In case you haven't yet guessed yet, I was an Army brat. My favorite Dastardly Archrival stories involve the Royal Knights, simply because that's the way I best understand Oscar and Kieran's personalities… oh, and Kieran's archrivally glee. Army logic just makes sense to me in terms of their history.

So, enjoy!…er, if you can, what with the length and all. (I'M SORRY I READ TOO MUCH DIANA GABALDON) It's a couple months after the last chapter and yes... I was imagining Captain Li during Kieran's, ahem, sweatier scenes. Yay, Disney crushes!

~~ Oscar Hates Training Recruits ~~

As I approached the group, a young lieutenant looked up into the face of fury: his lips were white and almost quivering in concentration, his spine stiffer than a tent pole. "Do you have any idea," said his commander, their noses almost touching, "just how fast you would die in a real battle, Lieutenant Joram?" A drop of blood fell silently from the lieutenant's chin to his bare shoulder. I joined the ranks silently.

There was a pause, in which every other young man and woman on the parade ground obviously quailed, hoping never to be in this boy's shoes. After all, anyone could suddenly lose a grip on their weapon during a sparring round and injure himself.

Finally, the lieutenant shouted, obviously with all his might, "No, sir!"

The general looked up, fierce brown eyes scanning the ranks. Shirtless, he stepped away from the poor boy, who almost sank to the ground in relief. "All right!" shouted the commander, swinging his poleax one-handed. "Since the Lieutenant decided to demonstrate complete idiocy in the face of what could have been mortal peril, we'll all be running another mile around the perimeter of the castle! Everyone, drop your weapons and armor right here, right now! Move, move, move!"

There was a flurry of movement as all the soldiers hastily began stripping off their armor and dropping their weapons. "And I don't want to see any of those axes, lances, or swords buried in the ground! Stow your gear properly!" was the general's last admonishment, before he strode over to me and threw his axe on top of his own armor.

I was hard-pressed not to laugh out loud: but as a soldier, I knew better. Kieran eyed me for a minute, obviously still pissed off and in hard core battle-training mode. He said briefly, "You'd better go with us, Captain." I nodded; my armor had been off as soon as the recruits started stripping, and as I stowed my lance to go run a mile, one last thought prevailed: this was possibly the best decision I'd ever made.

"Okay. That's it. I have finally found something you're good at that I absolutely cannot do," I said, without preamble, and slammed the door behind me. The whoosh of cold night air that followed me in blew a few papers off the commander's desk, but I didn't feel even the slightest bit embarrassed. "You are now free to gloat."

Kieran looked up, one hand freezing in the act of massaging his temples. Glaring, he demanded, "Excuse me, who gave you permission to storm into my office, Captain? I am in the middle of extremely important submission papers that are due insanely soon, and disturbances are extremely unwelcome."

I glared right back, planting my hands on the edge of his desk. It had been a hellacious morning, and I was in no mood for Bureaucratic!Kieran. "Sir. General Kieran. Your Eminence, O Great Archrival, and all the antecedents. Have you even seen the group of recruits that I'm supposedly in the middle of training? I have had it up to here with them and unless you stop your papers right now and pay attention to what I'm saying, I hereby resign from the Royal Knights."

My fury was so evident that even he paused. The hand dropped to the table, and as I tried to stop my chest from heaving too frantically, he leaned back and threw down his pen. "What are you talking about, Oscar?"

I struggled for a moment, standing straight and looking around in an attempt to get back my calm. This room had vastly changed in the last fifteen years: in Geoffrey's day it had been neat stacks of paper everywhere, a tapestry or two hanging on the walls, a rack of lances in the corner. Now it was a whirlwind of Kieran's ragmatag possessions, camp supplies stacked on top of old laces and armor, inexplicable sheaves of paper sticking out from underneath broken axes and tins of saddle polish. His desk was no better: instead of the relative order of Geoffrey's studies, it was littered with half-written notices, splotches of ink on torn-up blotters, bits of junk that Kieran's students would bring him, and other varied pieces of memorabilia from past campaigns.

