"Is everything well?" he said, stopping beside a group of swordsmen. In spite of the heat, some wore their green cloaks so that Gawyn’s white charging boar showed, embroidered on the breast.

Jisao Hamora was the youngest, still with a boy’s grin, but he was also the only one of the five with the small silver tower on his collar, marking him a veteran of the fighting in the White Tower. He answered. "All is well, my Lord."

The Younglings deserved their name. Gawyn himself, a few years past twenty, was among the oldest. It was a rule that they accepted none who had served in any army, or borne arms for any lord or lady, or even worked as a merchant’s guard. The first Younglings had gone to the Tower as boys and young men to be trained by the Warders, the finest swordsmen, the finest fighters, in the world, and they continued part of that tradition, at least, though Warders no longer trained them. Youth was no detriment. They had held a small ceremony only a week past for the first whiskers Benji Dalfor had ever shaved that were not fuzz, and he bore a scar across his cheek from the Tower fighting. The Aes Sedai had been too busy for Healing in the days right after Siuan Sanche was deposed as Amyrlin. She might still be Amyrlin if the Younglings had not faced many of their former teachers and bested them in the halls of the Tower.

"Is there any point to this, my Lord?" Hal Moir asked. He was two years older than Jisao, and like many who did not wear the silver tower, he regretted not having been there. He would learn. "There isn’t a glimmer of Aielmen."

"You think not?" Without any hefting to give warning, Gawyn hurled the rock as hard as he could at the only bush close enough to hit, a scraggly thing.