I Will Be the Greatest Knight

"Just a few years ago it was you up here with all of the apprentices," Irene observed as she looked out across the practice yard, not yet full of apprentices and the knights who optionally attended. Although, it would be soon.

Sir Gunnar had taken to night patrol with another knight and apprentice, but when he saw Irene out on the practice yard bright and early, he decided to see how things were going.

The old knight smiled at that but it caused him to sigh lightly as he held onto his helmet.

"It was only a few years before but children grow so quickly. I'm only relieved that the practice yard has been cleaned up and the Commander has taken to focusing on sharpening even the weakest in the order," Gunnar admitted.

Irene nodded slowly. Both of their eyes were on the practice yard but she soon turned to look at the knight with a questioning expression.

"You went all the way to Hydrogia to escort him north, how do you think he is doing?" she asked.

"He was cautious at first," Gunnar explained. "Perhaps even a bit timid. I thought that he wouldn't last. I especially thought he wouldn't last because we were taking him from such familiarity. Yet now I see a duchy that has changed exponentially. Not in appearance but the morale of knights and subjects. When I have the opportunity to go out, I see people eager to see the knights and monsters scared into the forests rather than openly pillaging even the smallest villages. I think that's important."

"I agree with you," Irene confessed. "He has grown into what we needed even if he was questioned at first. I feel all I can do now is support him."

Which was why she was staying behind while the others participated in an adventure.

In the nearly two weeks they had been off, she had learned to completely accept her Commander's decision. It was true that the apprentices came to her for many things. She oftentimes wondered if it was because they were young and missed their mothers, only to find that she wasn't going to be soft on them.

As apprentices started to appear, Irene turned to Gunnar. "You ought to get some food and rest, Gunnar."

His eyes crinkled as he smiled at her. Yet again, the scripts had flipped and it was no longer him fussing over her eating or sleeping.

"Line up!" she called to the apprentices.

She asked the same thing each morning yet they still appeared in front of her oftentimes in a blob of apprentices as they picked at each other and talked about how it was too early and they were too tired. Even if it wasn't like that, she liked to pretend that those days were far off for her.

The practices began, and it was clear she was still going hard on them after their fielding of questions a few days before…

Irene had thought it would be easy to lead knight school since Felix and Gunnar both seemed to do it so easily. She loved a collaborative environment where apprentices worked with one another to find information. They were even able to help each other if they were confused, but usually they would ask her about it.

That day, the topic was about dressing wounds on the battlefield if there wasn't a healer nearby. Felix thought she would be good at this since she had been reading up on Volna medicinal practices and she had learned that they intersected a bit with some of the herbs and procedures that mages did for the knights—sans magic, of course.

This had led her to creating a kit she would bring with her while traveling, but for now it sat on a shelf in her barrack since she wasn't traveling in the foreseeable future. At least, until she needed it to help the apprentices in their studies. It sat on the table in front of her while a few of the apprentices scoured through books for their given scenarios.

Irene had prepared the scenarios herself the night before. Already, she had gotten a compliment that her handwriting was easier to read than Felix's and she smiled proudly at that.

However, a new addition to the library had unexpectedly opened a door she wasn't expecting.

Martin, one of the apprentices she was less familiar with, brought a newly bound book to the table.

"What's that?" Bren asked, interested.

The apprentice, in his early teens but not as young as William, pointed to the words on the cover.

"Stanley the mage recounted a bit of the wounds and cleansing magic he had to deal with during the war," the apprentice explained.

Irene rushed forward and looked down at the book. As it was opened, sure enough, it was written in the scrawling text she had seen Stanley write in before. It was a bit exhausting to decipher, but it wasn't impossible. He was a rambler who used complicated words at times, however.

Bren looked up at Irene from where he sat. Since he had been an apprentice the longest, he knew the ins and outs of the knighthood the best.

"Wouldn't Stanley want to keep this to himself?" he asked. "I feel he's going to rush in and yell at us for reading it."

Irene nodded slowly, contemplatively.

"If it's in the library, he likely knows others can read it, but I imagine that will change once the infirmary building is completed. We'll end up having to do this particular lesson out there with the mages permission."

Bren smiled at that.

"And they will probably say no, or at least give a begrudging yes if the Commander pushes for it," Bren responded.

That caused Irene to laugh, but her laugh was cut short when Martin asked a question she wasn't at all expecting.

"Is it true that during the Monster War you pretended to be a boy?" the apprentice asked. "I heard that someplace."

Irene's reddish eyebrows rose and she couldn't help her gaze drifting to William and Bren who would both know that information firsthand. Of course, she expected that to be one of the topics that went around the knighthood. It was especially interesting for those who were new to the knighthood to know about.

At her gaze, both William and Bren balked. They didn't want to be blamed.

"When I was a child, I wanted to be a knight badly, but my father knew that it wouldn't be a good place for a girl," she explained as gently as she could. "He didn't want me to face unfairness and preferred that I wasn't underestimated by others because of something I couldn't control."

However, Martin was a bit of an instigator at times and he had to continue.

"Doesn't that mean you were bathing and sleeping alongside other boys?" he asked, alarmed. "Do they feel uncomfortable with you now?"

She couldn't tell if he was asking the questions with intention behind them or merely out of curiosity. She still tried to answer as kindly as she possibly could.

"In those days, a lot of people thought I was strange because I would hide away while we bathed or dressed," she responded. "I would have rather felt strange than doing something the others would likely be alarmed by in the future. However, I had a good knight I apprenticed underneath who was aware of my secret. He accommodated me in places I could hide whenever necessary. As for how people feel about me now, Bren and William were both squires when I was an apprentice. Are the two of you uncomfortable with me now?"

Her gaze set on the two of them again and they both quickly spoke up.

"Not at all!" Bren exclaimed.

"Never!" William agreed.

Even though they likely gave those answers because she could beat them both in a fight and was presently the one training them rather than their true thoughts on the situation, they knew not to treat her differently even when she appeared as a girl, so that was good enough for her.

However, Irene felt that punishing them a bit for a few days afterwards during the practices was the least she could do. After all, the only thing she required as a woman was privacy when it came to things men and boys couldn't understand.

A few days after that, there was a disturbance just after breakfast in the Duke's Tower and it was gaining the attention of all the maids, knights, and apprentices who looked on in awe.

Irene couldn't miss the squawking she was hearing and she rounded the northwest corner of the Duke's Tower and looked up at the sight to behold. Standing on the outer stairs of this tower, Blade stood with a letter on his ankle. Everyone was too timid to approach the flapping bird.

"I'll do it!" Irene called up to the maids who occasionally tried to reach out with a stick or broom handle.

Even the knights seemed a bit terrified and she had to raise her eyebrows at this.

Without hesitation, she reached for the outer wall that was alongside the stairs and hopped over them. She then approached Blade with her gloved hands raised as she retrieved what was likely to be a letter from her Commander…