Chapter 1319: Horse on the road(2)
The soft, persistent rain was coating the entire world in a layer of cold dew. Vilon stood absolutely still amidst the dense branches of a wild briar bush, the freezing water slowly soaking through his rough woolen cloak and tracing icy lines down against his bare skin.
Squat and still, like a stone, he commanded himself, his teeth clamped tight to keep them from chattering. Do not move. Be a stone.
He told himself to ignore the bitter chill; there was a warm campfire waiting for him back at the camp. This would pass. Everything eventually passed.The pain and perhaps even the guilt.
He was acutely aware that there were probably bugs crawling all over his neck and arms, he could feel a faint, maddening movement beneath his wet tunic, but he forced the sensation from his mind. It did not matter. Everything in this godsforsaken southern forest was moving today, desperately searching for a scrap of food to survive the winter. It was an immense stroke of luck that he had stumbled upon a small, muddy pond; animals always swarmed toward sources of fresh water. He just had to bide his time. Bide his time until one of those beasts wandered into his reach.
So he waited, and he waited still, until his patience finally bore fruit.
The forest was dead silent save for the rhythmic, heavy dripping of the rain from the canopy, which was perfect; the damp noise would easily mask his movements. How lucky was he? He felt luckier still when a gray rabbit hopped closer and closer to the water’s edge.
Closer and Closer.
When Vilon reckoned the beast was close enough, he exploded from the bush like a starved mountain lion, driving his weight forward and bearing the rabbit down onto the wet ground. Its soaked, coarse fur brushed against his freezing hands as he locked his fingers around the creature. It immediately went wild, squirming, kicking, and letting out a high-pitched, pathetic moan, exactly as he had expected it to do.
Vilon didn’t hesitate. He drew his hunting knife and cleanly chopped into its neck, watching silently as the dark crimson blood pooled and vanished into the muddy earth. He hoisted the carcass by its hind legs, letting the remaining blood drain away into the grass.
It gave its last kicks and then went still.
The caravan leader had been kind enough to provide them with the shelter of their fires for the night, but it was strictly the travelers’ own task to forage for their own meat. Vilon tested the weight of the beast in his palm; it was rather scrawny, truth be told, but it would do wonders in a pot. Perhaps if he and Owen offered to share the fresh meat with the caravan cooks, the merchants would share a few of their precious potatoes to make a proper, thick stew.
It was near dawn, wet, freezing, but brimming with a quiet pride over his catch, when Vilon finally returned to the safety of the camp. He did not waste a single moment before throwing himself down beside the very first fire he came across. He was drenched, shivering, and ravenous; the first two miseries the roaring flames could easily abate, and the latter he had just solved.
"Nice catch you got there, Ser."
Vilon wasn’t alone at the hearth. Apparently, the roads leading through the war-torn Principality of Oizen had become so notoriously dangerous of late that the merchants spent a small fortune hiring private guards. Not that a band of hired swords actually provided real protection. Vilon had served long enough alongside his father as a squire to know a fundamental truth about mercenaries: if things turned truly ugly, the man who bought their steel usually just paid to be stabbed in the back or be deserted.
The guards were more of a visual reassurance than a real army, meant strictly to scare away smaller bands of desperate highwaymen. If a well-organized force with actual numbers and courage decided to launch a real ambush, the chances of surviving grew exponentially worse. The attackers would only need to butcher four or five of the mercenaries, and the rest of the paid guards would instantly melt away like spring snow.
But of course, even hired soldiers had their own specific needs. One of those needs being women.
"I am not usually so lucky when hunting," Vilon muttered, a bit embarrassed by his disheveled appearance as he handed the wet rabbit over to Owen to skin.
Owen took the carcass without a word, though his simple, plain face turned to throw a thoroughly stinky, suspicious eye toward the woman sitting across the fire from them.
"And here I thought Ser Valorous to be an able man of the wild," she teased, her voice smooth and light. "Aren’t wandering hedge knights supposed to be master hunters?"
She was a young woman, barely above her twentieth winter if Vilon could trust his eyes. Her thick chestnut hair almost looked like spun gold whenever the flickering sun hit it, her eyes were always twinkling with a sharp, knowing wit, and whenever she smiled, a small, deep dimple formed on her left cheek.
Her name was Martha. And her specific profession was one Vilon knew intimately.
His only real life experiences before the wars and being taken by his father, had been inside a brothel, though certainly not the sort of grand exploits most men boasted of over a horn of ale. His duties back then had consisted of brushing down the filthy wooden floors, scrubbing out stains, and hurriedly redoing the sheets the moment a client was done and satisfied.
But he had never met a road whore before. Perhaps Martha was just a girl who had quarreled with her madams in some city establishment, or a farmer’s daughter from some destroyed southern village who was now left without family, without friends, and with only one remaining way to make a living in a broken world.
Vilon knew that dark world better than he cared to admit; it had been his own reality before his father had finally come to scoop him out of the gutter. Sometimes, during the quiet watches of the night, he still found himself wondering how his life would have turned out if his father had never arrived.
In that brothel, there hadn’t been only women selling themselves for another man’s fleeting pleasure. As he grew older, he always wondered why the madam hadn’t put him to work in that exact same sense. Perhaps it had been his mother’s desperate, fierce insistence that kept him from the beds?She did not remember her giving him much love growing up...maybe he was just ugly?
He wondered for a fleeting second if his mother was even still alive out there. But whatever answer his mind could come up with, he knew it would never truly satisfy him.
"I suppose there are plenty of knights who are not good hunters," Vilon replied, extending his shivering hands closer to the roaring flames, the heat pricking at his numb fingers.
