Chapter 5: Lovely Day
The morning dawned crisp and clear, a brittle sunlight doing little to melt the frost clinging to the inner courtyard’s cobblestones. Kerr found Oriana and Oren there, the boy bundled in a thick woolen cloak, swinging a wooden practice sword at an imaginary foe with more enthusiasm than accuracy.
“Uncle Kerr!” Oren shouted, abandoning his duel with a phantom darkspawn to charge across the stones. He skidded to a halt, his breath puffing in the cold air. “You promised! You said we could ride today!”
“So I did,” Kerr said, crouching down to the boy’s level. He winced inwardly at the stiffness in his muscles, a pleasant legacy of the previous day’s activities. “But first, a warrior must know how to stand. You’re lunging like a man avoiding a puddle. Your father would weep.”
Oren adopted a comically rigid pose, feet planted wide. “Like this?”
“Like a scarecrow. Here.” Kerr stood behind him, gently adjusting his shoulders, nudging his back foot with his boot. “Balance. It’s not about being a statue. It’s about being a spring, ready to uncoil.” He tapped Oren’s stomach. “Power comes from here, not your arms.”
For an hour, they worked on stances, parries, and the basic steps of the Highever infantry drill. The clack of their wooden blades echoed off the stone walls, a sharp, wholesome sound that drew smiles from passing servants. Oriana watched from a sheltered bench, a blanket over her knees, her face softened by a rare, unguarded smile.
Finally, Oren was red-cheeked and puffing. “Can we ride now? Please?”
“Go bother Stablemaster Donal. Tell him I said to saddle Buttercup and that gray pony… what’s its name? The one that eats your sleeves.”
“Mouse!” Oren yelled, already sprinting toward the stables, his practice sword forgotten on the ground.
Oriana’s smile faded as she joined Kerr, watching her son disappear into the stable’s dark entrance. “He misses Fergus so much it’s a physical ache in him. He thinks if he learns to fight properly, his father will come home to see it.”
Kerr retrieved the wooden sword, running his thumb over the notch Oren had put in it. “He’s not wrong. Fergus will be insufferably proud.” He glanced at her. “And you?”
She tucked the blanket tighter around herself. “The quiet is worse. At least when you are clattering about with him, the chambers don’t feel so… empty.” She changed the subject. “The merchant?”
“Convinced his horses are, in fact, ideal for light carpentry work. He decided our feed was perfectly adequate.” Kerr grinned. “I also assigned two of Howe’s men to help him reorganize his wagons. They looked thrilled.”
Oriana let out a genuine laugh, the sound bright in the cold air. “You are a devil.”
The ride was a welcome release. They took the path through the winter-bare woods west of the castle, the horses’ hooves crunching on frozen leaves. Oren, a natural on horseback, chattered endlessly about knights, dragons, and the secret tunnels he was sure existed under the castle kitchen. Kerr listened, interjecting with exaggerated tales of his own boyhood misadventures, making Oren shriek with laughter.
For a few blessed hours, the weight of the teyrnir lifted. There was only the rhythm of the ride, the stark beauty of the frosted branches against a steel-gray sky, and the simple, uncomplicated joy of his nephew’s company. It was a palpable thing, this normalcy, and Kerr clung to it.
Returning to the castle as afternoon shadows grew long felt like donning a heavy cloak. The familiar anxieties seeped back in with the courtyard’s chill. After seeing Oren to his lessons, Kerr found himself in his father’s study—his study now, technically. The map of the North was still spread on the desk, a trio of pewter figures marking his father’s, Fergus’s, and Rendon Howe’s reported positions.
The map of the North was still spread on the desk, a trio of pewter figures marking his father’s, Fergus’s, and Rendon Howe’s reported positions. Kerr leaned over the parchment, tracing a line from Highever with a calloused finger. His mind worked through the logistics of moving Howe’s men south to join the main force, a slow, grinding calculus of supplies, routes, and loyalties that felt alien to his nature.
The plans solidified in his mind, a cold, clear structure of orders and timetables. It was a relief to have a course of action, even a dull one. This paperwork, this waiting, it was a cage. He needed to move.
He pushed back from the desk, the chair scraping harshly against the flagstones. The restlessness in his bones demanded an outlet sharper than ledgers. He left the study and headed not for the barracks, but for the old training shed near the kennels.
