“What’s a mageera?” Charlie said, a wrinkle in his brow.

“Magerra,” Caroline corrected. “It’s a small duchy, isn’t it? Up north, where the carver beavers are. We use their fur for our garments. One of your cloaks is lined with carver beaver fur.”

“Is it?”

“The one you spilled mare’s milk on, remember? Mother threw up a storm.” She sighed. “Anyway, continue, Sir Roel.”

He cleared his throat. “The king, your grandfather, sent me up to Magerra. I must’ve been only a few years older than you, Princess Caroline. But I had slain monsters, fought heretics. I was finally starting to realize it wasn’t so easy, being a paladin.”

“What do you mean?” Charlie asked, confused.

“The fighting itself is the easiest thing about it, Your Highness. But what about the dead, the ones you should’ve saved, the ones that you couldn’t save? When I’m ordered to slay something like the Acid Spitter, how many could have been saved if I had arrived a day earlier? How can a man rest well when he knows that if he hurried instead of sleeping, there could be one less victim? I’m strong, I realized, but no one is omnipotent.” For a moment, he broke etiquette and stared deep into Charlie’s eyes, lingering for a long moment before lowering his gaze.

“It was rumored that spies were spreading rumors and trading secrets in Magerra. The king couldn’t allow that, so he sent me and three hundred men. Duke Pinabel, overseer of the region, was supposed to give orders, but well…” He chose his words carefully. “He was a rather lax man. I only spoke to him when he had orders from the king. Other than that, we were on our own, and I was the unofficial leader of the group.

“The people were upset. The duke’s own soldiers had been given free rein as well, and they would often act upon insubstantial leads with violence and intimidation. At the same time, they’d overlook just about anything for the right amount of money.

“When we arrived, the citizens expected more of the same from us. It was my fault. I hadn’t done my research, and I didn’t realize how angry they were. I wasn’t aware of the full extent of the soldiers’ abuses. I gave a speech at the town square to explain our intentions, to assure that we were just there to establish order. At first, they listened quietly. But they were restless.”

He gestured at the small piece of cake leftover on the prince’s plate. “That’s all it took. Someone in the crowd threw something of that size at one of the soldiers. A snowball, maybe. My soldiers didn’t understand the situation either, so from their perspectives, it was an unprovoked attack on their dignity.” He fell silent.

“What next?” Charlie pressed.

“What else do men do when their dignities have been scratched?” Caroline said in a low whisper.

“I should’ve reacted faster, but to be honest, it was the first time I had been slighted. I was sixteen, seventeen at most…” He shook his head. “No, I’m just making excuses. The truth is I had no clue what to do. So, I watched in horror. The soldiers rushed at the crowd, and although there were a few casualties, no one was dead. Not yet. I reported the incident to the duke, cowardly omitting my moment of inaction, and he reported it to the king. His Majesty wrote back quickly. I was to take the duke’s few hundred soldiers as my own and bring order to the duchy. More patrols, random searches, that kind of thing. And if it came to it, retaliate with full force.

“It didn’t take long for violence to break out. The duke’s soldiers bowed to me, but they didn’t obey me. I didn’t have the prestige or peerage. I had yet to make a name for myself. Dragons and monstrous spiders are always in stories, but they’re not so commonplace. And even if they were, I was young and inexperienced. The greatest feat I had accomplished by that point was killing the Acid Spitter, and I had barely managed to hold onto my life then.

“So, the duke’s soldiers ignored my warnings, and their abuses escalated. They seized goods and coin purses, started brawls, and ordered searches on women who had done nothing but look pretty. One of those women was an innkeeper’s daughter. The innkeeper beat two soldiers to a bloody pulp. So, the soldiers, they…” He broke off and glanced at the princess.

“They what?” Charlie asked.

“Sir Roel, please don’t stop the story on my account,” Caroline said with a frown. “I want to hear it. As it really happened.”

“Well, they tarred and feathered him,” he said after a moment.

“Tarred and feathered?” Caroline repeated with confusion.

Surprisingly, it was Charlie who answered. “I’ve heard about it. It happens in the stories sometimes. That’s what the townspeople do to tricksters and swindlers. They cover the man in tar and throw feathers over his body.”

The princess looked aghast. “That’s horrible.”

“It’s a method of public shaming,” Roel said. “The tar’s hot, but it’ll leave burns at most. They forced the innkeeper to stand in the square. It was supposed to be for two hours, but the mobs formed quickly. I got there just when the fighting started.” He gripped the hilt of his sword and clenched his teeth. “The Lord has gifted me with a divine power that only a few possess. But there was nothing I could do in that moment.”

“But…” Charlie opened and closed his mouth several times. “Couldn’t you order them to stand down? Stop the bad ones from fighting?”

“Everyone was fighting. I hardly understood what had transpired, and it was only later that I got the full details of the event. By the time it cleared up, we had twenty-seven dead. Some soldiers, but mainly townspeople. But I knew it wasn’t over yet. It would only get worse from here. I went to Duke Pinabel and asked him to stop them, but he declined my request.”

