Chapter 26 — "The Bronze Gate"
The Bronze Gate was everything the Bloody Gate was not.
Where the Bloody Gate was function — stone and iron and the specific purposefulness of a fortification that had been built to stop things rather than impress them — the Bronze Gate was statement.
Lord Royce's seat sat on a commanding rise above the eastern Vale approaches with the deliberate grandeur of a house that had been significant for a very long time. Banners everywhere — the Royce bronze runes on blue flying from every tower and gate and surface that would hold a banner.
Alaric rode through the outer gate with Harys at his shoulder and the two-fifty behind them and watched the castle's inhabitants watch them arrive.
The yard was already full.
Lords and their retinues from across the Vale — Redfort, Belmore, Corbray, Hunter, Coldwater, a dozen others whose banners he recognised from Edwyn's lessons three years ago and whose faces he was putting to those banners for the first time. Knights everywhere. The specific concentration of armed men that gathered around tournaments — competitive, watchful, the ambient tension of people who had come to measure themselves against each other and were already doing it before the first event.
They watched the two-fifty come through the gate.
Not just Alaric. The column. The composition of it — Vale veterans riding alongside former mountain clansmen in a formation that should have been awkward and wasn't because a year of shared campaign had burned the awkwardness out of it entirely. Davan riding near the front with the easy authority of a man who had stopped being a curiosity and become a fact.
Alaric had learned to read that quality over three years. It was the quality of rooms and yards and gates adjusting their picture of the world to accommodate something that didn't fit their previous version of it.
He rode through it without acknowledging it.
Lord Nestor Royce received him in the great hall.
The hall was everything Royce's exterior promised — high-ceilinged, well-lit, hung with generations of Royce history in tapestry and trophy and the accumulated weight of a house that had been here since the First Men and had very clear feelings about that fact. A dozen lords were already present, standing in the loose groupings of people at formal occasions who haven't yet found their conversations.
Royce came forward himself.
He was a broader man in person than the correspondence had suggested — built like a man who had once been a serious fighter
Whatever he had expected — whatever sixteen years old and a bastard and an axe and three years in the mountain passes had assembled itself into in Royce's imagination — the reality was apparently satisfactory.
He offered his hand.
"Snow," he said.
"My lord," Alaric said.
"I have been wanting to meet you since a long time. Come and enjoy the host."
"Come. There are people here who want to say the same."
The evening was the evening that formal occasions always were.
Alaric was not naturally good at this.
He was better than he had been. Uncle Ned and Lord Edwyn's lessons, three years of dealing with Vale lords on operational matters
He knew how to listen. He knew which questions were actually questions and which were assessments dressed as questions. He knew when to speak and when to let silence do the work.
Lord Corbray asked him about the night march. Alaric gave him the shape of it without the details that didn't belong in a dinner conversation.
Lord Hunter asked about the clan settlement model — whether it was applicable elsewhere in the Vale, whether the same approach could work in the southern passes where the clan activity was different in character. Alaric gave him an honest answer which was that the model worked because the Painted Dogs had been willing to work within it and that willingness couldn't be manufactured — it had to be created through a specific sequence of events and the sequence mattered as much as the offer.
Hunter listened carefully. Filed it.
Lord Belmore said he had raised a cup to Alaric's name three times in the past year and intended to raise another one tonight.
Alaric thanked him.
A young knight — Alaric didn't catch his name, someone's second son by the look of him, perhaps twenty years old and carrying the specific energy of a man who had drunk enough to misplace his caution
He created a ruckus and said something about the melee tomorrow. That he would win glory and what not. Said he was About looking forward to it to fight the savages and bastards and hearing things about the bastards with a axe .
He said the last part quietly enough that the nearby lords could hear it .
The nearby lords went carefully still.
Alaric looked at the young knight for a moment.
Lord Nestor Royce looks angry and wanted the boy out of there. But still his father was a Lord and couldn't keep him from participating
Alacric didn't care either way .
He turned back to Lord Belmore.
The young knight said nothing further.
Harys's expression remained contained.
In the end Harys smiled and toasted " Tommorow's about to be interesting."
The melee was held the following morning on the flat ground below the castle walls.
Forty-two men entered. Knights of the Vale mostly, with a handful of household fighters from the larger retinues and three men from the two-fifty that Alaric had permitted to enter because they'd asked and because a melee was good practice and because winning prize money was good for morale.
Alaric entered last.
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