"Everyone, prepare to move out!"

"Adrian, carry my orders. Tell Simon to move his men out."

"Grain, weapons, warhorses—prepare everything. Full battle readiness."

Derek sent the orders out one after another.

Under the governor's order, Count Perez had only ten days to whip his forces into shape.

Riding hard, it still took a full day just to reach here from Count Perez's own domain.

Derek had little time to spare.

Fortunately, compared to everyone else, his own men had trained far harder already.

Many of his soldiers had reached Level 7 or 8; even the newest recruits were generally above Level 5.

A fair number had even reached Elite rank—knights, squires, infantry alike.

Nearly every soldier from his very first batch had already climbed to Elite.

An army valued discipline above individual prowess, and the difference in strength was not always obvious at a glance.

More importantly, anyone foolish enough to challenge these men over how they had grown so strong was liable to leave with a broken leg.

The army Derek had maintained and even expanded despite the crushing expense was finally proving its worth.

House Ferreira, for its part, sent out five knights and three hundred soldiers, padded further by farmers pressed into service at the last minute.

Derek alone put together twenty cavalry and two hundred infantry.

Another hundred-odd stayed stationed across his various sites, drilling fresh recruits and guarding what he'd already built.

He set out from House Ferreira's lands and linked up outside Count Perez's domain with the slave-soldiers Simon led.

Once everyone had assembled, they marched into Count Perez's domain beneath Derek's triangular pennant.

In just a few days, Count Perez had already returned to his fief and raised the banner of the Northern Province's Second Legion.

By the time Derek reached the camp, tens of thousands of soldiers had already gathered there.

The knight assigned to greet arriving nobles spotted the badge pinned to Derek's chest and broke into a smile. "Sir knight, if you'd give me your house name and troop count, I'll register you, and you can wait for the count's own assignment."

Derek had made a point of pinning the Perez knightly order's badge somewhere plainly visible, precisely to announce who he was.

In a sense, most of the forces under Count Perez's banner shared a background in his knightly order—which made them, in effect, all one family.

In an army like this, belonging to the same faction brought tangible advantages—especially compared with those who had no such connection.

"Derek von Ferreira, titled knight. Total forces: two hundred elite infantry, one retired knight of the Perez Order, two household knights, twenty squires, and fifty militiamen assigned to the baggage train."

Derek laid it all out plainly. He knew the unwritten rules of a temporary legion like this well enough not to undersell himself.

The registering knight carefully inspected the assembled ranks. Every man but the militia stood fully armed, and he even spotted a company of heavy infantry among them.

Knights included, every man carried a solid build and a hard edge, armed to the teeth—every inch the elite.

This, too, was Derek's quiet calculation: he'd had every man fully kitted out ahead of time.

"Sir knight, you clearly know how things work here. But forgive my asking—I've never heard of your house."

"Elder, I come from House Ferreira—I've since struck out on my own and founded a branch house. I retired from our own order a year and a half back."

Derek caught sight of the badge on the man's chest and switched his form of address at once.

Sure enough—this man, too, had come up through the Perez knightly order.

The registering knight smiled, not the least bit put off by the gesture.

He'd heard the Ferreira name before, though he'd never guessed it carried strength like this—a branch son who could field a force this elite on his own.

He wrote it all down, then paused and added a line at the end: Note—elite troops, elite equipment, thoroughly drilled.

All of this would go straight to Count Perez's own eyes; a note like that meant putting his own name behind it.

Not that he needed to bother—there'd been no real reason to take the risk at all.

He turned the register around so Derek could see it plainly.

"Name's Cesar Ulpin. Since we'll likely cross paths again, let me set you up with a decent campsite."

Derek caught the goodwill in that easily enough.

"I won't forget it, Elder Cesar." Derek leaned in quickly. "My house deals in warhorses, weapons, armor—if you ever have need of any, come find me."

This wasn't idle goodwill on Derek's part—a registering knight held a low rank but real weight, serving as the count's first set of eyes and ears over the whole legion. No one but a trusted man got handed that post.

Serving under Count Perez for the time being, it only made sense to build the relationship properly.

Cesar hadn't expected to hear this. That kind of trade wasn't something just anyone ran—clearly he'd been away from his own fief too long, and knew too little about the nobles nearby.

"I'll remember that. I'm sure I'll come calling before long, Knight Derek."

Cesar took it that much more to heart, and set Derek up with an even better campsite for it.