The total chaos, for once, was inimitably soothing, and I took a deep breath. I needed to speak my piece. Ever since Kieran's promotion, the departure of the Greil Mercenaries from Melior, and my subsequent posting to the training grounds, my life had been a living hell. I was not a leader, and I knew it.

"As I said…this group of recruits is the rowdiest, most disobedient, rudest, most horrifying group of young men and women I have ever encountered. They make my brother Boyd look thoughtful and timid, and if I have to train them for one more day…" I paused again, inhaling through my nose. It was unlike me to get this worked up: I wanted to rip off my helmet and throw it at the wall, kick a door until it had dents. "They've already gotten two horses injured, they've scared three of the servants out of their wits, and I have yet to get them to march in formation. Either I'm terrible at this, or they're simple untrainable."

Kieran grinned at me. "Ha! No recruit is untrainable."

"Not for you." I paused to let the words sink in, and waved a hand over his desk. "Kieran, I didn't want this job in the first place, and you know it. Hire a secretary for a day and help me train these devils."

The grin grew wider, and he leapt up from his chair. The relief that sank into me, as he began expostulating on finally besting his archrival at something, was almost physical: my shoulders and back immediately felt less tense. He didn't quite dance around the room, but his expression was enough. "Ha ha! Finally, my chance to show that I best you, Oscar! I accept your offer, on the caveat that you find me a secretary immediately!" Pacing the room, he muttered something about "squinty" and "unworthy," then finished with a "wretch." I could have kissed him.

Finally turning to me again, he braced his hands on his hips and declared, "This will be a week to remember."

"I certainly hope so."

Kieran paused, eyeing me. "To be perfectly truthful, my squinty friend…" he began, then grinned and came to me. "Hell. I've been going mad, absolutely mad, trying to catch up to where I should be in all this bureaucratic nonsense. This is the perfect excuse I've been looking for to get out of the office, get in some good field work. You know that most of the time this archrival ridiculousness is… well, it's just that."

He'd put his hand on my shoulder, and I stared at him, not sure what to say. Kieran, suddenly declaring that this archrival business was nonsense? This would be the first time in going on twenty years. "Kieran…"

He stopped me immediately, to my chagrin relieving me, by adding fiercely, "Mind you, I'll be holding you accountable for finishing their training, after I get some discipline instilled. And you'll be the one filing a report about why I'm gallivanting off to the training grounds tomorrow morning. We'll have this settled properly."

"Yes, sir," I said, warmly. That hadn't lasted long, but it was just as well. I loved my archrival as exactly that.

"Speaking of which, how early have you been getting them up?"

I shrugged. "First light, as usual. Don't worry, they're in their version of formation five minutes before roll call." Not that they ever did roll call properly…

"Ha!" he said, mockingly, and turned away to start grabbing things. "Get up an hour before dawn, and have the papers ready to send on to General Geoffrey. I'll be there."

"Yes, sir," I said again.

It had all begun with one recruit, but then usually that's all it took, in my experience. I didn't even know his name at first; later the epithet Teddy, given to him by another, more amused knight, stuck with me rather than his true name, Joram. He was anything but a Teddy: brash and poor, from a rough port near Gallia, he'd early learned that the Royal Knights didn't conscript soldiers unless they had a need for them. Honorable or not, our conscriptions were by necessity. Hence, a young, relatively ballsy soldier could get away with any amount of mischief and mayhem if he or she was so inclined: given the right commander, that is.

I, to my own great self-disgust and chagrin, was exactly the kind of commander under whom soldiers like Teddy flourished. The first day of training, he'd immediately placed me.

"Lieutenant!" I said sternly, walking down the ill-organized ranks, and stopped before him. "Talking is not permitted in the ranks."

He remained silent, staring at me, no hint whatsoever evident of the "face-forward, eyes-up" instruction all of them had been given. I wasn't stupid enough to fall for his first trick. "The no-talking rule excludes when your commanding officer has given you an instruction to speak, Lieutenant." There was a tiny sigh from someone nearby: it sounded disappointed, as if they'd expected me to demand why he wasn't speaking. "Lieutenant. Your response, when spoken to by a commanding officer, should always be, 'Yes, sir.'"

