Rowland rubbed his tired eyes. What he needed was to be young again. He had finished the Book, or very nearly. All that remained was to take it to Corus. Part of the problem had been that, even after he visited a place, new information was always arriving from there, as people had children, or old people died of gods alone knew what, or some lord made a new ruling on a particular point of law. It really was too much to ask for people to sit and do nothing while he completed his work, but sometimes he wished their lives were slightly less busy.
That wasn't the problem right now. The problem, as he saw it, was that he wanted to make Tyke his squire. No, that wasn't right. The problem was that he still had Julius waiting around doing squire-ly things, and most importantly filling up the space that he wished for Tyke. He could have waited until after they presented the Book to the Count – or King, rather, as he had been hailed increasingly in the last three years – but he knew Jonathan would look at the girl and think her just a camp rat, despite all she did. If he could make her a squire, she could not be overlooked, as a page might and would be.
He couldn't ask any of the other knights to take her, either. Tenacious and a superb warrior though she might be, Tyke was still female. And now that she had grown into a young woman, he'd heard whispers of rumors – not even the rumors themselves, just murmurings that they existed – concerning the reasons she was kept around. Not one of the men said anything of the sort, of course, but still, the looks they got when Tyke rode into a village with them… The men all looked on her as a daughter, or a younger sister, or even, in the case of some of the youngest soldiers, as something of an older sister, for all she was still only thirteen, and he wouldn't accept a soldier younger than fourteen. New recruits sometimes muttered, but they were quickly hushed, and by the time they'd seen their first combat, they would realize Tyke was the veteran of many the battle, despite her youth and sex. He almost wished he could make her Coban's squire – if anything, the two had grown only closer over the years, and the big knight still followed the girl-child around like a puppy – but if anything would cause talk, that would. No one looking at the two for the first time would believe they were just friends, unless they could be convinced the pair were brother and sister. It might not be hard to convince someone of that, seeing the way the two behaved, but just to look at them, anyone would know it was impossible.
Tyke had grown – somewhat – into a slender girl, though the muscles in those skinny arms could have shamed a blacksmith. Her hair shone like polished bronze these days, and no one could miss that stunning violet gaze. Coban was big, far bigger than anyone related to Tyke could have been, and his dark brown hair defied the very idea of a flashy shade like Tyke's.
He had to make her a squire for her own good, he'd discovered that a few days ago when they rode into the latest village, which he might even have gone so far as to call a town. Jerril had brought the story back from the marketplace, where he'd gone with Tyke, Coban, and Tyke's latest adopted soldier, Gordon. It was a hot summer day, and Tyke had been wearing her sleeveless tunic that, seeing how it fit her, had lately made Rowland wonder if he ought to get the child some proper woman's clothes, no matter how she objected to it.
They were only passing through, on their way farther north, but they had stopped for the day to give the men some free time in the town. One of the town boys, fourteen years old, maybe, Jerril had said, had been quite suggestively rude to Tyke, and when he'd learned she was traveling with a company of soldier, had become increasingly so. It distressed Rowland no end, besides offending his sensibilities, to hear his surrogate daughter talked about in that way. Gordon, a runty boy of fifteen, though good with a bow, had tried to make the town lad push off. It might have ended worse than it had if Coban, sensing his little friend's distress, hadn't come and bodily slammed the boy into a wall, ending all question of what would happen to him or anyone else who made remarks about Tyke.
Yes, the girl would have to be a squire. No one said a word against a squire – unless they were a knight, of course, but they'd seen few enough of those, lately – even if that squire was a woman. Insulting a squire would bring the full wrath of the nobility down on the unfortunate's head. Of course, Rowland hadn't yet tested this theory about squires – he'd yet to hear of another girl in these eastern lands becoming so much as a page – but he was quite confident in it.
Unless… now there was a thought. Julius was nearing the time when he could be knighted. He might as well have been, if he would only let Rowland knight him, instead of insisting that only the king could do it. As though the king had nothing better to do than dub new knights. But he could be safely passed along to serve another knight until they reached Corus. Who to chose? It couldn't be one of the younger knights – Julius would be mortally offended, and the boy was completely unmanageable when he thought his precious noble's dignity was at stake. Certainly it couldn't be Coban – they hid it well in front of him, but he knew how much the squire detested they younger man, who had already achieved knighthood.
In the end, if was Waldron he settled on. The man wasn't young by any means, but he had been a knight even before he crossed the ocean, if only just. Perhaps he could even hammer some old world manners into the boy. That wouldn't be a bad thing at all. With a relived sigh – and another wish that he was younger than his present years – he called for one of the men to find Waldron to discuss the plan with him.