welcome you, Nox Owen,” Aedion said to the
messenger. “We travel at dawn.”
Aedion set out to find Kyllian to convey the
order. The tents were a maze of exhausted
soldiers, the injured groaning amongst them.
Aedion stopped long enough to greet those
men, to offer a hand on the shoulder or a word
of reassurance. Some would last the night.
Many wouldn’t.
He halted at other fires as well. To
commend the fighting done, whether the
soldiers hailed from Terrasen or the Wastes or
Wendlyn. At a few of them, he even shared in
their ales or meals.
Rhoe had taught him that—the art of
making his men want to follow him, die for
him. But more than that, seeing them as men,
as people with families and friends, who had
as much to risk as he did in fighting here. It