"Yes… sir," he said, the emphasis on the second word drippingly obvious. Eyes finally facing forward, his back was a ramrod, his posture composed of total precision. Yet another one of the soldiers giggled; I turned to her.

For a moment she managed to hold it in; then she couldn't resist from glancing at me, and her face broke as she giggled again. I pushed between two soldiers in the first row and stood before her. "And you are laughing… why, Lieutenant?"

"No reason whatsoever… sir," she managed to say, snorting slightly as she spoke the title. Another knight—and yet another, damn them!—started snorting madly along with her, one turning her face away. "I apologize… sir."

An unsure feeling flooded through me: I wasn't used to worrying about what people thought of me, but the idea of being in charge of… all these recruits… suddenly bore down. What if I couldn't get control of them?

I stepped back in front of the formation and given them their orders: stand at attention until approved, then proceed to the mess hall. The temptation of behaving for food was usually pretty high, for recruits. With breakfast served immediately after dawn, and the hard work of polishing tack and armor spaced evenly between the two meals, lunch was always the break point of the day.

Yet as I stood, wanting but unable to fidget, I kept seeing movement in the ranks. Someone would shift, just enough so that I could see it, and uniform immobility would return; then a second later, another soldier nearby would do the same, returning to perfect stance before I could pick out his or her identity. It was unbearable and, worse yet, completely unavoidably noticeable. There was clearly something going on.

I sighed. Tempting as it was to leave them standing here to boil in the midday sun, while their lunches rotted in the mess, I just couldn't. It was only the first day of training, after all: I would win their respect eventually. "Dismissed!" Only a few cheered. The rest just grinned as they broke formation and ran out of the courtyard.

That had been my first mistake. Mercy.

It only grew worse from there. A few of the recruits had been wanting to get into the Royal Knights for years, but had been unable to join due to family troubles, poverty, lack of ability to travel, or various other reasons. Some had joined recruit classes but had been turned away, unqualified. Conscription by the Royal Knights in wartime was an extremely old and honored tradition, bestowing all kinds of graces on the families selected. Yet somehow these young men and women felt it more of a burden than a blessing.

Some of the more respectful soldiers came forward to speak with me, and it was then that I found out why the epithet "sir" gave everyone the giggles: it conveniently began with the same consonant as "squinty", and Teddy had made some rather entertaining comments about that connection their very first night in Melior. My new (if not terribly original) title was firmly implanted in everyone's brain, like it or not.

"I didn't think it was particularly funny," said one recruit stubbornly, glaring on my behalf at the papers on my desk. She looked up at me, but I noticed she immediately looked away. Dammit. "I don't know why they all keep laughing, but it's not going to stop anytime soon."

I'd thanked her and dismissed her, the gratitude at having found out the first hurdle tempered by confusion at how to actually tackle it. If Teddy and his friends though mockery of their commanding officer would give them leeway to run all over the place, they were dead wrong. Still…

The problem was, I decided, there was no way to threaten them. Insubordination amongst Royal Knights was unheard of, simply because they had worked so hard and committed so much to becoming one of the army's elite. If a soldier was deemed insubstantial to his or her unit due to behavioral problems, they were court-martialed and either punished or (more often than not) dishonorably discharged.

Here, it wasn't quite as crucial. The young soldiers had been plucked from their villages willy-nilly, and while many of them had no desire to go back, neither did they feel particularly honored. The glories that could be gained in the army were immense, yet its lifestyle was not for all. The bitterness of some at only being able to join through conscription was obvious: but the greatest problem of all was that none of them had any sense of the real world.

Kieran had told me of the conscription classes from during the war against the Goddess. The real and tangible danger of the Begnions' invasion of Crimea had made the recruits sensible that the Knights were their best option. How could their families defend themselves without the army? They might as well better themselves for the good of the country. Yet this bickering between the nobles and the army, the constant skirmishing from the rebels, and the overall confusion of the country, had not only led to chaotic political alliances but turbulent civilian loyalties, as well. I sensed that not one of the recruits really had a cause for which to fight.

