Sir Ikkaren Last-Watch kept the vigil truest to his name.

  The eastern horizon unfurled like a naked canvas above the plains that led to the capital. A band of purple sunrise blossomed where land met sky. Already the air around him seemed to warm, embracing the coming dawn. He eyed the nearest campfire, reduced to little more than cinders. It wouldn’t do to stoke any more flames from that one, Ikkaren thought. That fire belonged to the night, and the Torchbearer’s sun was already burning it away.

  Dawnbreak had always been sacred. The changing of lights was as foundational to the world as breath was to the creatures who inhabited it, Illumed Tahna always said. The Torchbearer, Abbias himself, carried the sun from horizon to horizon during the day and left the Scribe to safeguard the stars come nightfall. Ikkaren always saw sunrise and sunset as a changing of the guard, and he counted it an honor to mirror the act with the men under his watch.

  He watched the stars closest to the arriving sun blink out, almost one by one. When next they came, Ikkaren knew they would shine upon a world he would scarcely recognize. Though he hardly imagined Lord Harrus Loren or King Ignacian Gallamoar would think twice of the new ruler of Ladentree. To them, it meant just another minor lord more loyal to the crown than the last. To Ikkaren, however, it meant unseating the family to which he’d first sworn his sword.

  His stomach ached at the thought, but dawn was all too eager to arrive.

  Gray light covered the camp like a blanket, and Ikkaren muttered a prayer to the Scribe to see the god safely on his way. He couldn’t see anyone stirring in their bedrolls or tents, but he had promised—perhaps threatened—to let their wakeup call come at the behest of his lute and lyrics.

  The strings still held the night’s chill, but his fingers quickly drove even that away. He plucked a few pieces from days long past, when Ladentree was still his home and Ara still just a city the traveling merchants spoke of with reverence. The chords were a far cry from complex, but they still stirred a deep ache in his chest.

  By the time the other soldiers started breaking camp, the words of an old song had come unbidden.

  “Away, away, my lady of Ladentree

  They’re sending me away from thee…”

  Ladentree’s namesake shed the last of its leaves when Ikkaren’s retinue marched by.

  “Would you call that an omen?” Hod asked. The squire’s straw hair was flat against his head from the helmet he’d insisted on wearing. Brigands could be anywhere outside the capital, his ma had said, and caution paid its way in gold.

  Ikkaren thumbed the reins. “People who look for omens have a way of making them come true themselves.”

  In truth, omens seemed altogether unnecessary. The look of the whole town set the hairs on the back of his neck on edge. Half the outlying houses stood empty, doors banging on their hinges in the morning breeze. The accompanying gardens and farms were overgrown with shrubs and weeds no caretaker would tolerate, and the fountain ordinarily gurgling in the town square should have more accurately been called a basin awaiting any water at all. Ikkaren chewed his lip.

  Ladentree huddled in the valley past the first line of hills west of Lake Loren. It had seen the bend of its river shift with the decades and centuries, and Ikkaren even remembered collecting worms and crayfish on a bank that now looked to be directly in the middle of the river’s deepest part. The townspeople had doubtless staked new docks on the riverside as the old ones fell into disrepair—or into the river itself. With dawn broken, the river was already full of fishermen from one side of Ladentree to the other, but otherwise, the town itself seemed dead to the world.

  An advance party flying the gold of Ladentree met them in the shadow of the ivory church that loomed over the town square. A dozen men-at-arms rode at the back of a man whose threadbare gray doublet matched the mustache draped messily across his upper lip. As they drew closer, Ikkaren made out the ash tree adorning the flags the attenders flew.

  “You arrive early, Sir Ikkaren.” The man with the mustache drew up his reins, drawing the first party line of the exchange. “Lord Utgarth was assured you would not be here before midday.”

  Something in the man’s guttural voice and half-closed eyes sparked a memory, and Ikkaren had to hold back a smile.

  “Sir Gregwell.” Ikkaren inclined his head, bringing his mount and host to a halt. “Someone once taught me the earliest knight conquered the battlefield.”

