“Captain Tammer!”

  A squire clambered over the wooden fence of the training yard, clutching a letter sealed with a bit of white wax. A few soldiers briefly paused to watch him. Captain Tammer wiped his brow and turned away from the wooden dummy wrapped in sacks of sand, ignoring the soft trickle of sand pouring out of a hole. That’d be a problem for the squire later. He dropped the heavy wooden sword and grabbed his linen shirt before he approached the boy.

  “What can I do for you?”

  The squire’s eyes flicked around Tammer at the leaking dummy and gave a hasty salute. “A letter arrived for you, sir. From Castoon.”

  Tammer dabbed at the sweat rolling down his chest with his shirt, noting the familiar script on the front of the envelope. “I suppose this is urgent?”

  “I was told to hand it directly to you, sir. That was an instruction that came down the line. Every stop they said that this needs to be taken directly to Captain Tammer. So I was told, sir. It left Castoon four days ago, so I hope we weren’t too late.”

  Tammer shook his head and took the letter. “Thank you.” The squire saluted again and scaled the fence, heading for the armory, presumably for a kit to patch the hole in the dummy..

  Tammer sighed and rolled his eyes as he stuffed the letter in the waistband of his pants. The letter was from his mother in Castoon, a many days’ ride away from Darluth. The kingdom of Alfreyad was by no means a small country; post took a long time to get anywhere. With her urgent message, the delivery men must have run themselves ragged to get this here so quickly. He hoped it was worth it.

  Tammer picked up his wooden sword and walked back through the crowded yard to the practice armory. It stood adjacent to the training yard, barely more than a shed to hold the practice weapons. The training yard itself was a converted green from the old city, a place where the farmers could graze their sheep. Once Darluth became large enough and the royal family recognized the sensibility of having a centralized capitol, the abandoned green was repurposed. The practice armory was only built a few years ago, after the Kingsguard complained sufficiently about the long walk from the main armory to the yard.

  Tammer replaced his weapon and dunked his head in the barrel of water right outside the door. Water cascaded around him, refracting the midday sun. The drops caught on the braided rows of his hair and sparkled like diamonds. He shook his head, his sopping beard hitting him in the face.

  The others in the yard went back to their training; their grunts and cries rose with the heat. As Tammer picked up his shirt, he felt he was being watched. He turned and saw a young woman sitting on the steps to the fountain in the square, twenty yards from the fence. He couldn’t make out much at this distance except for the basic details of her face and a wreath of curls. She grinned at him and he thought she winked before she hopped lightly to her feet and sauntered away.

  “Huh,” Tammer said to himself as he pulled on his shirt. It wasn’t uncommon for people to gather around the training yard; people often came to watch the Kingsguad - men and women - train. The commonly accepted reason was that they watched to ensure that the Kingsguard were, in fact, training and honing their skills; the people wanted to have visual evidence that their soldiers would and could keep them safe. But lust was probably the honest answer. Alfreyad was a hot country, and more often than not the guardsmen and women training on the green were half-dressed or less.

  It was a scorching day. His dark complexion could handle the heat better than some. Tammer had planned on training for at least another hour, but his mother’s letter gave him enough reason to pack it in early. He sighed when he entered the cool threshold of the guards’ quarters.

  The place was quiet, but this wasn’t unusual. If the guard wasn’t on active duty, then it was expected that they would spend most of their free time training. Few did, not that Tammer ever noticed; he rarely had the opportunity to spend time with the other sections.

  He waited until he was in his room to open the letter. His mother’s script was clear as always, but it did seem to be written a bit more hastily than usual.

  Tammer rubbed his eyes. Typical Ma, he thought. He appreciated her concern, but this was not something to bother the delivery men over. The king already been warned about the wolves’ strange behavior. Whether a child had actually been eaten, he had no idea. But in the meantime, the current order was to do nothing and see if the wolf problem grew worse. It was close to their mating season, so maybe they were just a bit more heated than usual.

  His mother also seemed to think that he was the king’s closest advisor when that was far from the truth. The Kingsguard never spoke to the royal family; the royal family spoke to the Kingsguard. He couldn’t just turn to King Daern while he was working and tell him about his mother’s letter. And even if the king did send a party out to take care of the wolves by Castoon, it would certainly be one of the ranger factions. The king’s personal guard would never be sent to do that.

  Tammer folded the letter and placed it in the pine box on his desk. Inside the box were other letters from his family and his sweetheart, Kata, as well as a smaller box that contained his life’s savings. It was minimal, but he was only a few months away from having enough to bring them all to Darluth and when Kata arrived, he intended to marry her.

