Rosso Brun stood catching his breath, watching several men step forward to help Colin off the ground.
He turned to Solomon. The shock in his voice was genuine.
"My Lord... what exactly are these men?"
He had genuinely believed these were ordinary soldiers. And yet one of them — apparently an ordinary member of this forty-man retinue — had nearly beaten him. The victory had cost him far more than it should have.
Solomon smiled. He pointed at the man who had just been helped back to his feet.
"His name is Colin."
"When we fought on Lege lands, he was always first through the breach. Five times he was the first man over the enemy wall. He has personally taken more than twenty enemy heads."
Colin, now on his feet, picked up his sword, bowed respectfully to Solomon, and then lowered his head and quietly moved back into the group — taking advantage of everyone's attention being elsewhere to slip to the very back of the formation. Deeply humiliating.
Solomon pointed to another powerfully built man carrying a longbow and a training sword, a smile on his face — also one of Brin's original ten brothers.
"His name is Angae. A longbowman."
"He has shot and killed thirty-seven enemies in my service."
The name seemed to reach Angae across the distance. He put down the training sword, reached back for the longbow with a grin, drew an arrow, nocked, aimed, and released.
Rosso Brun's eyes followed the shaft as it cut through the air with a sharp hiss and buried itself in the branch of a large tree two hundred paces away. The fletching was still trembling.
He swallowed.
Two hundred paces. That is a master archer's distance.
Rosso's gaze moved to two of the younger faces in the crowd — clearly no more than seventeen or eighteen years old.
"And those two?"
Solomon's eyes found the pair.
His smile faded. His voice became deliberate.
"Their fathers were farmers by birth. But they fought with exceptional courage — both personally took more than ten enemy heads in battle, and earned land for their families with those kills."
"Now their sons have joined my cavalry retinue. They will inherit their fathers' duty and their fathers' honor, and they will serve in their place."
The two young retainers heard their lord's words and immediately brought their right fists to their left chests, bowing their heads deeply toward Solomon — eyes full of reverence and something that burned.
Rosso Brun went completely quiet.
He looked around slowly — at the steady, sweat-covered, battle-hardened men surrounding him on all sides.
He realized he had forgotten something important. These were not garrison troops. These were men who had just come back from actual war. To become the lord's personal retinue, they would have been selected from the very best. He had dismissed them too easily.
One against three. Without the horse, not even one against two — against anyone here except the two youngest — would give me reasonable odds.
Every one of them had survived blood and fire.
Solomon watched the thoughts moving across Rosso's face and let his smile return.
"Ser Rosso — still interested in a three-on-one?"
He expected the man to concede.
Instead, what he heard surprised him.
Rosso Brun drew a slow breath. Something that had briefly faded in his eyes reignited.
He took a clean linen cloth from his saddle and pressed it to the bleeding gash on his chest, his hoarse voice carrying clearly.
"My Lord — you said just now that they are riders?"
Solomon wasn't sure where this was going. He nodded.
"I demand to continue the trial by combat."
A beat.
"One against three."
The assembled men erupted. Shouts and curses broke out from around the ground. Solomon raised one hand, and the noise stopped.
Rosso Brun held his ground, eyes on Solomon, ignoring all of it.
"But not on foot."
"On horseback."
A flash of genuine surprise crossed Solomon's eyes.
After seeing what my soldiers can do, he still wants three opponents at once. Only the method has changed.
Which means his confidence in horsemanship is in a completely different category from his confidence on foot.
He found himself liking this. The nerve. The recalibration under pressure, then the refusal to fold.
He looked at Rosso Brun and nodded.
"Granted, ser."
"I'll give you what you asked for."
A short time later, three retainers walked out leading their warhorses, chainmail on, weapons in hand.
Solomon watched them with genuine interest. This is actually useful information. These forty men are my future cavalry — their riding is well-drilled, but I've never seen them in mounted combat. Let me find out exactly how large the gap is between trained retainers and a hedge knight who has lived by the lance.
He was confident in his retainers. But he wanted to know the truth.