Once Derek had made his rounds and found eldest brother Marco, he saw the man's own campsite fell short of his.

Plainly, that was favor showing through.

Marco had seen Derek's site as well and spoke with obvious envy. "Coming up through the Perez Order really does have its advantages. This spot's nothing like ours."

Derek just smiled and said nothing. The finer details weren't something he meant to spell out.

Still, gathering a legion tens of thousands strong, one could well imagine what a hastily thrown-together camp looked like overall.

Over the days that followed, the numbers kept climbing, and with the deadline closing in, Count Perez finally announced a brief review the next day, with the march out to follow the day after.

That very night, the count sat up poring over the registration ledgers.

Why call this a small secret only military nobility understood?

The register looked plain and unremarkable, yet it was a legion commander's first and most important source of information.

It revealed which houses fielded elite troops and which knights possessed genuine ability.

With a legion running tens of thousands strong, no commander could review every man in person; he had to hand out commissions off whatever limited information he had.

That made the register an opportunity in its own right. Without someone to explain the system, a man might never realize there was an opportunity to seize.

After some time spent reading, Count Perez suddenly called out.

"Cesar. Come here. What's this Derek von Ferreira business?"

Count Perez couldn't possibly know every noble in the North, but he certainly knew of any real strength among them.

Fielding this many elite troops in one go wasn't something more than a handful of houses could manage.

And with the register carrying that special note besides, this had to be the very cream of it.

Unfortunately, the name Derek rang no bell at all for the count.

He had no quarrel with his men doing favors for friends, or even taking coin for it outright—but this ran well past reasonable.

He knew Cesar well enough to doubt the man would pull something like that, but it still called for an explanation.

Cesar glanced over. Derek?

The name stuck vividly in his memory, and he answered at once with a smile. "My lord count, you can see for yourself tomorrow. Everything I wrote is the plain truth—if anything, I undersold it. Knight Derek's men really are that elite, and he comes from our own Perez Order besides. He's a son of House Ferreira."

With that brief account, Count Perez formed an impression of his own.

But if Cesar dared vouch for it this plainly, then it had to be true.

"Put the boy up near the front tomorrow. I'll see for myself." The count nodded his agreement, then added with a laugh, "If it's all true, this one's got ambition to spare."

The next day, the Northern Province's Second Legion held its review.

Plenty of merchant sons and minor noble heirs, still oblivious to how any of this actually worked, waited with hearts full of hope for the count to appear.

The Second Legion might be a temporary formation on paper, but given how things stood, it looked unlikely to be disbanded anytime soon.

Secure an officer's post here, and it would last for some time at the very least. With luck, the appointment might even become permanent.

For minor nobles and merchants' sons with no connections, this was a rare path to advancement.

...

A smaller circle, though—sons of military nobility—already understood the competition had started the moment they walked through the camp gate.

Military noble houses like Baron Ferreira's numbered at most seven or eight in the whole legion, but between them they made up a fifth to a third of its actual strength.

Everyone else filled out the rest—lesser nobles both great and small, and sons of the well-off middle sort.

Plenty of knightly houses, ordinary baronial families, had no way of grasping the finer game being played here.

The moment they placed him up near the front, Derek knew his scheme had paid off.

Dead center stood Count Perez's own private forces.

To the left, military noble houses like House Ferreira.

To the right, first in line stood Derek himself, followed by one or two more military houses.

Everyone else could only stand further back.

Derek knew he'd never share in House Ferreira's own glory—that belonged to eldest brother Marco, who'd inherit it.

But it didn't worry him. Whatever scheme he built for himself, there was no way it would come out worse than his brother's inheritance.

Sure enough, Count Perez delivered a rousing speech, promising titles to come once the war was won.

Then the review began.

The process was simple: one pass through the ranks gave the count a rough sense of each contingent's quality.

The North's military nobility, at least, kept their family arsenals in reasonably strong shape.

A house like Ferreira might keep only a hundred or two on standing duty year-round, but its rotating militia ran deep in number, and their training held up well enough.

Called up together, they made a serviceable force. In an emergency, the house could put as many as a thousand men in the field.

What Marco had brought, on top of that, had gone through two months of intensive drilling, and it showed—visibly a cut above the houses standing around him.

Count Perez took quiet note of it.

Passing his own private forces, he slowed his pace—he knew them inside and out already, but the gesture mattered. This was the base his grip on the legion rested on.

Then came Derek.

One look told the whole story.

