Without a word, the two men moved toward the source of the commotion. The morning grass was heavy with dew, leaving dark, damp tracks on their boots and shins as they cut through it.

The noise was not a solitary shout but a rhythmic, echoing clamor that grew louder as they neared the newly erected barracks. These wooden stalls had been thrown up in haste to process the deluge of volunteers who had flooded the city since the victory a month prior.

Merelao’s name had been making good track; his personal valor as he led the charge against a superior force on the field had become the centerpiece of a burgeoning legend, drawing wandering knights and landless sellswords from every corner of the South.

They came in a motley array of steel, some in mail, other with only a simple boiled leather atop their clothes, all eager to swear fealty before the march to Yarzat began.

As they approached the throng of recruits, the shouting sharpened into the distinct, ugly snarl of a confrontation.

"Your lordship should take care. It could be an assassin’s ruse to draw you out," Varo warned, his hand clamping onto Merelao’s shoulder to anchor him. The older man’s eyes darted frantically across the crowd, his regret over the missing breastplate plain on his face.

Merelao didn’t flinch.

He looked at the chaos with the detached boredom of a cat watching a mouse. "If this is an assassination attempt, then we are dealing with the most incompetent killer in history. No, this is the smell of bloodlust. With so many men joining our banner, it was only a matter of time before two or three found an old grudge to settle in the mud."

He shook off Varo’s hand and began to walk directly into the press of men. Varo followed closely, his hand hovering near his own hilt, his chest thrust forward to display the heraldic falcon of the Prince’s house. The crowd parted like a receding tide; while many did not recognize the unarmored Merelao, every soldier however saw the armor on Varo and the herald, so recognising him as a noble they made way.

They broke through the inner circle of flesh finally to behold the scene.

In the center of the clearing stood a young man, his face pale and frantic under a matted shock of brown hair. He held a notched sword that rang out with a thin, vibrating hum as it shook in the air. He was surrounded.

Three of Merelao’s guardsmen had their spears leveled at his chest, the iron points a mere breath away from his throat, breast and gut. The boy looked like a cornered animal, his boots drifting across the grass as he tried to find a footing that wasn’t there.

"Drop the steel, lad," one of the guards spat, his spear-tip twitching. "Or we’ll pin you to the oak like a prize pelt."

"I’ll drop my steel when I am assured of my safety!" the boy shouted, his defiance not budging a bit even facing three spears. "I’d sooner cut a dozen throats than let myself be pinned like a pelt. I am being made a criminal for the crime of existing! Assure me of my life, and I shall explain. I am no liar, I am exactly who I say I am!"

Despite his youth and the clear, lethal disadvantage of his position, the boy’s sword did not tremble. The notched blade hummed in the cold air as the spearmen began a slow, synchronized advance, their iron points inching closer to his throat, his chest, and his unarmored thighs.

It would be an execution, and it was clear who the floor would belong to once the music started.

Intrigued by the boy’s suicidal stubbornness and wishinig to hear him out, Merelao stepped forward, his boots crunching on the dew-dusted grass.

"Stand back!" one of the guards barked. He swung his lance around, the tip hovering inches from Merelao’s solar plexus. "Back, unless you want steel in your guts!"

Varo’s blade was out of its scabbard before the threat had even fully left the guard’s lips. The rasp of steel on leather was like a thunderclap in the sudden silence of the crowd.

"STAND DOWN, YOU FOOL!" Varo roared, his own sword-point resting against the guard’s neck. "YOU STAND IN THE PRESENCE OF LORD MERELAO! BEND THE KNEE OR LOSE THE HEAD!"

The guard’s face drained of color as if a plug had been pulled. The spear clattered to the mud instantly, and the man collapsed to his knees, his forehead hitting the cold earth as his spine curled in terror. "Mercy! Mercy, my lords! I did not recognize, I did not know to whom I spoke—"

The penalty for leveling steel at one’s sovereign lord was death by the rope or the axe, and the man knew it.

"Give him a bloody back and be done with it," Merelao said unceremoniously, his tone flat and bored, as if he were ordering the disposal of kitchen scraps. Ten lashes would suffice to remind the man of his place; anything more was a waste of a good spearman.

And they would need many of them, he mused, another battle was coming.A much greater one.

He smiled at the thought before realising he was doing something else at the moment.

With his identity now draped over him, no one said anything or made any move as Merelao stepped into the very center of the ruckus.

"I was attempting to find some calm with a walk," Merelao said, his emerald eyes scanning the circle, "only to find a cacophony that demanded my witness. Now, if no one else has business bearing steel in my presence, I demand an explanation for this."

A man scurried out from the shadow of a wooden stall, his fingers stained black with ink as he clutched a bundle of tally papers to his chest like a shield.

"My Lord’’ the man stammered, pointing a shaking finger at the boy with the dirty boots. "This... this peasant came to my desk claiming the honors of a knight. He insists he is a noble of ’Tall Roast,’ but I beg my lord to take a look at him! He has no horse but a old thing with a hoove in the graves, no armor, and not a single silverii to his name.Only a sword that is notched, and a spear whose wood is as rooten as milk left in the sun.

When I informed him of the sentence for faking a noble’s pedigree, which is the loss of neck, he did not budge. And when I called for the guards to seize him for the dungeon so that he may brought to your presence, he unsheathed that rusted piece of iron and threatened to slaughter us all!"

