Digby leaned against a post and watched the recruits finishing out their sparring bouts.

"McNab, watch that backswing! Keep your legs steady!" He strode forward and corrected the boy's stance with a sharp thwap of the his hache-butt. "Your weight's gotta rest on your back leg or you fall over and you die," he said, in the vexed tones of one who has imparted the same lesson over and over.

Walking through the ranks, he nodded to himself. Sergeant Kincade had done a marvelous job. Amazing, what he'd made of the raw lads who had stood here a few weeks back. But they weren't finished. They hadn't yet tasted the blood of combat. The blood, and the stink of spilled guts, and the moaning and the fire and the smoke and the pain. It took a real battle to see that.

"When we are at war," he said, his voice loud and rough after years of battlefield mustering-orders, "You'll see. Him as goes down, stays down!" He knocked a recruit's shoulders into alignment and moved on. They were all sweating pitiably. It was a hot, muggy day, the sun glowing dimly and warmly through a stifling blanket of white clouds. "And again! Break for a sip of water after this next round!" Nothing like incentives. Confident the recruits were flinging themselves into their final rounds with vigor, Digby left it to the drill sergeants and strolled over to the side of the practice arena, where the entrance of a cavalry office, and one he recognized, hadn't gone unnoticed.

"Your Lordship," he said, making a stiff half-nod and a bare tilt of his torso that might've been a bow. "Been years--hain't it?"

Returning to the garrison pulled long-since-sleeping memories into the forefront of Newbury's mind; the sound of weapons clanging and catching in the practice yard, the stench of humid air and the mud of soil and sweat and blood. After the struggles of the past few years, just passing through the gate let some of the ache wash off as surely as if it had been raining that very moment. If there were any justice in the world, his hair would have lost its gray and the lines round his mouth and eyes would disappear like rivers running dry.

Then the sound of Tremaine's voice caught his ears, and Cullen surprised himself at the flood of half-recalled memories that came pouring back just at the sound. He turned to face it and smiled, though it didn't reach his eyes.

"Don't call me that," he chided gently. He reached to clasp Digby's arm, more grateful to see him than his voice might let on; most of the cheer in him was long gone. "I hear enough of it at home. And it's been far too long.. Being away from the battlefield has cut more out of me than being on it ever did. I'm glad to see you're still in one piece; how have you been all this time?"

"Still in one piece!" Digby gave a half-smile. "Aye, that I am." He tapped the scar under his eye. "Got a few to add to the old collection, of course. Lots of lucky marks. What luck." He was speaking ironically, but smiling, buoyed up at the sight of an old comrade. Now this was someone he could trust--if only to be more of a stubborn bastard than he was himself.

He shook Cullen's hand up and down and relaxed into his habitually casual form of address, gesturing toward the recruits. "Now then, as you know, they hit us hard not two months back. Never done such a thing before, and their Warlord was here too, I could tell." He shook his head. "Bad business, this is. But just leavin' well enough alone ain't working any more, so we're gonna go in and break some skulls. Looking forward to it, to tell the truth. Too long we've been sitting here like a target for the barbarians. I miss the old days, too. Good clean fighting. And plunder. Ha!" Digby wasn't a covetous sort. All he'd wanted was enough gold to support the farm and Molly and Rick, and he'd gotten it. But the choicest prizes--those had always gone to the old King.

He turned to look out over the paradeground, over the moist and sunwarmed soil and the sweating, grunting recruits. Their footsteps made chalkboard sound against the gritty ground, and Digby clenched his teeth in sympathy, shading his eyes with one hand.

"I've been well," he said at last, once the official story was done with. "Lost a sergeant, got a new one, that's the way of things. The lad's grown up. He's almost fifteen years old now." He shook his head, melancholy tugging downward at the edges of his mustache. "He's the spit of his uncle. And your family, then? Leaving behind the--you had some youngsters, I think I recall?"

Cullen smirked as Digby showed off his scars. "Whatever doesn't kill us, aye?" he said, grinning fondly at the thought. Few men found as much joy in minor disfigurements as Digby Tremaine.

He listened to the briefing with patience, concerned with the meaning of sending a Warlord to something that ought to have been a fairly simple affair. "I suppose there must be some truth to the rumors then," Cullen said. "Though I've got my fair misgivings about barbarian Warlords having designs on the outposts, I can't say I'm displeased that they're stirring again. The stalemate never sat well with me either, friend."

