"No, there isn't. When most of the current nobility were our age, there was a lot of feuding. It was a dangerous time. Quite frankly, I think my father... no, all of our parents are a bit jealous that we haven't faced 'real' danger and they think that we're not capable of, well, anything because of it.
"Don't you remember Baron Westwig's comments about how he could pick a worthy heir since he'd managed to get his sons all killed off? And don't you remember what I said to make him let us go? It would surprise me if this 'mission' wasn't engineered to, shall we say, weed out the unworthy.
"So, what are we going to do with all these mercenaries?"