Merelao turned his gaze back to the boy, who was still breathing in short, ragged hitches. Their eyes met.

"Tall Roast?" Merelao repeated, a thin, mocking smile spreading across his lips. "I have traveled the South from the here to the Sea, and I have never heard of a ’Tall Roast.’ Tell me, is it a kingdom of potatoes, or merely a very tall hill of burnt beef?"

The boy’s knees hit the sodden grass with a heavy thud, his boots sinking into the muck beneath the grass. He didn’t drop his sword, not yet, but he lowered the point until it rested against the earth.

"My Lord, I am Vilon of Tall Roast, son of Ser Avan," he cried, his voice echoing against the wooden walls of the barracks. "Your Lordship may not have heard of our lands because they lie in Ezvania, far to the east. My father hailed from those hills, though it has been twenty years since he settled here in the South, and I was born to the road shortly after."

In response the blond man took another bite of his persimmon, the sweet juice glistening on his lip like a smear of blood. "And yet, I see no heraldry except that on your shield which is almost gone with age. I see no plate. I see only a boy in a moth-eaten tunic with a blade that looks as though it’s been used to chop firewood. ’’He swallowed the morsel ’’I would say you scavenged those boots from a ditch and took that horse from a stable when the master wasn’t looking."

Vilon’s head snapped up "My father fought for yours, my Lord! He stood at the center of the charge beside your lord father at Bigrogile and held in the ranks during the failed Siege of Durnomanis. He always spoke well of your father, Gods be my witness! He took a wound for his service, a scar that never truly healed, before he succumbed to sickness two winters ago. I have spent every day since then making my way across the land, doing odd jobs to keep the horse fed. I was... I was forced to sell my mail for bread , oats for the horse and salt for the food, but I am who I say I am! I am a knight seeking to bleed beneath your banner!"

Merelao came to a halt, looking down at the boy as if he were a strange specimen of insect he hadn’t yet decided whether to crush or keep. He took another slow, meditative bite of the fruit, the silence stretching as he did.

"And what would I do with you?" Merelao asked at last"I am marching south . I need iron-clad lances and seasoned men-at-arms who don’t have to sell their armor for a loaf of bread. You would be of little help on a field of real war. You would be nothing but a target for an Oizenian arrow."

"I would kill ten men for your cause, if you gave me the chance!If I perish after that woe to me only!" Vilon shouted.

He gripped the hilt of his sword so hard his knuckles looked like white stones. "I have no other path to take but this one!I beg you my lord. I have a horse, and I can charge with a spear as well as any man in your host. I would gladly die for you, just as my father was ready to do.’’

"And yet," Merelao said, his voice cold as a mountain stream, "before you die for me, I would first have to feed both you and your horse.’’

"Aye," Vilon countered, his chin lifting. "And in doing so, you would have a man who would rot in the mud before retreating without an order. Just for some sacks of grain some would say that a good bill to pay...’’

"And unneeded one. I have a thousand men in this camp saying the same. I ask you again, boy: why you?"

Vilon faltered he understood waht the lord seeked. He looked down at the trodden grass, his mind racing back to that fever-dream under the oak. The old woman’s words, which had seemed like madness in the rain, suddenly crystallized in his mind, sharp and unbidden.

Why could he not recall of her until now?

"Your Grace... an old oak and a fallen leaf may stand beside one another, but ahead of the storm, they tell different stories." He struggled with the words, his tongue heavy and unpracticed, he was never studied in the way of oratory so he was as rough as tree bark. "My Lord made his cause known to the world when he led a charge against a host that should have broken him. You showed a valor that few had heard of before that day. If a Prince can rise from the shadow of an uncle to become a legend, what is there to say I cannot do the same? Allow me to march, and the South will hear of the Prince who was so just, so Great, that an unknown knight asked only for the leave to die in his name. I will be a good man, and a better knight. I swear it by the Five!"

His oath was just and his words true.

Varo at these words turned his eyes away from the boy, looking instead at his ward. He saw it again,that flickering, hopeful gaze the lord had held only minutes ago. I am in need of good men, he had said. And here was one, though not yet man, filthy and desperate, clutching a rusted sword, offering the very thing Merelao claimed to seek.

But as Varo watched, that light was torn away. The "Pioneer" retreated, and the man of coldness took the reins once more. Merelao’s lip curled in a faint sneer as he looked around the circle of spectators, then back down at Vilon.

He reached into his breeches and pulled out a heavy silk pouch, the coins within clinking with a dull, rich sound.

Both of them had made the same choice it appeared.

"Listen well then" Merelao barked. "I will give you your chance. But if, at the end of the first skirmish, there are not at least three witnesses to swear you killed five men in my name, I will take your head myself for wasting my grain."

He turned to the crowd, holding the bag of silver high above his head. "A bag of silverii for any man willing to part with a set of mail and a sturdy helmet! Who among you values coin more than his skin?"

Before he could even draw another breath, a dozen men surged forward, hands outstretched as they undoness their armor to sell the very iron that protected their lives for a taste of the Prince’s wealth.

Vilon looked up, his gaze filled with a desperate, shining hope, but he withered when he saw the look in Merelao’s eyes. It wasn’t pride; it was a profound, biting distaste as he watched the soldiers bartering away their safety, his expression one of utter loathing for the humanity he commanded.

He looked at the boy in a new light now. ’’Perhaps the fallen leaves truly do have stories worth hearing.I believe any of these men’s iron is better suited for you.’’