Of course, as someone with progressive aspirations, Ronan wasn't satisfied that it was just him alone that was getting better and better...
Which is why while he's at it, he's thinking of reforms to be done alongside his fellow knights-in-training.
Even as a young lord with very sus claims, these knights represent his power... and they need to be more than just fighters wearing very noticeable bronze.
A transformation and reform was in order... using ideas he could remember from his old life and maybe pestering the maester some more for books on raising armies.
Then books on leadership, command, fostering loyalty and all that.
Of course, he also had to multitask, given that he planned to not stop his learning of other disciplines.
All in all, Ronan was going to be very busy but with the page... it should be acceptable. More than rewarding even.
---------
It began with him, that one boy.
That one boy who just refused to be ordinary.
Willam Royce had grown up among the clangor of steel and the scent of sweat and dust.
Training yards were as common to him as prayer halls.
But what had always been routine... ritual even... began to shift when the bastard of Runestone, Ronan Stone, took to the grounds in earnest.
The change was quiet at first. Subtle.
A few longer hours here, a few new drills there.
But before long, the whole yard began to move differently.
He was just a boy like many his age... yet he trained like a man possessed.
There was rhythm in his motions, a strange patience that none of them had.
Every strike, every parry, was deliberate... as though he saw the art of war as something to be studied rather than merely endured.
The knights had mocked him at first. How could they not?
A boy famed for carving toys and clever trinkets, suddenly telling men twice his age to run, stretch, and sing.
Yet they followed.
Gods help them, they followed.
Because it worked.
Soon, the training yards of Runestone were alive before dawn.
While the rooster still crowed and the sea breeze bit through the mist, the knights and squires gathered.
They began with stretches. Something no Royce man had ever thought to do before battle.
Ronan said it "lessened the strain," and though most didn't understand how, they soon noticed that soreness faded faster and fewer men were laid up with pulled muscles.
Then came the running... not just a few laps about the yard, but full jogs across the coastal roads and cliffs of Runestone.
They ran past the fishing ports and over the old bronze causeways, boots thudding in unison, the breath of a hundred men rising like fog.
To keep the rhythm, Ronan had them sing. He called it "cadence," some strange foreign word that caught on quickly.
And of them all, one song became Willam's favorite... the marching chant known as "Come On Over".
Which went like...
Come on over
The war's not over
So put your weapon next to mine
And we'll beat'em all down the line
I hacked insurgent one
Did that one just for fun
So put your weapon next to mine
And we'll beat'em all down the line
Come on over
The war's not over
So put your weapon next to mine
And we'll beat'em all down the line
I sliced insurgent two
Did that one just for you
So put your weapon next to mine
And we'll beat'em all down the line
I cut insurgent three
Did that one just for me
So put your weapon next to mine
And we'll beat'em all down the line
Come on over
The war's not over
So put your weapon next to mine
And we'll beat'em all down the line
They all sang it in chorus, their voices rising over the surf, echoing through the cliffs.
Willam thought it foolish at first... singing while training... but then realized how effective it was.
It unified them.
Kept the line together, the pace even, the morale high.
No one fell behind when the rhythm carried them.
That was what made Ronan's methods work, Willam decided... they made men want to move together.
The songs, the drills, the constant improvement... none of it felt like labor when it was done as one body.
And Ronan kept improving things. Gods, he never stopped.
Running soon turned into weighted runs... hauling stones up the steep ridges of the Vale, forging endurance on the same slopes that once forged bronze.
Then came swimming lessons.
At first, many balked. Knights were not sailors, after all.
But Runestone thrived on its ports, its fleets, its coastal holds... and Ronan said a man who could not swim had no place defending the sea.
So they swam.
They learned to row, to fish, to haul nets. They became seafaring warriors in truth, fit to defend the tides as well as the mountains.
It did not stop there.
There were the strange "push-ups," where men lowered their bodies to the ground and raised them again until their arms trembled.
The "pull-ups," where they hung from iron bars until their strength failed after lifting up their own bodies many times over.
And many other exercises that targeted some body part and honed it. Even the legs, as leg days are said to be just as important.
In any case, there were also weighted lifts, where they raised great stones or heavy and special-shaped irons again and again.
Ronan said these built the muscle and though few knew how that made sense, none could deny its results.
Every knight in Runestone began to stand straighter. Strike harder. Endure longer.
Even the veterans... men like Ser Gerold and Gunthor Royce, the Bronze Giant... had taken notice.
The old guard scoffed at first, but once they saw the younger knights and even the training squires lasting longer in sparring bouts... they quietly began to adopt the same habits.
And then came the weapons. Wherein Ronan was a master of them all. Even the designated master-at-arms had to call him grandmaster-at-arms as no jape.
The yard rang with his lessons on sword and shield, axe and spear, dagger and hammer, even the bow.
His methods were precise and measured, with each weapon studied like a discipline of its own.
He broke them down to motions... angles, ranges, momentum... so that even the most stubborn squires found themselves improving.
He taught not only how to strike, but why the strike worked.
Knife-throwing contests became a daily practice.
Splitting wood with the axe turned from a chore to a drill.
Using hammers to help with building... using said hammers and clashing it against molten metals... to train warhammering.
But maybe it's just to use able bodies for anything they could be needed. Especially the buildings, restoration, and what else Ronan needed from them. Ships most foremost.
And there are even unarmed training... fists, grapples, stances... all honed beneath his eye.
To train as though you will one day be unarmed, which was Ronan's reasoning.
Apparently, a knight's worth is not in his weapon, but in his will. And Willam took that to heart.
So, they fought with hands, elbows, knees, and feet... a system he was apparently "reverse-engineering" called the Art of Eight Limbs.
If restricted by half of that, he taught "kickboxing" among the other so-called martial arts he's still coming up with.
And if restricted even further, they continued with just fists, with a style that was mostly boxing.
Yet their strengthening of their skills and body seemed not enough.
As Ronan had them trained in games of wit... from the simple checkers, the complicated chess, to the more familiar cyvasse.
And drilled them in discipline, virtue, and the so-called "ethics of men". Each was expected to live by a code of chivalry beyond the mere words of vows that Vale knights lived by. Reciting rules like scripture... from the Ten Commandments and counting.
Before long, four years passed, and Runestone changed.
Where once there had been only proud knights of bronze, now there stood a growing army... leaner, sharper, stronger.
About a thousand men bore the rune of House Royce, and their fame spread beyond the Vale.
Bards sang of their discipline, of the Bronze Order that moved as one, whose chants shook the coast and whose endurance never failed.
Willam watched it all unfold, half in awe, half in disbelief.
Runestone had always been strong.
Now it was formidable.
Feared among the mountain clans and maybe even the Vale's bannermen.
And it all began with the boy they once called bastard. The bastard of bronze.
Willam often thought of what a wise man said once, long ago... that some men follow tradition because it made us great. Others change it because they wish to make us greater still.
Ronan Stone, it seemed, was the latter.
And what Willam considered the Bronze Age of Runestone had begun from here on out.