So it was with heavy heart that I came to the next formation. We'd been practicing weapons drills, and I wouldn't have minded my recruits' inefficiency if I hadn't known it was for simply not trying. "Shoulder arms!" I barked, feeling wholly inadequate to the task of being fearsome.

Several recruits actually followed the order, crisply raising their weapons; many others vaguely brought them up. One or two didn't bother at all. "Shoulder arms!" I yelled, louder this time. "That was not an option!"

I heard a couple of sighs, but finally everyone obeyed, if somewhat lackadaisically. Where, oh where, was my sergeant? I had a drill sergeant scheduled to join me for practices such as this, just as I had a priest assigned to me for healing during sparring, but said sergeant was off somewhere, probably fighting rebels or signing papers for the royals, or something else completely unrelated to my problems. The army was so unbearably short-staffed that most of the time she didn't even oversee training exercises.

Still, they'd shouldered their weapons. All right, next move. "Four, three, two, one. Mark time… mark!" The order, given in a specific metric time, was meant to get them marching. Ideally, I would have had my sergeant clapping his or her hands, or someone beating a drum to keep time. Here, it was just me. I could see many of the soldiers actually keeping time… left, right, left, right… but many weren't bothering to keep in time with the beat I was clapping, and a few—Teddy included, naturally—were just standing still, yawning into their shoulders.

A note of desperation began to enter the alarm bells ringing in my brain. We were due to ride out with the army in less than a month, and we hadn't even gotten to the basics of horsemanship yet, much less sparring, defense, the weapons triangle, briefings on the enemy, or managing to keep in time with fellow soldiers.

I swallowed down my fears and doubts (why, Goddesses, why did Geoffrey give me this job instead of someone else?!) and marched over to Teddy. "Lieutenant," I said, trying to stay calm, "give me one good reason why you haven't obeyed my order to begin marking time."

"Because it's pointless. Sir," he added, obviously as an afterthought, but without any emphasis whatsoever.

I ignored him for a moment, and in time to the beat, shouted, "Company… halt!" In two steps, many of the footsteps I heard crunching on the gravel stopped, quite in time. Pleasure that some had actually obeyed me aside, I was still pissed. "And can you explain to me, Lieutenant, exactly why learning to work as a team is pointless?"

He shrugged; every eye was on the two of us. "Well, we won't be marching, will we, sir? We'll be on horses."

A few chuckles and murmurs were heard. Confusingly enough, some part of my brain said, Well, yes, we will. Angrily, I answered, "Your possessing a horse, Lieutenant, is entirely contingent on your learning basic training techniques."

It dawned upon me for a moment that there had to be a better way to approach this than reasoning with an enlisted troop member. Somehow, though, no alternate approaches occurred to me, and as he spoke, I could only vaguely look at him. Not a bad-looking boy, after all: well-built, in the rangy way of paladins, and almost as tall as me. "And basic techniques for mounted units like us include marching… why?"

For a moment I didn't even realize that he hadn't bothered to address me as "sir." Only his words came through, and that stupid little part of my brain panicked again, wondering, Good point, why do we teach marching? In my own training days I'd wondered the same thing: I frantically tried to recall what Geoffrey and Renning had explained to us… I knew it was because you couldn't fight on a horse before you fought on foot, but how to explain it...?

Fury overtook everything. I was normally a very calm, collected person—amused coolness, rather than irrational anger, was usually my primary reaction to frustration. But there was so much at risk here. If these bandits and rebels ever succeeded in joining together and attacking the castle as an organized unit, killing the queen or somehow disabling the Royal Knights… Crimea was done for.

"That's it!" I shouted, and saw more than a few of the knights-in-training start in surprise. "Lieutenant. Report immediately to the barracks supervisor. You will spend all of tomorrow in the stocks for insubordinance and obstruction of your superior's orders."

There was a short, breathless pause. Then he shrugged, as if it didn't matter. "Yes, sir." And the boy everyone called Teddy stepped out of line, dropping his weapon to the ground at my feet, and made a casual beeline for the barracks. I stood, almost stunned, at his calm obedience.

