The blade left Aldric's hand and settled in Theoden son of Theodred's, and the boy did not flinch when steel touched his palm.
"Captain."
"Lord."
A nod. A step back. The next one forward.
This was the part that mattered. Not the speeches. Not the trumpets. The sword going from one set of hands to another, and the name spoken aloud where the whole rank could hear it.
He had been at it twenty minutes. He had nine names left.
Halbarad stood at his shoulder, slate and chalk in the crook of his arm, the missing fingers on his left hand keeping the chalk pinched against his palm. The old man had not said a word since the first commission. He did not need to. He had said all of it an hour ago, in the under-room behind the parade ground, where the tally had been settled.
The tally had not been pleasant.
[NORTHWATCH ACADEMY — UNDER-ROOM, BEFORE THE CEREMONY]
"Ten." Halbarad set his slate down. "Maybe eleven, if I'm in a generous mood, which I am not."
"Twelve."
"Aldric—"
"Twelve."
The old man drew a long breath through his nose. He had the look he got when he was deciding whether to argue or to wait Aldric out. He chose argue.
"You want me to put a sword in Eorlund's hand and send him to lead men. That boy froze on the third assault drill. Twice. The second time, half his squad got marked dead."
"He froze the first time because his cousin was the one playing the corpse on the ground. The second time he was sick with the flux and tried to run the course anyway." Aldric tapped the name on the slate. "I'll take a man who pushes through fever over a man who quits clean any day."
"You're letting one good story carry a soft candidate."
"I'm letting a documented illness explain a single bad mark on an otherwise solid record. That's not the same thing." He did not raise his voice. He had stopped raising his voice with Halbarad a long time ago; it never worked, and the old man had ways of making it cost. "Read me his other scores."
Halbarad read them.
They were not bad scores. They were not Theoden's scores, but no one else's were either. Eorlund had finished fourth in tactics, second in field surgery, sixth in the riding trials. He had broken his hand in the wrestling round and refused to use it as a reason to drop out.
"He's the seam," Halbarad said finally. "Cut him and you stop at eleven. Keep him and the next four are clear."
"I keep him."
"You overrule me."
"I overrule you."
The old man wrote something on the slate. He did not show what. Then he tucked the chalk away in the leather pocket sewn into his belt — the one Tauriel had made him last winter, when she got tired of watching him fumble — and lifted his head.
"Twelve, then. On your record."
"On mine."
"And the eight?"
"The eight get told."
"By whom?"
"By me."
Halbarad's mouth moved, almost a smile, and did not quite reach it. "Good."
[THE GROUNDS — CEREMONY]
Now the line was shorter than it had been.
Nine names called. Twelve to go.
The thirteenth man — the one who would not be called — stood at the back of the formation, eyes fixed straight ahead, jaw locked. Halgar son of Hadan. Twenty-three. Strong. Brave. Slow to read a battlefield, slower still to change a plan once it had been set. He had been told an hour ago, in the under-room, by Aldric himself. He had not wept. He had asked one question.
"May I try again next year?"
"You may."
He had saluted and walked out, and now he stood in the rank with his brothers and waited for the ceremony to end so he could go drink something strong and decide what kind of man he was going to be.
Aldric had watched him walk out of the under-room and thought: that one might still make it. Not now. Not this year. But the asking was the right answer.
He moved down the line.
"Hadhod son of Brom."
The dwarf stepped forward — the only one of his kin in the class, sent up from Grimgar's quarter as a test of whether the integration would carry into command. He took the sword in both hands, the way dwarves did, and looked Aldric in the eye and did not blink.
"Captain."
"Lord."
The next one.
"Eorlund son of Eofor."
The boy who had argued with Halbarad in absentia and won.
Eorlund's hand was steady when he received the sword. His face was not. There was something in it — a tightness around the eyes that said he had heard, somehow, that he had nearly not been called. He swallowed it and did not let it land on his expression long.
"Captain."
"Lord."
Aldric held the boy's gaze a half-beat longer than the rest. Don't make me wrong.
