Run: 2026-07-25-01KYCPYQ6VCZGWXVWD034XCWRH

<nc-section data-title="Chapter 2: The Knight at the Stables (Version 1)" data-color="red"> The gates groaned open before me, and I guided Thunder through the archway into a courtyard thick with the smell of hay and hot iron. A man stood waiting beside the stables, broad as a barn door, his surcoat dusty at the hem and his grey hair cropped close as a soldier's. "You'll be the boy from Ashvale," he said. Not a question. He took Thunder's bridle in one scarred hand and ran the other down the stallion's neck with a gentleness that surprised me. "Sir Roland. I train the squires here, when I'm not burying them." I dismounted too quickly and nearly turned my ankle on the cobbles. He watched without offering a hand. "Frederick, my lord. Frederick of Ashvale." "Just Roland will do. Lords are for the great hall." He looked me over the way a farmer looks over a calf at market — not unkindly, but with an eye for what would break first. "Skinny. Well. There's worse things to be. Rub him down yourself, mind. A knight who lets another man tend his horse is a knight who'll die wondering why it threw him." </nc-section> <nc-section data-title="Chapter 2: The Knight at the Stables (Version 2)" data-color="green"> I found the stables by the noise before I found them by sight — the stamp of hooves, the low murmur of grooms, a whistled tune that stopped abruptly as I rode into view. The whistler was a knight. He sat on an upturned water bucket with a saddle across his knees and a rag in his hand, working oil into the leather. Younger than I expected, though there was a white seam of scar running from his ear down beneath his collar, and he had the sort of face that seemed to be holding back a laugh at all times. "Ha!" He set the saddle aside and rose. "The sunset arrival. Very grand. Did you time it, or was that providence?" Heat climbed my neck. "I rode as fast as I could, sir." "Then providence. Better luck than skill, in my experience — skill runs out." He offered his hand, and his grip was iron. "Roland. Sir Roland, if the Marshal's within earshot, which he usually is. And you're Frederick." "You know my name?" "I know everything that comes through that gate. It's most of what being a knight is, boy. The rest is falling off horses with dignity." He clapped my shoulder hard enough to stagger me. "Come. Thunder, is it? Fine beast. Let's get him fed before we worry about you." </nc-section> <nc-section data-title="Chapter 2: The Knight at the Stables (Version 3)" data-color="blue"> The courtyard was quieter than I had imagined a castle could be. Torches were being lit along the inner wall, one by one, and in the blue dusk between them a figure waited by the stable door, motionless, hands folded behind his back. He did not move as I approached. He did not speak until Thunder had come to a full stop and the echo of the hooves had died away in the stone. "You are late," Sir Roland said. "The river road was flooded, sir. I had to go around by the mill." "I know. I rode it this morning." His voice was very level, and something in that levelness made me sit up straighter in the saddle. "I am not scolding you, Frederick. I am telling you a thing you will need to learn: the world does not care for your reasons. It only counts your arrivals. Remember that when you are older and someone's life depends upon your hour." He stepped forward then, out of the shadow of the doorway, and I saw that he was missing two fingers from his left hand, and that his eyes were the pale grey of winter water. "Down you come," he said. "There is a stall at the end for him, and straw in the loft. When you have finished, come and find me at the well. We will see what your father has taught you, and how much of it must be unlearned." </nc-section>