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In my Uncle Sefert’s rand library was given over to tall shelves that held rank upon rank of such journals Sefert Burvelle was my father’s elder brother, the eldest son who inherited the family ho the family history My own father, Keft Burvelle, had been the second son, the soldier son of his generation Forty-two years before hteenth birthday, my father had iment for the frontier He had never returned to live at Stonecreek Mansion, his ancestral ho occupied a substantial two shelves of his brother’s library, and was rife with the telling of ourTroven had expanded his holdings into the wilds

In tiained rank and been offered private quarters at the fort, he had sent word home that he was ready for his bride to join him Selethe Rode, then twenty but promised to him since she was only sixteen, had traveled to hiiood cavalry wife, bearing child after child to the lieutenant who became a captain and eventually retired as a colonel In their youth, they had believed that all their sons would go for soldiers, for such was the destiny of the sons of a soldier son

The Battle of Bitter Creek changed all that My father so distinguished hi Troven heard tell of it, he granted hily and bloodily won frorant went a title and a crest of his own,hi’s new lords would settle in the east and bring civilization and tradition with them

It was my father’s crest, not his older brother’s, sharply starant leather of my new book, which I held up for my brothers and sisters to see Our crest was a spond tree resplendent with fruit beside a creek This journal would return here, to Widevale Mansion, rather than being posted to our ancestral home at Stonecreek in Old Thares This book would be the first volume on the first shelf set aside for the soldier sons ofa dynasty here on the fore of the wilds, and we knew it

The silence had grown long as I held the journal aloft and savored my new position My father finally broke it

"So There it is Your future, Nevare It awaits only you, to live it and to write it" My father spoke so solemnly that I could not find words to reply

I set ifts down carefully on the red cushion on which they had been presented to me As a servant bore them away frolass At a sign frolasses "Let us toast our son and brother, wishing Nevare ested to his falasses to me, and I raised mine in turn, and then we all drank

"Thank you, sir," I said, but lass "And" He spoke, and then waited until ht come next but I desperately hoped it would be a cavalla horse ofSirlofty was a wonderful mount, but I dreamed of a more fiery horse I held my breath My father smiled, not at me, but the satisfied smile of a aze traveled the full table "Andlet us toast to a future that bodes well for all of us The negotiations have been long and very delicate, my boy, but it is done at last Show Lord Grenalter three years of honorable service on the frontier, earning a captain’s stars on your collar, and he will bestow on you the hand of his younger daughter, Carsina"

Before I could say a word, Yaril clasped her hands together in delight and cried out, "Oh, Nevare, you will make Carsina and me sisters! Hoonderful! And in years to come, our children will be both playmates and cousins!"

"Yaril Please contain yourself This is your brother’s er sister was soft-spoken, but I heard it Despite her words, my mother’s eyes shone with pleasure I knew that she was as fond of young Carsina as irl, flaxen-haired and round-faced She and Yaril were the best of friends Carsina and her elder sister and mother often came of a Sixday to join the woossip Lord Grenalter had served alongside my father, and indeed won his lands and faements that had led to my father’s elevation Lady Grenalter andschool and had been cavalla wives together As the daughter of a new noble, Carsina would be well schooled in all that was expected of a soldier’s wife, unlike the old nobility wives I’d heard of in tales, ere near suicidal with despair when they discovered they were expected to cope with a home on the border and Plainspeople on their doorstep Carsina Grenalter was a good match for ht bring would enrich my brother’s estate rather than come to Carsina and me That was how it had always been done, and I rejoiced for hoould expand s In the dim future, when I retired from the cavalla, I kneould be welco our children here My sons would be soldiers after hters married well