Sworn Over Coin

The Marrow Lances' recruiting pamphlet: the pay stated plainly, the marrow-oath quoted in full, and an honest account of what the company does to those who break it.

Every recruit I've signed asks the same first question, and it isn't "will there be glory." It's "what does it pay." Good. That's the only sane place to start, and I'll answer it before you ask anything else, because I'd rather lose you here over a number than lose you on the road over a lie. A Sworn draws two crowns the moon, kit found — boots, a blade if you've none worth the name, and a bunk in the Marrowhall while you're between contracts. A Lance who's stood a full season draws four. A Blooded Lance draws five, and first pick of the armory. None of that moves for how well you talk. It moves for how long you've stood and whether you ran. Contract purses are separate and split by the file, not by rank — the captain's cut is no bigger than a Lance's, except on the contracts where the captain bled the same ground you did, and then it's the same cut for the same reason. If a contract pays badly, we say so before you march, not after. We take contracts from every house in the Vale on purpose — Vandahl's silver counts the same as a trade-moot escort, a garrison rotation the same as work I won't describe further in a recruiting pamphlet. A company that answers to one paymaster can be starved by that paymaster the season he decides he doesn't need you. A company that answers to five never can be, and that is worth more to your two crowns the moon than it sounds like it should be. That's the coin. Here's the oath, because the coin doesn't mean anything without it — a company that will hire its steel to five houses that hate each other has exactly one asset, which is that every one of those houses believes we'll keep our word to the letter regardless of theirs. You swear it once, at the muster table, a drop of your blood on the contract and the coin in your other hand: [i]I swear it marrow to marrow. My blood answers for my word. The Marrowhall's name is my name till the contract's done or I am, whichever comes first. I have taken the coin. The coin is the oath. Break one and you have broken both.[/i] Most companies would stop there and let you wonder what happens if you don't keep it. I won't. If you break the oath, the Marrowhall doesn't take you to a magistrate — that's not what the oath is for. We send the Recovery: three Lances and the debt, and the debt is collected, one way or the other, because the day it isn't is the day no house in the Vale trusts our word again and every Sworn under this roof is out of work. You've maybe heard of the Broken Lances. Ask anyone what became of them and you'll get the same shrug, and the shrug is the point — I won't dress it up prettier than that, and I won't pretend it's never happened. I tell recruits all of this before they sign, in this order, because I have signed people who were promised the moon by some captain in a cleaner coat than mine, and I've watched them walk in already looking for the catch. There isn't one. That's the whole pitch. You will be paid exactly what I said, on the day I said, for exactly as long as you stand, and if you fall we will not pretend it was worth more than it was. Which brings me to the last thing, and it's the reason half my honest recruits actually sign. If you go down mid-contract — bled out on someone else's road, under someone else's colors, a long way from anyone who'll remember your name by winter — your wage keeps going. Not a lump sum wrapped up in flag-talk and handed over once. Your wage, every moon, paid to whoever you named at the muster table, for as long as the Marrowhall still stands to pay it. We have never missed that payment. Not once, not to anyone, not even the year the treasury was thin enough to worry the captains. Name someone before you swear. That's the second question I ask, right after I've told you the pay. Most recruiters never ask it at all.

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