All around him, his squadmates were stirring and stretching and yawning and rubbing their eyes, as he was doing. Sergeant Joram roared at them as loudly as he roared at Rollant, though their hair was dark. Joram treated everyone like a serf-or rather, like a free man in the army.

No, Rollant hadn’t had to join King Avram’s host to return to the north country to make war against the baron who’d chained him to the land-that was how he thought of the fight, in purely personal terms. He’d been making pretty good money as a carpenter down in New Eborac. He’d married a pretty blond girl he met there; her family had escaped feudal ties a couple of generations before. They had two towheaded children.

Norina had wept when he took King Avram’s silver bit. “I have to,” he told her. “Geoffrey and the northern nobles are trying to make sure we never get our place in the sun.”

His wife hadn’t understood. He knew that. Norina took for granted the freedom to go where she wanted when she wanted and do whatever she pleased once she got there. Why not? She’d enjoyed it all her life. Rollant hadn’t, which made him realize exactly how precious it was.

Right now, that freedom consisted of standing in line along with a lot of other poorly shaved, indifferently clean men and snaking toward the big brass kettles hung above three fires. When Rollant got up to the fire to which his line led, a bored-looking cook slapped a ladleful of stew down on his tin plate. Rollant eyed it with distaste: barley boiled to death, mushy carrots, and bits of meat whose origin he probably didn’t want to know. He’d eaten better back on the baron’s estate.