He omitted the fact that the duke had been in a bathtub at the time. Peasants bathed once a week if that. The duke had built his castle around a thermal spring, and it was said he spent most of his days in the bathtub.

Duke Pinabel had barely glanced at Roel the entire time and replied to his concerns with

a simple question: “Do you think we will lose?” He had been at a loss for words for a moment – losing wasn’t the issue. When he replied that they were unarmed townspeople, the duke said, “then it’s fine,” and waved him away.

“The entire duchy devolved into chaos and fire overnight. And when it was over, only the soldiers stood tall. The citizens, those who survived, retreated into their homes.” He drew a shaky breath. “Over a few weeks, the bustling streets had become quiet, and the once flourishing marketplace was empty. Duke Pinabel was supposed to be in command, so he was stripped of his authority and forced to move to the Wetshard Lands. The council reprimanded me, and for a year, I was assigned the most menial of tasks. Of course, the news of the incident was suppressed, and if you did hear about it, most of the blame was attributed to heretics and spies.”

“That’s not right,” Charlie said. His brow was furrowed, and he looked almost like his father. “That’s not right,” he repeated. “The soldiers were wrong. The duke was wrong. They should’ve listened to you. It wasn’t your fault.”

“I did nothing, Your Highness. I tried to stop fights, but there’d be more two more happening at the same time. The soldiers I had brought to the duchy stopped listening, too. I was but a single man.”

He wanted to close his eyes, but he knew the images of what had transpired would come to his mind. Somehow, the townspeople had acquired weapons, and that only made things worse. He had to cut down men, some of his own who had insisted on lynching the leader of a small band of ruffians to teach them a lesson.

The leader was but a boy clutching an ax in one hand. His eyes were defiant, but his scrawny arms were shaking. Roel was about the same age as he was, and that could be why he strongly refused to let his men carry out the lynching. One of the soldiers, a grizzled man whose face he could no longer recall either because he couldn’t or didn’t want to, had pulled out his sword.

“Alright, we won’t lynch him, but he still needs to die,” the man had said. “Or else they won’t learn.”

“No, I won’t allow it,” he replied, his voice cracking.

“You’re being foolish, boy.” The soldier spat on the ground, and with the same nonchalance, drew a flat arc with his sword and sliced the leader’s head off. Before he knew it, Roel had drawn his own sword – a real sword since Olivier had not commissioned Durendal for him yet – and with a golden flash, the soldier’s head tumbled to the ground and rolled next to the boy’s. He had unintentionally called upon his blessing and had swung the sword with so much strength that it had flown out of his hand and lodged itself into a barrel.

Upon reflection, he thought that that moment was his biggest mistake. The incident had occurred in the middle of the street – everyone had known about it once the day ended. His own men turned on him. Although he was still regarded as a commander of sorts only because of his status as a paladin, they disobeyed him when his attention was diverted.

Only overwhelming violence could bring an end to further violence. Furthermore, it had to be a carefully orchestrated show of violence. Instead, he had swung his sword without thinking. It was only fair that he would suffer for it.

“I understand this is a gruesome story, one that you might not normally hear in the palace,” he said softly. “But I want you to understand what it means to fight and to lead. It is not enough to be strong or honorable. Competence is oftentimes not the sum of those two things.”

“Then what is competence?” Princess Caroline asked. She stared at him fixedly, and there was something familiar about the steely-eyed look on her face. The nervous, awkward princess he had met at the banquets was nowhere to be seen. “You will lead again soon. How will you do it?”

“I only know one way of doing things, Your Highness: I will not falter. I will lead the men straight and true.”

He truly did not want to lead again, but he would. This time, he had his reputation as the Hero of Rove, but even that might not be enough. It was possible that a similar situation would occur again. At Magerra, he had been a paladin of small repute, and most of the blame had fallen on Duke Pinabel for his utter disregard and incompetence. But now, all eyes would be on him, and he could no longer blame inexperience or youth.

No one spoke. Charlie had a dissatisfied frown; this was not the story he had wanted to hear. As for the princess, she had a thoughtful expression on her face.

The only thing he could hope was that the story would stay in Charlie’s mind. He had told the story as truthfully as he could and without exaggeration. He felt no relief or catharsis in recounting the whole horrible event. Perhaps that was because he had left out a single detail, small but significant only to him, that he would never tell anyone.

Before embarking on his mission, he had already been familiar with the duchy of Magerra. He knew of its long, harsh winters, so bitter and cold that even the nobility wasn’t safe in their manses, and that on some mornings if one looked up towards the sky, it was impossible to distinguish the mountain peaks from the clouds.

He knew that the best spots to hunt carver beavers were the most dangerous; the northeast of the duchy, often referred to as the Bearbel Snowlands, was known for its “stained-glass lakes” where many had fallen through seemingly solid ice and drowned.

And he knew that if one of your brothers shoved you in the snow, the only way it would end would be with both of you covered in mud and slush and your mother doling out punishment – “you think sheepskin cloaks are cheap?” she’d mutter – with the piece of cedarwood that she kept by her bedside.

He had been born and raised in Magerra.