  He almost left, but then slumped down at his desk and pulled out a clean piece of stationary. He thought carefully as he wrote, not wanting to sound entirely dismissive even though that was his intention.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  The sun was starting to dip when he finished his letter. Most of the Kingsguard would be returning soon for dinner, so he headed that way.

  Now that he had rested the day wasn’t so hot, but it was surprisingly warm for early spring, even in Alfreyad. Tammer strolled across the large courtyard that separated the town square from the training yard. Quite a few people were bustling around, going here and there about their lives. Bakers with their trays of bread, older women gossiping amongst each other, farmers carrying their cache of eggs back to their wagons to take home only to bring them back tomorrow. They all called out to passersby, shouting over their neighbors and trying to entice them with their wares. The setting sun cast long shadows over the grass and gravel walkways. The trees were still bare, but if the weather kept up, soon the buds would break through.

  Off to the right, high above the rooftops of the guards’ quarters, stood the gleaming spires of Darluth Castle, the home of the royal family. Tammer remembered the day he first arrived in Darluth. He was a young farmer boy then, strong from all his years of herding, milking, and shearing goats, but naive, idealistic, and spry. He had never been away from his family before, never even left Castoon, and there he was, in Darluth! The greatest city in the world! And there was the castle, standing proudly above it all. That day he could have sworn he saw the king standing at the highest window, looking down at him, and young Tammer knew that one day he would become the king’s greatest knight, the greatest general Alfreyad - the whole world! - had ever seen. He was going to be just like the heroes in all the stories he read growing up. Fierce, powerful, gentle, and fair, but hardened from the many battles he fought and won.

  Tammer chuckled to himself remembering that day. Five years had passed, and yes, he’d excelled as a soldier - so much so that he quickly rose through to the captain’s rank - but Alfreyad was a peaceful nation; they hadn’t been at war with anyone in over a hundred years, maybe more. Which was good, he reminded himself, because no one likes war. It could be argued that a Kingsguard that never sees a fight means that they’re doing their job well just by looking intimidating, but heroes aren’t made in times of peace.

  Tammer entered the dining hall and was instantly bombarded with a cacophany of voices. A few dozen soldiers sat at the long tables over pewter plates and cups, tearing into bread, arm wrestling, or huddled close and gossiping. Kitchen staff weaved among them, taking empty plates and unused silverware, occasionally refilling a cup or bringing more food. A few of the kitchen cats huddled around the edge of the room, eyes furtively looking for mice or the odd piece of dropped meat. The wafting aroma of cooked meat and cold ale hung over it all. Laughter, small scuffles, debates, and tall tales were being shared freely among the guards. Tammer looked around and spotted his men, the second section. They ate, they drank, sometimes too much, but here he wasn’t just their captain; he was their friend.

  “Tammer!” Gentren, his best friend and one of his lieutenants, jumped off the bench and ran over, throwing an arm around him and pulling him to the group of men and women he had just left. “‘Bout time you showed up. Where you been? You left training early.”

  “I had to answer a letter. My mother sent me what she thought was urgent news, but it was nothing. Had to respond, though, or she thinks I died. And what were you doing?”

  “I was training! I was only ten yards away from you!”

  Tammer reached over and stole a piece of bread off Gentren’s plate. “Oh, you were ? From what I saw, I thought you were hosting a tea party.”

  Gentren shoved Tammer’s shoulder, knocking him into his neighbor. “Oh, fuck off,” he said before turning to one of the kitchen staff. “Can we get this man a plate? Thanks!”

  The rest of Tammer’s brigade squeezed in closer. The Kingsguard second section had had the day off and spent it sparring with each other; the welts and bruises were still fresh. Liesl, the youngest of his soldiers with rusty hair, picked at her dinner of fish and said, “So, Captain, you hear about the wolves in the west?” Liesl wasn’t from Castoon, but she was from the same area. They were the only two guardsmen in all of Darluth from the Back End.

  “I did; my mother wrote me a letter.”

  “So did mine. One of my bunk mates said she received a letter from mother warning her of the same thing, but from Klost, all the way on the other side of the country! And she has a friend who lives right by our border with Estorlath and she said that they’re having a wolf problem, too, but only at the border with Alfreyad; everywhere else is fine, supposedly.”

