Most of all, he enjoyed strolling-or rather, swaggering-along the streets of Ramblerton in his gray uniform with the two stripes on his sleeve showing off his rank. Northerners, men and women who would gladly have left the Kingdom of Detina when Grand Duke Geoffrey proclaimed himself king in the north, had to get out of his way in a hurry, for along with the uniform he wore a shortsword on his hip and sometimes a crossbow slung on his back.

They got out of his way as they would have for any ordinary Detinan soldier. If they hadn’t, he and his comrades would have made them sorry for it. He was one of King Avram’s soldiers, yes, but not an ordinary Detinan. Ordinary Detinans were swarthy, with dark eyes, dark hair, and, on the men, dark beards. Rollant was a blond, an escaped serf from Palmetto Province who’d fled south to New Eborac and made a good living as a carpenter till taking service with others from his city, from his province, to help liberate all the serfs in the north from their bonds to the land and to their feudal overlords.

That would have been bad enough for the Detinans of Ramblerton. Serfs in arms had been their nightmare ever since their ancestors overthrew the blond kingdoms of the north. Because they’d easily won those wars, they professed to believe blonds couldn’t fight. The gray uniform on Rollant’s back argued against that.

But the stripes on his sleeve were what really made the locals shudder. One of those locals called, “You there!”-not to Rollant, but to his friend Smitty, a common soldier walking at his side.

“You talking to me?” Smitty asked. He was as ordinary a Detinan as any ever born, but for a silly streak.

“Well, who else would I be talking to?” the Ramblertonian demanded.

“Oh, I don’t know.” Smitty donned an expression of exaggerated idiocy. “You might be talking to my corporal there. He’s got more rank than I do. He’s the company standard-bearer, and I’m not.”