Merit — Lily Dewaruile

Fleeing the Saxon invaders, Jac travelled westward. His mother had been killed at dawn the day a Celt woman ran into the woods and hid in the underbrush. As the Saxons drew closer to the village he had hoped to reach before nightfall, Jac kept his vigil over the injured woman. Alone, old enough to begin training, the Saxon invasion had dashed his hopes of finding employment. Hours passed. The chill of the night tore at his flimsy rags. His mother's body lay miles behind him, buried beneath his cloak, forest soil, and brush with no grave marker save the cross he had fashioned from twigs and vines. The woman's rescue and Jac's salvation rode a dark-spirited warhorse. Once a fugitive, now a warrior trained by the most skilled and feared man on the battlefields of his new home, Jac seeks to gain merit enough in the eyes of Christophe Maides to ask for the hand of the girl Jac has loved from the day his mentor dragged him from the underbrush. Winning a contest for the command of an army of warriors may bestow that merit.