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me at all and you don’t ever ask me a question. Eventually—” He smiled at Nell. “Eventually you’ll be welcome to say what you please and ask all the questions you like. But just now, I gave you an order—to do work that will benefit everyone in our mess group. Don’t give me any shit. Go do your work.”
    Nell stood with crossed arms and didn’t do anything to support the boy. He flushed with anger, but he swallowed it and went to get wood. Nell followed him. “She’s Lady Kaitlin’s maid, and she’s sort of the head non-combatant in your mess group. She and Robin give the orders.”
    “What’s a fewkin’ mess group?” Diccon asked.
    She looked at him, as if enjoying his confusion because it reminded her how far she’d come. “Do you know what a lance is?”
    He didn’t stay in an ill-humour long. He grabbed a good armload of wood—nice dry maple—and started back to the fires. Just to be supportive, Nell took an armload, too.
    “A spear about ten feet long?” he said.
    “It’s a knight, a squire, an archer or two and a page,” she said. “Two lances make a mess group, with their lemans and their—”
    “What’s a leman?” he asked.
    “Lover. Whore. Partner. Wife. Husband. Whatever.” Nell laughed. “You only get to have one permanent-like with the captain’s permission.”
    “Christ, it’s worse than being a monk!” Diccon said. He dropped his wood on the right pile and then stooped to stack it before going back for another load. Six pairs of watching eyes noted him stack the wood he’d just dumped with approval.
    Nell shrugged. “Lemans cost money for food and bedding and everything. Any road, we don’t leave ours behind. So the veterans have lemans and they bring up the numbers of a mess group to ten or twelve. Everyone in that group eats together, sleeps together, and works together. Most of us fight together.” She grunted as she lifted a big chunk of oak.
    He took it from her and held out his arms to be loaded up. “You in my group?” he asked.
    “No, sweet. If I were, I wouldn’t buss you or allow any liberties. Got that? It’s a rule, too.” She smiled. “I’m the captain’s page. I’m in the command lance.”
    “Is that special?” Diccon asked. His eyes were brimful of questions.
    “It’ll be more than a mite special if I don’t have the horses ready for inspection. We move in two hours.” She dropped her load on the pile. “Stack mine, will ye?” she asked. “I’ll come see you later. Anything you fuck up, just say you’re sorry. Don’t cross the captain or the
primus pilus
. That’s all the advice I have.”
    She went back to where Robin was sitting. He had a cup of hippocras in his hand and he was looking at Ser Michael’s sabatons, which had somehow started to rust overnight.
    “I’m a dead man,” he said.
    Nell thought that was probably true, but felt no pity. She bobbed her head. Squires got one bended knee first thing and then they were pretty much just folk. “I don’t think the new boy has anything,” she said. “Not even a blanket, and certes no horse or arms.”
    Lord Robin sighed. “I’m going to catch it. Nell, can you ask Toby to help me?”
    “If’n you’ll see to it that the new boy gets sorted,” Nell said. She smiled to show she wasn’t entirely serious.
    Robin looked pained. “You like him,” he said.
    Nell shrugged. “Yes, sir.”
    Robin nodded. “Please find Toby,” he said.
    Toby was attending the captain, and Nell didn’t even try and find him until all the horses were done. The sun was well up by the time she found them both, out behind the inn’s barns.
    “Toby, Toby,” the captain said. “Again.”
    Toby was stripped to hose and a doublet and both men were covered insweat. They both had arming swords in their hands and, after the captain spoke, Toby cut hard at the captain’s head.
    The captain retreated his front foot to his back foot so that he stood in a narrow stance and his forward leg was