Fearless

His men said the Steward's elder son was fearless; they said he'd killed a troll with a bread-knife once, and calmly gone back to slicing bread for supper. It is easy to believe, as the encroaching storm follows him into his father's hall, tattering the long dark cloak about his calves and playing havoc with tangled dark hair, the wild curls of it matted with sweat and blood.

Stewardship

His first memory:

He can't be more than four; maybe three and a half – his mother is well, then, her stomach flat under the graceful fall of her shift. Sometimes he wishes he could better remember her face, more than the curve of her mouth smiling, the sharp bracket of its frown. She smelled of juniper and roses, he remembers. His father always brought her roses. And his grandfather can still pick him up, swooping him off his sturdy little feet to spin him round and round strong bony shoulders.

In the memory, his father is very tall. As childhood memories go, it presents itself in a blur of smell (polished wood, all orange and beeswax; the damp wool of his father's cloak – it must have been winter; the stony scent of ink) and sleepy golden light, which now he knows for candles, with sharp pinpricks of lucidity.