The Red Ring was the Fifth Prince's private yard in the Throneheart. It sat behind the sixth armory, fenced in by six-inch posts of pressed ironwood that two hundred years of broadsword blades had scarred and notched.
The ground inside was a deep, churned red sand, mixed with crushed salt to keep the river mud from rising through the frost. It smelled of old grease and cold iron, and of the crushed juniper branches the yard-boys used to sweep the blood away between trials.
Prince Regulus was already in the ring.
He wore no velvet mantle and no polished plate, and there was no crimson lion on his collar. He wore a simple leather arming doublet over a grey linen shirt, with the sleeves rolled up to show wrists wrapped in thick strips of unbleached canvas. His snow-white hair was cropped short, and sweat had plastered it flat against his pale scalp.
In the corner of the fence stood Count Pyrrhus, balancing two wooden pails of cold river water.
