After choosing the day carefully, Derek set out with all his squires and five Fine-quality warhorses.

By his reckoning, raising a horse from Fine to Excellent would take at least another year of work.

He could not wait that long. Besides, Fine-quality warhorses were already the standard on the market.

Even the King's own household knights rode nothing better.

Take the horse under Derek himself. Its panel read:

Warhorse (unnamed)

Quality: Fine (45/100)

Experience Pool: 0/100

The best animal he owned. The remaining fifty-five points would take time: the pool banked a single point every three or four days, and the horse itself gained a point or two only every month or so.

It was only middling within the Fine grade, yet already better than eighty percent of the warhorses money could buy.

Derek had fitted it with a layer of leather barding. Muscle rippled clean beneath a brown coat brushed to a gloss.

It was a handsome animal by any standard, exactly the sort of horse most knights dreamed of owning.

A true Excellent-grade warhorse was beyond most men's fantasies altogether.

The other riders sat horses that had only just crossed into Fine—visibly a shade lesser.

An all-mounted party traveled quickly.

One night's rest on the road, and they arrived the next day.

This was nearly the heartland of Count Perez's domain—one of the North's rare pockets of dense farms and people.

Knight Croya's fief lay here.

It was a knight's manor inherited from his forebears, among the oldest knight-fiefs in the North.

Over three hundred acres of land, supporting seventy or eighty households who had farmed for the Croya family for generations.

He held the right to raise troops, establish toll stations, levy taxes, and exercise a range of administrative powers.

Even the smallest knightly title carried real authority—

authority no merchant-bought manor could ever exercise.

Not that Knight Croya used those powers much.

This close to the count's castle, keeping soldiers was redundant.

And setting up a toll station was suicide: any business conducted at the count's feet was, eight parts in ten, the count's own.

The land alone brought him two or three hundred gold a year.

With his stipend and various additional income, he lived better than ninety-nine men in a hundred.

One more detail worth noting: Knight Croya's full name carried the name Perez in the middle.

The fief lay close by, so on every rest-day Croya returned to it.

Derek had timed his visit to land exactly there.

Ten months, give or take, since he'd left the order.

At the news of Derek's visit, Croya's first assumption was that the boy had come to pull strings.

A young man tried his fortune, failed, and came home. It was an ordinary turn of events.

As it happened, the count meant to expand the order. Convenient timing.

But before Derek entered, the steward leaned close and murmured what he'd seen.

"Knight Derek arrives with seven riders and a dozen-plus warhorses—every man fully equipped. They look thoroughly respectable."

Respectable: the very lowest compliment payable to a noble.

But then—not everyone earned even that.

Perhaps, Croya mused, I've guessed wrong.

When Derek strode in brimming with confidence, Croya was sure of it.

"Uncle Croya! I've come to beg a favor."

Derek opened with a joke.

The two houses were old family friends; the current Baron Ferreira and Knight Croya had shared a battlefield in their day.

Standing on ceremony would have been the true rudeness.

Sure enough, Croya smiled, with the particular indulgence reserved for a favored junior. "If it's within my power, just name it.

"Although... little Derek, one tour in the world has certainly loosened your tongue."

The old Derek would never have spoken to him like this—stiff-backed, proper to a fault.

But after nearly a year apart, it was understandable that rough company had changed the young man.

Derek's eyes warmed. Favors were favors either way, but personal warmth made them far easier to accept.

Some people believed every boundary should remain perfectly clear. But few such boundaries survived contact with the world. One man's restraint meant nothing if the next lacked it.

Every man who lacked that restraint became another obstacle.

So Derek, laughing, took Croya by the arm and walked him out the front door.

A file of brown warhorses stood arrayed before the gate. Even the lesser few would have taken an expert to tell Fine from common.

The other seven or eight were, at one glance, superb animals every one.

"Fine horses!"

Croya said it evenly, praise tossed off by habit—neither startled nor stirred.

They were good horses, but not astonishing ones.

