Tristan removed his hand from the viper’s hip--the forward woman had put it there herself. “My lady—“ he began, unsure of how best to put her off.

“Call me Lilah.”

“Your Grace, we both know that’s not your real name.”

The duchess of Catania pouted prettily. “It is for tonight.”

Tristan sighed. “My lady, there is no denying you are a beautiful woman—“

“Thank you, Paladin,” she purred, attempting to entwine herself around him.

“—But I am certain His Grace would not approve of our entanglement.” Tristan gripped her gently by the shoulders, holding her at bay.

The duchess snorted indelicately. “His Grace and I have an understanding,” she said. “And I do so love what the Paladins do for our country. Surely you deserve to be rewarded for your service.”

Tristan was fed up with her coquettishness. “Find another Paladin to so reward. Or better yet, find your husband.” He skimmed the room, looking for Sam and Braeden, and found Sagar instead. He took the proffered lifeline. “Excuse me, but I think I see an old friend.”

Sagar was well in his cups, and after enduring twenty minutes of his incoherent babbling, Tristan decided it was time to leave. “Have you seen my trainees?” he asked. He thought he’d seen a glimpse of Sam while the duchess still had her claws in him.

“Who? Oh, the lad with the funny eyes and the short one with the mouth?” Sagar scratched his head, an intense look of concentration on his face. “Think I saw ‘em leave together.”

“Nice of them to tell me,” Tristan grumbled.

Sagar elbowed him hard in the ribs. “Can’t blame ‘em. You didn’t look like you wanted interrupting.”

“I would have appreciated the interruption,” he said. “I better go after them and make sure they don’t get into any trouble.”

“You’ve turned into a right prude, you know that?” said Sagar. “You used to be the one causing trouble, not the one cleaning it up. ‘Tis a sad day for the Paladins to have lost the great Tristan Lyons to respectability. Think I might need to have me another drink to toast his passing.”

Tristan bit his tongue to prevent saying something he’d regret. “Have a good night, Sagar.”

A number of others – both men and women – stopped Tristan as he maneuvered towards the tavern’s exit, but he spoke to them just long enough to be polite before extricating himself from the conversation. He had no idea where his trainees were, he was relatively sober in a room full of drunkards, and he was in a bear of a mood. If he was being honest with himself, he had been in a foul mood for over a week. Lady Samantha’s death had affected him far more than it should, though only the gods knew why.

It was already well past midnight when he finally escaped the party, which despite the late hour showed no signs of abating. He made his way upstairs and to his room without disruption, hesitating behind the door that separated his room from Sam and Braeden’s. It was late but, damn it, they should have told him they were leaving. He knocked.

Sam answered the door, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He blinked a few times before registering Tristan.

A long silence passed between them. Sam’s eyes traveled up Tristan’s body, from his rumpled tunic to his face. A flicker of something passed behind Sam’s eyes – sadness or disappointment, Tristan wasn’t sure. He resisted the urge to smooth out the wrinkles in his shirt. He’d done nothing to be ashamed of—if anything, he’d been unusually well-behaved. He turned down a damn duchess, for the gods’ sake, not that he had to explain himself to his own trainee.

“Well?” Sam asked, breaking the silence. “ ‘Tis not morning, is it?”

“No, not yet. We have a few hours ‘til dawn.”

“Then what are you here for?”

Tristan cleared his throat. “I was…concerned.”

Sam’s brows rose into his hairline. “For me?”

“Yes, for you,” he said. “And Braeden, too, of course. That party was treacherous, and I couldn’t find you.”

“Well, we’re here,” said Sam flatly. “If there’s nothing else?”

Tristan was a little taken aback at the boy’s coldness. Normally Sam was all fire and spirit. “No, that was it.”

“Then goodnight, Paladin.” Sam shut the door between them. Tristan had been summarily dismissed.

He stood staring at the closed door for a while, wondering what he’d done to deserve his trainee’s censure and why it bothered him so.

Dawn came just seconds after he drifted off to sleep, or at least so it seemed to Tristan. It was a strange thing, fostering trainees – when he’d traveled on his own, he would have allowed himself to doze for another hour. He’d been beholden to no one. But now that he had his trainees – or his boys as he thought of them when he was feeling particularly sentimental – he did what he said he would and he did it with a smile. Or at least without a frown. Most of the time.

Once he’d dressed, he burst into Braeden and Sam’s room without pausing to knock. “Wake up, you lazy slugabeds!”

Sam and Braeden were already wide awake, clothed and packed, sitting idly on the edge of their respective pallets as though they’d been waiting for him forever. Sam ignored him, massaging the tender skin underneath his eyes, and Braeden just frowned at him. “Well,” said Tristan, slightly dismayed that he wouldn’t get to lecture them. “I’ll finish packing, then.”

They left from the inn’s stables shortly thereafter, the sun still partially hidden by the horizon. Tristan kept the horses to a brisk pace, but not so brisk that they couldn’t manage conversation. But apart from answering his occasional questions with monosyllabic responses, Braeden and Sam were silent – not just with him, but with each other, too.

Their unusual silence persisted into the next few days. Each day was much the same – they rode their horses until the animals tired, trained until nightfall and then made camp, to rise and repeat on the morrow. Such a pattern wasn’t out of the ordinary for travel, but without Sam’s regular banter and Braeden’s pithy remarks, even the most trivial of activities seemed off.

Tristan didn’t know what to make of it. He’d thought Braeden and Sam had developed a camaraderie of sorts – he envied their closeness, at times – but something had disturbed their easy friendship. They moved around each other like magnets repelling, bouncing back skittishly whenever one of them drew too near. Yet as soon as they drifted apart, their eyes invariably sought out the other.

