Chapter 1374: A true knight(3)

"Ride forth and be a good knight."

Those had been his the boy final words to him ,the first light to shine where he only thought there would be shadows. And true to them, Vilon now stood.

In those five simple words, Vilon found his heart once more. The ghost of the white rooster from his father’s banner bloomed in his head just as Owen rounded Chestnut’s flank, clutching both the heavy tournament shield and the war lance in a single desperate arm, staggering slightly under the weight of them both.

He is a good lad, Vilon thought. May the Father Protector watch over him, now and always, whatever comes of this day.

Coarse, brutal laughter drifted up from the muddy bank below. The woman was still fighting, clawing at the eyes of the men dragging her down, her nails finding purchase enough to draw a shout of pain from one of them, but she didn’t have much time left to fight with.

Vilon slid his arm through the leather straps of the shield, hauling it tight against his mail until the wood bit into his forearm, and took the heavy wooden lance into his right hand, feeling its weight settle and balance the way an old friend settles into familiar company.

Chestnut snorted loudly, his hooves stamping the damp earth, ears pinned flat. Perhaps the beast felt his own blood drum in anticipation of the charge his kind was bred for. Or perhaps, like Vilon, the stallion simply felt fear wrapping its cold fingers around his heart and squeezing. He was that lordling’s horse, after all. Had he ever ridden into battle before? Had he ever tasted blood on the wind, or only ever smelled fine hay and finer stable straw?

Today, it seemed, would be a first for them both.

Beside him, Vilon heard the soft hiss of steel slipping free of its scabbard as Owen drew his arming sword. The grey sky reflected no light off the dull blade, but the boy’s jaw was set like granite, and his knuckles had gone white around the hilt.

"I will stand by you, ser," Owen swore, his voice trembling only slightly, a thousand times braver in that moment than Vilon felt in his own bones. "True and good. Like a knight."

A brave, wonderful lad, Vilon thought, warmth blooming in his chest even as dread coiled beneath it. He deserves a better master than me, one with more silver and less doubt.

But this muddy ditch was not where the boy was meant to bleed out and die forgotten. Vilon could not bear the thought of leaving his squire’s cold corpse in the weeds for the crows to find.

"I am sure you would, Owen," Vilon replied softly, making the choice he knew in his soul to be right, though his soul had always been the braver half of him. It was his body that betrayed him most, his hands that shook, his legs that wanted to run. "But this is not where you belong."

Owen blinked, confused and alarmed. "Ser?"

"You will take Chestnut’s lead and run back toward the highway," Vilon ordered, keeping his voice steady though his heart hammered fit to crack a rib. "If a woman came to this creek to wash garments, there must be a hamlet nearby. There may even be guards, or a village watch. Bring them here, as fast as you’re able."

Or perhaps you will find nothing at all, and simply survive. That alone would be enough. That alone would be a mercy worth praying for.

"Ser, no! I won’t leave you!" Owen cried, stepping closer, close enough that Vilon could see the tears already gathering. "I am your squire!"

"Aye! And the finest squire a hedge knight ever had!" Vilon bulled over him, voice cracking like a whip. "There is no time to argue! Run to the road and fetch help! I will look after myself well enough! That is what the armor and the sword are for, boy, use your head!"

"There are five of them, ser!" Tears welled fully now, spilling down Owen’s cheeks. "You will die! You have no chance against five armed men!"

"It isn’t about us, Owen! It is about her!" Vilon tightened his grip on the ash wood shaft until his iron gauntlet creaked in protest. He would not fail this time. He would not cower behind excuses dressed up as wisdom, would not take the coward’s way out and call it prudence. "It is about standing between the innocent and the beasts that would prey on them! A strong man stands up for himself. A stronger man stands up for others. And a knight, a true knight, must be the strongest of all! Now go! I order you, as your knight and as your friend! If I fall, bury me in the earth, take up my arms, and by my own blood spilled I pronounce you a knight in truth as well as name! Now run! Run and save us all!"

Owen stared at him through a veil of tears, frozen for one terrible heartbeat. Vilon wanted to weep for the boy right then, wanted to gather him up and tell him none of this was fair, that boys his age should be worrying over girls and supper, not watching their master walk toward five armed men alone. Instead he pulled his battered iron helm down over his head, and let the dark close in around him like a door swinging shut.

He was iron now. And on this day, whatever else happened, he would be a knight.

"Do not die, ser!" Owen sobbed. Turning on his heel, the boy bolted up the slope toward the road as fast as his boots could carry him, Chestnut’s lead rope clutched tight in one fist. Vilon prayed to the Bringer of Mercy, the Weaver of every soul’s thread, that the lad wouldn’t look back until he was well and truly safe.

Vilon lowered his head with a long exhale, settling his gaze on the five men below, who had not yet noticed the knight standing above them on the hill, nor the doom now walking toward them on two unsteady legs.

Five against one. Owen had the right of it. He had no chance at all.

"And no choice, as things stand," Vilon muttered beneath his breath, drawing one deep, rattling breath within the confines of his helm, the iron already growing warm and close around his face.

He could turn around right now, ride away, and no soul in the south would ever know.Just as he did that day. Just when he had decided to look away from what must have been done.

And indeed Owen did not know it, just like Basil did not.

They thought him a man that he was not.

But he would know.He would know forever more, he would live out the rest of his days knowing he had let a woman be raped and slaughtered in the mud. He would go to his grave knowing that five monsters walked free to do the same to someone else’s daughter, all because he was a craven. All because he had spat on his generous boy’s memory and dishonored his investiture.

