The morning after the duel, I arrived at the training yard before the sun had fully risen. The air was cold and sharp, and my breath plumed in front of me. The yard was already a hive of activity, the rhythmic thud of wooden swords against shields and the sharp commands of junior officers cutting through the dawn quiet. When I stepped onto the packed earth, a wave of silence rippled out from my position. Conversations died. Sparring matches paused. Every eye was on me.
Yesterday, I had been a ghost, a rumor. Today, I was a problem. I was the forgotten third son who had come back from the dead, humiliated his stronger brother, and earned the Count's cryptic approval. They didn't know what to make of me, and the uncertainty had bred a thick, uncomfortable wariness.
Captain Garrick, his face as grim and stony as ever, strode over to me. "My lord. The Count said you would be joining us."
"Just Lancelot is fine, Captain," I said with an easy smile, trying to cut through the oppressive formality. "I'm here to train, not to be saluted."
Garrick's expression didn't change, but he gave a curt nod. "As you wish. You can join Sergeant Harlen's group. Basic forms and sparring." He pointed towards a barrel-chested man who looked like he'd been chiseled out of granite.
For the next hour, I was put through the wringer. I followed Harlen's commands, practicing the fundamental stances and strikes of the Ashworth style. I didn't complain. I didn't act superior. I just did the work, focusing on integrating the Two-Heart Cadence into the familiar movements, trying to find the harmony between the Path I was creating and the martial art Lancelot had been taught.
Then came the sparring. My first opponent was a young, eager guard named Rolan. He came at me with a flurry of quick, aggressive strikes. I didn't try to overpower him. I let my newfound grace and the rhythmic pulse in my veins guide me. I used Rhythmic Circulation for defense, my body flowing around his attacks. It was a repeat of my fight with Elias, but this time, it was a dance, not a duel. I made him miss, and miss, and miss again, until he was red-faced and panting.
When Garrick called an end to the spar, I didn't gloat. I stepped forward and clapped a hand on Rolan's shoulder.
"You're fast," I said, my voice genuine. "That combination after your parry… I barely saw it coming. The footwork is incredible."
Rolan stared at me, utterly dumbfounded. A noble, let alone the Count's son, was asking him for advice? "Uh… thank you, my lord. It's about shifting your weight just before the lunge."
"Show me," I said.
And he did. For the next five minutes, in the middle of the training yard, I became his student. The other guards watched, their wary expressions slowly melting into ones of confusion, and then, grudging respect. This was not the behavior of an arrogant noble.
I repeated this pattern all morning. I sparred with a grizzled veteran named Pike and lost soundly, but immediately asked him to show me how he'd trapped my arm. I complimented a young woman named Lyra on the unique way she held her shield. I treated every single soldier not as a subordinate, but as a source of valuable knowledge. I was an Adept, a novice in this world of warriors. It was only logical that I should learn from them. But logic and nobility rarely mixed, and my simple act of humility was so unexpected it completely disarmed them.
By midday, the atmosphere had transformed. The silence that greeted me was gone, replaced by nods and quiet greetings. They were still cautious, but the wariness was gone. I wasn't just the strange third son anymore. I was their young lord, and I was putting in the work.
Later that afternoon, after the physical drills were over, I found Captain Garrick in the command tent, hunched over a large map of the County's border territories. He was tracing the patrol routes with a finger, his brow furrowed in concentration.
"Captain," I said, approaching slowly.
He looked up, his gaze neutral. "Lord Lancelot."
"Just Lancelot," I reminded him gently. I gestured to the map. "Planning the patrol schedules?"
"The Count wants to increase our presence in the northern passes after… recent events," he said, the unspoken reference to Valerius's treason hanging in the air. "We're stretching our manpower thin."
This was my chance. I leaned over the map, my eyes tracing a familiar route. A route I remembered from a grim chapter in The Crimson Dragon's Lament.
"This route here," I said, pointing to a path that wound through a narrow, heavily wooded ravine. "Patrol 7. It's the most direct path to the watchtower, isn't it?"
"It is," Garrick said, his eyes narrowing slightly. "Fastest by half a day. We've used it for twenty years."
"I was just thinking," I said, choosing my words with care. "When I was running, before I found the cave… I passed through a ravine like this one. The rock formations, the thick canopy of trees… it does something strange to the sound. It muffles it. A man could scream his lungs out, and you wouldn't hear it fifty paces away."
I looked up from the map and met his gaze. "If a patrol were to be ambushed in a place like that, they'd have no way to signal for help. No horn, no warning cries… they'd just vanish."
Garrick stared at me, his expression unreadable. He looked down at the map, at the winding, treacherous line of the ravine, then back at me. I wasn't giving him an order. I was offering an observation, a piece of hard-won intelligence from a "survivor."
He was silent for a long, heavy moment. He picked up a charcoal pencil, and with two sharp, decisive strokes, crossed out the ravine route. He drew a new, longer path across the open ridge-line above it.
"A sound observation, my lord," he said, his voice a low grunt. "The northern patrol will take the ridgeline from now on. It'll add half a day to their journey, but it's a safer path."
He looked at me then, and for the first time, the professional mask cracked. I saw a flicker of genuine, unvarnished respect in his eyes.
I gave a simple nod and walked out of the tent, leaving him to his maps. The afternoon sun felt warm on my face. I hadn't just won a spar. I hadn't just made a friend. I had potentially just saved the lives of a dozen men who, a month from now in the original story, were fated to be slaughtered in a silent, bloody ambush.
It was a small change in the grand, tragic script. But it was a start. And it was mine.