Except for when Sam’s eyes sought out Tristan. Tristan caught Sam staring at him on more than one occasion, the boy’s mien shifting between doleful and guilty. Sam’s lingering stares agitated him, eliciting a corresponding thickness in his chest that felt suspiciously like feelings. Tristan didn’t do feelings.

On the evening of the fifth day of this nonsense, Tristan attempted to reach out to Sam the only way he knew how. After an hour of practicing their archery – one of the few fighting arts in which Tristan didn’t have natural talent – he offered to spar with Sam. “Wouldn’t want you to get rusty,” he said, handing the boy a longsword.

Sam’s face lit up, but still, he said nothing. Tristan wondered if he ought to have lent Sam his Scimitar, just to hear him sing its praises.

While Sam may have repressed his enthusiasm for fine weaponry, he couldn’t stifle his competitive instincts. Once he altered his stance into ready position, pommel at his right hip and sword point aimed at Tristan’s heart, the hangdog expression he’d worn all week was replaced by one of concentration.

Tristan struck first, his blade sliding along steel as Sam parried his attack. He smacked the trainee’s sword, hard, from the opposite side, and followed it up with an immediate remise. He launched a quick riposte, and then another, but Sam’s sword was there to meet each successive attack.

There were a few reasons Tristan was considered an unmatched swordsman – his strength, his speed and an inexplicable gift for deducing his opponent’s next move. But Sam’s sword work had an unpredictability to it that kept Tristan quite literally on his toes.

Unaccustomed to practicing with an opponent who was worth his salt, Tristan swung his sword out in a wild, diagonal cut, a powerful but sloppy blow that left him wide open to attack. His blade whistled through air as Sam dodged out of the way, the momentum of his swing carrying him well within striking range. He shifted his feet to regain his balance, but not before Sam whipped the foible of his blade across the side of his neck.

Tristan touched his raw skin, and drew back fingers coated in blood. “You won the bout,” he said, staring at his red fingers disbelievingly. He would need to be on his guard the next time he fought the trainee.

Sam’s face fell. “You’re bleeding like a stuck pig. I’m so sorry, Tristan.”

Tristan heard a roaring in his ears. “Are you apologizing to me right now?”

“Errr. Yes?”

“Dare I ask why?”

“Because I hurt you.”

Tristan snapped. “We were sword fighting, you clotpole! You’re supposed to hurt me!” He dropped his sword and marched so close to Sam that the boy had to crane his head backwards in order to meet his angry glare. “A fortnight ago you would have crowed victory and heaped insults upon my head. What’s going on, Sam?”

“Nothing, Tristan.”

“What a crock of shite! You’ve had this pathetic look on your face and you’ve barely said a word all week. I can’t stand it anymore. Have I wronged you in some way?”

“Have you wronged me?” asked Sam. He shook his head adamantly.

“Then why are you looking at me like your favorite horse went lame?”

“I am doing no such thing!”

Tristan heartened at the outrage in Sam’s tone. He was beginning to worry that he’d done something to kill the boy’s spirit, though he couldn’t imagine what. “I beg to differ.”

“Well, you’re wrong,” said Sam defensively. “And my face isn’t pathetic either.”

“You can’t see your own face,” Tristan pointed out. Sam bared his teeth at him in response.

Tristan slapped him heartily on the back. “There’s the Sam I know and love!” Sam’s cheeks turned pink at his words. “Oh, come off it, Sam. It’s healthy to express affection for your fellow man.” He took in a fortifying breath. “I want you to know that you can come to me. If something’s bothering you, I mean.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “I’m not very good at these things, but I’ll try. We have a long road ahead of us and I haven’t much enjoyed the last week.”

Sam kicked at a tuft of grass. “You can talk to me, too, if you want,” he offered tentatively.

Something caught in the back of Tristan’s throat. “Don’t you worry about me,” he said, reaching out to tug a lock of hair that had escaped the boy’s topknot.

Sam swatted at his hand. “I really hate it when you do that.”

Tristan tugged the lock of hair again, harder this time. “Too bad.” He bent over to pick up his discarded sword. “Let’s help Braeden make camp, shall we?” Sam flinched at Braeden’s name, but nodded his agreement. “What’s going on between you? You’ve been acting strange around each other all week.”

Sam face reddened again. “If anyone’s acting strange, it’s him.”

Tristan rolled his eyes. “This is ridiculous,” he said. “Braeden, come here, boy!”

Braeden, who had been hammering stakes into the ground a short distance away, ambled over. “Yes, Paladin?” He carefully avoided looking at Sam.

Tristan’s glower encompassed both Sam and Braeden. “I won’t pretend I know what’s happened between you two. But whatever this is,” he said, gesturing at the space that separated the two of them, “it stops now. Are we clear?”

The trainees looked at each other, and then their feet. “Yes, Paladin,” they said in unison.

“Good. It’s settled then,” he said, clapping his hands together. That had been easy enough. “Now let’s finish making camp before it gets any darker, or we’ll be sleeping out in the open.”

“Gods, I would kill for a proper bed right about now,” Sam groaned.

“You might just have to,” said Tristan. “Tomorrow we’ll be in Westergo. Westergoans will smile while they stab you.”

“Wonderful. As long as they stab me after I’ve had a good night’s sleep.”

A/N Yes, yes, I know, another half chapter. And I've got big plans for Westergo. Meant to do a whole chapter but work got in the way. Hopefully this will hold you over until I finish the second half. Please vote if you enjoyed the (half) chapter, and let me know what you think in the comments.