Arthur's days in Minas Tirith begin to settle into a pattern of steel at dawn and bandages by dusk.
Chapter 5 – Houses of Healing
The training yard of the Wardens lay in cool early light when Arthur stepped onto the packed earth.
Breath steamed from men and horses alike. Boots scuffed in loose lines as knights stretched, rolled their shoulders, and checked the buckles of their armor. Torin's voice carried over it all, rough and steady.
"Lines. If you can't stand straight, you can't hold a wall."
Arthur joined the front rank, black mithril plates catching the first hint of sun. The new cloak—a deep, almost black blue lined in pale silver—hung from his shoulders, fastened at one side with a simple metal clasp. A few men glanced at it, then quickly away.
Eoric ended up opposite him again, wooden practice sword in hand. The young man still had the open, slightly nervous look of someone trying to earn his place.
"Try not to break me today, ser," Eoric said, attempting a grin.
Arthur raised his practice blade, leveling it between them. "Then mind your footing," he replied.
They moved. Eoric came in with a straightforward cut. Arthur blocked without effort, feeling the impact run up his arm like a light tap, then angled the boy's blade away with a small twist of his wrist.
"Too much arm," Arthur said. "Use your shoulder. And breathe."
Eoric tried again. Little by little, his swings became less wild, more controlled. Around them, other pairs clashed and stumbled, grunts punctuating the morning air.
Torin paced past, watching. His gaze rested on Arthur and Eoric for a moment. He could end this in a heartbeat, the captain thought. But he gives the boy room to learn.
After nearly an hour, Torin called for full-contact drills. Arthur cycled through several opponents—older knights with scars and new recruits with something to prove. He beat each in turn, never with showy moves, only with small, efficient decisions: a step inside a guard, a shift of weight, a tap that knocked a sword from fingers gone numb.
When Torin finally raised a hand to end the session, most men sagged where they stood, chests heaving. Sweat soaked gambesons and hair.
Arthur wasn't breathing any harder than when he'd begun. He rolled his shoulders out of habit; nothing ached.
Eoric, leaning on his sword, stared at him openly. "Do you ever get tired?"
Arthur considered the question. "Not easily," he said.
"Feels unfair," the young man muttered, but there was a trace of admiration in it.
Torin clapped Arthur on the shoulder as the others drifted toward the water troughs. "You're with me at midday," he said. "Outer patrols want a healer's eye on some old wounds. And the Houses of Healing asked for you again."
Arthur nodded. "I'll go there now."
He left his armor in the barracks, keeping only a light breastplate and his sword. The climb to the Sixth Circle took him past vendors setting out fresh bread and fruit, children chasing each other between doorways, and a pair of old men arguing quietly over grain prices. Life felt heavy but steady here, like a city used to tension and yet unwilling to give up its routines.
The Houses of Healing stood behind a low wall of pale stone, their gardens filled with herbs and small trees. Inside, the air cooled and quieted. Beds lined the long hall, white sheets and bandaged limbs everywhere his gaze rested.
Mistress Ioreth met him near the entrance. She wore a plain dark dress and an apron already marked with stains, hair pulled back tightly. Her eyes, however, missed nothing.
"You're late," she said.
He glanced at the sunbeam slanting through the high window. "I came as soon as drills ended."
"That is still later than pain arrives," she replied, but one corner of her mouth moved, almost a smile. "Come. There's work."
They stopped beside a man whose right leg was wrapped from knee to ankle. The cloth had turned dark in places. A young apprentice stood nearby, hands wringing the edge of his own apron.
"I stitched it yesterday," the boy said. "Like you showed me."
Arthur crouched. The leg was swollen, skin hot. He loosened the binding a little. The stitches were large and uneven, pulling the skin together in some places and biting too deep in others.
"Your pattern is correct," Arthur said quietly. "Your tension is not."