As Tremaine went on about plunder and victory and the old days, Cullen couldn't help closing his eyes and remembering, each of his friend's words curving around the memories as though they could be wielded like blades. "It's been far too long since we've claimed our right from our fallen enemies, too," he said. "And without battles to claim them from, I believe our new King's gone without his rightful tribute even longer."

Cullen watched the recruits with him, and wasn't displeased; they were green, and it showed, but there was youth and strength in those limbs that would get them through the worst of it. Some of them, anyway.

"Fifteen already?" Cullen asked, doing his best to deflect the question of how his own kin were faring. "I'm sure he must be looking to take after his father by now, then; has he got a weapon he favors yet?"

"No." Digby shook his head vehemently. "Oh, he's learned the sword all right, and I gave him my old one, and he isn't bad with a hache either." He couldn't help the faint flicker of pride that swept over his face. "But I'll be damned if he follows the way I've lived my life. No, he's too young for war, and enough of my bloodline've spent their blood on the battlefield. This is the life I've known, and it'll be the death, and I want--" He shrugged and shook his head. "I've gotten him schooling, too, at the monastery. He'll have that. A marriage one day--but I must be getting old. I shouldn't on about such."

He clapped a hand on his friend's shoulder. It hadn't escaped him that Cullen had failed to mention his family. Oh, Digby had heard about Constance's death years past, and he'd taken it with the same equanimity he always put on when he faced death. It was what it was. And he'd thought his old friend would be the same.

Foolish. How'd he feel if Rick died? Even Molly, though theirs had never been what he could call love. It was different.

"The new King," he said, shaking his head. "Now he's green. Never been in battle. He's the one we'll have to train up, and hard work too. Your job, how's that? You can be diplomatick. Bah!" He pronounced the word with a heavy 'k' sound at the end of it, and laughed.

He wouldn't ask more about his family at the moment. At the garrison, Digby was cut off from the current gossip, and he didn't usually regret it, but there seemed to be something amiss that wasn't just the loss of his wife. Well; he'd mention it if needed, and in meantime, they'd take care of what needed it. "Come on, I say we get something cold to drink and get out to a bit of practice once my boys have cleared the field."

He slapped Cullen on the back again, familiarly, and propelled him toward the mess.

Hearing news of Rick's imminent education, Cullen nodded approvingly. "If the boy has a mind for it, sending him to pursue scholarship is a fine plan. I'm sure he must be thrilled over it," he said. He paused, carefully choosing his words. "Julian, my second son-- the one with lame leg who went away to study-- recently returned from his trip abroad."

He let a small thread of pride work his way into his voice. "He's quite bright. I've often wondered whether it takes more courage to conquer men or the unknown; if your son proves himself capable of both, it'll be a blessing fit for the highest king to envy," Cullen said, and clapped his own hand on Digby's shoulder, grateful for the camaraderie as they headed toward the mess hall..

"Feh, don't remind me," he said, chuckling despite himself. "Green or not, he's Aelfric's boy and we've got a duty to him, diplomatick though it be. I doubt he'd have much use for me as a diplomat anyway, I'm sure he's got all manner of nobles and courtiers who'd give him far less of a headache than either of us would. Lord or not I'm still a soldier."

Digby pulled two mugs from the tap himself and sat down across from Cullen, sipping at the barley beer.

"Ah, and we do have a duty. And was never a king that won a war, even if I grant Aelfric the honor of being not a king but a soldier, just as you're no Lord." Was there a double edge in that last? Digby didn't mean it, but if it was there, so be it. He wouldn't have accepted a fiefdom even if it had been offered. He was happy on his farmstead, when rarely he saw it. And happier still at the garrisons.

"I'm glad your boy's back." Was Roger dead? He'd heard something, but--Digby shook his head. No use worrying over it, and he was always faintly annoyed by avoidance. "I've a new sergeant, as I said. Duain man, from the West, where they wear--skirts--" He chuckled. "Anyways, he's working wonders with the recruits, and that's no lie, and talking innovations like leather armor... but--"

Digby leaned forward, elbows on the table and shoulders hunched. "What's what is we're going to attack the main barbarian camp, where they're all of them gathered--in three days' time. Keep silent about it. I don't want to name all I had to talk to so I could learn that, it's between the King and the General--but there it is. At last. And we've got some new weapons that can rip through them, an alchemist makes them, but there's still room for steel... and these recruits are schooled on how to treat the women they find in the battlefield." For a moment, Digby's eyes turned hard. "Nothing like what went on last time."

