Chapter 1381: A pebble for an avalanche(3)

As the bitter words bubbled out of the old woman’s mouth, Vilon turned his eyes toward his lad. Sure enough, her harsh reality sat terribly with the boy.

"This is no—"

Vilon’s hand shot out instantly, cutting Owen off before he could utter another word.

Say what you will about the lad, say he was brave to a fault, say he was fiercely loyal, say he had just saved his knight’s life down at the creek. But one could never say the boy possessed the mind to look beyond his own narrow horizon.

He gave him a look that told him to hold his tongue.

To Owen, the Prince of Yarzat was the noble ruler who had brought prosperity to his home village, enforced fair laws for the common good, secured the highways, and maintained the peace. But here? Here, that same prince was the monster who had unleashed blood-soaked legions upon the land, the invader whose armies had burned, pillaged, and put to the sword everything that sat beneath the shadow of the red sun of Oizen.

In Yarzat, he might be beloved alongside his good queen. But here, in the dirt of a resettled village, he could never be anything less than reviled.

What for one man was heaven for another could very well be hell.

"We are deeply thankful for all that you and your people have given us," Vilon said, inclining his head in a low, respectful bow, though his side protested violently at the movement, sending a sharp spike of agony through his ribs. "The warm broth, the roof over our heads, the dry straw. It was immensely kind of you."

"It was expected of me," the old hag replied flatly, deliberately ignoring the dark, defensive scowl Owen was hurling in her direction. "It is not every day we see a knight riding through our fields, and rarer still to find one true to his vows."

Vilon did what he always did.He smiled "I merely did my duty.My oaths. Nothing more."

"Well, if more men in iron did their bloody duty, I am certain this world would be fit enough for the Weaver herself to set foot in," she countered, leaning heavily on her carved ash stick. "And if the realm were filled with men like that, your deeds wouldn’t be worth half a copper’s praise. ’’She humphed ’’But the world is rotten. So the few who actually prove true to their word and the gods’ mandates ought to be fed and sheltered whenever they pass through."

She turned her milky, half-blind eye back toward the creek in the distance.

"That girl you saved down at the water may have come from another hamlet from here, but those five dogs you cut down would have done no different had it been one of our own daughters. You bled for a stranger, ser. In these lands, that makes you a rare beast indeed."

The praise sat terribly in Vilon’s gut.

The heavy debts he owed remained hopelessly unpaid. Perhaps he might consider himself a good man when that ledger was finally balanced, but until then, he was merely a broken soul searching for a repentance he wasn’t sure he deserved.

"The Hounds are fighting for you, too!" Owen muttered bitterly, his voice laced with a sudden, resentful sharp edge.

Just when I told him to hold his tongue, VIlon thought despairing.

"They hang every bandit they catch from here all the way to Yarzat! We’ve passed hundreds of them swinging from the oaks! And it was the Hounds who came riding down to the creek to help save Ser Vilon!"

Vilon blinked beneath his brow. He had never imagined the lad would begrudge his own knight a moment of praise, yet there it was. You’d think he hated me for stealing his grand king’s glory.

"Aye, so they do," the old woman conceded, her raspy voice laced with venom. "They ride the highways and pretend to defend us now. But six moons ago, those very same men rode those very same roads with our daughters tied to their saddles, leaving nothing but ash and blood behind them. The only ’good’ your Hounds do is hunting down men who have no strength left to fight back.If they wanted to scour this land of rapists and robbers they should first fit the noose on their own necks."

"I’ll have you take that back!" Owen snapped, stepping forward, his cheeks flushing crimson. "They are as brave and noble as lions! They are the King’s men!"

"And who do you think took my Serbio’s Marie?" she hissed back, her one good eye flashing with burning hatred. "For all I know, your grand Hounds dragged her into a ditch, raped her raw, and left her to rot with their seeds still in her womb! Snakes, the whole wretched lot of them!"

"Owen, enough!" Vilon barked.

The sharp authority in his voice finally cut the squire down, shutting his mouth tight. These people were putting food in their bellies and a dry roof over their heads. The least the boy could do was stomach their grief without preaching gospel about their conqueror.

Before the silence could settle, the dull, rhythmic thud of approaching hooves drifted through the cold air.

Speak of the devil’s horns...

