My name is Ser Truman the True.
The name has not been mine long enough for me to wear it comfortably. There was a time when I had no name worth remembering, when no man called me ser, and when the only purpose I understood was to survive until the following morning. Hunger had been my master then. Cold had been my companion. Hope was a luxury for those who had eaten.
Now I had a sword at my hip, a knight's cloak upon my shoulders, and the favor of a lord whose name could make men rise from their seats.
I was nineteen years old.
And I was afraid.
Fifty ships sailed toward Cindermoor, the capital of Ashmarch, where the king's banners flew above stone walls and watchtowers. We carried soldiers, horses, provisions, iron, and enough sharpened steel to turn a peaceful harbor into a charnel house. Beneath our feet, the ships groaned with every swell, their timber complaining against the sea as though the old vessels knew where we were going and wished to turn back.
The northern wind came hard across the water.
It hissed through the rigging and worried at the sails, making the ropes sing thin, mournful songs in the darkness. Salt gathered upon my lips. The wind found the gaps in my cloak, crept beneath my tunic, and settled against my skin with the intimacy of a knife. I drew the wool tighter around myself, but it did little good. My fingers had grown stiff, and the hand resting upon the ship's rail was so cold that I could scarcely feel the splinters pressing into my palm.
Ahead, the sea and the sky had become one great darkness.
Only the coast betrayed their division. When the waves lifted our ship, I could glimpse the shoreline stretching beside us, a jagged black mass beneath an empty sky. White surf broke against the rocks below the cliffs. It rushed up the shore in ragged sheets of foam, spread itself across the stones, and retreated into the night, only to return moments later.
Again and again.
The waves never tired. They came ashore, died against the land, and were swallowed by the sea from which they had come.
I watched them longer than I should have.
There was something dreadful in that endless repetition. The shore gave nothing to the water, and the water gained nothing from the shore. Neither could remember how often they had met. Neither could mourn the dead that lay beneath them. The sea did not care for the men sailing upon it, any more than it cared for the fish that fed beneath its waves or the bodies that would someday sink into its depths.
We were little more than things upon its surface.
A hundred men might perish before dawn, and the sea would continue to breathe against the rocks.
I wondered whether the world above the water was any different.
A lantern swung from a wooden post behind me, its weak yellow light trembling over the deck. Men moved through the shadows, wrapped in wool and leather, their breath rising in pale clouds. Some spoke in low voices. Others sat with their backs against the gunwales, checking the buckles of their armor or running whetstones over their blades. A few had already fallen asleep wherever they could find room, their heads resting against barrels and bundles of rope.
They had the look of men who had accepted what morning would bring.
I envied them for it.
Beyond our ship, I could make out the dark shapes of other vessels. Their lanterns bobbed across the water like dying stars, now visible, now swallowed by the swell. Fifty ships had set out beneath Lord Robert's command. Fifty ships, carrying enough men to drown a harbor in blood.
I could not see all fifty.
Sometimes I could barely see the vessel nearest us.
The darkness made the fleet feel smaller than it was. It reduced the world to a length of wet wood beneath my boots, the cold rail beneath my hand, and the black water waiting on every side.
For one brief moment, I imagined that the other ships had vanished.
That I was alone.
The thought was absurd, yet it settled over me with the weight of a shroud. I pictured the sails collapsing, the lanterns going dark, the distant voices falling silent one by one. I imagined the sea swallowing the fleet until nothing remained but a single knight upon a splintered deck, too tired to pray and too frightened to curse.
Then I looked down at my knees.
They were trembling.
I clenched my jaw and straightened my back. A knight should not tremble like a frightened child. A knight should know the purpose of his sword, the weight of his oath, and the price of the blood he had promised to spill. He should meet danger with a steady gaze and death with a steady hand.
At least, that was what I had believed knights to be before I became one.
The title sat strangely upon me still. I had learned how to polish my armor, how to keep my sword sharp, how to sit a saddle without being thrown, and how to hold a shield without exposing my ribs. I had learned to obey orders and to give a few of my own. I had learned that a battle was not a song sung by a bard, but a confused and terrible thing in which men screamed for their mothers while other men trampled them into the mud.
Yet there remained parts of me that no swordmaster could train away.
I still counted the days by the meals I had eaten. I still woke at the slightest unfamiliar sound. I still found myself watching other people's hands whenever they stood too close, wondering whether they meant to strike me, steal from me, or send me away.
And, sometimes, when the nights were quiet enough, I still felt like the boy who had never possessed anything that the world could not take from him.