He commanded a banner. Aside from men, nothing filled his days like horses. Of course he was calm.

That Derek owned so many, though—the boy really had done well for himself.

"Little Derek, have you come to show off? Shall I march you back to the order for a refresher in mucking stables?"

Derek trotted down the steps and stood before the horses.

"Uncle Croya, you asked what I'd been doing out there. This. This is what I brought you—well? Satisfied?"

And now, at last, Croya was startled.

He followed down the steps and went over the horse with his hands and eyes both:

teeth, hooves, legs, coat.

It was a fine animal, standing still beneath Derek's hand and only tossing its head now and then.

Trained, clearly. Battle-ready the day you took the reins.

"A gift? Then I accept."

"Keep it. That one's the gift. These four I'll sell you—at cost."

Croya lacked for nothing in horseflesh personally. But the market lacked—even Count Perez lacked.

Scarce resources always drew competition.

"How much?"

"Take these four. They're lower-grade as warhorses go. Twenty gold a head. Well?"

"Not expensive!"

Not cheap either—right at current market.

But goods like these existed to be exchanged for other resources. At market price, the deal already counted as generous.

Croya decided on the spot. "I'll take all four. And if more of this stock comes your way—come to me first."

"Eighty gold for all five. And if Uncle Croya wants more, another string will arrive next month."

Derek tossed the reins to Simon.

"Oh-ho! Now it's cheap. A gift this size, I'm not sure I dare accept."

...

Sixteen gold a head undercut the market by a solid margin.

Discounts that large never came without expectations.

Croya wanted them—and feared what they might cost him.

"Out with it. What are you after? Let's see if I can help."

There was that personal warmth again. Another man bearing the same gifts might never have gained an audience.

The scrupulous sort would refuse him outright.

The unscrupulous sort would take the gift and acknowledge no debt at all.

The two went back inside. Some things weren't for open air.

"Uncle Croya. These horses of mine... aren't Northern stock.

"And besides horses—weapons, armor, people. I trade in all of it."

"Southern horses run dearer, and the west is too far. So—from further north, is it?

"Good prices, I'll grant. But weapons and armor are embargoed goods. Run them that direction and let the capital catch wind of it, and they will peel the skin off you.

"The Monastery will be frothing too. Hard road. Very hard."

Croya stroked his chin and turned it over. Hatred was hatred; business was business.

Plenty of Northerners traded with the barbarians. Bring warhorses back across the border, and the whole province would applaud.

But weapons and armor moving the other way crossed a genuine taboo. Without a great figure providing protection, the danger was real.

Derek cut in before Croya followed the thought further. "I sell the weapons and armor. What I want in return is people, grain, and ore. That shouldn't be difficult, should it?"

"The horses I understand. But where do the weapons and armor come from?"

"The south. Certain... accidents of fortune. Our trade routes happened to cross, and so..."

Derek stayed vague, and Croya didn't dig.

In trade of this kind, secrecy was the professional standard.

"Then there's no problem at all. The North has never lacked arms dealers. One more will make no difference.

"From now on my own weapons come through you. Match market price or better, and we're done."

Croya was brisk about it. Buying was buying, whatever the source, and his connections could open several markets on Derek's behalf.

A banner captain in Count Perez's order held considerable influence.

Derek thanked him again. With Croya's word secured, many things could now proceed one measured step at a time.

That evening they ate and drank at the manor, and between cups Croya let fall a great deal of news.

Count Perez was, after all, one of the North's few great lords, both a titled noble and one of the crown's senior officials in the region.

News gathered in a house like this. Certain great nobles, for instance, had begun stockpiling war materiel, and even Count Perez was expanding the rolls of his order.

At a measured pace, though. Which meant no immediate urgency.

To Derek, information like this was priceless.

The next morning he left a contact point and took his leave.

In Sentinel City again, he placed orders with several trading houses—iron ore and pig iron both.

The city smithy had by now dwindled into a mere outpost; little real business passed through it.