Rosso Brun swung onto the back of his horse — a deep chestnut red animal — and accepted the lance a soldier brought at Solomon's direction. The moment he was mounted, something in his entire bearing changed. Man and horse seemed to merge into one.
This time Solomon gave no signal.
The three retainers had already been holding themselves back for some time. All of them wanted to make this arrogant man answer for it. After a brief, heated exchange of you go / no, you go, one retainer lost patience and simply drove his horse forward at full gallop while the other two were still gesturing at each other.
Two horses accelerated toward each other like arrows loosed from the string.
Rosso Brun's lance held perfectly still.
At the moment of crossing, it struck the center of the retainer's shield with absolute precision.
The wooden shield exploded into pieces. The force carried the retainer completely off the back of his horse. He hit the ground hard.
The field went silent.
After a long moment, voices started breaking through.
"That was an accident. Has to be."
"What are you two waiting for! Get out there!"
"Move! Let me go!!"
The two remaining retainers looked at each other. Shock in both faces — but no fear. One kicked forward.
The second pass.
This time Rosso chose not to take the impact directly. At the moment of contact, a subtle twist of his body let the incoming lance slide along his armor.
Simultaneously, his wrist moved — a short sharp lift of the tip — and the opponent's helmet was flicked cleanly off his head and sent spinning through the air.
Same silence as before.
The retainers were not arrogant men. Faced with the evidence in front of them, they acknowledged the gap without argument.
Rosso Brun looked at the last rider and called out clearly.
"Still going, my friend?"
No cowards among the retainers. The last man's answer came back as a shout.
"Going!!"
His horse felt the fury in his grip and screamed, hooves driving into the earth. The final retainer leveled his lance and came on.
The third pass.
This time Rosso met him head-on — pure force. No technique, no deflection. The two lances collided in a single explosive moment, and the retainer was driven backward off his saddle by the impact.
The entire plain fell silent.
Three passes. Three retainers unhorsed. Clean, complete, no contest drawn out.
Rosso Brun reined in and turned his horse back toward Solomon at a slow walk.
He dismounted, handed the lance to a waiting soldier, and looked up with eyes that held the confidence his foot combat had temporarily stripped away.
"Lord Solomon — may I have your investiture now?"
Solomon looked at him. He could not honestly dispute what the cavalry gap looked like. His retainers needed formal mounted combat training. The man standing in front of him was, without question, the right person to provide it.
He finally gave a single nod.
"You may, ser. I acknowledge that your ability warrants investiture."
He paused. His tone shifted.
"However — I will not be granting you land."
The confidence on Rosso's face froze. Confusion moved through his eyes.
Solomon held his gaze and spoke each word clearly.
"In my service, land is not given through investiture."
"You will earn it the same way they did — on the battlefield, with military merit, exchanging enemy heads for the land and honor that belong to you."
"The choice of whether to swear loyalty to me is yours."
Rosso heard that, and the confusion on his face slowly dissolved.
What replaced it was something he couldn't quite contain.
He doesn't care about starting position. He cares whether the rules are fair. And he was very confident in his own ability.
A clear meritocratic promise — earn what you take — was worth infinitely more to an ambitious hedge knight than any arbitrary lordly gift. Gifts could be revoked. Earned land meant something different.
He went down without hesitation, one knee heavy on the ground, and made his answer clear by the weight of the gesture itself.
Solomon drew the Myrish longsword at his hip. The blade caught the sunlight and threw back cold white light.
He laid the flat of it gently on Rosso's right shoulder.
"I, Solomon, accept your loyalty."
"From this day, you are my sworn knight."
"Fight for me — and I will give you land and honor."
Rosso raised his head and looked up at Solomon.
"I — Rosso Brun — do swear."
"Before the Seven as witnesses."
"My loyalty to my Lord — until death takes it from me."
A brief silence.
Then the retainers raised their training swords and brought the pommels down against their shields in a rhythmic hammering, and the sound of it broke across the plain like rolling thunder.
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