Laban

Laban is a grown soldier of Midland's court, brown of hair and blue of eye, carrying the bearing of a man long seasoned in the field. A lifetime of service leaves him easy in armor and at the head of a mounted column, a face known to those who fought their way through the Hundred-Year War.

Set apart from the bulk of Midland's nobility, Laban keeps ordinary people in his thoughts and will risk his own neck to shepherd them to safety. He stood as both the first noble to throw his weight behind Griffith and the first to grasp how extraordinary the young commander was, and he holds a lasting bond with his fellow general Owen. The terrors of the Kushan invasion inured him to the uncanny, yet Griffith's marvels still astonish him, whether Grunbeld hoisting a ring of ancient stones or a ride through the heavens along the World Tree's boughs, a feat he confesses leaves him a little afraid.

Awe never blinds him, though. He presses for a reliable standing army instead of dependence on the released War Demons, weighs the advice of others carefully, and gives his own where it counts, as when he urges Mule to rein in his recklessness on the battlefield.

Through the Golden Age, Laban sits among the Midland commanders debating the strike on Doldrey and speaks up with confidence that Griffith will win the day, even naming him a would-be hero of the age. He is present at the victory banquet after the stronghold falls, and when Griffith later drops as if dead, he and Owen have the exits sealed.

In a Midland laid low by plague, Laban leads a rescue for refugees caught in a landslide, wading into the mire himself to haul survivors loose, and comes to see that for common Midlanders the falcon of their shared dream can be none but Griffith. Word soon arrives that the king has died of sickness. When the Kushan take Wyndham, he brings the Arklow Knights into the captured capital, joins with Foss's resistance, and hears that Princess Charlotte yet lives. Steered by the children's prophetic dreams, he stages a citywide escape, cloaking its people in cast-off Kushan clothing, and gladly reunites with Owen amid the reborn Band of the Falcon.

He stands among those Griffith charges with guarding Charlotte, the Pontiff, and the folk of Wyndham as a twice-reborn Ganishka rises overhead, and he looks on as the Great Wave breaks and Falconia comes into being. In the years that follow he leads Band patrols shielding refugee caravans from trolls and a cockatrice on the roads toward the city, ushers the returning Rickert inside, and takes his place among Falconia's officials, pressing for unity across the citizenry.