Chapter 1439: A chance for peace(3)

Vilon was hauling hard on New Chestnut’s girth-strap when Owen trotted into the yard.

It was barely dawn. The sky was a bruised expanse of soiled plum, split down the middle by the first pale, bloody fingers of the rising sun. The morning air bit through linen with a damp chill.

"Ser!" Owen called out, beaming with a grin wide enough to span a river. He was leading Thunder by the hemp halter, the massive plow-mare snorting plumes of white steam into the frost.

The lad was already clanking in full harness. Lord Edric had proved uncharacteristically thoughtful of their vagabond station; before turning them loose, he had ordered his armorer to hammer out two solid breastplates tailored so neatly a man could slip into them alone like an oversized iron shirt.

The blacksmith had grunted when took their measure, that it was an older, obsolete fashion, completely useless for the mass-levies of the modern cohorts.

You could hardly stop to take the bespoke chest-measurements of a thousand line-troopers; standard legionary plate was forged in separate breast and back pieces, cinched together at the flanks with heavy oiled leather and iron rivets.

How in the Seven Hells do a thousand footmen buckle their own backs without squires? Vilon caught himself wondering as he secured the saddle-buckle. The idea of an army hauling a thousand extra camp-boys just to pull leather straps was madness, think of the grain wagons, the water-skins.If the camp was rushed at midnight, half the legion would be butchered in their woolens while screaming for a boy to find their flank-rivets.

The more he chewed on the logistics, the more his skull throbbed.

He spat into the straw and let it go. Alpheo of Yarzat had conquered half the south with those disciplined cohorts; whatever trick kept the king’s legionnaires strapped into their iron, it was certain a crowned conqueror had solved the puzzle long before a thick-skulled hedge knight started scratching his chin over it.

The thought struck him with sudden, jarring weight: I am riding straight into that king’s city.

Would the lowborn sovereign watch from the royal dais? Would he ride in the lists himself? The mad notion flared in Vilon’s chest: What if the heralds pair my lance against the King of the South?

Would an anointed king tilt against a gutter-knight whose shield was smeared in ditch-mud? And if the Five Gods were drunk enough to grant him the chance... would he dare drive his ash-lance squarely into the royal breastplate or shield?

Vilon let out a dry, rough snort, turning his back on the daydream before it made a fool of him.

"Did you bid your kin a proper farewell?" he asked, his voice low and gravelly as he smoothed New Chestnut’s dark mane.

Owen gave an eager, vigorous nod, his mail coif rattling against his neck. "Aye! I still can’t believe the gods let me see them so soon. You should have seen Mama’s face when I rode up the lane in full plate atop Thunder! Her eyes popped out so far I thought they’d roll right into her cabbage patch!"

The boy chuckled, utterly intoxicated by the memory. Vilon offered a quiet, fleeting smile, keeping to himself from reminding him that he was there to see also.

He gave the destrier’s flank a firm, reassuring slap and swung his boot into the stirrup. Perhaps the Weaver would grant him another turn of the seasons. Perhaps one day they’d ride back down this very ridge, and he’d show little Josephine how to keep a warhorse between her knees without getting thrown into the briars.

"How did you pass your last day here, Ser?" Owen asked, adjusting his grip on Thunder’s hemp reins.

"Toiling in the dirt and teaching Josephine how to fight with a stick," Vilon rumbled, tapping his thumb against his empty hip. "I’ll be needing a new hunting knife before long."

"You lost your father’s dagger?"

"Nay, I know right where it rests. Under the thatch, likely. I only hope she never has to put edge to meat with it." Vilon’s gaze softened. "The blade carried few sweet memories for me anyway. Better that the lass thinks fondly of an old wanderer whenever she holds the hilt then I of my father. Besides, we can afford another." He flashed the boy a crooked, rare grin. "We didn’t exactly walk away from Lord Edric empty-handed."

"Aye, Ser! In the end, Mama got her brown heifer. Took a whole bloody year of praying, but she has her cow milk now."

Vilon nodded in silent agreement.

That single heifer had devoured nineteen solid silver denarii. The Crown’s long-term tithe would have dragged the price to five-and-twenty, so dropping the whole sum onto the headman’s table had spared them six silver pieces, but still, nineteen denarii for a beast!

Even with their coin purse fat, the sheer weight of the price was staggering. In all his wandering years, Vilon had rarely seen ten silver coins resting together in the same palm.

Now, from a single bloody campaign against the Vulture’s brood, he carried nearly a hundred and fifty, to say nothing of the warhorses, the fitted plate, and the baggage.

They had left half that fortune buried under the hearthstones of Owen’s family cottage. Hauling that much silver along the high road was an invitation for a slit throat; leaving it in trusted hands meant that if disaster found them at the capital, they would not be starting from the gutter again.It was much better than most people had it.

