"I like it," said the captain, laughing with his sergeants as Calos and Jochim looked on. He slapped his thigh. "Yes! Best keep him well fed, though, and get the dogs to guard him, so we can say he's just speaking to them. All innocent!"

Alain didn't like it, but he understood he had no viable alternative. The world could not be changed in one day or one year and it was possible it could not be changed at all. It was just possible that this trivial and even selfish act of kindness toward a crippled, illegitimate orphan outweighed a hundred more apparently momentous acts involving the great and powerful of the land. Dog, as they were all calling the boy now, was sitting in a corner slurping down porridge and had shown no fear in the barracks with men coming and going and talking in loud voices, jostling, coughing, laughing, and singing out crude jokes.

"Someone has got to wash him," added the captain. "Calos, you take care of it, as you brought him in."

"Jochim, you take care of it," said Calos. "What of this man, who says he was a Lion?" He gestured toward Alain, who stood quietly to one side.

"Let me see those dogs you say come with him," said Captain Lukas, and he strolled with exaggerated casualness over to the door and squinted along the porch. Sorrow and Rage regarded him with their dark eyes. When they saw Alain, they thumped their tails on the plank sidewalk but did not otherwise move.

The captain looked at those dogs for a long time. Then he looked at Alain. The captain recognized him. Alain saw it in the smile trapped on his lips, in the way he scratched at his forehead to give himself something to do while he considered, in the way he tapped a foot three times on the porch as he reached a conclusion.

"Best we go see the lady," he said to the air. He turned back to beckon his sergeants closer. "I'll need a dozen men. Sergeant Andros, you are in charge here while I'm gone."

"There's to be a sweep of the southwest quarter this afternoon, Captain."

"Proceed as usual."

"Yes, Captain."

"If you will." The captain indicated to Alain that they would walk together. "Surely you have come here in order to see Lady Sabella." Without allowing Alain a chance to answer, he began issuing orders to the dozen men hurrying out to accompany them.

They stood in the dusty forecourt of what had once been a merchant's warehouse complex but was now both barracks and stable. There were two long warehouses linked at their northern ends by a spacious hall. An open kitchen and small storage sheds fenced in the southern end of the compound. The men lived in one half of the hall, their horses in the other. There were three troops quartered here, one in each structure, about three hundred men in all if Alain's estimate of the size of Captain Lukas' troop was correct. Men lounged by the open doors of their living space keeping an eye on the comings and goings of the other soldiers, friends and rivals alike. Dogs slunk along at the base of each porch, looking for scraps of food or a friendly pat. They kept clear of Sorrow and Rage, but a rare bold bitch ventured up and sniffed them over. A cart laden with manure trundled past, pushed by a pair of soldiers headed out to the fields. The open dirt yard stank of sweat and shit and urine and dust and that peculiar intangible scent of men sizing each other up for weakness. A pair of men were joking in loud voices.