only drill become statues with swords. They need the smell of mud, the insult of rain, the truth of frightened faces. They need to learn what danger looks like when it is boring—until it is not.”

  Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Spoken like a man who has been bored into usefulness,” Maxwell said.

  Sire Kay huffed. “I have been bored into patience. Usefulness is still applying for the job.”

  “That is why you brought me,” Maxwell said, and it somehow did not sound like boasting.

  They walked their horses toward the gate. The guard there saluted, eyes flicking to the white falcon at Sire Kay’s shoulder. On the wall-walk above, a few townsfolk stopped to watch in silence, their gazes lingering as though committing their lord’s departure to memory.

  “Kay,” Maxwell said quietly, using the name only a very few men could. “You said treat you like a squire. I will. But understand what I do with them. I do not protect their pride. I protect their capacity to learn. I will not spare you either—but I will not humiliate you to win a point. Your men must believe you can bleed and still think. If you cannot, I will pull you out of the saddle and put you where you are of use.”

  Sire Kay’s mouth curved. “That’s not like you. That was a very long way of saying: no special treatment.”

  “It is exactly that,” Maxwell said. “And another long way of saying—command does not make you right. It only makes you responsible when you are wrong.”

  Sire Kay absorbed it, then nodded once. “Then let us go be responsible.”

  They mounted. The squires came trotting up, rain freckling their cloaks, faces bright with that combination of eagerness and dread that only young soldiers carried convincingly. Maxwell put them in order—Toby forward on Sire Kay’s left, Reece behind him, Zak riding tail where his chatter could not unravel a formation.

  “Why do I always get the back?” Zak complained mildly.

  “Because if anything tries to eat us from behind, it will be slowed by your opinions,” Maxwell said.

  Zak considered this. “That’s fair.”

  Sire Kay glanced sidelong at Toby as they crossed the outer gate. “You are quiet.”

  “Thinking, my lord,” Toby said.

  “About what?”

  “About how often roads look gentle when they aren’t,” Toby said.

  “Good,” Sire Kay said. “Keep doing that.”

  Maxwell clicked his tongue. “Both of you—enough wisdom on an empty road. Save it for when it is needed.”

  They rode north into the rain.

  ***

  The road fanned into two pale ribbons where cart wheels had eaten at the sod. Beyond the fields the land rolled toward the riverlands—a quilt of wet meadows and low stone walls, willow copses and the occasional farmstead with smoke rising in a tidy column. The rain eased to a bright mist that made every spiderweb on a hedgerow into a string of beads.

  It took Zak less than a mile to fill the quiet. “So,” he said, nudging his horse closer to Toby’s. “Are we going to be told what we’re riding into, or is this one of those educational surprises?”

  Reece, who had been counting strides between milestones for a reason known only to Reece, looked up. “I assumed we were escorting a cart. You know—noble work. Guarding flour.”

  “No cart,” Sire Kay said over his shoulder. “A message. Limepost sent word at the ceremony yesterday—something’s troubling the river paths and the reed-cutters. They’ve asked for support. We bring steel and judgment.”

  “Limepost,” Zak repeated. “That the one with the lime-washed cottages and the inn that puts honey in everything?”

  “The same,” Sire Kay said. “And yes, the honey is a sin worth confessing.”

  Reece brightened. “Do we have time to—”

  “No,” Maxwell said without turning.

  Reece sighed and resumed counting mile stones.

  “So,” Zak tried again, “we’re riding north to… what? Another werewolf? Because I am not carrying another head.”

  “Head carrying builds character,” Maxwell said. “And posture.”

  Zak groaned. “Master, if you keep this up, my posture will be very upright on account of my soul leaving my body.”

  Sire Kay let the banter run a moment, then raised a hand and the thread cut itself. “Listen. Graymill’s shadow was not an oddity. This border is a seam—men on one side, old things just beyond. When men push, other things push back. Limepost sits where river and fen argue all spring. There are creatures that enjoy such arguments.”

  Reece shivered slightly beneath his cloak. “Why aren’t they… dealt with? All of them.”

  Maxwell finally looked back. “Because killing them all would cost more men than we have sons,” he said, not unkindly. “Because some of them keep worse things from coming up from the deeper places. Because the world is not a floor you can scrub clean—it is a hearth you must tend every day, or the fire goes out.”

  Zak mulled that, brow furrowing in the rare shape of thought. “So… we are hearth-tenders.”

  “We are men with buckets and scars,” Maxwell said. “Do not make poetry where ash will do.”

  Toby rode a half step closer to Sire Kay. “What is Limepost’s trouble, exactly?”

  Maxwell answered before the young lord could. “A prince frog.”

  The squires stared.

  Zak broke first. “A what.”