Cullen took the vessel and took a mouthful-- it was cheap stuff, he knew, and swill compared to the wine that got around his own house, but the second it hit his tongue, it might as well have been distilled from clouds at daybreak. He drained it almost at once.

If Digby's barbs stung him, he didn't show it. "Aye," he agreed. "There are days I wonder if his Highness only gave me the land to show me what it takes to civilize a man. He may have been a warrior-king fit to tell tales of forever, but you're right, I'm no more a Lord than I am--" a father? A husband? "--a Lady."

"I'm glad of Julian's return myself, though I was loathe to call him back from his studies," he said. "The boy is unfathomable to me most days, and if it weren't for my Constance's unshakable virtue I would wonder if he was my son at all, but he lacks nothing in the way of courage. That, at least, I can pretend he's got from me. I wish the same for your Rick, it's a source of immeasurable pride."

"A skirt?" Cullen's eyes threatened to disappear into his (blessedly not yet receding) hairline. "... Well, I suppose the skilled are entitled to a quirk or two."

He listened to Digby's explanation closely, approving very much of alchemical weapons that wouldn't eliminate the need for soldiers, and even moreso of those soldiers being taught at least something of courtesy.

"Good," he said firmly, never having liked the claiming of women as spoils of war, and certainly never standing for it in his own territory; it meant angry half-bastards, for the ones who lived, adulterers among the soldiers, and proof against the idea that the Baskar were the Barbarians named in the war. "Then I'll be happy to count it among punishable crimes."

"That we will."

Digby lapsed into silence and took a desultory swallow from his mug. There were times for talking and times for silence, he thought. How strange to see Cullen again. It reminded him of when he was young. And now he was as protective of the young'uns as a mother hen, when he himself had been only thirteen when he'd joined up. The better part of his life had been spent in King Aelfric's army.

He wasn't sure he liked King Aedan's in comparison. It was just that once you hit a certain age, you started to think: a third of these boys are signing up to die. And then you thought, well, is it worth it? And he couldn't say for sure it was, this time. They couldn't kill all the barbarians, not their women and children, and then where would they be? Oh, well. That was politics, and he had never understood them. They'd attacked his garrison; that was reason enough for now.

"So have you kept up with bladework, all these years? Some changes since we were young, aren't there." Swords were slightly shorter, and lighter. Haches instead of pikes. Well, it stood to reason: fighting the barbarians was entirely different from fighting Scalians.

Cullen felt the sword at his hip, fingers catching around the hilt with a familiarity most people never managed with their spouses. It wasn't the same one he'd begun his career with-- heaven only knew what a sad state of affairs that poor, overworked steel bar was-- but it was the one he'd been wearing when the war was declared ended. Probably heavier, clumsier than the new works, but he couldn't bear to part with it.

"More deeply than I think you realize," he said, a grin sharpening the corner of his mouth as keen as any blade. "You haven't been to Newbury, have you, my friend? Aelfric gave me that land as recognition of my service to the crown, and I swore that day that my lands would serve him as long as they belonged to me and mine."

"I confess I've been loathe to replace my old blade," he admitted, and poured the last few sad drops from the tankard into his mouth. "But even an old sword can still hold an edge. I'm sure you've been keeping up yourself, though, so I'm sure we're still equally matched. Unless, of course, you think it's a matter of years."

Cullen's smile was easy and teasing, though it was far from the lighthearted manners of his youth; there was a challenge in it, but a desperate one. He wasn't sure he could keep up anymore; he had practiced every day, gone hunting and riding and competed whenever he could, trained troops in his own yard and brawled in his own bars (well, just that one time, early on), but how much would it really matter against someone who'd never been away from the real battlefield?

Digby laughed, and avoided the matter of the fiefdom entirely. He wasn't jealous, of that he was sure; what he felt instead was an obscure melancholy. Perhaps it was for a time when comrade in arms were just that, and he felt the pull of no rank or ambition.

When he wasn't responsible for other people's deaths except among the barbarians. But he always had been, when he thought of it.

"Is that a challenge?" He shook his head, still chuckling a little, in a forced sort of way. The noise came out like the slow grind of rusted gears. "If it's a matter of years, I think I've got one or two on you, don't I? And what was an advantage back when is just more rheumatism now." He made a show of flexing his shoulders, lacing his hands together behind his back.

"If I get to choose the weapon, I'm gonna say sword--sidesword, mind." He winked. "Times are changing, and you can't stay locked up on your fiefdom hoping to go back!"

