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as far from it as possible. To hear him tell it, in panicked tones with shaking hands, he was being thrown to the front, death looming over him like a ravenous strangle-snake, licking its lips with a forked tongue. The truth was far less dire; he was closer to the front than Ollie, but no true risk to his life would be had. He’d give some orders, point his finger around while astride an armored steed, and receive all the credit for the deeds of the men under his command.
    Still, it was a fairer lot than I’d drawn.
    After me, there was the fourthson, who was sworn by tradition to the oracles. The odds of a fourthson getting anything out of an inheritance was so forgone that there was little more he could do but join the faith. Tradition had to make some allowances for a line to continue in the unlikely event that all three other sons died in battle or son-less. So one son must be admitted to a vocation that would ensure his safety, which meant he would become a priest and a scholar. My little brother Midth was barely twelve, but he was a spitting genius. He was well suited to the role chosen for him. For that, I envied the little brat.
    With the first and second sons only playing at war, someone from the noble families had to actually go out there and fight it. The peasants and middlelanders wouldn’t be happy if they were the only ones to lose sons to the war. So, the nobles long ago decided that their thirdsons would be the ones they actually put into the war with a reasonable expectation of losing to an Illyrian lance or one of their wicked barbed arrows. And that role fell to me. Further, having a fighter in the family who actually got to fight was all for the glory of the house and my lord father. That kept his peasants happy, especially if I died in battle. Which, all things considered, I probably would have.
    I wasn’t much of a soldier, much to my father’s chagrin. I was fit enough, and I’d learned to fight with a sword and wear armor along with my older brothers. I just took issue with certain aspects of the soldier’s life . . . specifically the part about taking orders and “listening” to my “superiors.” More often than not, the officers were puffy secondsons like Ferug . . . or worse, even puffier thirdsons like me. They’d made me an officer, as befit my lordship, however minor, but I was only slightly better at giving orders than I was at following them. So much for the glory of the Standwells this generation.
    I wasn’t completely useless, however; I did have a knack for contraptions. In my youth, I’d built all manner of mechanical devices, usually for fun, but occasionally to aid in my chores, like the time I constructed a horse-drawn spinning wheelbrush to hurry along the task of re-tarring the northeastern side of the Standwell Keep library. Tar was important, you see. It kept the rain off the books. I’d been charged with this task one year, and so rather than climb up with a bucket of tar and a polebrush, I devised a way to have a horse-powered crate with a spinning contraption complete the task for me. The device functioned just as expected, but I had not anticipated the frailty of the library’s ceiling. It proved unable to support the weight of the horse, which was already unsteady about being on top of a slanted roof in the first place. The end result was a tar-filled library, an angry horse and an even angrier father. Nonetheless, I was confident that the concept was sound, and swore to my father that my next prototype would allow the horse to do the work from the ground . . . he need merely provide me with longer shanks of wood and a new horse—the old one wouldn’t come near me anymore. His response was a beating . . . which was fair, I think.
    Little did I expect that my aptitude for engineering had a tactical application. Turns out, men at war have need for all kinds of contraptions. Traditional examples included catapults and giant crossbows. Less known