  If the old knight held any fondness for the squire Ikkaren had once been, it did not warm his face. “Lord Utgarth is still abed. Whatever you’ve brought to Ladentree can wait until he calls on you.”

  Ikkaren’s nostrils flared. “Certainly this isn’t the courtesy a native son can expect. I bring warm tidings from the king himself.”

  “The king’s welcome to rouse Lord Utgarth himself, if he’d like.”

  “I don’t wish for things to sour between the crown and Ladentree.”

  “Seems they’ve soured already.” Sir Gregwell chewed on something and spat. “Whose host, the king’s or his own, did Lord Harrus saddle you with when he bid you do his bloody work? Are you a knight or a lapdog?”

  “Aren’t we all lapdogs the moment we say the words?” Ikkaren walked his courser to the side of the column he’d led to Ladentree. “We fly the king’s green in peace. You’ll notice our weapons are stowed and our faces weary from the long travel.”

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  The distant gurgle of the river settled between the parties. Mist clung to the hills that towered over the town, resisting the urge to burn away in the morning sun. At the northern bend of the river, Utgarth Keep was crowned in sunrise, and Ikkaren saw another host, smaller than either gathered in the square, depart its grounds.

  A bell tolled atop the keep, and Sir Gregwell sighed. “Seems Lord Utgarth’ll see you after all.” When the old knight spotted the party leaving Utgarth Keep, he bid Ikkaren and the capital’s host follow him.

  The Lord of Ladentree tore off a piece of salt beef and tossed it to the closest hound, but the mutt never took its eyes off Ikkaren.

  “Suit yourself.” Lord Alder Utgarth pressed his heels into his mare and climbed the next hill. He had welcomed Ikkaren with a knowing nod but had said little else. The man had been lord of Ladentree and its attendant lands as long as Ikkaren had been alive, and his family had called Ladentree theirs since the tree itself was hardly more than a sapling. The only sign of his age was the shock of white hair atop his head and the gray wash of his beard. His voice was strong and deep as ever.

  Ikkaren and Hod started forward, prompting the dozen or so additional men-at-arms to follow their commander’s lead, but without so much as a glance, Lord Utgarth raised a hand at their advance.

  “I’d speak with Sir Ikkaren in confidence.”

  Hod, ever the faithful squire, looked to Ikkaren for instruction. Ikkaren remembered giving Sir Gregwell the same wide-eyed, expectant look half a hundred times. There had to come a time, he thought then, and Hod certainly thought now, when a squire would earn the right to share in his master’s business. Hod was a good lad, and loyal, but Ikkaren waved him back regardless. He owed Lord Utgarth that much.

  Ikkaren crested the hill and brought his courser to a stop next to his former lord.

  “Gregwell’s still a nasty old cur, isn’t he?” Lord Utgarth chuckled, his laugh a mist in the morning air. “Had to give you a bit of a thorny welcome. You’ve been Harrus’s man long enough to know how these things work.”

  “Lord Loren might call that conduct unbecoming of one of his sworn men.” Ikkaren cleared his throat.

  “And he’d be a fool to say it to my face. I and my fellow lords serve at the Lord Valiant’s pleasure, but he rules at ours.”

  Ikkaren smirked, despite himself. “Little guess why he sent me.”

  “A familiar face bearing the steel and authority of liegelord and crown both.” Lord Utgarth narrowed his eyes at an ascending flock of waterfowl. He drew a crossbow and loaded a bolt, but stopped just short of loosing the quarrel. “I don’t like any of this. Not one bit, Ikkaren.”

  “You’ve nothing to fear, my lord.” The flock of birds cleared the valley and were nearly level with their vantage point. Ikkaren thought Lord Utgarth might prepare another shot, but the old man set the crossbow on his lap and met Ikkaren’s eye. When Ikkaren was a child, the lordly gaze would have set him to babbling, trying to find the right words to satisfy his lord’s unspoken command. Now, though, Ikkaren just let a smile spread on his face. “Lord Harrus takes care of his own.”