Vilon had made it clear to the boy’s kin that they should spend whatever was needed if a bad harvest struck, and if five winters passed without word, the silver was theirs by right.

"And how did you spend your final day, lad?" Vilon asked, his eyes drifting down the winding road. Yarzat’s highways were far better policed than the lawless ditches of Oizen, but the old phantom itch between his shoulder blades never truly slept.

Unburdened by his knight’s dark vigilance, Owen’s face split into a wide, breathless grin.

"I was with Pip and little Branden down by the duck pond, Ser! You remember them don’t you? When Thunder and I trotted up, Pip dropped his willow pole straight into the green muck and stood there with his mouth gaping like a landed carp!"

The boy chuckled, the iron plates of his new armor rattling with his excitement.

"I rode right up to the wall and told them we were bound for the King’s tourney at the capital. They looked so downcast at that... and truth be told, I felt a knot in my throat too. I love the village, Ser, but by the Weaver, I love the road with you far better."

Something tight and hard in Vilon’s chest gave way, warming him beneath the cold iron of his breastplate.

"We spent the whole afternoon sitting atop the dry hay behind the miller’s barn, and I told them the whole tale," Owen went on, his hands moving with dramatic flourishes. "Well, most of it. Branden truly believed the Vulture Lord was a giant crow with iron talons, fiend form the Deceiver himself! I had to knock some sense into him. Told him he was a massive warlord with eyes like poisoned daggers and a broadsword twice the length of a harvest scythe."

The boy leaned toward New Chestnut’s flank, his eyes bright with reverence.

"I told them how you held the shallows at the creek, Ser. How you charged five brigands all at once to shield the maiden, roaring like a mountain bear and cleaving a banded shield clean in two with one stroke! ’’ Vilon refrained from telling him that had never happened, and even if it did, he wasn’t even there to see it . But he let him continue, deciding not to shit on his excitement ’’Pip was so wide-eyed he begged to hold on my dagger, so I gifted him my arming sword. I have the mace now anyway."

Owen patted the heavy, flanged iron hanging at his belt. It was a stout, brutal weapon, far better suited to the lad’s stocky frame than a blade; one of Lord Edric’s subcenturii had noted the same when watching the boy swing.

"In return, their mothers packed us a whole sack of dried plums for the journey," Owen finished softly. "When dusk came, we sat by the fire and wept a little. I promised them I’d return one day, and that when they had sons of their own, I’d take them on as squires just like you did with me, Ser."

The lad’s boastful swagger melted into a tender, crooked smile.

"Mama clipped my ear for stuffing the young ones’ heads with blood and battle... but she ladled me a double portion of mutton stew all the same. We embraced in the yard before the dawn broke. This time she shed no bitter tears, and she didn’t try to bar the gate. She saw what we can do."

Owen looked up at the older knight, his chin held high against the morning wind.

"She knew she couldn’t stop us." he chukled ’’So to Yarzat is it ser?Perhaps we will see if it was truly the king’s son that gave you your horse.’’

"As if anyone could stop a mule as stubborn as you," Vilon grunted, though there was no malice in the rough edge of his voice. "Now put an end to your woolgathering and kick that mare into a trot. I mean to reach the capital before the lists are crowded so we can pitch our pavilion on decent grass."

They had inherited the heavy canvas from Lord Edric as well,a stout, serviceable shelter, free of heraldic silk, but tight enough to keep the rain off their saddles.

They had basically gotten everything from him. Gods bless that man.

As their hooves struck the packed gravel of the high road, Vilon noticed Owen twisting in the saddle every few furlongs, casting long, lingering glances over his shoulder. Even when the sun swallowed the thatched roofs and the valley shrunk to a hazy smudge against the foothills, the lad’s eyes kept drifting back toward the smoke of his mother’s hearth.

Vilon would have been a liar to the Five if he claimed his own neck hadn’t turned just as often.

A bitter, hollow weight settled behind his breastplate with every league they put between themselves and the valley. It felt dangerously like madness, spurning the quiet hearth, the honest loam, and the very life he had secretly hungered for since boyhood, all because some stubborn rot in his soul whispered he had no right to taste it, whispering he did not earn his forgiveness and redemption.

The farther the road pulled him, the sharper the truth cut. The Weaver had laid an open door before him, a chance to let the rust claim his armor and die an old man with dirt beneath his fingernails.

And he was walking away from it.

Too many lives were on him. Peace was a gift meant for men with clean hands, it was not for him.

He squared his shoulders against the morning wind, tightened his grip on New Chestnut’s reins, and fixed his eyes upon the southern horizon, where he knew the towers of Yarzat waited for hundreds of knights to test their mettle.