"Sad knights, I suppose? Are you a sad knight, Ser?"
Owen snapped his head up from the carcass, looking as if he had been physically struck by her words. "Ser Vilon is a better knight than most! A true knight!"
"I meant no offense, big boy," Martha said, flashing a dazzling smile that caused Owen’s face to instantly redden to the color of a winter beet. "Just a lonely woman’s dallying."
"I do not know of this dallying," his squire muttered, completely avoiding the woman’s eyes as he went back to aggressively skinning the rabbit. "But I know of insolence enough to see that you are, indeed, being insolent to my ser"
"Mayhaps someone should teach an insolent woman the proper manners to have with a knight?" Martha purred.
She shifted her weight across the log, and her knees lightly brushed against Vilon’s. His breeches were soaked and he was bone-chilled, making the sudden warmth a surprise. Though a pleasant one.
"Perhaps after dinner?" she whispered, her eyes twinkling with a dangerous, inviting light. "If you are as good a knight as your boy says you are, then surely you have an ample coin or two to spare for an ailing maiden in search of alms? We could warm ourselves inside my tent, a fierce fire raging outside, our hands all over each other."
And then make a bastard, Vilon thought bitterly. No. He would never curse a child with the misery of such a birth. Besides, he had absolutely no coin to spare for such fleeting dallying, and good knights did not spend their meager wealth in the beds of camp followers. A true knight had to be holy, just, and brave. Everything his father was not, except, perhaps, for the bravery part.
"I apologize, mistress, but I have no tent to offer, nor any coin to spare," Vilon said evenly, holding her gaze. "A scrawny rabbit is all the ware I have to my name today."
The deep dimple on her cheek vanished as quickly as it had appeared. "A poor ware, I fear," she sighed, though she didn’t look entirely displeased. "Though I’ll gladly take a bite of the meat, if you’d allow it."
Her knees went right back to her own side of the hearth, and just like that, her romantic interest evaporated into the morning air.
"If you could convince one of the wagon-drivers to part with a few potatoes, I would gladly share the meat in a stew," Vilon offered, trying to salvage their breakfast. "It would make a fine, proper broth for us all."
To his immense surprise, the plan actually worked. Martha had a tongue that could charm a snake out of a tree, and within the half-hour, she returned with a small bounty. As the sun climbed higher, others from the caravan began drifting over to their fire, drawn by the rich, savory scent of boiling meat.
They arrived in small clusters, bringing with them wood, iron bowls, a handful of wrinkled potatoes, and a few pale carrots dug from the bottom of the merchant bags.
The food was apparently destined for Oizen, as the crown of Yarzat paid double the ware for any food that was actually brought down, elsewise it was standard market price for it.
Whetever the soldier took the potatoes on their own or asked, Vilon had no interest. He just wanted some potatoes.
Predictably, Martha’s attention immediately shifted away from the penniless hedge knight and his grumpy squire when she understood the rabbit was all she would get from them.. An hour later, as the iron cauldron bubbled furiously with the thick, rich stew, Vilon looked across the crackling logs.
Martha was already nestled comfortably on the knee of one of the caravan’s hired soldiers. The mercenary was a thick-necked man wearing a greasy leather jerkin and rusty iron mail, his heavy boar-spear completely forgotten, propped uselessly against the mossy trunk of the tree where he sat. He was laughing loudly at something she whispered, his thick hand already resting heavy on her hip.
Beside Vilon, Owen threw the pair a thoroughly stinky, venomous glare, his fingers white around his wooden spoon.
Vilon suppressed a sigh, nudging his squire’s arm. Over their weeks on the road, he had found out that Owen was a particularly fervent, pious boy. The squire was intensely devoted to the old customs, always dropping to his knees to pray to the Father Protector of Laws and the Weaver before every meager meal and before laying his head down to sleep. To Owen’s simple, structured world, the lawless, casual sinning of the road guards was one he wanted no part in , be it watching or doing.
"Eat your broth, Owen," Vilon murmured softly, blowing on his own steaming bowl. "The road is long, and the stew is hot. We are guests.Guest do not condemn their host’s practices."
Vilon served only himself and Owen, leaving the rest of the company to crowd around the bubbling cauldron and ladle out their own shares of the broth.
"Rosh," one of them grunted, plunging a wooden spoon into the pot to fish out a thick, steaming chunk of potato.
Vilon raised his eyes to meet the man’s gaze. It was the mercenary who had been dallying with Martha.
"Rosh," the man repeated, offering a wide smile that revealed a gap right where his front teeth ought to be. It was a wet, heavy sort of smile, lacking any real warmth. "That’s my name.You far from home?"
"Vilon," the knight allowed, his tone flat and uninviting as he blew gently on his broth.He did not like that man’s smile.
Beside him, Owen’s simple eyes darted instantly to the mercenary. He must have felt something too, for without breaking his glare, the squire subtly shifted his weight, wedging his short-sword a fraction of an inch closer to his hip where his hand could find the hilt in a heartbeat.
"Ser Vilon of TallRoast," Owen corrected firmly.
’’Mind yourself Owen. We are guests’’ Vilon repeated once more. As he signalled through his eyes for the boy not to be rash . They were outnumbered and he didn’t want to give them any alarm to see them throw out.It was far safer to be in this company that out there alone in the dark.
Rosh’s chuckle was a low rumble in his chest as he looked between the hedge knight and the defensive squire. He took a slow swallow from his bowl, wiping a smear of grease from his chin with the back of a dirty sleeve.
"Well then, Ser Vilon," the mercenary said, leaning his thick frame forward just enough to narrow the space between them. "I had a few questions I wanted to put to a fine man of arms like yourself. If you’d allow it, of course?"