Run: 2026-09-23-01M37PK338BP99012TY9PVJNJD

<nc-section data-title="Version 1: A Stern Welcome" data-color="red"> The gates groaned open before I reached them, and a pair of guards waved me through without a word. The cobblestones of the outer bailey rang beneath Thunder's hooves as I slowed him to a walk and followed the smell of hay and horse toward the stables along the eastern wall. A man was waiting there. He stood with his arms folded across a broad chest, his gray-streaked beard trimmed close to his jaw. He wore no armor, only a plain leather jerkin and boots caked with mud, but I knew him at once. There was no mistaking the scar that ran from his left temple to the corner of his mouth. Every boy in the kingdom had heard how Sir Roland had earned it. I swung down from the saddle too quickly. My foot caught in the stirrup, and I stumbled against Thunder's flank. The stallion snorted, and I felt heat rise into my face. "Frederick of Ashford," Sir Roland said. It was not a question. "Yes, my lord." I straightened and bowed, as my father had drilled into me a hundred times. "I am honored to—" "You're late." I opened my mouth, then closed it. The letter had said the first day of autumn. It *was* the first day of autumn, if only for a few more hours. Sir Roland stepped forward and ran a hand along Thunder's neck, then down his foreleg, lifting the hoof to inspect it. He set it down gently and looked at me for a long moment with eyes the color of cold iron. "You rode him hard," he said. "Too hard for a horse who carried you all this way. A knight who does not care for his mount will not keep it long, and a knight without a mount is only a man with a heavy sword." He tossed me a curry brush from a hook on the wall. I barely caught it. "He is brushed, watered, and fed before you are. That is your first lesson. Supper is at the ringing of the bell. If you miss it, that will be your second." He turned and strode off toward the keep without another word. I stood alone in the dimming light, the brush in my hand, as Thunder nosed at my shoulder as if to say *well, go on then.* </nc-section> <nc-section data-title="Version 2: A Warm Welcome" data-color="green"> By the time I passed beneath the portcullis, the torches along the walls were being lit one by one, their flames bright against the purpling sky. A stable boy no older than ten came running to point me toward the long timber building beside the smithy, and I thanked him and guided Thunder across the yard. I heard the laughter before I saw the man. "Now *there's* a horse!" a voice boomed from the stable doorway. "Look at the legs on him. Tell me, lad, is he as quick as he looks, or just vain?" A tall man stepped into the torchlight, wiping his hands on a rag. His hair was the color of copper gone dark with age, and his face was lined in the way of someone who spent more time smiling than frowning. A silver brooch shaped like a rising sun fastened his cloak, the crest of the knights of the realm. "Both, my lord," I admitted, dismounting. "Mostly vain." He laughed again, a great warm sound that filled the whole yard. "Sir Roland," he said, clasping my forearm in the manner of warriors. His grip was like a vise. "And you'll be young Frederick. Your father wrote that you'd be tall for your age and stubborn as a mule. I see he was half right, at least." "Which half, sir?" "Time will tell." He winked, then turned his attention to Thunder, offering the stallion a wrinkled apple from his pocket. Thunder, who had bitten two grooms and a tax collector in his short life, took it as delicately as a lady taking a sweet. "Ah, he's a fine one. We'll put him in the end stall. It has the best view of the mares, and I suspect he'll appreciate that." He led the way inside, talking as he went, of the other squires, of the cook who burned everything but the bread, of the old armorer who would pretend to hate me for a month before deciding otherwise. I followed, and for the first time since leaving home three days ago, the tight knot in my chest began to loosen. At the end stall he paused and looked back at me, and for just a moment the laughter left his eyes. "We'll work you hard here, Frederick," he said quietly. "Harder than you think you can bear. But you'll not be alone in it. Remember that." </nc-section> <nc-section data-title="Version 3: A Mysterious Welcome" data-color="blue"> The courtyard was strangely quiet when I rode in. I had expected the clamor of a great castle at dusk: servants hurrying, soldiers changing the watch, the clang of the smithy. Instead there was only the whisper of wind across the stones and the uneasy stamp of Thunder's hooves. He tossed his head and would not settle, his ears pinned back. "Easy," I murmured, patting his neck. "Easy, boy." The stables stood in the long shadow of the northern tower. As I drew near, a figure emerged from the darkness within, and Thunder shied so violently that I nearly lost my seat. "Steady," the man said, and though he did not raise his voice, the stallion went still at once. He stepped closer, and I saw a knight in a dark blue surcoat, a sword belted at his hip. He was lean and weathered, perhaps fifty years old, with a close-cropped beard and eyes that caught the last of the sunlight in a way I did not quite like. "Sir Roland?" I guessed. "You were expecting someone else?" He took Thunder's bridle and looked the horse over, but his gaze kept drifting upward, past the walls, toward the mountains in the north where the peaks still glowed faintly red. "You came by the northern road." "Yes, sir. It was the fastest way." "Did you see anything? On the ridge, past the old watchtower?" I hesitated. I had seen something. Or thought I had. A shadow passing across the clouds that afternoon, too large to be a bird, gone before I could be sure of it. I had told myself it was a trick of the light. Sir Roland watched my face, and whatever he found there made his jaw tighten. "Never mind," he said. "Not here." He handed Thunder's reins to a groom who had appeared silently at his side, then placed a firm hand on my shoulder and steered me toward the keep. "You'll eat, and you'll rest. Tomorrow your training begins, and it will not be the training your father believes you've come for." "Sir? What do you mean?" He did not answer. Behind us, in the stables, every horse had fallen silent, and far to the north, so faint I might have imagined it, something like thunder rolled across the mountains, though there was not a cloud in the sky. </nc-section>