  Lord Utgarth’s smile aged him another ten years. “He’s certainly made a believer of you, eh?” He shook his head. “I don’t begrudge your optimism, and far be it from me to rob you your honest work beneath the gods’ watchful eyes.” He met Ikkaren’s gaze again. “But I will not give fealty to this pup.”

  “He’s hardly a pup, my lord.” The chainmail resting under Ikkaren’s cloak felt heavier. He had feared this since the moment the new Lord Harrus had sent him to ensure the loyalty of his vassals. He’d thought about this conversation night after night, and though his heart started to pound, he steeled himself. “He’s been at court since he was a boy, and he’s befriended Prince Federick—“

  “Ah.” Lord Utgarth’s laugh echoed across the valley. “Prince Federick. The runt leading the litter. Tell me, when King Ignacian names Roderick heir, will your elder prince take kindly to losing that which he never won? Were I still a betting man, I’d say no. Perhaps Roderick will wake to a knife at his throat, or perhaps the court will shut their ears to his decrees. Federick styles himself a king-to-be already, yes?”

  Ikkaren nodded. “But we were speaking of Lord Harrus.”

  “And Harrus has begun his lordship by throwing in his lot with the wrong man. I feared the king’s nephews might lack the godly convictions a monarch might require, but Federick…” Lord Utgarth scoffed. “If ever a man was the rancid spirit of the capital given flesh, it would be him. Roderick, though, there’s a man after King Ignacian’s own spirit.”

  “And all this after, what, one dinner with either of them?”

  “A lord needs a quick eye if he’s to keep his seat.” Lord Utgarth raised his crossbow, loosed a bolt, and watched a duck fall from its flight. He whistled at the dog that had earlier refused the morsel, and the stout thing bayed and barked all the way to retrieving its master’s prize. “I had more than enough time appraising their worth in the Ashways. King Ignacian may have called us to war, but it was Roderick who commanded the men in his uncle’s charge. And Federick? Well, he thought himself above the whole affair. Kept himself and his lickspittles safe behind the walls of a city hundreds of miles from the fighting.”

  “One might call that keeping the royal seat secure.” Ikkaren had spoken with Harrus at length about this sensitive bit of the royal brothers’ history. He knew Alder was not the only lord who would sooner turn a cold shoulder to the elder prince, but Lord Utgarth had certainly been loudest in his cups. “A king can’t always fly to the vanguard of a war when all the realm vies for his attention.”

  “I’ll not trust a man who has never led others into the breach. Would Lukan von Ara have fared half as well on his march south if the warriors in his command didn’t trust him?”

  Ikkaren blinked. “We’ve gone from talking about Lord Harrus to a king who died centuries ago.” He could feel his own frustration bubbling up his chest. “If you were going to refuse your liegelord, you could have at least done me the courtesy of sending a bird with your message. Would have saved me the trouble of coming out here with my men.”

  The dog loped back to Lord Utgarth, proudly displaying the duck in its jaws.

  “In truth,” Alder chuckled again, and the echo of his laughter filled the valley below, “I wanted to take your measure as well. See what kind of man your new lord was fashioning you into.”

  As if he’d never left, Ikkaren was all at once the boy quailing under his lord’s gaze. He blinked hard to bring himself back to the moment, and when he opened his eyes again, he saw Alder giving him naught but pity.

  “You bring armed capital men to my keep. I, who gave you that sword and bore witness to your vows. I, who presided over the road and river you called home. I, who kept you and yours safe from the shivers of winter and the ravages of poor harvests. You disgrace the very call you answered all those years ago.”

  Ikkaren stared at the ground, the lump in his throat nearly strangling him. “My lord, I wish not—“

  “Now you speak of what you wish?” Lord Utgarth sneered. “When all is already decided, when you’ve all but put a blade to my throat, you decide to speak your mind?” He pressed his mare to a trot, and the rest of the hunting party followed him. “Tell Lord Loren he can have my seat when he drags me away in shackles.”