The Anvil

The Anvil is the lance of the Order of the Gauntlet placed at Xanphina's disposal on her elevation to Hammer of Light. They hold what she cannot stay to hold.

The writ below came up from Elturel with the lance, in a large hand that pressed hard enough to go through in places.

The writ

Xanphina —

Hammer of Light. Good. It took them long enough, and I said so, loudly, to people who did not enjoy hearing it.

Now understand what the Order has actually done, because there is a difference between the honour and the thing that came with it, and agents who confuse the two get people killed.

What a Hammer is for

A Hammer strikes and moves on. That is the whole of the rank. You are trusted to go where we cannot send a company, kill what we cannot kill by committee, and be gone before anyone organises a response. You do not garrison. You do not hold. That is not a slight — it is the entire reason we made you what you are.

But a thing you have hit does not stay hit, and I have watched too many good Hammers spend a year taking the same road back off the same enemy because there was nobody behind them. So the Order is lending you an anvil.

Understand that word. Lending. You do not command troops. That comes at Knight Commander and not before, and you will find it is more work than glory. What you have is a lance placed at your disposal, on the Order's discipline and the Order's oath, for as long as you use them properly.

Who I sent you, and why

Four sworn, under Knight-Sergeant Bertrand Kell. Kell answers to me and stands apart from the four; he is the reason the lance functions and you will find him difficult to argue with, which is the point.

I did not send you the best swords in the Order. I want you to hear that plainly, because you will look at them and wonder. I sent you the ones who will still be standing where you left them.

There is a kind of soldier who wants a song written about him, and that soldier leaves his post to go and earn one. These four have no interest in songs. Kell has held gates for twenty years and finds it satisfying. Storr moves to the front without being asked and has never once told anyone about it afterward. Ackley knows every way a road goes wrong because he spent two decades on roads that went wrong. Sunwell prays over the wounded and the dead in the same flat voice, which unnerves people until the night they need her.

Steadiness is the rarest thing in the Order and I have spent it on you. Do not waste it.

What you may ask of them

Three things, and I would prefer you kept to them.

Hold. Set the lance on a place and it stays held. A ruin you cleared stays cleared. A road stays open. A gate stays shut to the wrong people. Your company has a bad habit of paying in blood for ground and then walking away from it — this is the cure for that, and it is the reason I fought for you to have them.

Escort. Prisoners, wounded, supplies, people who cannot move themselves. What the Anvil escorts arrives. You will find this frees you from a great deal of work you are overqualified for.

Lend. Send them, or some of them, to an ally who needs holding up. The Order counts that as your company's work and so does everyone watching, and you will feel it in how the coalition speaks to you.

On moving them

A posted soldier holds where they stand. They do not wander and they do not improvise.

Moving them costs time and you should treat that as the real price. Hours to cross a city. Three to five days to cross a region. Ten days or more to cross the coast. On the road they hold nothing, guard nothing, and are worth nothing to you — so decide where they should be and then leave them there.

They do not go down holes with you. They are a lance, not an adventuring company, and if you take them into the sort of place you spend your time in, they will follow you and they will die there. Ravengard had the right of it when he handed you that fort: your company is a strike force. Let it be one. This is what makes that possible.

The part I would rather not write

Four sworn and a sergeant. That is all they are.

Send them somewhere they cannot hold and they will try anyway. That is what the oath means and it is not negotiable, not by them and not by you. They will stand until they are relieved or until there is nobody left standing, and if you have misjudged the ground, that is not their failure.

You will be short a name at the next muster, and I will have to find someone to replace them, and the Order will ask what happened. Send word before it comes to that. I would rather move them early than bury them on time.

Giddy up, I am told.

— Ontharr Frume

The lance

Knight-Sergeant Bertrand Kell — the lance's anchor, and counted apart from the four. A career man of the Order, unhurried, entirely without imagination, and correct with a frequency that irritates people who have more of it. He addresses Xanphina as "Hammer" and has never once been talked out of an order.

Four sworn stand under him, and the Order adds a fifth as her name carries further, and a sixth beyond that.

Sworn	Bears	Currently posted
Ithra Sunwell	Acolyte and field medic. Prays over the wounded and the dead in the same flat voice.	Nuts Deep — the gate watch
Dorn Ackley	Man-at-arms. Twenty years a caravan guard before he swore; knows every way a road goes wrong.	Escorting supply caravans on the eastern road
Yavena Storr	Man-at-arms and shield. Says little, and moves to the front without being told.	Nuts Deep — the gate watch
Peth	Banner-bearer, and the youngest by a decade. Has not yet been told she is the one they would carry out first.	Elturel — liaison to the city's paladin corps

See also

• Order of the Gauntlet — the Order; standings are tracked on the Renown Tracker
• Nuts Deep — where the lance keeps its watch
• The Nightingales — Gootcha's Harper cell
• Xanphina · Ontharr Frume