'Tomorrow, we march on Estragales,' Sir Josce said, addressing his knights. They'd assembled around the huge oval council table, the remains of the evening meal before them. He scratched his chin. ‘I think that piece of fey shit has had long enough to consider all my proposals! He hasn’t even got the common manners to acknowledge the last one! Time to bash his walls in and make him!’

‘Hear, hear!’ came the answering yell of accord, and twenty tankards banged a din on the table, rattling everything else on it.

Thomas lunged and caught a pewter tureen lid as it toppled, replacing it carefully over the soup. He stood, rigid with annoyance, at his master's elbow. His hand hurt – a punishment for being late and turning up with saddle-grime under his fingernails.

That wasn’t the worst of it.

Sir Josce hadn't administered the knuckle-rapping; Estienne had, on Sir Josce’s orders, and Thomas had endured the punishment praying fervently Estienne wouldn't take it upon himself to be creative in his chastisement. He wished he hadn't seen the bulge in Estienne's breeches.

He also wished it hadn't only been disgust that he himself had felt.

That was even worse than the other two things. He blamed the heat and the boredom, but deep down, he knew that was a lie.

He shifted the jar to the other hand, flexing his bruised fingers. Estienne had offered to suck them better again, promising he'd enjoy it, and for one miserable moment, Thomas had been tempted to let him.

He glared down the table and caught the herald’s eye.

Estienne let a sleepy little smile cross his lips.

Fool! The priests will beat you bloody right after Sir Josce flays your worthless hide, if you allow yourself...and what in the three hells is he doing here anyway?

'Boy, what is wrong with you! Wine, now!' Sir Josce's voice thundered into his brain, and he jumped, dropping his gaze from Estienne's and pouring wine as he was bid. His hand shook. And other parts of him throbbed.

'My apologies, sire,' he murmured. He wanted to pull at the front of his hose. Too tight. Surely there was more room than that in them.

Sir Josce waved him away, irritated. 'I'll put it down to the heat, this time, but see you remain alert from now on. I have no use for a squire who sleeps on his feet. You'll be hopping on hot coals if you don't look lively.'

'Yes, sire.'

Sir Josce harumphed and turned back to his knights.

'Lord Hart hasn't even afforded us the courtesy of a formal refusal,' he shouted down the hall. 'He's sent no reply at all! I won't stand for such insolence! That is my land the bastard's sitting on, and my land I want back! And we're going to go and get it!'

Thomas stilled his eyes mid-roll. Sir Josce seemed to have forgotten that the land in question had not been in his family for over a century, and the castle's walls were on the verge of falling in. Bashing them in wouldn't be a problem, providing Lord Hart sat back and let them get on with it.

But he was an elf, and elves didn't sit back while mortal knights bashed their walls in. Thomas almost looked forward to the attempt. 

'He's a scoundrel!' Sir Josce screeched, still on his warm-up. 'A filthy, duplicitous, conniving scum! We'll rout the ferret out of his hole and stick him!'

This was followed by hearty cheers, for the summer had already been long and the knights were bored and restless. As a battle speech, it lacked finesse, but nobody cared for finesse. The finer details would be worked out by the warleaders - Sir Josce and his half-brother, Sir Garas - and all that the knights of the troupe needed to know was who they were fighting and in which direction to ride. Why wasn’t a consideration, not at this stage.

Thomas thought them boneheaded and predictable. Stick a looking-glass in front of them and they’d attack that for looking at them funny.

All Thomas knew was that ahead of him lay weeks of battle, of hard work cleaning tack and weapons and armour - and avoiding the temptations Estienne was bound to lay in his path.

I hope you all bloody die, he thought, and sloshed more wine into Sir Josce's cup.

‘Tomorrow, on the cusp of dawn,’ Sir Josce was saying, with a frown for Thomas’ carelessness, ‘before they have time to get their wits about them let alone their dicks safely strapped in their hose! Take ‘em by surprise! I want that baseborn cock out of his roost before sundown and impaled on my spit!’

The look Thomas got from Estienne rooted him to the spot. Someone made a lewd comment about spits and fey men, and the pavilion shook with raucous laughter.

Estienne didn’t look away from Thomas.

And Thomas found he didn’t want him to.