[color=#007985][b][h2]Sir Jerel Ban[/h2][/b][/color]A smile, a true smile, slipped onto Jerel’s face. It felt good, to smile and make others laugh, like a knot inside his chest was unravelled by its loose end. When he realised, he became overly conscious, and it fell away, and rising up to replace it was some of that same tension that had momentarily abated. 

His jaw muscle jumped as he clenched it.

He scratched his beard, the horse bone scrimshaw rattling on their braids. 

“Do you forget I spend most of my time in a rookery?” Jerel said, his gait sauntering, loose; he was too tired for the rigid decorum he usually demanded of himself, “They eat rotten flesh and shit it back out just as fast.”

He shook his head, a slight smile fighting its way back to his face, "They almost smell as bad as you."

The darkening of Gerard’s features didn’t go unnoticed, but Jerel decided not to comment on them. There was a pit growing in his stomach, and it needed filling.

They took the shortest path to the kitchens.

The bandage stank of herbs and ointments. It was dubious whether such a thing was even needed, given the healing magics. They claimed it aided the process. Jerel thought it served more as a brand, to let their shame be known to all, to hammer home that they needed to be better. As if that wasn’t known already.

And then, a thought. An answer to a private, idle wondering that birthed another litter.

“Ser Gerard, I was not there in the battle. What was it like fighting him? What did you learn?” Jerel asked. What he did not say, but what rattled in his mind, [i]How many men could have stood before him? How many would it have taken? If not for the Knights? [/i]

[@HereComesTheSnow]