Chapter 1373: A true knight(2)

The creek wasn’t right along the road. They had to break off to the right, pushing through a sea of tall, swaying wild grass that came up near to Vilon’s waist.

The air held the sharp, clean scent of an after rain, and the blades still clung to heavy morning dew, which was strange, considering that as far as either of them had seen or heard, it hadn’t rained a drop all morning. Vilon raised his eyes to the sky. It was a gloomy, bruised grey, heavy with the promise of a downpour, certainly. But not yet. The gods, it seemed, were content to let a man sweat a while longer before they opened the heavens on him, perhaps to was all his sin away.

Vilon deeply misliked tall grass. Not being able to see where his boots fell was a fine way to break an ankle, and all he had to protect his legs from snakes were his thick leather riding boots, cracked at the seams and long overdue for the boot maker’s needle.

It was hardly optimal, but it was better than going bare. Fortunately, it was late winter, so the snakes weren’t nearly as active as they might have been in the heat of harvest, when the sun baked them lazy and mean both at once.

The swish shhh and hollow rush of running water grew louder with every stride, until it filled the whole world the way a chorus fills a church

Owen and Vilon traded a brief, guilty glance as they came close to the dividend of their decision.

"Come on, lad," Vilon muttered, clearing his throat like a septon about to lie to a congregation. "We’re just going down there to fill our canteens and let Chestnut have a proper drink. If we happen to see someone taking a bath, we’ll simply turn right back around and wait for them to finish. It’s not as though the creek belongs to them."

Owen nodded eagerly, snatching up the moral ladder his master had just built for them, brick by shoddy brick. "Indeed, ser. Turn right around, we shall. Eyes forward. Chins high. Like proper nuns."

"We are godly, right minded men, after all," Vilon agreed, with the solemn air of a man swearing an oath before the Father Protector himself.

"The godliest," said Owen. "I might even pray a little on the way down, ser, so the Weaver knows my heart’s in the right place."

Though if they happened to catch a fleeting glimpse of a bare breast as they turned around, well, that was merely collateral damage. Nothing to be done about it. Surely the Five wouldn’t hold a casual glance against a pair of tired travelers. Hopefully.

It wasn’t a particularly grand argument, Vilon knew, the sort no man would ever write into a history, no singer would ever set to a tune. But somehow he felt this was the path he had to tread, however crooked and daft it looked from the outside.

What a mere wandering knight could ever hope to find on an endless highway was entirely beyond him. All that mattered right now was the wet grass swishing cold against his knees and the stones shifting treacherously beneath his shod heels, and the fact that, for once, his belly wasn’t gnawing at him with worry.

At the very least, he had managed to chase away the cold, greasy ache in his stomach with a bit of childish tomfoolery. It was a rare comfort, rarer than good meal or a soft bed, to simply act the fool around someone he didn’t need to impress.

Owen was, in truth, the very first real friend Vilon had ever possessed. And he was fun to have around besides, always ready with some fool grin or some foolish jape, as if the world hadn’t yet gotten round to teaching him it wasn’t worth smiling in.

Perhaps knights weren’t supposed to be friends with their squires. Perhaps they were supposed to boss them around and teach them the way, all stern jaw and harder hand, the way the old man used to boss Vilon around, back when Vilon still had all his illusions about what knighthood meant. But anyone with half a brain could see Vilon wasn’t that sort of knight. Playing the harsh figure was never his thing, and he suspected, deep down, it never would be

Together, they hauled themselves up the crest of the low rising hill, anchored at its peak by a oak tree whose naked branches reached toward the grey sky like a beggar’s hands toward a lord’s purse.

Vilon gazed at the tree for a moment, and found himself thinking of his father, of the day the old man died, and how he’d first wished to bury him under a tree just like this one, at the top of a hill just like this one, where the roots could hold him and the wind could sing over him...just like this one.

But two hours of hauling stones up a slope to weigh down a corpse had taught him a hard lesson about the difference between what a heart wants and what a tired back can manage, and in the end he’d buried his father near a river instead, where the stones were as plentiful as the grass and half so heavy to carry.

Below them, down the slope of the hill they sat upon, lay the winding creek.

There were no crowds of bathing maidens, nor a grand bathhouse fit for high lords, only quiet water and the grey sky’s reflection upon it. Resting her knees on the muddy bank of the stream was a solitary woman with thick, dark brown hair tied back loosely at her neck. She was bent over the cold water, her sleeves scrubbed up past her elbows, systematically wringing the river dust from a pile of rough spun garments.

It had been weeks since either of them had washed their clothes, but without a spare set, Vilon couldn’t afford to sit shivering in the freezing air while their linen dried. In this bitter cold, a wet shirt would take a full day to dry, if it didn’t freeze stiff as a board first. In the high heat of summer, a man could happily wander about in his skin and feel nothing but bliss. In winter, doing so was a swift path to the worms, and Vilon had no ambition to feed them before his time.

Perhaps it is time I bought us both a new set of clothes, Vilon decided, mentally adding another entry to his ever growing list titled Things to Buy When Silver Appears.

It was a grand list.

A proper war hammer. A sturdy oak shield. A suit of plate and a charger for the boy, so Owen might stop looking longingly at every knight who rode past with squire and pony both. New tunics for the both of them, ones without holes at the elbow that let the wind bite through.

