Last knight

Argo wasn’t even a proper fiefdom—just a patch of dirt without so much as a wooden palisade. Yet it belonged to a knight. These days, with the Imperial Church stamping out titles like cheap coins, fewer than one in a thousand "knights" still held land. The scrap named Argo existed for one reason: Phrixus. They called him "The Arrowstorm" after his archers shattered the Saxon flank at Blackwater Ford. That victory earned him this so-called lordship. But glory’s a fickle b***h. Take Ares, the kid who’d followed Phrixus through hell. Charging through ten thousand screaming Saxons to relay orders? That got Ares a shiny title too—no land, just a parchment with the Church’s seal still sticky. Now he lingered in Argo with Oryphmus, Phrixus’s old lieutenant. Not out of loyalty. Phrixus couldn’t make sense of a ledger if his life depended on it. Last month, he’d tried to "fortify" Argo by stacking firewood. Oryphmus now handled the coin, the supplies, the actual wall-building—while Ares sharpened blades and wondered when the next war would start. The Church’s courier arrived at noon. Another bloodstained parchment. Another title. Prologue, the place of gathering together This is one of their few calm moments. The storm is always brewing in peace