The apprentice's shoulders hunched. "I thought—"
"You thought fast," Arthur cut in gently. "That matters. Now we fix it."
He asked Ioreth for hot water and strong spirits. As she sent someone to fetch them, he began removing the worst of the stitches, careful not to tear more than necessary. The man on the bed clenched his jaw, looking at the ceiling.
"Breathe with it," Arthur said. "In when I pull, out when I pause. It gives you something to hold onto."
The man followed his rhythm, breaths rough but steadying.
Arthur cleaned the wound, his hands moving with practiced ease. In his mind, the words from his old life surfaced—debridement, contamination, dead space—but he kept them there, unspoken. To the others, it was simple: remove what was rotting, leave what could live.
He stitched again, smaller and more frequent, following the natural lines of the leg. When he tied the last knot, the skin lay flatter, less strained.
The apprentice watched closely. "You stitched along the curve, not straight across," the boy said slowly.
"Skin stretches in certain directions," Arthur replied. "Fight it, and it tears again. Work with it, and it holds."
Ioreth checked his work with a quick, sharp eye. "Better," she said. To the apprentice: "Watch and remember. Pride kills as quickly as any wound."
The boy nodded, cheeks flushed.
They moved from bed to bed. A cracked rib here, a fever there. Arthur noticed where their methods matched what he knew and where they differed. They used certain herbs more freely than he would have, others not at all.
At one point, Ioreth handed him a small bundle of dried leaves. "Kingsfoil," she said. "We use it for bad air in the lungs and stubborn infection."
He rolled a leaf between his fingers, noting the scent—sharp, clean, almost bitter. It reminded him of some of the stronger antiseptics he'd once used, though milder.
"Does it always work?" he asked.
"Nothing always works," she said. "But it helps more often than it fails."
He nodded. Likely some natural antiseptic compound, he thought, filing the idea away.
By midday, the hall had quieted. Those who could sleep did; those who couldn't at least lay with less tension in their faces.
Ioreth stepped aside with him near an open window that overlooked the gardens. "You see bodies differently," she said. "Not as pieces to be patched, but as… patterns."
"I spent a long time learning those patterns," he replied.
Her gaze lingered on his hands. "And now you spend your mornings swinging a sword."
"Both have their place," Arthur said. "Sometimes the best way to protect these beds is out there, before people end up in them."
She snorted softly. "You sound like a captain trying to justify his bruises."
"I sound like a tired man who has seen how quickly things go wrong," he said, tone even.
For a moment, their eyes met in quiet understanding. Then a runner from the Wardens arrived at the door, armor clinking.
"Arthur," the man called. "Torin wants you at the gate. Patrol leaves within the hour."
Arthur nodded to Ioreth. "I'll be back when we return."
"You'd better," she said. "Half these fools are planning to test their stitches as soon as someone waves a sword at them."
He collected his armor from the barracks, the motions by now as automatic as washing his hands. Plate, straps, cloak, sword at his hip. As he fastened the last buckle, Eoric poked his head around the corner.
"Riding with us today, ser?" the young man asked.
"That's the idea," Arthur answered.
Eoric grinned nervously. "Good. The last time we went near Osgiliath without you, three men came back with cuts that should've killed them. Captain says you've a way of pulling people back from the edge."
Arthur thought of the man's leg, of the slow, steady breaths in time with his hands. "Sometimes," he said. "If they give me time."
They rode out through the city gates in a column of twenty. The plain stretched ahead, windswept and wide, the broken towers of Osgiliath distant on the horizon. Armor creaked, hooves thudded, leather reins groaned softly under gloved hands.
Arthur rode near the middle of the formation, George steady beneath him. As the city walls receded behind them, he felt that familiar quiet settle in—the sense that here, between life and death, his choices would matter in ways that no one back in the Houses could ever fully see.
Different tools, same purpose.
He let the rhythm of the ride carry him forward, the White City shrinking behind, the broken stones of old battles drawing nearer ahead.