  “I’ve also heard whispers going ‘round that the wolves are getting more dangerous,” said Ferg. His nose had a chunk missing; he scratched it. “Attacking travelers, and not just people traveling alone. So far, no one’s died, but how long until that happens, eh?”

  Taryn, the tallest of them, leaned in, his long neck arching low like a willow branch. “What do you think they want?”

  “To fuck and to eat,” Tammer said, taking his steaming plate of food from the kitchen staffer, who then hurried back to the kitchen. “Same as us.”

  “Same as you, maybe,” Gentren quipped with another playful shove. Tammer grinned and looked away quickly.

  “You don’t think something’s going on?”

  “Nah,” he said, tearing into his fish. “We just need a cull, is all. The wolf population has gotten too high and they’re competing for food. Food gets scarce, they get desperate, turn to the easiest thing to catch, which is travelers. Just you wait; in the next few weeks, the king will order the rangers to go hunting.”

  “Now there’s a job,” said Gentren. “A ranger! If I could go back in time and talk to little Gentren when he decided becoming a member of the Kingsguard was a great idea, I’d knock him on the head and tell him to be a ranger. Pay’s got to be better than the pittance they give out here.” The rest of Tammer’s squad looked down at their plates and nodded. Tammer focused on his fish.

  It was a great honor serving in the Kingsguard, truly. But it was demanding and for little payoff. Rarely was the guard ever required to really anything, but they still had to work to stay at the top of their physical prowess, just in case. Days off were only allowed when there was nothing on the schedule for any member of the royal family, which was rare, and even then those days were rotated among the different platoons. It was entirely possible for a platoon to go an entire year without a single day off, but even then, “days off” didn’t really exist because you were still expected to train the whole day. Tammer hadn’t seen his family since the day he had left for Darluth, and he knew the rest of his soldiers hadn’t seen their families, either.

  All that, and there was never anything for the guard to do. Each day, they were assigned to a member of the royal family, and they followed that person around the whole day, keeping watch outside their door at night, and so on until they were replaced with a fresh guard. Then they were to sleep, eat, and return to their post. It was incredibly dull. Not only did nothing ever happen to the royal family, but the royal family themselves rarely did anything interesting. Anything that

  be interesting, the guard was left outside so they couldn’t observe.

  The rangers, though...the rangers were practically ghosts. Their duty was to travel the kingdom and fulfill mysterious orders. No one quite knew exactly what they did, but the theories ranged from espionage to thwarting coups and criminal cartels. Every once in a while, they would also be ordered to thin animal populations. It happened a few years ago with rabbits; too many rabbits resulted in too few crops, so the rangers, since they were already traveling about anyway, hunted the rabbits. This was always a great time for the people; game hunting had strict limitations throughout the year, but when a cull was ordered, the rangers were also required to take the carcasses to the nearest town for the butchers to portion and sell at reduced prices.

  Many a Kingsguard dreamed of one day becoming a ranger, but no one had ever heard of a transfer happening. It would look bad on the royal family if their elite protection guard decided to do something else. If you were selected for the Kingsguard, you were there for life.

  “I heard,” Liesl, whispered, leaning in even closer; her hair dipped into her fish, but she didn’t notice. “I heard that the rangers run secret combat missions to try and find the Abyss.”

  Eyes grew wide. “Really?” Tammer said, dropping his fish.

  “That’s what I heard,” Liesl said. “I don’t know how true it is, but it would make sense, right? The Abyss wants the One Fire, and it’s here somewhere in Alfreyad. What if the rangers are the secret guardians of the One Fire? And they’re trying to protect it!”

  The One Fire was Alfreyad’s - no, the world’s - most sacred relic. It safely assured the lifeblood of every mortal man and promised the redemption of every immortal soul. Since time in memoria the Eternal Hearth had safeguarded it from the machinations of the Abyss and the kingdom of Alfreyad was the kingdom chosen by holy edict to protect the Eternal Hearth and the One Fire from certain destruction. If Alfreyad failed, the whole world fall to ruin.

  “Do you think the wolves are being controlled by the Abyss? What if it’s using the wolves to try and find the One Fire?”

  “Then we better hope that the rangers are good at what they do,” said Taryn.

  A bell rang in the courtyard; dinner was over, and the Kingsguard needed to return to their posts.

  “Damn,” said Ferg.

  The crowd of soldiers clumped at the door, moaning while they still could. “Who are we on this week?”

  “Princess Halia,” Tammer said. “She plans on making a tour of the Near End. We need to be ready to go at sun-up.”

  The soldiers groaned.