Chapter 42: The Dawn Knight
The next day, William stood on the deck of the ship, his sword whistling through the air as he wielded it with force and precision. His routine hadn't changed since the start of the journey. For the past two weeks, he had never wavered in his determination: every morning, at the first ray of sunlight, he rose from bed, dressed in light clothes, and went out to train under the open sky.
The sailors had already grown used to seeing him from the earliest hours of the dawn, moving like an unstoppable shadow, repeating his exercises over and over until the sun began to dip toward the horizon. He only paused to eat, go to the bathroom, or, on rare occasions, when one of his companions came out to talk or spend a moment with him.
Even though he hadn't enjoyed intimacy with them in days, he understood why. The constant swaying of the ship had devastated their health—nausea, dizziness, fatigue... they were in pieces. In those conditions, there was no room for wild pleasures, no matter how much they all desired it.
Still, some found joy in the view. Every time the nobles left their cabins, they could see William training tirelessly, his muscles glistening with sweat. The men never missed a chance to mock:
"Look at him! A peasant pretending to be a knight," one of them laughed.
"He probably thinks he'll gain something by sweating like a pig," another added with disdain.
But their words were nothing more than shields to hide the insecurity he caused them. They all remembered perfectly how he had slaughtered a hundred of their guards in a single afternoon. They knew he wasn't someone they could insult or defeat. If not for the strict rules of the ship, they wouldn't even dare look at him, for fear he might beat them to death.
The women, however, didn't share that opinion.
Secretly—and some even openly—young noblewomen would watch him for long minutes. William trained shirtless, his torso coated in a fine layer of sweat that emphasized the firmness of his muscles. His body had changed drastically: taller, broader, stronger. He had grown nearly twenty centimeters since arriving in Caerlin. He was no longer the kind-faced boy who had fled a massacre, but a young man forged by pain, battle, and discipline.