The dawn bell tolled, and Toby woke in the same brief, stunned happiness as every morning since he’d come to the castle—warm bed, soft pillow, the tiny miracle of a roof that didn’t drip. He rubbed sleep from his eyes, swung his feet to the flagstones, and pulled on his tunic before Maxwell’s bark rattled the corridor.

  “Feet, feet, feet—if you ain’t moving, you ain’t here!”

  Toby snatched his belt and wooden blade and ran.

  The yard was rimed with the faintest brush of frost. In the pale blue before sunrise, the inner wall looked like the edge of a blade, and the outer wall behind it like a second edge waiting to cut what the first missed. Kay, Zak, and Reece were already there—Kay straight-backed and alert; Zak yawning; Reece bouncing on his toes as if trying to outrun his nerves.

  “Two laps,” Maxwell said, voice carrying like iron across stone. “You know the road. Go.”

  They went. Toby settled into his stride, lungs opening, legs finding that steady, good ache he’d known since fields and harvests taught him what bodies were for. Kay kept pace, silent as ever; Zak loitered behind, tossing comments like stones in a pond; Reece clung grimly to Toby’s shoulder as if the nearness would drag him faster.

  They finished with breath to spare—Toby first by a nose, Kay right there, Zak behind, Reece trailing but upright. Maxwell nodded once. “Improved,” he said. “And you”—his chin flicked at Toby—“are no gazelle, but you’ll do.”

  The word improved shivered through Toby like a spoon against a glass. Praise. Not a lot, but enough to stand on.

  “Blades,” Maxwell snapped.

  They formed pairs: Kay with Zak, Toby with Reece. Footwork first, then the pattern-drills—high, low, center; parry, counter, retire. The sun shouldered up over the rampart, throwing long stripes across the yard.

  “Good step, farmer,” Maxwell said once—once—when Toby rode a bind and slid clear without stumbling. “Again. Make the feet teach the hands.”

  He did. For a few breaths it all joined up: ankles, hips, wrists, breath. Even the wooden sword felt like a friend instead of a log. When the bell for breakfast rang, Maxwell lifted a hand.

  “You’re less hopeless,” he told Toby, flat as granite. Then, to all four: “Eat. Don’t dribble porridge on your surcoats in front of the lord.”

  They trooped to the hall on sore legs and warm pride. The great hall was brighter than usual. Pages ran like ants, carrying messages and trays. The guards moved with the measured urgency of soldiers who knew haste had its own kind of danger. Toby ladled porridge into a trench, took a heel of bread, and slid beside Reece on a bench near the door. Zak thumped down opposite, already reaching for a second slice. Kay sat at the top of their table with nowhere near enough ceremony to warrant it, yet somehow looking right there anyway.

  “Something’s afoot,” Reece whispered, glancing at the bustle.

  “Looks like the lord’s back,” Zak said through a mouthful. “Hear that? Stable bells.”

  Before Toby could answer, a page darted in to whisper to the herald, who then spoke up.

  “My lord, Sire Ray!”

  The hum of talk flattened. Men rose. Toby and the other squires scrambled to their feet as the lord entered with his retinue—dusty, travel-stained, and stone-faced. Ser Dylan had a tear in his sleeve and a fresh scratch on his cheek. Sire Ray stripped off his gloves as he walked, jaw set.

  He climbed to the dais, nodded to the castellan, and spoke without preamble.

  “Two more hamlets south of the marsh have been raided,” he said. His voice was calm, but calm as a drawn bow. “Brindle Hollow’s fate repeats. No survivors.”

  A sound went through the hall like a blanket torn in half. Toby’s spoon froze in his hand. Kay’s knuckles whitened against the table edge. Reece stared at nothing. Zak’s gaze darted toward Toby and away again.

  “No tracks,” Sire Ray continued. “No true sign. They ghosted the ground clean. We found only what they left burning.” He looked over the long tables as if counting each head into a ledger. “We post more watch on the southern borders. We ride farther and with more eyes. And we get smarter. The elves won’t show us the same hand twice.”

  He lifted his cup. “Eat now. Work after.”

  He stepped down, and the scrape of benches filled the stunned air.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  Toby swallowed a mouthful that tasted like ashes. The praise from the yard hung in his chest like a bell clapper waiting to strike. He stood before he could think better and crossed to where Sire Ray was conferring with Ser Dylan and Master Maxwell at the sideboard.

  “My lord,” he said.

  Sire Ray looked up. “Toby.”

  “I—Master Maxwell said I was improved,” Toby blurted, feeling twelve and foolish, “and I wanted to ask—what are you going to do to get rid of them? And if you ride, if you hunt—can I come?”

  Dylan’s eyebrows climbed, but he kept quiet. Maxwell’s mouth twitched in something that might one day be a smile, then died.

  Sire Ray regarded Toby with the same measuring look he’d worn the day of the duel. Not unkind or indulgent—just weighing.

