Chapters (76)
- Title Page
- Copyright Notice
- Dedication
- PROLOGUE
- PART I
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- PART II
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- PART III
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- INTERLUDE
- PART IV
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- INTERLUDE
- PART V
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- PART VI
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- FORTY-ONE
- FORTY-TWO
- FORTY-THREE
- FORTY-FOUR
- FORTY-FIVE
- INTERLUDE
- PART VII
- FORTY-SIX
- FORTY-SEVEN
- FORTY-EIGHT
- FORTY-NINE
- FIFTY
- FIFTY-ONE
- FIFTY-TWO
- PART VIII
- FIFTY-THREE
- FIFTY-FOUR
- FIFTY-FIVE
- FIFTY-SIX
- EPILOGUE
- AUTHOR’S NOTE
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
- Newsletter Sign-up
Dillon shrunk. Guy kept at it, walking amongst the men. “There’s nobody to fight in Nottingham, lads. You’re not in the king’s army, and you’ll never be knights. If you are here for glory, I will give you a glorious death right now and we’ll both be happy. That’s not what you’ll be doing in the Nottingham Guard. Here, you’ll man the towers, escort the sheriff, yell at gang children, and you will do a very lot of standing around with very little moving. You’ll notice we’re not training you how to do that, because we assume you arrived here with more talent than an average tree.”
The smirks and amused eyes in the crowd faded. Most here would never rise above the Common Guard, which meant a life of monotony and discipline. Or a quick death at the hand of the damned gerold next to them. “You are being trained to swing a sword without killing yourself, in the unbelievably rare event you will need to use it before someone slightly less incompetent than yourself comes to help you. If you are lucky you will someday rise from the ranks of those who stand and do nothing to the elite order of those who ride and do nothing. You will enforce the sheriff’s laws, you will collect and escort supplies, you will make lords and nobles feel more important. Perhaps you’ll be lucky enough and one will pay you to join their retainer, and then you will be very happy because you won’t ever have to see me or The Simons again. And we will be equally happy to never see your face as well.”
“What about criminals?” Dillon Fellows asked, unaware that it was not his turn to speak.
Guy raised an eyebrow. “Criminals?”
“Won’t we be fighting them?”
“Only if their crime,” Guy leaned in to investigate Dillon’s face for any sign of intelligence, “is that they are currently fighting you. But if The Simons has done his job and you look like you know how to swing a sword, they won’t want to fight you in the first place. So I’m terribly sorry, you won’t be killing any of your fellow countrymen. This is England, not Barbaria!”
This garnered a wave of laughter, though when he thought back on it later he was fairly certain that Barbaria was not a place.