The list grew longer by the day, while his coin pouch only grew lighter, as if the two were bound by some cruel, invisible thread, one that the Weaver herself must have spun as a jape at his expense.

Knight and squire shared a quiet, knowing look, mutually agreeing to wait until the woman finished her laundry before bringing Chestnut down to drink. In the meantime, they settled near the roots of the oak at the crest of the hill, letting Chestnut wander off to happily munch on the damp green grass, swishing his tail at absolutely nothing, the way horses did when they’d decided the world was, for once, an agreeable place.

"How far is Scidna, ser?" Owen asked, settling onto his knees. Vilon leaned his back against a smooth patch of bark, carefully picking a spot clear of marching ants, who seemed to have opinions about where a tired man ought to sit and were none too shy about sharing them.

"I do not know the exact leagues, lad. But if we keep a steady pace upon the road, we shall reach its gates long before the tourney begins. We still have three full moons ahead of us, ample time to make our way at our leisure, stopping to rob every bathing creek along the way."

"We are godly, right minded men," Owen reminded him solemnly. "We do not rob creeks, ser."

"No," Vilon agreed. "We just look at them’’

"Why are they holding a tourney, by the way, ser?"

"A new child was born to the Prince of Sharjaan," Vilon replied, offering up what little he knew.

"A boy or a girl?"

Vilon shrugged, leaning his head back against the trunk.He did not know. "Does it matter?"

Whether the child was a son or a daughter, the tourney was already proclaimed. So be it if the prince was celebrating an heir or drowning his disappointment over a girl in strong wine, high lords and wandering hedge knights alike would still flock to Scidna, pitching their silk pavilions and spurring their fine stallions for the delight of the smallfolk, who would cheer just as loud whether they understood the politics of it or not.

"What will be required of me there, ser?"

Vilon cast an apologetic look toward the boy. "Very little, I fear. We shall not be riding in the joust, but fighting in the grand melee."

The squire took the news with a flicker of disappointment, though he accepted it well enough, the way a boy accepts most things when he trusts the man delivering them.

A grand melee was a far bloodier affair, but it was fought on foot, and Vilon was infinitely better with his boots planted in the mud than his backside planted in a saddle. If he was going to risk his armor and his mount, he would do so where his arms were strongest. He had little skill with a heavy tilting lance, and he certainly lacked the coin to pay a ransom if some high born lord unhorsed him in front of a cheering crowd. A single loss in the joust would strip him of everything he owned, down to the boots on his feet.

Looking over at Owen, seeing the quiet, simple contentment on the lad’s face as he gazed up at the few stubborn leaves still clinging to the oak, refusing to surrender to winter, Vilon knew he couldn’t bear to lose what little they had.

He had never felt so blessed as he did in this quiet moment, the two of them, a horse, a hillside, and nowhere in particular they needed to be.

And then a high, piercing, feminine shriek tore through the cold air, and that peace shattered like thin ice underfoot.

Squire and knight were on their feet in a heartbeat, steel hissing free of scabbards, both of them whirling toward the creek from whence the scream had come.

They appeared from nowhere.

Five men had materialized along the muddy bank, surrounding the woman like wolves closing round a doe that had strayed too far from the herd. Two of them had already seized her by her thick brown hair and her rough spun sleeves, dragging her backward the way a hunter drags a rabbit from a snare, while a third slammed a filthy, leather gloved hand over her mouth to muffle her screams before they could carry any further than the creek bank.

They must have crept up from the far side of the river, Vilon realized in a single flash of instinct, his mind working faster than it had all morning. He wouldn’t have missed five armed men riding down the main road, not with iron on their hips and murder in their eyes, and a pack of scavengers like that would never have let a lone knight pass unmolested with a horse as fine as Chestnut in tow.

Five against one were fine odds for men like these, and easier still if all it took to end the fight before it began was a boy’s throat and a blade held to it.

They must have known the land well too, for it would not have been an easy thing to slip past the watchful patrols of the Hounds. Thieves, robbers, rapists. This land was accursed indeed, cursed enough to make honest men into corpses and corpses into warnings for the next honest man to come along.

Down below, the woman fought like a cornered beast, and no one could ever say she lacked for grit. She snapped her teeth down hard onto the leather glove muffling her face, sinking them in until the man let out a sharp, muffled curse and snatched his hand back, cursing her for it, only to pay her back with a heavy backhand across her cheek that sent her head snapping sideways and her knees buckling in the mud.

That banished all the fight in her.

Vilon’s dark eyes hardened, every trace of doubt and hesitation melting away in an instant, though the fear beneath it did not, would not, could not. Fear was not a thing a man simply willed away. It only decided, in moments like these, whether it would rule him or kneel to him.

Still, he had seen enough. He knew what he was meant to do, and for once, standing there with his sword already drawn and his blood already rising, he felt something he hadn’t expected to feel: pride.

Pride in himself, in the fact that whatever else he lacked, silver, land, a name worth speaking, he had the strength of soul to do this. That this time, he would not fail as he had failed once before.

"Owen," Vilon commanded, his voice coming in a tone that admitted no refusal, no argument, no hesitation, whetever it was for Owen or himself, only the gods Knew.

"Get my lance."

Perhaps this was his road after all.