It didn't last long. "Well, if he's going to be punished for questioning stupid orders, why shouldn't we all?" shouted an angry voice from the back. A young girl stepped forward: she couldn't have been older than about fifteen, and my dazed mind wondered who was in charge of impressments these days. Violet eyes flashing, she yelled directly into my face. "I think your orders are stupid, too, and if Teddy's going to be punished, so am I!" She threw her axe at my legs and fled in the same direction as had her co-knight.

I didn't jump back, half for being completely stunned and the other half for simple pride; the axe clanged off my armor and fell with a thump in the dust. I knew better than to think it had been a malicious act: the weapon was practically half her size.

A silence descended. I looked around at the troops; more than one pair of eyes dark with displeasure greeted me, and I shouted, "If any of you are unhappy with the idea of blindly obeying your superior's training orders, then leave now for the barracks! If not, stay in formation!"

And that had been the second mistake: to trust that only a couple of knights would be so idiotic. Almost half of the assembled youngsters had mumbled and trudged off towards the barracks: far too many to discipline properly. I'd half-heartedly led the more devoted knights through a pitifully ineffective marching exercise, and then had dismissed them for the evening. Retiring to my chambers, it didn't escape me that recruitment and training problems weren't the only items on my list of woes.

The simple fact was, being separated from Kieran so completely was disheartening and frankly destructive. In the Greil Mercenaries there had always been something to do, someone to save, a goal to concentrate on. Beyond that, I had had my brothers to worry about. Until just before I had returned to the Mercenaries, even Boyd had been something of a bother, intelligent but hardly a planner, worried more about training for an upcoming fight than about where his next meal might come from.

After that, there had always been Kieran. My friend, my laugh-out-loud companion, my inexorable competitor in all things inane, and my sometime lover, he'd kept me sane through the rigors of returning to a slightly unwelcoming army, the difficulties of adjusting once more to the Royal Knights creed, and the horrors of large-scale battle in the name of justice. It wasn't that he solved my problems: it was merely that if I talked to Kieran about something serious, the problem either vanished in the wake of bigger fish, or I could completely forget about it, in one way or another.

Since we'd returned to Melior for the last time, though, things had been totally and insufferably different. He hated his job and I obviously couldn't handle mine. Plus we never saw one another.

I flopped onto my bed, feeling the varied knots of wool that had been stuffed into the mattress, many captains ago. Well, this was going to end soon. I couldn't command these recruits on my own, and there was only person I could reliably turn to. Someone who knew how to train recruits, how to intrinsically command respect, and how to help me…without making me look like a totally inept dolt.

Now I grinned to myself as we ran our laps around the training grounds. My heart might have been pounding in exertion—truth be told, Kieran and I were both getting a little old for this—and my breath may have been coming short, but I couldn't stop laughing silently, every time he barked an order.

The first day had gone spectacularly. Kieran had woken me more than an hour before dawn by bursting straight through my doorway, and from there had proceeded to direct me as his sergeant. Screaming "WAKE UP!" at the top of my lungs, I jogged up and down the barracks, yanking off blankets as I went. Half of the recruits, terrified and confused, leapt out of bed and begun pulling on their boots. The other half—the recruits who'd followed Joram out of formation—just rolled over.

"Your commanding officer gave you an order!" I yelled as loudly as possible, and reached into one bunk to slap someone's head. "GET UP!"

They vaguely began acquiescing, mumbling to themselves, not bothering now to hide the epithet Sir Squinty. That is, until Kieran stepped through the doorway.

I doubt many of them had ever met a general before in their lives: none of them had yet been issued armor from the supply grounds, so the closest they'd been to such a highly polished officer had been myself. Yet somehow, even in the half-dark of the barracks, without a word, Kieran managed to silence the entire line of recruits. The mumbling stopped, and even the most rebellious among them started pulling on clothing.

"Be in front of this building in parade formation in five minutes or you'll have hell to pay, young soldiers," was all he said, and left, taking his gleaming medals with him.

After a stunned moment of silence I barked, "You heard the general! Move!"

Kieran had told me not to stay behind, and it worked. Within five minutes they'd all dragged themselves outside, in various stages of dress, some with weapons and some without. And within another five minutes, I found out more about conduction of parade formation and inspection than I'd ever learned in my whole career. He didn't stand and talk at them: glaring fiercely, almost malevolently, he swept the formation one soldier at a time, barking insults and direction equally, not hesitating to physically adjust what he found unfit.