  “Prince frog,” Maxwell repeated, as if reading from a very dull inventory. “Toad the size of a horse. Lives in reed islands and low banks. Eats what fits in its mouth, which is most things that come near its pool. If you are within a cart’s length, you are already too close. If you are within four carts, you are still in danger.”

  Reece blinked. “That is not a real thing.”

  “It is very real,” Maxwell said. “And very ugly. The tongue can break a man’s ribs through a shield. The trick is to see the bulge of the water before it comes.”

  Zak rubbed his chest in sympathy that was part dread, part fascination. “And we are going to… kill it?”

  “We are going to assess it,” Sire Kay said. “If it is eating cattle, we kill it. If it is eating deer and the odd fool who thinks he can snatch its eggs, we move the footpaths and teach the fool’s friends to count better.”

  Zak sagged in the saddle. “We are turning into monster hunters.”

  Sire Kay looked back, one eyebrow rising. “That is the role of a knight—to keep his people alive between plow and prayer. Sometimes monsters are men. Sometimes men are monsters. Sometimes the monster is a frog with delusions of royalty.”

  “That last one offends me personally,” Zak said. “I refuse to die heroically to a toad.”

  “Good,” Maxwell said. “Refusal is an excellent survival trait.”

  They rode on. The land settled into its river shape. The road grew damp underfoot even when the sky held its rain, and the smell of water replaced the smell of earth. Herons rose from ditches and flapped away like old men offended by visitors. Here and there, a figure stooped in the reeds, cutting with a hooked knife, pausing to watch the riders pass with polite curiosity edged by hope.

  Toby felt it in the way his shoulders set—the familiar tightening before an unknown task. He glanced at Sire Kay.

  “Why come yourself, my lord? You could have sent us with writs and called it duty.”

  Sire Kay considered, then answered the way he had begun to answer lately—cleanly. “Because I cannot demand my men live between plow and prayer and monster and then excuse myself from the road that makes them do it. Because Limepost sent for me, not for my seal. Because command is not a perk—it is a tax.”

  Maxwell’s mouth twitched. “Do not let Ser Dylan hear you being wise. He’ll think he’s out of a job.”

  “I am wise in the morning,” Sire Kay said. “By dusk I am a scandal.”

  “Just don’t listen to Zak, and you’ll do fine,” Reece said.

  Zak turned to Toby. “Can you imagine this? One day back with Sire Kay, and Reece has already betrayed us.”

  Toby gave a mock-wicked smile. “Us?”

  The laughter stretched on until Zak leaned forward in the saddle, squinting toward a pale line of cottages along a bend in the river. “Is that it?”

  “Limepost,” Sire Kay confirmed. “Reeds, honey, and a ridiculous spring fair where children crown a scarecrow and call it king.”

  Reece smiled despite himself. “Sounds safer than werewolves.”

  “If the scarecrow moves,” Maxwell said, “run.”

  Zak groaned. “We are never safe again, are we.”

  “No,” Toby said quietly, and there was no bitterness in it, only recognition. “But we endure.”

  Sire Kay heard and did not look back—only lifted a hand, brief, an acknowledgment a lord gives a companion instead of a subject. The road bent toward the river. The reeds whispered. Somewhere over the river, something big turned in water with a sound like a man rolling over in his sleep.

  “Eyes open,” Maxwell said. “Mouths shut. I’m looking forward to spit-roasting the tongue, it’s quite the delicacy you know.”

  Zak raised a suspicious eyebrow. Toby slowly shook his head with admiration. Reece made a face, half disbelief, half nausea. Sire Kay only exhaled through his nose—the faintest sound of a man trying not to smile.

  They pressed their horses into a trot, the falcon’s white and blue moving north under a sky that was finally, almost, thinking about being clear.

  by Rauxon

  Colonel Riza Emberfell is a living legend.

  Her kill count is in the tens of thousands. In her heavy black armor plating, she’s almost seven feet tall. To most humans that meet her, she looks like an alien demon—if they ever see her at all.

  The mission is simple: An asset has spent months undercover studying a horrific bioweapon. Extract both the agent and the sample, recover the prototype cure, and get the hell off the planet.

  The asset: Major Elias Blackwall—a quiet field medic with a warm personality—and the only person who’s never looked at Riza with fear. He doesn’t see a weapon or a legend—she’s just his commander and friend.

  And she’s surprised how much that disarms her.

  Battlefield Heartsurgery is a high-octane action novella set in the universe, taking place over five years before the main story begins. No prior knowledge is needed—just hop on in and enjoy the violence. Things get dark, characters get vulnerable, and a lot of enemies die. And underneath it all, the foundations emerge of a partnership that will one day shake the stars.

  [participant in the Royal Road Writathon challenge]