The northern wind rose.
I shivered.
Are you afraid?
The question had not yet been spoken, but I heard it all the same.
Perhaps that was the worst of it. I knew what my answer ought to be. I knew what a brave man might say, what a knight would be expected to say, and what a fool might shout merely to convince those around him.
I had rehearsed every answer except the honest one.
Yes.
I was afraid of Cindermoor. I was afraid of the men waiting behind its walls, of the arrows that would darken the sky and the blades that would find the gaps in my armor. I was afraid of horses screaming beneath me, of hands reaching for me through the smoke, of being trampled by men who would never know my name.
More than any of those things, I was afraid of dying without understanding why I had lived.
A man might bear hunger because he hoped to eat tomorrow. He might endure humiliation because he believed there would come a day when he could stand upright without fear. He might even endure suffering for another person's sake, if he loved that person enough.
But what was a man to do when tomorrow offered nothing? When every road led to another indignity, and every season brought the same hunger beneath a different sky?
I had seen men live that way. I had watched them grow old in the space of a few winters. Their shoulders bent, their teeth rotted, and their faces became maps of disappointments they no longer cared to name. They worked, slept, and woke to work again until death came to collect them.
Some had been kinder than I deserved.
Some had been crueler than I could forgive.
None had escaped being forgotten.
A gust struck the vessel broadside. The deck tilted beneath my feet, and the cold rail bit into my palm.
I looked toward the shore. A wave broke against the rocks, its white foam briefly luminous beneath the faint light filtering through the clouds. Then it withdrew, leaving the stones black and empty.
I wondered whether all the things we did mattered so little in the end.
The thought sickened me more than the cold.
"Ser Truman."
The voice came from behind me.
I turned too quickly and nearly struck my shoulder against the rail.
Lord Robert Spencer stood a few paces away.
I had not heard him approach. The wind had swallowed his footsteps, or perhaps I had been listening so intently to my own thoughts that the rest of the world had ceased to exist. He wore a dark cloak fastened at the throat, its edges stirring in the wind. There was no crown upon his head, no gilded chain about his neck, and no jeweled ornament to announce his rank. The light caught only the hard lines of his face and the pale gleam of his eyes.
He looked as though the cold were an inconvenience he had long ago dismissed from consideration.
Behind him, a sailor hurried past carrying a coil of rope. The man noticed Robert, lowered his head, and moved on without a word.
Robert watched him go before turning to me.
"Are you afraid?"
The question was quiet.
That made it worse.
Had he barked the words like a captain inspecting a coward, I might have found the courage to lie with some conviction. Had he laughed, I might have answered with a laugh of my own. Instead, he asked as though the answer mattered, and as though he had already decided not to condemn me for it.
I shook my head.
"No, my lord."
The lie left my mouth before I could think better of it.
Robert regarded me for a moment. His gaze dropped to my hands, then to the rail that I was gripping hard enough to whiten my knuckles.
He said nothing.
I loosened my fingers.
"I see," he said at last.
There was neither amusement nor anger in his voice. Somehow, I found that more humiliating than either.
He came to stand beside me. For a time, we looked toward the coast together. The wind tugged at his cloak. Salt spray struck the side of the vessel and drifted across the deck in a fine, cold mist.
At length, he spoke.
"You may lie to me, Truman. You may lie to your comrades. If it pleases you, you may lie to every man aboard these ships."
He turned his head.
"But you cannot lie to yourself."
I lowered my eyes.
"The sea does not become shallower because a man insists that he can swim," Robert continued. "A sword does not grow dull because its wielder calls it sharp. And fear does not depart merely because you refuse to name it."
He rested one hand upon the rail. His fingers were bare, though the wood was wet and bitterly cold.
"There are men who mistake the absence of fear for courage. They are fools. A man who does not understand danger cannot understand bravery. He may charge into battle with his eyes shut and call himself a hero, but the dead have little use for the names given to them by fools."
A wave struck the hull below us. The ship groaned, and water rushed past in a dark, hissing sheet.
Robert did not look away from the shore.
"Fear is a warning. Sometimes it warns us wisely. Sometimes it warns us of things that have not yet come to pass and may never come. The trouble begins when a man gives it command of his life."
I listened.
I had heard men speak of courage before. Captains praised it when they wished their soldiers to advance. Lords praised it when they wished their servants to remain silent. Old men praised it when they wished the young to repeat the mistakes that had ruined their own lives.
Robert spoke of it as though it were something that could be examined, weighed, and put to use.
