They met every year at the Five Armies. It was down on the fifth circle, far from the levels of power. It was his favorite tavern, and their Captain was a man who enjoyed taverns, the more disreputable the better. He had brought them here in times of victory and defeat, to celebrate or to salve their wounds with ale the color of his bright hair. Their own hair was now either grey or gone, but their laughter was young. They drank to his courage, his loyalty, and his uncanny ability to know whether you had a wench in your tent on the night before a battle.

They never visited the marble monument in Rath Dinen, not after the day they had served as honor guard for the dedication. The statue was beautiful, of course: the figure noble, upright, the white marble hand at rest on the sheathed sword. They had come here directly after the ceremony to wash the taste of death from their mouths. The white thing was not their Captain. Nothing so cold and pale and still could honor the man they knew. That man was life itself to them, had literally stood between them and death a hundred times. The eyes they knew glinted green with the light of battle or sparked with laughter at one of their bawdy jokes, told to keep fear at bay. He was never still, as they remembered it. He was forever walking around the campfire to say a word of cheer on cold nights, riding down the line with a critical eye to their position, or charging first into the dark ranks that opposed them. For them, his sword was never sheathed. He lifted it over them, silver in the sun or red with the blood of their enemies.

That first year, as the ale and stories flowed, they knew he was with them in the dim, smoky air filled with words and memories. So they met here every year on the same day, settled along the long wooden benches in the back room with their mugs of ale, and began. “Do you remember....?”