Inside, he bypassed the racks of standard-issue gear. From a shadowed corner, he lifted his personal set. The shield was a monster of riveted oak and steel, taller than most men’s torsos and wide enough to hide behind. The practice longsword was no blunted toy; it was a heavy, thick-bladed simulator of castle-forged steel, its hilt worn smooth from his grip.
He carried them out into the late afternoon light of the main courtyard. A group of his father’s soldiers and castle guards were drilling there, their shouts and the clash of wood filling the cold air. They fell silent as he approached, lowering their own weapons.
“Right,” Kerr said, his voice carrying easily. He dropped the great shield on the cobbles with a definitive thud that echoed off the walls. “I’ve been thinking at a desk all day. My brain’s gone soft. Who wants to hit me?”
A few of the men chuckled nervously. Rogan, a veteran sergeant with a gray-flecked beard, stepped forward. “Just the sword and board, my lord? No armor?”
“Armor’s for war. This is a conversation.” Kerr hefted the practice sword, its weight a comfortable, brutal anchor in his hand. “You first, Rogan. Show these pups how it’s done.”
The fight was short, brutal, and utterly one-sided. Rogan was strong, seasoned, and smart. He tried to use speed, to dart around the colossal shield. Kerr moved with a surprising economy, the massive slab of wood an extension of his arm. He didn’t attack; he waited. When Rogan overextended, Kerr slammed the shield edge forward, not with a killing blow, but a solid, staggering push that sent the sergeant stumbling back three steps, breathless.
“Good,” Kerr nodded. “Again.”
He worked through them one by one. He used the shield’s face to deflect blows that would have shattered a smaller buckler, absorbing the force in his legs and core. His own strikes with the practice sword were controlled, measuring thumps to the ribs or shoulders, always pulling the impact. He wasn’t trying to win. He was teaching, testing their footwork, their recovery, their nerve against his sheer, overwhelming physicality.
“Alright, my turn to be unpopular,” he said, after the last man, a young guardsman named Ewan, had been disarmed with a deft twist of Kerr’s blade. “All of you. At once.”
The men exchanged glances. There were eight of them, all armed. Rogan grinned, a fierce, competitive light in his eyes. “You’re sure, my lord?”
“I’m bored,” Kerr said, settling his stance, the great shield covering him from knee to chin. “Come on.”
They came in a wave. It was chaos—a storm of swinging weapons from all angles. Kerr became a fortress. He pivoted, using the shield as a mobile wall, deflecting two blows simultaneously. His sword arm worked in short, powerful arcs, parrying a thrust from the left, slapping aside a hack from the right. He moved not like a duelist, but like a force of geology, a slow, relentless landslide. He created space by bulling forward, scattering them, then turning to catch the next assault.
One by one, he disarmed them. A hook of his sword’s crossguard wrenched a weapon from a grip. A shield bash created an opening for a disarming slap. He took a few solid hits on the shield’s face, each a deep, wooden boom that echoed in the courtyard. He never yielded an inch of ground.
Finally, only Rogan and Ewan were left, circling him warily. Kerr feinted at Rogan with the sword, drawing his block, then slammed his shoulder into the shield, driving it into Ewan and sending the youth sprawling. He spun, caught Rogan’s next strike on his own blade, and leveraged it down, pinning the sergeant’s weapon against the cobbles underfoot.
Silence fell, broken only by the panting of the men. Kerr wasn’t even breathing hard. He stepped back, lifting his foot and offering Rogan a hand up. “You left your flank open when you circled wide. Don’t watch the sword, watch my hips.”
From the shadow of the arched entrance to the keep, Arl Rendon Howe watched, unnoticed. His face was a placid mask of polite observation, but his fingers tightened around the stone windowsill. The display of raw, effortless power was a visceral insult. He saw the easy loyalty in the soldiers’ eyes as they clapped Kerr on the back, heard their rough, admiring laughter.
It was the casualness of it that gnawed at him. The younger Cousland treated this legendary prowess as a mundane exercise, like checking a fence line. Howe’s own skill was careful, practiced, political. This was something else, a birthright written in muscle and bone that no amount of cunning could acquire.
A deep, familiar insecurity tightened in his gut. He watched Kerr laugh, a bright, unburdened sound, and slowly unclenched his fingers from the stone.