Finally returning to my side, everyone in place, the great general Kieran shouted, "It has been brought to my attention that approximately a score of you decided to abandon your posts yesterday. If you were out waging war this would be called going AWOL, and you would be executed. However, I have decided that those of you who are ringleaders will spend this afternoon cleaning bird shit from your barracks and from the grounds buildings. You and everyone else will go without lunch or dinner today. Is my purpose clear?"

"Yes, sir!" answered abut fifteen soldiers.

Kieran walked directly up to Joram, not bothering to hide his ire (he wasn't good at it anyway), and socked him in the stomach. There was a collective gasp as the boy fell to the ground, gagging for air. "I said!" he shouted, looking around. "Is it in any way unclear why you are being punished for disobeying your superior officer?"

"No, sir!" Many more responded this time.

What followed was the most grueling twenty-four hours of my life, including my conditioning as a new recruit: of course, I had twenty years on these kids, so I had an excuse. But by sundown, those who hadn't eaten were gasping and blue-faced as we ran miles; those who had spent the boiling hot afternoon cleaning the side of the barracks looked ready to collapse as Kieran directed us in fitness and speed drills.

At one point, he'd actually frightened one of the more diligent recruits into approaching me: "You may be tortured!" he'd been yelling, and had proceeded to show us scars from Ashunera only knew when. "You may be knifed in your sleep or have rusty nails shoved under your fingernails, along with the normal battle wounds! You must be prepared to see your first blood!"

The recruit who'd snuck to my office at night had been the same who'd come to me even before Joram's first rebellion: with her were four others, all with expressions ranging from nervousness to naked fear. "Er, Captain?" she'd asked. "General Kieran isn't… he's not actually planning to torture us… is he?"

I'd wanted to laugh out loud, but evidently the possibility didn't seem so remote to them. I'd assured the group that he wouldn't, to their immense relief. "Thank the goddesses," the girl had said faintly. "We… we all want nothing more than to make you and the general proud, but we're not sure we could cope with torture quite yet."

There were questions, of course. Not so many as had been posed or yelled to me, naturally, but at one point the question was repeated. Upon being given the command of "Mark time, mark!" and ignoring the order, the young violet-eyed lass, Amira, insolently asked Kieran the same question Joram had demanded of me.

"So why do we need to learn foot drills, sir?" Her tone was perfectly respectful, much more so than it had been with me, but I knew she was going to get her comeuppance just the same. "If we'll be spending our time on a horse, why do we—oof!"

Kieran had, once again, hit her: but this time much more impressively. Unlike with Joram, where he'd simply drawn back and punched, with this tiny girl he'd executed a neat grab for her lance, smacked her in the head with it, and thrust her to the ground with the lance at her throat. Even I was impressed: I hadn't seen Kieran use anything but an axe or a sword since our dual time in the Mercenaries, and hadn't known he was so good with my own weapon.

"Because," he said, not shouting but with a voice that rang across the formation nonetheless, "you must learn to walk before you run. Because if you have no discipline, no strength, force, or swiftness, you cannot walk the path of a Royal Knight. If you don't learn to hit still targets, how will you ever handle those that move?" Pausing, he said darkly, "How will you control a panicky, moving animal and fight at the same time if you never learn to control the panicky animal within yourself, Lieutenant Amira?"

I smiled: one of our recruit class's mottos had been "You must first walk the path of Peace before you can hope to survive the path of War." Suggesting that control of inner turmoil was the key to success in battle, the motto had been immensely useful to those among us without any semblance of self-control—the perfect example being the self-proclaimed Great Knight standing before us.

Throwing down the lance at the girl's side, Kieran added, somewhat negligently, "I don't expect any of you to be perfect. But if you can't obey orders, then for the goddess's sake go home and tend your crops. The rest of us will be along to defend your families, if we find it worthwhile." And with that, he'd ordered everyone up and we'd run some more miles.

