Run: 2026-07-25-01KYCR8VMVP0RYHZ6ZNCG4D8MG

<nc-section data-title="Version 1: The Warm Welcome" data-color="red"> The stableyard smelled of hay and hot iron, and the boy who took Thunder's reins could not have been more than nine. I had barely swung down from the saddle when a shadow fell across the cobbles. "So this is the squire they sent me." He was broad as a door, this man, with a beard the color of rust and a nose that had been broken and badly set at least twice. His surcoat bore a black boar on a field of green, and though it was old and much-mended, it was scrupulously clean. "Frederick, my lord. Of Wenholt." "Sir Roland will do. I'm no lord and never will be, thank the saints for their mercy." He took my hand and crushed it with great enthusiasm. "You rode him hard, coming up the field. I watched you from the wall." "He likes to run." "He likes to *show off*, which is a different animal altogether, and so do you." Sir Roland grinned, and half his teeth were missing. "Good. A squire with no vanity in him is a squire with nothing to break, and I've never yet made a knight out of a boy I couldn't break. Come. You'll rub him down yourself, then you'll eat, then you'll sleep, and tomorrow before the bell you'll learn what a real morning feels like." </nc-section> <nc-section data-title="Version 2: The Cold Appraisal" data-color="green"> I found the stables by the smell, as one always does, and had begun to unbuckle Thunder's girth when I realized I was being watched. The knight stood in the doorway with the last of the light behind him, so that for a long moment he was nothing but a shape — tall, still, one hand resting on the frame as though he had all the evening in the world and intended to spend every minute of it looking at me. "Your stirrups are too long," he said. "Sir?" "Your stirrups. You ride like a man on a cart bench. Whoever taught you meant well and taught you wrong." He stepped forward, and I saw a face that had been carved rather than born — flat cheeks, pale eyes, a white seam running from his left ear down into his collar. "I am Roland. You'll have heard nothing about me, which is as it should be. What have they told you about the mountain?" "Nothing, sir." "Nothing." He almost smiled. "Then someone up there is being careful, and that is the first useful thing I've learned today. Finish with the horse. Speak to no one about where you've come from. And Frederick — when the bells ring tonight, and they will ring, you will stay in your bed with your eyes shut and your mouth closed." He was gone before I could ask which bells. </nc-section> <nc-section data-title="Version 3: The Unexpected Meeting" data-color="blue"> Thunder shied at the stable door, and that was how I came to be sitting in the mud when I met the greatest knight of the northern march. "Don't move," said a voice, quite calmly. "There's a wasp nest above the lintel and he's smelled it. Horses are wiser than we credit them." A man crouched beside me in the muck without the slightest concern for his knees. He was younger than I had expected of a knight — perhaps thirty — with dark hair tied back like a woman's and an old apple in one hand, which he offered not to me but to my horse. Thunder took it and forgave the world. "Frederick, yes? They sent word." He hauled me up by the elbow with an easy, careless strength. "I'm Roland. I'd say welcome to Aldermere but you've just been thrown into its dungheap, so perhaps we'll call it an honest introduction instead." "Sir Roland." I tried to bow and only made things worse. "Stop that." He was laughing, but not unkindly. "Listen to me. Everything they told you at home about this place is true, and none of it matters. The walls are strong, the food is bad, the lord is dying, and something in the eastern hills has been taking cattle since the frost broke." He looked at me sidelong. "Do you know what a squire is for, Frederick?" "To serve his knight." "To *survive* his knight," said Sir Roland. "Come inside. I'll show you where the good bread's kept." </nc-section>