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<nc-section data-title="Chapter 2: The Knight at the Stables (Version 1)" data-color="red"> The gates groaned open before I could announce myself, and I guided Thunder through the archway into a courtyard smelling of hay, smoke, and horse sweat. A man waited beside the stable doors with his sleeves rolled to the elbow and a currying brush still in his hand, as though he had been interrupted at work he did not mind doing himself. "You'd be the boy from Aldemere," he said. "I'm Roland. Sir Roland, when there are lords about, which there are not tonight." I slid from the saddle too quickly and nearly went down on the cobbles. He caught my elbow without seeming to move at all. "Steady. The horse rode well; you rode along with him." There was no cruelty in it, only a kind of amused accuracy that made my ears burn. He ran a hand down Thunder's neck and grunted approval. "Good beast. Better than you deserve, I'd wager. Tend him first, eat second, sleep third. That order never changes, and if you forget it, I'll remind you at an hour you won't enjoy." "Yes, sir." "Roland," he corrected, and turned toward the lamplight. "The 'sir' you'll earn or you won't." </nc-section> <nc-section data-title="Chapter 2: The Knight at the Stables (Version 2)" data-color="green"> I found the stables by their smell before I saw them, and there, leaning against a post with the last of the daylight on his face, stood a knight. He was older than I had imagined knights could be. Grey stubbled his jaw, and a scar cut a pale seam from his left ear down beneath the collar of his tunic. He watched me dismount in silence, and the silence lasted long enough that I began to arrange apologies for crimes I had not yet committed. "Frederick," he said at last. Not a question. "Yes, my lord." "Not a lord. Roland. I hold this castle's training yard and very little else." He pushed off the post and came forward, and I saw that he favoured his right leg. "Your father wrote to me. Three pages. Two of them about your virtues." "And the third?" "The third was honest." A corner of his mouth moved, which I would later learn was as close as Sir Roland came to laughter. "Bring your horse in. There's an empty stall by the water trough, and a bucket beside it that has been waiting all afternoon for someone exactly your height." </nc-section> <nc-section data-title="Chapter 2: The Knight at the Stables (Version 3)" data-color="blue"> Thunder's hooves rang on the cobbles of the outer yard, and a voice came out of the shadow of the stables, dry as old parchment. "You came in fast for a boy with nothing chasing him." A knight stepped into the failing light, tall, broad through the shoulders, a sword belted at his hip as casually as another man wears a purse. He looked me over the way a farrier looks over a hoof: not unkindly, but thoroughly, and with an eye for hidden cracks. "Sir Roland of the Ashford Watch," he said. "Master-at-arms here, for my sins. And you are the squire I've been promised since midsummer." "Frederick, sir." I bowed in the saddle, which I realised at once was ridiculous, and then dismounted, which was worse, because my legs had gone to wood after nine hours of riding. Sir Roland let me stagger. He did not offer a hand, and I understood, dimly, that this too was a lesson. When I had my balance he took the reins from me and pressed them straight back into my palm. "First rule," he said. "Nobody carries anything for you here. Not your saddle, not your sword, not your name. Stable him, then come to the hall. There's bread left, if the hounds have been slow." </nc-section>