He glanced at me again.
"Tell me, Ser Truman. Why are you here?"
"To serve you, my lord."
"That is an answer. It is not a reason."
I opened my mouth, then closed it.
He waited.
I had expected him to supply the answer himself. Lord Robert rarely seemed at a loss for words, and when he spoke before a gathering of men, silence followed him as surely as a shadow follows its master. Yet now he offered me no rescue. He stood beside me and waited for me to find something worth saying.
"I swore an oath," I managed.
"Men swear oaths for many reasons. Some do so because they believe in what they promise. Some because they desire the rewards that follow. Others because they fear what will happen if they refuse."
His eyes settled upon mine.
"Which sort are you?"
I thought of the sword at my hip, the weight of my armor, and the men sailing toward a city where many of us would leave our blood. I thought of the life I had lived before the oath, and the life I had imagined would follow it. I had told myself that serving Robert would make me a better man. I had told myself that a knight could do more than a starving boy, that a sword in an honest hand could protect those whom the world had abandoned.
Yet I had never asked myself whether I believed those things because they were true or because I needed them to be true.
"I believe in your cause, my lord," I said.
"Do you?"
His reply was so immediate that I faltered.
"Yes."
"Then remember why."
He turned toward me fully. There was nothing in his bearing that demanded I bow, yet I found myself standing straighter beneath his gaze.
"When you are cold, remember why you endure it. When you are hungry, remember what you have chosen to pursue. When your legs tremble beneath you and your heart tells you to flee, remember what brought you here."
He paused as the wind swept between us.
"Purpose will not make you invulnerable, Truman. It will not stop an arrow, mend a broken bone, or compel a frightened man to stand when every instinct tells him to run. Do not expect it to perform miracles."
His voice hardened.
"But when fear begins to bargain with you—when it tells you that your oath is foolish, that your struggle is hopeless, that surrender would be easier—you must know what answer to give it."
"And what answer is that, my lord?"
"Your reason."
He spoke the words without raising his voice.
"Fear asks what you stand to lose. Purpose reminds you what you stand to lose if you abandon the struggle. The two questions are not the same."
For a moment, there was only the wind.
Robert looked toward Cindermoor, where the dark outline of the coast disappeared into the night. I could not see the capital from where we stood. Somewhere beyond the cliffs and the empty stretches of water lay its harbors, its markets, its towers, and its high-walled manors. Men were sleeping within those walls, secure beneath their roofs, unaware that fifty ships were bearing down upon their kingdom.
Some would wake to fight us.
Some would wake to flee.
Some would never wake at all.
"I will not tell you that your purpose must always be noble," Robert said. "Men have slaughtered thousands in the name of noble purposes. Nor will I promise that the world will reward you for pursuing yours. It rarely does."
He rested his hands upon the rail again.
"I ask only that you know what you are fighting for. Know it well enough that, when the hour comes, you may look upon the price and decide for yourself whether you are willing to pay it."
I studied him, searching for some hint of mockery or doubt. There was none that I could see. He did not offer me comfort. He did not tell me that we would triumph at Cindermoor, that my fears were foolish, or that the gods would protect us.
He offered me a question and left the answer in my keeping.
Somehow, that was harder to bear than a command.
For I knew the answer.
I had always known it.
I had merely spent too long trying to live without remembering it.
My gaze drifted from the shore to the black water beyond our ship. The wind still gnawed at my face. My knees still trembled, and the thought of the battle waiting for us at Cindermoor had lost none of its terror.
Yet beneath that fear, something stirred.
Not courage. Not yet.
Memory.
There had been a time when I possessed no sword, no title, and no lord to whom I could swear allegiance. There had been a time when I could not imagine living long enough to grow old, much less dying for a cause. I had been a boy who knew the smell of refuse heaps better than the smell of a clean hearth, who measured his days by the scraps he found and whose greatest ambition was to see the next sunrise.
I had believed that was all life could ever offer me.
Then there had been a girl who shared her bread with me.
A girl who had dreamed of a distant, peaceful land where she might grow rich enough never to bow her head again. A girl who had made promises with the solemn certainty of a child and believed, for both our sakes, that the world might someday be kind.
For years, I had told myself she had forgotten me.
It was easier to imagine her alive somewhere far away, living the life she had wanted, than to ask what had become of her.
The sea breathed against the shore.
Robert said nothing more.
And in the darkness, with fifty ships carrying me toward war, I remembered the purpose that had made me a knight.
I remembered Lysaro.