Cullen smiled gratefully. "If am to be trounced by anyone here," he said, "I'm more than glad that it should be you-- that is, of course, if you manage. Let it be the sidesword then; better that my first swing of one should be in the practice yard than in battle."

The words stung-- not for any ill intent on Digby's part, but he cast his eyes down and laughed humorlessly. It was like being slapped on a sunburn. "No, friend," he said softly, "I came here to swim upstream against time."

He took a quick breath and forced the words out, knowing that once he drew his sword he would be-- or at least would hold himself-- as simply Sir Cullen Newbury, the way he always had in the old days, and Sir Cullen Newbury didn't have these problems, even as Lord Cullen Newbury was being devoured alive by them.

"My Constance is dead and Roger is gone. I had to call Julian away from his studies because I have no heir, save him. Isobel and Rachel have their mother's charms and beauty about them and won't lack for suitors much longer, and I worry that the twins will have grown up while I've been away." He let the words flood out of his mouth, and there was shame and hurt in it that was near unseemly in its honesty, but he kept his voice low. "My family is falling apart, and without Constance I feel like someone's taken half my heart out of my chest.. I thought I might find it here."

Digby let his face relax into expressionlessness and leaned forward, listening, elbows propped on the table. He didn't stare too intently at the ravaged look on Cullen's face. There were times when you just gave a man space to let out his hurts. Digby did it with violence and drunkenness, on the rare and shameful occasions he let himself feel much at all apart from the burning need to protect his boys. After Hawes had died--that was a bad time. After his brother had died was worse. Perhaps the most haunting death was the second child he might have had with Molly... but death was a funny thing. It swept over you and then it was gone. Being sad about it was almost selfish, he thought. After all, it wasn't your death.

Still he couldn't imagine losing a wife. Molly was really just wedded to him out of circumstance, and he still felt a connection of the soul to her, if only through Roderick.

"Barracks and battleground can be simpler," he said finally, looking down into the dark damp of his cup. "But you're talkin' like a man who wants to die."

Cullen shook his head emphatically. "No, Tremaine, never that," he said, his fingers curling into a loose fist.

"You're right, I am no lord. I take no joy in working lands that only arbitrarily have my name on them, and I certainly have no love for the droning of courtiers and their ... well, their ways," Cullen drawled, letting the word drop off of his tongue with such disdain that it might have been thrilled to be free of his mouth for its hostility. "My King and my wife are dead, my heir has not needed me since he turned thirteen and became wiser than I, and I have no wish to spend the rest of my life mincing about with the rest of a nobility that I don't belong in."

"I miss the fighting. I miss being able to look around me and know that every face I saw was a brother and a friend. I miss battle and glory and the closeness of brothers-at-arms. I've missed you," He chuckled. "I've even missed the stench of unwashed feet in muddy leather. I came here to live again, not to die."

Digby shook his head, but a smile tugged at the corners of his lips, twitching his mustache up at the sides.

"You have been away too long. Don't you know half the fun of soldiering's hoping for your lot?" He tipped his chair back and balanced thoughtfully, rubbing one hand slowly along his jaw. "After glory and riches, what should we be fighting for? Peace, I guess. But peace never gave me much peace."

Digby let the legs of his chair slam down, and faced Cullen, head propped up on his hands. "Sometimes I think war's a young man's game." He meant a great deal more than that, but it hovered somewhere in the back of his mind, refusing to be said. He had the vague idea that the only thing left to look for was death; that his righteous passion was fading; that his was a waiting game; that there was something big behind his desperate anger whenever one of his 'boys' died.

"But then, so's lording. And what's left for for us?" His grin widened, became feral. "A place in the pages of legend was never my aim. But since we won't live to see the end of war, might as well never let war see the end of us..."

Cullen grinned at his friend, feeling his old strength return at Digby's words.

"I have never had particular concern for the barbarians-- they are our enemies, and that position deserves a certain amount of respect-- but this is not a new war, simply one with a long intermission."

"And for each of us who remembers how it was in the beginning, I'm sure there's one among the barbarians to match. Glory and riches may be left behind in death, it's true, but to leave behind a story to pin on your name is immortality." The old soldier made a sweeping gesture, as though clearing imaginary chess pieces from the table, leaving the empty tankard of ale in front of him a lonely monolith. "And how great a memorial is the one that stands long after its event has ended?"

"This is no new threat to our lands," he said, and offered his wrist to Digby again, renewed in his purpose and much brighter in his demeanor, "This is simply a matter of unfinished business. Let's make it our war, and let it be our pen that writes the history."