Now, on the fourth day of training with the General, the difference in the recruits was unmistakable. Not only did they immediately obey every order given to them, but they questioned nothing—not even coming from me—and recited back long chunks of dogma, working their minds and bodies to the limit. I'd had a priest on hand this morning for sparring, and he'd gotten quite a workout in terms of small injuries, healing those who'd been defeated by their partners.

Nothing had compared, of course, to Joram stabbing himself in the head this afternoon, spurring this very mile we were running. I'd had to absent myself from the field when Joram had fallen to the ground, for fear my laughter would be heard by Kieran (how many times had he done exactly that?) as he screamed at the lieutenant. Despite my bone-deep weariness, I felt a faint and fragile hope that this recruit class might be the best ever, and for the first time looked forward to writing to my brother and leaving out absolutely nothing.

The mile eventually ran itself out, and the soldiers held themselves upright for another ten minutes as Kieran had them recite the seven virtues of a Royal Knight. Many could barely gasp out the words, but I felt a sudden pride stab my heart as Joram drew himself up and shouted louder than anyone else.

"What is the Royal Knight's duty?" shouted Kieran. He himself looked fresh as a daisy—or perhaps his flushed complexion just hid it well—and his voice was just as vigorous as ever.

"Defend Crimea!" came back the roar.

"How does a Royal Knight defend Crimea?"

"With strength and honor!"

With that he held them at attention, looking to me calmly. I was panting as hard as the least among them: yet somehow I, too, felt the compunction to control myself as I gazed over the troops. Nary a movement among them. Finally, I yelled, "Reform five minutes after mess… Dismissed!"

There was no cheer, but no groans, either: just a soft sigh of content, as everyone picked up their armor and weapons to stow before dinner. I stood in pace beside Kieran as they left, and as the last soldier left the field, I let my shoulders slump, letting out a huge breath.

His first word to me wasn't formal, or even terribly dignified: "Ha!" he exclaimed triumphantly, punching me on the shoulder. "I think that should do it, eh?"

I groaned. "Goddesses alive, Kieran… to get them this far is a miracle! They'll have to make it all the way now."

"Best recruit class yet," he said, without a hint of either braggadocio or shame. "I think you'll be able to handle them now."

"I should certainly hope so." Both of us bent to get our gear, and we silently began moving towards the mess hall. As a rule, officers ate last when training was in full swing, since we could go find food elsewhere if it ran out. I became aware, as we walked, that both of us were still only half-clad, practically steaming from our exertions. It had been a long time since I'd seen quite this much of Kieran up close.

He caught me looking at him, and grinned. "Are you kidding me? Every eye in this place is going to be fixed on you starting tomorrow, squinty."

"I know, I know," I protested, and sighed. The ground tilted, and as we strode up the hill my hamstrings sang out in pain. "I can't help it. Are we ever going to get an inch of privacy again?"

He considered. I loved that look: Kieran, trying to be pensive and totally failing. He always just looked angry. "Well, I thought we were done for back when… you know. You did that kissing thing in front of everyone… and then showed up in my room and made me go to bed with you…"

"You were dying!" I yelled, but laughingly. "Come on, do we have to go over that again?"

"I am just saying!" he yelled right back. "If we never get an inch of privacy again, it's your fault, you negligent, ignorant, imbecilic, accursed romantic!"

I laughed at this classically half-insulting string of curses, and as we came to a halt by the door to the mess hall—the buzz of exhausted yet contented soldiers came from within—a swell came over my heart. It didn't matter right now, really, and I said as much. "Besides. Once these recruits are trained, I'm putting in a request to head out with them. There's no new conscriptions coming in, after all."

"No," he agreed. "General Geoffrey has told me he'll be moving out all the new soldiers within the month, if not sooner." And Kieran grinned, looking furtively around the doorway. Startling me unduly, he leaned forward and kissed me full on the mouth quickly. As I stood gaping in surprise, he added, "I'll probably be commanding all of you idiots, anyway! Come on!"

And with that, he strode into the mess hall, tugging on his shirt as he went. I shook my head, following him in. How could a man be at once brash and unsubtle as a tiger, yet surprisingly mysterious as the moon? Kieran was the Royal Knights in a nutshell.