Run: 2026-07-25-01KYCPP1AV3RM42HK3BTXG1C2Z

<nc-section data-title="Version 1: The Iron Handshake" data-color="red"> The stable yard smelled of hay and hot iron. I had barely swung down from Thunder's back when a shadow fell across the cobbles — a man broad as a doorframe, his surcoat still dark with the sweat of the day's drilling. "You'll be the Marchand boy," he said. Not a question. He took my hand before I could offer it, and his grip closed like a portcullis. "Sir Roland. I keep the yard, the armoury, and the bones of every squire who thinks himself clever." "Frederick, my lord." "Sir will do. Lords sit indoors." He looked past me to Thunder, and something in his weathered face softened by a hair's breadth. "Good animal. Better than you deserve, I'd wager. Rub him down yourself — don't hand him to a stable lad. A knight who cannot care for his horse is a man on foot who hasn't noticed yet." He turned and walked three paces, then stopped without looking back. "Dawn bell, Frederick. Not after it. Not with it. Before." </nc-section> <nc-section data-title="Version 2: A Warmer Welcome" data-color="green"> "Ho! Rider!" The voice came from the stable doors, warm as the light spilling out behind it. A knight stood there in his shirtsleeves, forearms streaked with saddle grease, a bridle slung over one shoulder like a farmer's yoke. He was perhaps forty, with a face that had been broken and mended and seemed the friendlier for it. "Sir Roland of Ashvale," he said, wiping his palm on his breeches before extending it. "And you are the squire we've been promised all winter. Frederick, yes? Your uncle wrote three letters about you. Three! I've had fewer from my own mother." I flushed. "I hope they were kind, sir." "They were long," he said, laughing, "which from your uncle is the same thing." He ran a hand down Thunder's neck, and the stallion, who suffered no strangers gladly, leaned into it. "Well. Look at that. He likes you, Sir Roland, everyone says, and here's a horse agreeing with them." He took the reins from me and nodded toward the keep, where windows were beginning to glow amber. "Come. There's stew, and bread that's only a day stale, and a bed by the wall where the draught is least. The hard part starts tomorrow, lad. Tonight you're only a guest." </nc-section> <nc-section data-title="Version 3: The Measuring" data-color="blue"> He was waiting for me. That was the thing I understood first, before his name or his rank or the grey creeping through his beard — that Sir Roland had been standing in the stable's doorway for some while, watching me ride in. Watching how I sat the saddle. How I handled the reins on the turn. Whether I'd looked up at the walls like a gawping farm boy. I had looked up at the walls. "You dropped your left heel on the approach," he said, when I'd dismounted. "Twice. In a charge, that's a lance through your ribs." "Yes, sir." "You don't know if it's true. You simply agreed with me." He stepped out into the last of the light, and I saw that his right hand was missing two fingers, and that he did not hide it. "Which is worse than arguing. Squires who agree with everything learn nothing and die politely. Do you understand me, Frederick?" "I — no, sir. Not entirely." Something flickered at the corner of his mouth. It was gone before I could call it approval. "Better," said Sir Roland. "Stable your horse. Then find me in the armoury, and we'll discover what else you don't know." </nc-section>