And Mike Havel wasn’t nasty like Arminger, or crazy like Arminger, but he was a hard man and no mistake. Dad did what was necessary back then too, so I’m not going to be too snippy about this baron guy’s parents. They lived, and so did their kids. And if it helped to plaster everything with names out of old books, so be it.

Their son had coarse, curly bowl-cut red hair of a dark copper color like an old penny, pale skin of the sort that turned ruddy rather than tanning, slightly buck teeth, a big nose and ears like the handles of a jug. He also wore a full set of Western plate armor except for the helmet and the gauntlets, which lay beside him, and while he wasn’t particularly large he moved as if the weight and heat and constriction didn’t bother him more than dayclothes.

He was busily engaged in cutting bread and cheese, using a painted shield as a platter. Ingolf dredged up newly acquired heraldic knowledge to read it: Argent, a fess Gules, in chief two greyhounds courant proper while the nobleman stopped and glanced up at the pair. The peasant spearman bowed low in a complicated gesture with something like a curtsy involved. Maugis returned it with a nod that was . . . literally . . . lordly.

Mind you, he could have just ignored the kid.

“Thank you, Girars . . . Bero, get some of this, take it back to the rest at your post, boy . . . and tell your father I’m glad he’s keeping a sharp lookout,” he said.

“Thank you, my lord!” the youngster said, louting low again as he accepted the loaves and cheese and meat wrapped in a length of coarse sacking.

“And Girars, next time you leave your post, take your shield with you as well as your spear, or you’ll be very sorry.”

“Yes, my lord!”

The nobleman turned to Ingolf, and bowed respectfully with the gesture between equals.

“Colonel Ingolf! Welcome, my lord of Readstown. What news of the enemy?”

Of course, when it comes to people here being polite to me it sure as shoot doesn’t hurt that I went with Rudi all the way to Nantucket and back and am officially now one of the Nine Companions of the Sword- Quest in song and story. Or that I married his half sister on the way, Mary being a big wheel among the Dúnedain Rangers and now a princess, more or less. Since Rudi is High King Artos these days. I didn’t realize quite how important she was, and it wasn’t why I married her, but since it’s a fact . . . well, use the mojo where you can get it, Ingolf old son. Sure as shit beats being a wandering paid soldier the local Farmers wouldn’t let in the front door and the Bossmen treated like something nasty you scrape off your shoe on a hot day.