Eorlund stepped back into line.
Five more.
Three more.
One more.
"Maira son of Mardil."
She came forward.
She walked the way she had been taught to walk — heel first, hips locked, shoulders back the way men carried shoulders. Her hair was cropped short under the helm. The padded jerkin under her surcoat hid what needed hiding. She had bled into a rag for three days every month for the six months of the course and gone to the training field without flinching. Halbarad had told Aldric privately, in the first month, that son of Mardil had a particular way of holding the bow. Aldric had said, Then she has a particular way of holding the bow. Halbarad had not asked again.
Aldric set the sword in her hands.
"Captain."
Her voice did not crack. She had practiced this, probably, every night for a week.
"Lord."
He looked at her the way he had looked at the others. No more. No less. The grounds were full of witnesses. Whatever was true about Maira son of Mardil was true between her and the people she chose to tell, and Northwatch would not be one of the places where a woman's competence had to wear an apology.
She stepped back.
The last sword went to a tall lad from one of the dwarf-trade families who had finished first in everything that involved a horse and last in everything that involved a book. Twelve names, twelve swords, twelve men — and one woman, who would call herself a man as long as it suited her, and that was her business — standing in a rank that had not existed at sunup.
Aldric stepped back from the line.
He did not give a speech. He had not planned one. The grounds were quiet, the sun slanting low across the practice posts, and the twelve stood with their new steel and the eight stood behind them with empty hands and the families and friends and instructors crowded along the rails waited for him to say a thing worth carrying home.
He said: "Tomorrow you will be sent where you are needed."
He let it stand a moment.
"Some of you to the borders. Some of you to the patrols. Some of you to the academy itself, to teach what was taught to you. You will not all see each other again before winter. You will not all see each other again, period. That is the trade. You took the sword. You took the trade."
He looked along the rank.
"Captain Theoden — you ride north at dawn. The Coldfells patrol has been without a captain for three weeks. Eight men. You'll know two of them; the other six will know your name by the time you reach the camp. Halbarad has the orders."
Theoden's hand tightened on the hilt of his sword. He inclined his head.
"Lord."
"The rest of you — your assignments are with my steward by sundown. Read them. Argue if you have grounds. Ride at first light." A breath. "Dismissed."
The line broke.
The eight who had not been called stayed in formation a moment longer than the twelve, because that was the discipline they had been taught, and then they too broke and walked off toward the eastern wall where their instructors waited to talk to them about what came next. Halgar was the first to go. Aldric watched him until the gate took him.
Halbarad came up beside him. The old man stood there a while without speaking, watching the families crowd in to find their sons.
"Twelve," he said at last.
"Twelve."
"Eorlund didn't freeze when you named him."
"No."
"You knew he wouldn't."
"I hoped."
Halbarad made a noise that might have been a laugh and might have been a cough. With him, lately, it was sometimes hard to tell. "Hope is a poor commander."
"Hope is what you have left when the math runs out."
The old man considered that. Considered it for the time it took the dwarf, Hadhod, to cross the parade ground and embrace a short, broad-shouldered woman who must have been his mother, by the way she struck him in the chest before she put her arms around him.
"Coldfells patrol," Halbarad said. "Tonight you write Theoden his orders."
"Tonight I write Theoden his orders."
"Then I'll go drink with the eight."
"Drink slowly. I want them sober enough to hear what you say to them."
"I'm always sober enough."
"That's a lie."
"It is a lie." The old man clapped him once on the shoulder, lightly, with the hand that still had all its fingers. "You did well today. You can put that down somewhere."
He walked off across the grounds toward the eastern wall.
Aldric stood a moment longer. Twelve swords were leaving the parade in twelve different hands, walking into twelve different futures, and the man who had given them each a name had a desk waiting and an order to write before the light went, and Theoden — Captain Theoden — would be on the Coldfells road by sunrise.
He turned for the keep.
⚜ ━━━━ ROYAL PROCLAMATION ━━━━ ⚜
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