"Are there no poor sitting in the lady's hall, fed by her stewards?" asked Alain. "Can it be she has forgotten the ancient custom? Did not King Henry feed a dozen beggars every day off his very own table?"

The elder spat. "Get on. Speak not of Henry, the usurper. Well! He's gone now. Some say he's dead."

"Did he so?" asked the youth. "A dozen beggars, every day?"

"Or more, on feast days," said Alain, standing his ground.

"How do you know?" demanded the elder. "How could a man such as you know? How could you have stood in the hall where noble folk took their supper?"

"I was a Lion, once." And more besides, but he would not speak of those days to this man.

"A Lion!" The youth whistled appreciatively, with a look of respect. "A Lion! They take some tough fighting, it's said. Duke Conrad takes in any Lions that come this way. Strays, like."

The gaze of the older soldier had shifted in an intangible way. "Were you now? Seen any fighting? Ever kill a man?"

Weary, Alain met his gaze. "I have seen fighting. I killed a man." One who was already dying.

"Huh. I believe you. Huh." He glanced toward the town walls where twin banners curled limply at the height of the tower, concealing their sigils. The clouds moved sluggishly overhead, although it often seemed to Alain that they did not move at all, not anymore. "The lady needs soldiers. There's a bed and a meal every day if you join up with her. Interested?"

"What of the child?"

"Is he some kinsman of yours?"

"I found him abandoned in the woods, just as I said."

"Then why burden yourself with him? Look at him! That child's half dead, crippled, useless. Can it even speak?"

"Dog," said the babe.

"Dog!" snorted the youth. 'A good name, don't you think? We could clean him up and take him in the barracks as a mascot, Calos. Put him up on a chair by the door and teach him to say 'dog' every time one of Captain Alfonse's Salian braggarts comes past."

Calos choked down a laugh, but it was easy to see the notion amused him.

"The lady has Salian soldiers in her retinue?" Alain asked.

"Oh, plenty of them, the cursed snails!" said the youth with the good humor of a man who has suffered no real harm from disparaging his comrades. "Foul-tempered and gluttonous. They come with that Salian lord who is one of my lady's commanders but I don't recall his name. Lots of Salians. They've got no king now. All at each other's throats, so it's said. No wonder they come east, these ones. It's safer here."

"It wasn't for those driven out into the woods," said Alain, waving an arm back the way he had come.

"They brought their own trouble down on them," said Calos with a sneer. "What of the little lad? I'm liking this idea of Jochim's the more I think on it. Up their craw, and them not daring to hurt a tiny babe so crippled as this one is."