These men looked more elite even than his own private guard, their gear top of the line.

Even setting their equipment aside, fielding this many elite soldiers was no small feat.

Some merchant sons' troops—and even the private guards of a few minor nobles—could barely hold a straight line.

Count Perez believed the register's account now, and thought, if anything, it had understated the truth.

He even turned to ask the men beside him, "Derek came up through my own order?"

The unspoken question underneath it: how had he let a man this good slip through his fingers?

Someone stepped up at once with a quick account of Derek's history—never underestimate these functionaries; the moment they'd seen where he'd been placed, they'd already dug up everything worth knowing.

"A shame!"

Count Perez felt the real sting of it—given the chance, he'd certainly try to win the man back a second time.

For now, though, as one of his own soldiers, the stronger the better regardless.

And coming up through the Perez Order carried a bond of its own, however faint.

The count walked up close and spoke without warning. "Knight Derek. I hear you finished your training at the very top of your class. Would you show me?"

Derek froze for a beat, then felt a surge of pure elation.

Count Perez had called him out by name. This was an opportunity placed directly before him.

He read the meaning behind the count's words sharply enough: perform well here, and a fine post might well be waiting for him.

"Yes, my lord. As you command."

Derek stepped forward at once, fist to chest in salute.

Now he had to make the opportunity count.

An idea came to him almost instantly.

"Arm up!"

For a review like this, the knights had already stood fully armed to begin with.

Compared to everyone else, though, Derek's elite knights were monsters of raw endurance—men who could wear this mid-weight full plate around the clock without trouble.

By his reckoning, only one soldier in a hundred—perhaps even one in a thousand—ever reached Elite rank.

Across the whole Northern Province, a Level 5 or 6 knight passed for decent, 7 or 8 for excellent, and Elite rank belonged to little more than the handful of famous, titled knights everyone already knew by name.

But under him... he had a whole crowd of them.

So arming up here was less a preparation than a signal.

Under a crowd of startled eyes, the knights swung up into their saddles in a single fluid motion.

Everyone had assumed it was pure show, armor put on just to make an impression for the review—standing this long in full plate had to be exhausting.

Instead, watching them move, not one showed the slightest sign of strain.

The count had only meant for Derek to show off some personal skill—he hadn't expected the man to summon his whole company of knights.

Seeing his own guards tense and step in front of him, the count pushed the wall of bodies aside himself. "Stand down. Knight Derek came up through our own order—there's nothing to worry about."

The words landed with real weight for a moment—say what you would, Count Perez knew exactly how to win a man's loyalty.

Derek mounted up as well, riding lightly out to the front of his own knights.

Clop, clop!

His brown warhorse pawed the ground in place, its powerful muscles making the case for its own strength.

A warhorse risen now to Excellent grade.

"Charge!"

From dead still to full gallop in an instant, the horse's raw power on display, and the rider's command of it right alongside.

"Throw!"

As Derek's javelin struck the ground, a volley of short spears whistled down after it, all landing within a space barely twenty inches wide.

Three full passes, the horses wheeling back and forth each time, and not a single throw landed off the mark.

By the time the stunned onlookers caught their breath, the knights had already reformed their line.

"Lances up! Advance!"

They followed with dispersed skirmishing, pursuit maneuvers, and one formation change after another.

The two squads performed with a degree of skill few cavalry units could hope to match.

Men who'd walked in brimming with confidence found it knocked flat in an instant.

"Is this what real military nobility looks like? How's anyone supposed to compete with that?"

For the count, the reaction ran much the same.

He knew perfectly well his own knights couldn't match this—every single rider here would have earned a knightly title of renown in his own right.

"How in the world did you train them to this? Which of you could pull that off?"

The count's own knights shook their heads, awkward and empty-handed. A rare man among them might match it alone—but bringing a whole company up to the same standard was another matter entirely.

Derek and his men returned to their starting mark and dismounted together as one.

Not one of them appeared winded.

"Magnificent! Absolutely magnificent! I'd have sworn I was watching the King's own Guard Knights."

The count offered his praise, then, out of nowhere, asked, "Knight Derek—are you married?"

"...Huh?"

Derek stood there thoroughly baffled. He had expected a compliment, not a question about marriage.

The count had simply blurted it out on impulse, and caught his own slip almost the instant it left his mouth.

He hurried to steer the conversation elsewhere. "A showing like that's more than enough to earn you a commander-of-a-thousand's post."