6 Months Later

"As you have summoned, so am I here, your majesty," Corvus half snarled.

From across the grand space of the Belegarian throne room, Lugh Jayne sighed and lifted a weary hand to his temples. He seemed older and the crown on his head seemed to hang heavier than it had on the summer day of his coronation 6 months earlier. Corvus immediately regretted his words, and in a softer tone, spoke again. "I am here, Brother. Why have you called me away?"

"Away from what?" Jayne spoke, his eyes flashing with frustration, "Your vacation cruise?"

"If you had need of me you had only send for me. Eldgrim sails where he wishes but never beyond the range of communique with Belegaria."

"Of course I have needed your help, Corvus. I have needed all the help I could have asked for and more after that. The world might have been saved in Hithdor 6 months ago but I'll be damned if running a kingdom in peace isn't more difficult than one at war."

He paused for a moment, then added, " In war time it was enough to provide the poor with bread and the rich with protection. Now they petition me to replace sheep lost to wolves lost on my land. Replacement sheep!" Laughter shook his enthroned form, temporarily softening the lines of his face into someone Corvus remembered.

"I am sure your ears have been sorely tested with all this talk of sheep, Lugh, but I am no shepherd. I am a soldier in a time of hard-bought peace. Call on me when your borders are challenged, perhaps, but I do not think they are. If they were, you know my commanding officer is Toland," Corvus paused, the name of his estranged friend and comrade feeling strange as it passed his lips for the first time in months, "I have received no news from the Field Marshall in these six months."

"Aye, that is true, and there is not much reason for the mustering of troops right now, you are also correct to say. But you have brought us to the true purpose of my call for you."

"Toland?"

"Aye"

" What of him?"

Jayne sighed. "I was hoping you would know more than I. I have had no word of his whereabouts or activity since the Army marched from Hithdor."

"We—I have not spoken with him either." Not since that day on the smoldering battlefield six months earlier, he would have said could his heart have bore it.

"Then I am afraid your vacation is over, Corvus" said Jayne, handing Corvus a rolled parchment and a small wooden box, "and considering that most of my commanders are dead or missing, there are 3000 men who need commanding, war time or not." Corvus opened the wooden box. Nestled inside in velvet fabric were a pair of golden Oak leaf pins, the rank insignia of a field Marshall of the rangers.

"Great."

"Find him, Field Marshall," Jayne's tone echoed Corvus's snarl earlier, "You are dismissed."

Jayne did his best impression of a king with more pressing matters to attend to. Corvus guessed that he had had more practice at it then the last time he had seen him.