Behind Owain, the lodge door opened, and Sir Gilander stepped out into the cold. The old knight moved with the careful precision of a man whose joints had been arguing with the weather since long ago, but there was nothing frail about the way he carried himself.
Gilander had commanded the personal guard of Marquis Bors Lothian for more than thirty years, and even now, days after his lord's death, he wore the blue and yellow surcoat of House Lothian as though it were armor rather than livery. Given the chance, he would likely cling to his post until the day he died.
"The trackers went out an hour before dawn, my lord," Gilander reported calmly. If the poor turnout for the hunt or the disrespect of the barons bothered him, he gave no sign of it, keeping himself strictly to his duties and the tasks at hand.