Vilon turned his gaze back toward the ancient woman. "Snake or lion,lady, step on their tail and you die all the same," he warned softly as a party of riders crested the hill, clad in scarred plate and draped in heavy wolf pelts, their coarse laughter drifting ahead of them. "You would do well to mind what you say around men like that. It is the Falcon that rules over your fields now, not the bloody sun. The lad and I will hold our tongues, but I cannot promise the same for the next wanderer. I beg you... keep your words guarded."

"Bah! I am old," she spat, though her voice dropped low. "I’d like to see the bastards try and hang an old hag. But do not worry, ser, I am not fool enough to wag my tongue around strangers. You are no stranger. But the boy at your side... I can hardly stomach his air.’’ She gave him another scowl ’’ Though he is hardly the only foul thing I am forced to swallow today. It is bitter enough we must waste our fodder and broth on those beasts. As for you ser, we shall bring dinner tonight, but your squire can find his own food, I won’t have him be begrudged our food. "

She turned away without another word, her wooden stick tapping a hurried, uneven rhythm against the dirt as she wisely steered herself off the main path and vanished behind the nearest timber cottage.

The laughter of the Hounds died down as they drew their mounts to a slow walk, the faint winter sun glinting off the polished iron of their breastplates and the silver-embroidered falcon crests on their cloaks. They reined in just a few feet away from the battered knight and his scowling squire, their horses snorting clouds of white mist into the freezing air as their eyes swept over the pair.

Vilon adjusted his grip on the clumsy wooden walker, carefully shifting his weight to ease the burning agony in his side as he observed the mounted men.

His eyes swept over their scarred faces until they settled on a familiar set of sharp jawlines.

"Mariol?" Vilon called out, his voice still a raspy growl.

The man’s expression didn’t soften in the slightest. He simply held Vilon’s gaze, cold and menacing, echoing the dark stares of his companions.

"Is this the red knight you spoke of?" asked the man leading the detail.

He was a sour-faced brute with a patchy brown beard and a single working eye. Draped over his iron gorget was the pelt of a massive black wolf, curiously fashioned so that the pelt’s missing left eye hole sat directly above the man’s own empty, scarred socket. He stared down at Vilon from atop his heavy warhorse as if the wounded knight were nothing more than a cockchafer begging for a hard heel.

Vilon deeply misliked that look. Even Owen, whose face had initially brightened at the sight of the King’s falcon sigil, felt the sudden drop in temperature. The squire took a hasty step forward, instinctively trying to place his young body between the riders and his master.

The one-eyed commander didn’t even bother looking at the boy. He dismounted in one fluid, practiced motion, marched straight up to the pair, and shoved Owen hard by the shoulder, sending the squire stumbling backward into the dirt.

He stepped into Vilon’s space, towering over the knight who would normally tower back at him, but that was now hunched painfully against his walker. A cold, prickling sweat broke out across the small of Vilon’s back, pooling beneath his tunic as the man swept his lone, dark eye from head to toe, taking in the bruised throat, the bandaged ribs, and the battered frame.

"I ask you again," the leader rasped, his breath smelling of stale ale and dried mutton. "Is this the knight you spoke of?"

"Aye, that’s the bastard," replied a rider from the far end, his elbow resting lazily on his pommel as he slouched forward like a wolf ready to pounce.

The silence stretched thin, taut as a bowstring. Vilon braced himself, tensing every muscle for a knife to the ribs or a gauntlet to the jaw.

The one-eyed man’s gaze locked onto Vilon’s with an intensity that made the cold sweat on the knight’s back turn to ice.

He’s going to hit me, Vilon thought, bracing his bruised ribs for the crushing weight of an iron gauntlet.

Vilon had expected many things in his line of work. It was the thing about hedge knight, they are wanted nowhere buyt yet can be found anywhere.

He had expected a blade between the ribs, a spit in the eye, or a heavy boot to the chest. He certainly had not waited for a reward, nor, if he was being honest with himself, did he think he deserved one. But even if the King of Yarzat paid his men in such strange way, Vilon would never in a hundred winters have guessed what came next.

Before he could even draw a breath to make his case, the scarred commander lurched forward like a striking viper. A heavy, calloused hand clamped around the back of Vilon’s neck, yanking him down, and planted a full, hard, wet smack of a kiss right squarely upon the knight’s stunned lips.