“To fallen peers!” echoed the hall, getting to their feet in a great rumble and crack as at least three benches were knocked over. They drank deep and a slight chill ran through the hall. There was a soft hiss as, under their breath, the warriors recited the names of recently fallen friends. Roper bowed his head, horn still outstretched before him, and repeated one name of his own.
“Kynortas.” He looked up. “We will see them again. Second: the awards of valour!”
This elicited a murmur of interest rather than the raucous cheer that had greeted almost everything else this night, and the silence intensified. “This campaign has not been two battles, but three, and on the first, we left the field before the Sutherners did.” Roper paused and held up his hands, as if to keep the good-natured jeer with which these words were received at a distance. They were laughing about what for so long had been his deepest shame, and he let out a breath that he had seemed to hold since that rain-soaked day. “It is not as glorious, but valour in a losing cause is surely the most heroic of all, and there would undoubtedly be fewer men celebrating tonight without the actions of Pryce Rubenson. Perhaps we would not be celebrating at all. For putting down Earl William when other men were looking to the hills, I award him the Prize of Valour!”
Another roar.
Roper turned to Pryce and beckoned him forward. Pryce stood to another great bellow of raucous joy and approached Roper. He bore the adulation of the other warriors lightly, wearing no discernible expression on his face. He dropped to a knee before the Black Lord and leaned his head forward, raising his hands. Roper laid his left hand on Pryce’s head and with his right produced a silver arm-ring. Pryce already wore one on each wrist and Roper added a third, bending it around his right wrist. “A rare reward, for rare courage.” He regarded Pryce, who looked up to meet his eyes. “I’d have given you two if I could.”
“I am honoured with one, my lord.”
That was Pryce’s third.
The record, awarded to Reynar the Tall, was four. Gray had imparted to them the story of how Reynar had died eighty years before, in the act of winning his final prize. It had taken him until the age of one hundred and twenty to win his four prizes. Pryce was barely forty.
Gray, at over one hundred and forty, had two.
Uvoren, almost one hundred, had two.
Roper pulled Pryce to his feet and they embraced, Pryce returning to his seat to the sound of thunderous applause.
“I have one more to give,” declared Roper. “Its recipient shall come as no surprise to those who were at Githru, but here I must honour Pryce once again, as well as Gray Konrathson.” At the mention of Gray’s name, the warriors began to beat their hands upon the table in support. Roper raised a hand and silence fell after a time. “Both showed mighty heroism and, if heroes were scarcer, would each be collecting a prize of their own.” He waited for the hubbub to subside. “But the final Prize is for Leon Kaldison, who ended the battle by the sea for us by slaying a true leader: Cedric of Northwic.” Through the din, Roper turned to Leon and beckoned him forward, affixing his ring as he had done Pryce’s and embracing him. Leon stood humbly before Roper and asked that he might be allowed to speak.
“By all means,” said Roper, standing aside and gesturing to the guardsman. The cheering fell away.
“This is my greatest honour: my first Prize of Valour.” Leon’s voice was deep and slow, and he frowned as he addressed those below him. “But I merely finished Lord Northwic. As my Lord Roper has said already, the work was done by Gray Konrathson and Pryce Rubenson. This ring,” he gestured at his adorned wrist, “is as much theirs as mine.” The hall clapped appreciatively and Leon bowed to Roper and returned to his seat.
Without waiting for silence, Roper hollered: “Peers, have at the meat!” and sat down to help himself to some of the splendid boar before him.
“Well spoke, Husband,” said Keturah, leaning close. “For your first time, at any rate. It’s a shame you can’t win the Prize of Valour. I’m told you’d have had one for charging single- handedly into the Suthern encampment.”
“Miss Keturah,” said Roper. “They exaggerate. The truth is that I lost control of the horse your father gave me.”
“Apparently, it took you rather a long time to regain control of it.” She played along, straight-faced.
“I am a poor rider,” confirmed Roper. “But I wasn’t single-handed. Gray was with me.”
Keturah looked past Roper to the guardsman on his right, who at that moment was weeping tears of laughter. Tekoa was looking on, amused, and every time it looked as though Gray was about to compose himself, Tekoa would mutter something else to him and Gray would almost collapse into the boar before him. “I think he will be with you as long as you need him.”
“He is the best man I know,” said Roper, sincerely.
“Have you met his wife?”
“No.”
“Sigrid Jureksdottir. You should know her, she’s Jormunrekur.”
“Is she?”
“And perhaps the most beautiful woman in the Black Kingdom.”
“How is it that I’ve never heard of her?”
“Not your generation,” said Keturah wryly. “But I’m told it was a scandal at the time. The beautiful daughter of the Jormunrekur, marrying a mere Pendeen legionary from House Alba. His esteem has risen considerably since those days.”
“The devil,” said Roper, grinning. “Good for Gray. And good for Sigrid, that her seeds have flourished.”
“As have mine,” said Keturah. “I married a boy who rode off to war and whom I never thought I’d see