It refined ore, forwarded resources, quartered a squad of soldiers, and took small escort commissions—

building connections and keeping Derek's name in circulation.

Derek came through often—sometimes leaving Simon in charge, sometimes presiding himself, clearing the unhurried sort of problems.

Since hearing Adrian's counsel, Derek had acted with considerably more confidence.

He even called on the Goat Trading Company and contracted a batch of goods for proxy purchase.

It was a pity Steward Vincent was away; they might otherwise have discussed more business.

The circuit took ten days, and Derek returned to the mountain base—

where several unfamiliar slaves had appeared. He went straight to Little Tru, who had been left in charge. "Lloyd came by?"

Little Tru, thoroughly won over by now, followed Derek wholeheartedly—

training new smiths, even handling simple management.

"Yes, my lord. Word is he caught a rich target—someone flouting the rules and trying to slip through quietly. These slaves are the merchandise."

"How many?"

Derek had spotted more strange faces hauling and hammering around the smithy.

"Twenty-two. They say some escaped—otherwise there would have been at least fifty."

"A slave caravan, then? A shame about the runners."

Derek could guess the victims' trade. Slavers were scarce in the North—far commoner down south.

Little Tru seized the moment to relay terms: "Lloyd's men are asking five gold a head this time. These are tamed slaves, my lord, broken-in—not raw stock.

"Down south, they say, each fetches a dozen gold or more."

The five gold itself did not trouble Derek; Northern markets demanded six or seven for a strong adult slave anyway.

But Lloyd had no way to sell them himself. And every raw captive before now had been priced against goods at one gold a head.

A sudden price increase meant Derek had to consider what else might lie behind it.

"Three gold a head. Tell Lloyd's men: if he refuses, they take every last one back with them.

"And if he agrees—sweeten it elsewhere. Shave the weapon prices a touch, or throw in some extras. Use your judgment."

Whatever ideas might be forming in Lloyd's head needed to be corrected now: Derek set the prices. That was the rule.

But he could not alienate Lloyd either. Compensation elsewhere would not equal what Lloyd had hoped for, but it would define their relationship clearly.

Derek opened the Panel and began reviewing the new portraits.

Slaves, all of them—and most of the newly purchased ones had already surfaced on the Panel.

Good obedience, then; the first roots of loyalty already down.

Small wonder. Derek's operations enjoyed broad margins, so he had no need to reduce his own people's rations.

Even a slave worked better when well fed.

They were, after all, his property.

The whip and the blade still had their place. Reward and punishment, used in proportion, kept order.

The new arrivals he skimmed past. Their loyalty still needed time to prove.

His real focus was the older raw stock: caravan captives, mountain-folk captives, and various unfortunates who'd tumbled into Lloyd's hands by other roads.

Of those thirty-odd, five or six had by now held steady on the Panel for a long while.

They had accepted their lot, and a basic loyalty had taken hold.

Derek walked the camp with his squires, singling out slaves one at a time with the same question:

"Take up arms and fight for me—earn merit and I grant you freedom. Or labor here until you die. Choose."

Unsurprisingly, when the alternative was slavery until death, every man chose to gamble.

These men Derek would burden with nothing else for now.

He would keep them at his side, training and fighting until discipline wore down their wildness and long habit hardened into loyalty. Only then would he assign them other duties.

They would remain under his eye at all times. If any portrait vanished from the Panel, he could respond within the hour.

And there were the others to consider. Giving a slave his chance was one thing; handing him, overnight, the standing of freeborn men was another.

Do that, and the hearts of the camp would scatter.

But a slave climbing out of the pit proved that hope existed; one might even rise directly to overseer.

For the slaves who remained, no sermon could match that example.

Sure enough, several new portraits bloomed onto the Panel at once, sharpening by the hour.

"All of you, look well! Work hard, stay loyal, and I will hand you your chance at freedom—at standing—at fortune! Otherwise... grow old and die right here."

Derek pressed the lesson while the moment was fresh, and morale did the rest.