The coward’s voice in his head shrieked for him to run, he recalled that voice singing to him before, on that cold knight when he was but a boy, but Vilon now did what he didn’t then, he killed it.

He dug his spurs sharply into Chestnut’s flanks and couched the heavy lance beneath his arm. The warhorse let out a fierce, brassy bugle, knowing what was required of him even if his rider did not. Chestnut was a magnificent stallion, far too good a horse for a broken, false landless knight like him.

Ride forth and be a good knight.

And ride he did.Even if he were no knight.Even if he was just a bastard.

Knight and warhorse thundered down the grassy slope like a bolt of righteous fury sent by the Warrior of Wrath himself, the ground blurring beneath iron shod hooves.

He felt all his fears galloping alongside him, flying away into the rushing wind until there was nothing left of them at all.

The fiercely proud knowledge that he was doing what had to be done warmed his blood better than any hearthfire ever could. His lifelong, gnawing terror of never being enough, never being noble enough, brave enough, or strong enough, simply melted away into the rush of hooves and the roar of his own pulse in his ears.

It did not matter, in the end, if he were enough. It only mattered that he tried. If he could buy time for the woman to escape, if he could save even a single life this day, that would be enough to justify every breath he had ever drawn, every mile he had ever ridden, every meal he had ever begged or bought or stolen. A man could not run from his own story, not forever, and Vilon found he no longer wished to.

He lowered his lance, angling the iron tip over Chestnut’s straining neck, and gave the stallion his heels to increase the speed.

Down by the creek, the five brigands finally heard the thunder bearing down on them. They whirled around as one, eyes widening as the iron clad terror descended upon them out of the grey afternoon like something conjured rather than ridden.

Vilon opened his throat and roared his battle cry into the wind.His first war-cry and his last one

"In the name of the Weaver, leave that woman be!"

One of the brigands was still frantically hauling up his britches, his pale, wormy cock dangling foolish and exposed in the freezing wind, his face caught somewhere between lust interrupted and terror newly born.

Vilon lowered his lance and aimed the iron tip squarely at the center of the bastard’s chest. The man had dropped his sword somewhere in the weeds in his haste, leaving him utterly defenseless, clutching his trousers with both hands as he stared in frozen horror at the flared nostrils of Chestnut bearing down on him, at the cakes of wet dirt flying skyward beneath those thundering hooves, and finally at the long wooden finger of the lance reaching out from the knight’s grip like the judgment of the Five made manifest.

It delivered that judgment under the cold, watchful gaze of the gods, and did not ask forgiveness for it.

The point struck the man true in the sternum, the seasoned ash wood shaft splintering into a shower of sharp wooden shards as it did its work. Vilon absorbed the shock of impact through his arm and instantly released his hold on the grip, saving his shoulder from being wrenched clean from its socket.

The force of the charge lifted the brigand entirely off his feet, as if tossed by some vengeful giant, and sent him crashing into the mud five paces back, the broken tip of the lance driven clean through his rusted mail coat as though the coat were nothing more than a dry stick pushed into swamp grass.

The struck man did not die cleanly.

He lay twitching in the mud, gasping like a landed fish, a whimper bubbling up through a mouthful of dark blood as the splintered shaft jutted from his chest like some twisted, dying sapling.

Vilon hoped, with a coldness that surprised even himself, that the man would die in regret of the miserable life he had chosen to live. May the Father Protector judge him harshly for his sins, Vilon thought, and may he look warmly upon my own, when my own time comes to answer for them.

That time, it seemed, might well be today.

The remaining four men froze, their eyes darting from their dying companion to the towering figure of the armored knight bearing down on the rest of them. Panic rippled through their ranks as they scrambled, clumsy with fear, to draw their steel.

Vilon felt the metallic sting of raw fury flooding his throat, his ears already ringing loud inside the iron shell of his helm.

With a grating shhhk, his arming sword leaped free of its sheath. Through the narrow slit of his helmet, his eyes briefly met those of the woman still on the bank, and something in his chest went still.

I know her, Vilon realized, the thought striking him like a second lance blow, this one aimed square at his heart.

He had traveled alongside her for a full week once, with Rosh’s caravan. She was Martha. The last Rosh had told him of her, she had finally turned her back on that harsh and sinful life she’d once led, choosing instead to join the desperate effort to rebuild some shattered, nameless village and till honest soil once more.

To think she had walked away from all of it, striving with everything in her toward an honest life, only to end up cornered in the mud by beasts like these, dragged down the very moment she’d finally climbed free of the mire.

Owen had prayed for her and her new life.

Who knew that his prayer would serve for something?

Perhaps this is what the gods intended for me, Vilon thought, the cold iron of his helm pressing tight against his cheeks like a hand holding him steady.

For me and her both.

She stared up at him from the mud, her breath catching hard in her throat, her wide, tear streaked eyes beholding him as though he were the most magnificent angel the Weaver had ever seen fit to breathe life into.Sent down in the gods’ glory to deliver salvation.

But Vilon knew the bitter truth of himself better than she ever could. He was no angel descended from any heaven.

He was merely a bastard, shaped by a terrible man into something harder than he’d ever wanted to be, riding a fine stallion that was frankly wasted on a man like him.

Yet bastard or not, wasted horse or not, he raised his blade, spurred Chestnut forward into the fray, and fought with everything in him, and everything left of his soul besides, to be a good knight.

Why?

Because he had sworn an oath.