  “What we’ll do is make our borders teeth and our roads eyes,” he said. “We’ll bait, and we’ll listen. We’ll not be drawn into the woods where we’ve no footing, not until we can force a fight we choose.”

  “And me?” Toby asked, heat crawling up his neck. “I can run and drill and—”

  “And you can’t yet call what you did in the yard, when you struck Ser Dylan,” Ray said, voice soft enough that only the four of them heard. “You’ve a spark, boy. Sparks are pretty. Fires cook stew and burn barns. I won’t carry a spark into tinderland.”

  Toby flinched. “So I stay and polish wood while people die.”

  “You stay and learn to strike when you mean it,” Sire Ray said. No anger in it. Only iron. “Until you can touch the Physical Art on command—until you can open that door and close it—you’ll not ride to hunt elves. I won’t throw you away for your pride.”

  The words went in like brads; not what he wanted to hear. Toby nodded, jaw locked so tight it hurt.

  “Yes, my lord,” he said, and fled before his temper tore something he’d later need.

  The yard took him back. Wood and dirt don’t care how your heart is knotted. Maxwell pointed him to Kay for drills and let the pairs switch after a few passes. Kay worked him like a whetstone, each motion steady, precise, and unyielding. It helped and it did not.

  Next, Toby faced Zak.

  Zak grinned, chin high. “Let’s see your improvement, farmer.”

  The first exchanges were even. Toby’s feet were good this morning; the muscle under his left shoulder obeyed when he told it no; the hilt rested right in his palm. Zak fought loose and smiling, years of drills hidden beneath the laziness. He tapped Toby’s wrist, a score. Toby breathed, reset, drove him off line with a shove. Zak laughed, circled.

  The third pass, Zak flashed a feint at Toby’s knee and flicked high. It only grazed. No point. Toby parried hard. Something in him, anger, shame, or the self imposed pressure that he wanted to take his fight to the elves, jerked the line tighter than he meant. The parry rang. He stepped through without thinking of the step—without thinking at all—and the world thinned.

  A breath stretched. The courtyard tilted that hand’s breadth. Zak’s center opened like a gate. Toby felt the power like a low hum behind his ribs—felt his thigh, calf, shoulder, wrist align as if drawn on a chalkline that had always been there. The wooden blade snapped through the space before Zak’s guard could find it. The first strike rapped Zak’s temple with the flat, clean and cruel. Zak’s head snapped sideways. The second hit the collar with crack enough to echo.

  Then the breath closed. Sound crashed back—the scrape, the shout. Zak folded as if someone had cut the cords at his knees and dropped, timber to the dirt.

  “Hold!” Maxwell roared, already moving. He knelt, two fingers at Zak’s throat, then lifted an eyelid with a thumb. “Out cold,” he said. “Not dead. Thank all the saints you used wood.”

  Toby stared, horror dropping his stomach into his boots. His own hands shook with leftover power and sudden emptiness. “I… I didn’t mean—”

  “No one means to be a fool,” Maxwell snapped. “We manage it just fine anyway.”

  Reece hovered pale and sick-looking. Kay’s face was carved stone.

  Zak groaned and rolled to one side. A page sprinted for the leech. Maxwell didn’t look away from Toby. “Ten laps,” he said. “Outer ward. Now. Run until you’ve no anger left to swing.”

  Toby nodded once and ran. The first two circuits he barely felt the ground. The next two his lungs began to burn. By the sixth his thighs shook and his mouth tasted like old pennies. The seventh hurt. The eighth asked questions: Why did you step through? Why did you want it so much? Whose face were you striking? The ninth gave no answers. The tenth delivered him back into his body with all its trembling and a ribbon of fire down his right side.

  He staggered into the yard, chest heaving, and doubled at the rail until the stitch eased enough to stand. Zak sat on a bench in the shade, eyes clearer, a welt rising above his brow. Reece hovered. Kay leaned against a post, arms folded, gaze unreadable.

  Toby walked to Zak and went to one knee because the ground was steady there. “I’m sorry,” he said. No excuse, no embroidery. “It was too much.”

  Zak’s mouth twisted. “You hit like a cart,” he said, then pieced a grin together from scraps. “Next time use less cart.”

  “I will.”

  Maxwell’s shadow fell over them. “See that you do. This isn’t a pit. You don’t win by leaving fewer teeth on the dirt.”

  Toby nodded. He meant it.

  Maxwell looked past them toward the open gate and the outer bright. “Enough walls,” he decided. “We all stink like the inside of a boot. Tack up. We’re riding.”

  Kay pushed off the post at once, as if the order had been hidden inside him waiting to be read. Zak stood slower. Reece blinked. Toby’s heart kicked once, hard and unpleasant.

  He knew how to sit on a plow horse and ask it to walk a furrow. He did not know what a castle’s horses wanted from a human. He knew, with the clear, awful knowing of a boy about to be measured, that everyone else already knew.