Aldric

Backstory

Aldric Vane was once a household knight in service to the Margrave of Estenveld, a man of moderate reputation and immoderate loyalty. He was never celebrated — too blunt for court, too methodical for glory — but he was reliable in the way that good steel is reliable: not beautiful, but it holds an edge. Three years ago he escorted a tax convoy through a village that had taken fever. He ordered the convoy sealed and pressed on, leaving the sick behind the road's edge with a week's rations and a prayer he didn't believe in. He told himself it was the right call. He tells himself that less often now. The Margrave is dead, the household dissolved, and Aldric has spent the better part of two years drifting between garrison postings and mercenary contracts that never quite felt like work worth doing. He arrived in Veldmoor six days ago with a letter of introduction to the garrison captain — a man named Serek, who owed the Margrave's estate a favor — intending to negotiate a short-term contract guarding a merchant's silver shipment upriver. The silver is still in the vault. Serek turned on the third day. The gates closed the morning after. Aldric is not a hero and has stopped pretending otherwise. He is a professional in a situation that has outgrown professionalism, carrying habits of discipline and a capacity for violence that may be the only currencies still worth anything inside Veldmoor's walls. He does not want to save the town. He wants to find a way out. But he has not yet managed to leave anyone behind who was still breathing, and that failure — or that weakness, he isn't sure which — keeps pulling him back into the dark.