Ser Gerold Royce had known battle.
He had ridden against the painted men of the Mountains, those savage clans who came down in their hundreds to raid the Vale's villages and farms.
He had fought on cold slopes and in narrow passes, with steel and shield, against foes who fought like wild wolves... quick, cruel, and without honor.
And though the battles were small by the reckoning of the realm, they were enough to forge him.
He was a man of Runestone through and through.
Bronze and oath, duty and honor... these were the words he lived by.
It was not in him to question his tasks, though there were times he could not help but grumble in private. Especially now, with Lady Rhea.
His cousin. His eventual liege.
Headstrong, proud, unbending as the stone she ruled from.
He had respect for her strength... a rare kind among women, rarer still among Royces... yet there were days he longed for the simpler order of a lord commanding and a knight obeying.
But these were not simple times.
In the Eyrie ruled a girl, Lady Jeyne Arryn, still in her youth.
His uncle, Lord Yorbert Royce, served as regent... old, weary, and not long for this world. It was said he barely rose from his bed now, his body giving in... though his will had not.
Soon, the weight of Runestone would pass to Rhea. Gerold knew this, as did every knight and bannerman in their halls.
He had his doubts, yes, but he kept them close. A Royce does not show division before others.
And so when Rhea told him that her son... the boy of many names, Ronan Stone to some, Ronan Royce to her... would be his to train, Gerold simply bowed.
It was his duty, and duty was reason enough.
The boy's fame had reached far beyond the Vale.
The maester wrote of him as a prodigy... the Stone boy who carved wonders and made even lords of the realm bemused with toys of his own design.
But Gerold was not a man for clever hands and pretty playthings.
He believed a man's worth was measured in his stance, his strength, and his sword arm.
Still, he was not blind to the strangeness of the task.
A bastard, even a bright one, was not often given the honor of squiring beneath the heir's own kin.
But Rhea had made it plain.
He will train here, she said. Among his blood. For no one beyond Runestone will take him.
Gerold had not argued.
He had seen what others whispered... that the boy's name and rise had stirred unease.
Especially now that Daemon Targaryen had cast Rhea aside, his marriage dissolved by the King's will.
That alone was a wonder in itself.
Never before had a marriage of House Royce ended so... not by widowhood or the sword, but by decree.
Making Gerold wonder if that Daemon had schemed for it from the start, that all his cruelty and mockery of his Vale wife had been to win that freedom.
If so, then the boy Ronan was both curse and symbol... the unwanted link between dragon and bronze.
Some called him the bastard who broke the match.
Gerold had no love for Daemon, but neither did he think it wise to speak such words.
Still, he wondered.
Rhea swore that the boy was Daemon's. He believed her... she was too proud to lie of such a thing. And when he looked at Ronan, he could see something there that was not wholly Royce.
It was not in his hair, but in his eyes, his purple-laced grey gaze...
Regardless, Gerold accepted the task.
From that year forth, he would teach the boy the way of the bronze.
He would learn the weight of a sword, the balance of a jousting lance, the stance of a knight of the Vale.
When the boy took his first lesson, Gerold saw no cringing weakness.
None of that maester-ly aptitude dampened the boy's entrance into the way of arms.
He saw control. Restraint. The kind that comes from patience rather than fear.
Again and again... the boy struck with precision, not power, and when corrected, he listened.
In time, he came to see that the boy's measure was study. Ronan learned every motion before he made it, as though every strike was a puzzle to solve.
He was no brute, but neither was he frail. The strength came... slowly, as it should... but the focus was there from the start.
After nothing less than a hundred trying swings... the boy actually mastered a motion and incorporated it into his growing skill with the blade.
And though Gerold did not say it aloud, he began to think that this strange boy might yet honor both sides of his blood.
The dragon for half of the blood, and the bronze for the potential of the body.
So began the next turning in the life of Runestone's heir-that-was-and-was-not.
The clever hands that once carved toys now gripped steel... and the quiet mind that once built blocks and pots began to learn the craft of battle.
Gerold Royce had seen many training squires in his life.
But none, he thought, would be quite like this one.
He would make a bronze knight of the boy as ordered of him... but even so, he felt that this boy had his own making to be something else entirely.
Either way, it would be worth the watch. Worth all the guidance.
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And yeah, Ronan himself was training and whatnot now...
Of course, it must be noted that he wasn't really an athletic guy. Nor was he into honing his physicality.
He was pretty much a couch potato at best.
Either doomscrolling or watching movies in his downtime, while his most productive mode is when he's writing, lying down in his bed while doing so.
So, he really should be quite far from this prodigy of a squire that Runestone knights and other squires were eyeing, murmuring about.
Fortunately, he had a cheat and it was as effective to martial methods just as how it worked with knowledge.
As long as he made an effort and got his reps in, he's bound to have some gains. With a corrective and improved insight rewarded after a certain threshold.
The page in his head didn't discriminate.
Accordingly... after changing his skins from being a linguist, an author, an artist, a rune apprentice, a wood craftsman, a Captain Boomerang-er, a toymaker, a plank builder, a potmaker, and a gardener of a botanist...
It also didn't take long for him to be a more-than-steady squire with unmatched wood-swordmanship.
For Heaven Rewards Diligence. Heaven rewards his diligence, indeed.