Chapter 1318: Horse on the Road(1)
Vilon woke to a painful, rattling jolt, his cheek mashed uncomfortably against something hard and swerved. He forced his crusty eyelids open, groaning at the sudden, sharp spike of pain in his neck as he raised his head away from the gnarled, mossy root he had been using as a excuse for a pillow.
The rest of his body was barely any more comfortable than his neck. He stretched the best he could from his cramped, half-sitting position, his joints popping like dry twigs.
Last night, the skies had opened up in a relentless rain, forcing him and Owen to take desperate refuge beneath the heavy, leaf-covered canopy of a massive oak, one of the few ancient trees in the valley that could still boast about sporting green leaves to shield them in the dead of winter.
He rowdied himself awake, squinting as a bright, piercing ray of light caught him dead in the eyes from a barely raised su—
Wait. Sun?
Vilon blinked hard.
Indeed, the morning sky was rising, displaying a completely serene, cloudless blue. The air was still cold against his raw throat, and his mouth tasted as dry as river dust. The flickering, golden glow of a well-risen sun washed fully over his camp.
It revelaed an already awake squire waiting for his master.
That big idiot.
"Good morning, ser!" the culprit chirped, completely unbothered by the early hour. "Did you sleep well?"
Vilon found the boy sitting cross-legged on a log, diligently sharpening Vilon’s heavy steel longsword over his knees with a greasy leather strop. They had managed to barter for the strop from a grimy blacksmith in Myros before making their way toward the city of Duresa, just as a traveling merchant they met on the road had suggested.
That had been a most saddening departure, truth be told. They had gone from the slick, beautiful cobblestones of the Magna Strata to this miserable, mud-ridden walking path they had been forced onto. It was just one of the many latest sadnesses that had befallen their little party. The heavy rain of last night was simply the most recent insult.
"Don’t you give me none of that, Owen!" Vilon barked, rubbing his aching temples. "How many watches did you skip?"
Both of their eyes trailed at the exact same time to the exact same object resting by the cold fire pit. The clepsydra. Or, as Owen liked to call it in his simple way, the leaking bucket.
Having fully roused himself from sleep, Vilon crawled over and took hold of the top earthenware jar, noting the tiny hole bored into its bottom. They used the water-clock to decide on the length of their night watches; two completely emptied top jars made one full shift.
"As I thought," Vilon muttered darkly, lifting the dry upper vessel. The iron cauldron beneath it was completely full to the brim, the water perfectly still. "You never bothered to even fill it up again after my watch ended, did you?"
Owen paused his rhythmic stropping, blinking his wide, simple eyes like a confused calf. "Yesterday was a very big, hard night, ser. You had the heavy eyes. You needed the sleep-time. Back in my village, when the wolwes went howl in the dark, it was I that went up to scare them and remain vigil. I can go a whole night with no sleeping at all. Don’t you worry about me, Ser."
He nodded firmly to emphasize his point, finishing the final stroke across the blade to admire the result of his handiwork. Satisfied that it was sharp enough to shave a hair, he slid the steel back into its leather scabbard with a clean clack.
Most of the time, Vilon could not have been happier about his choice of squire. Owen was a thoroughly sweet, fiercely hardworking boy who would gladly toil through tasks before he was even asked. Sometimes he would even wake up in the morning to find a pair of fresh river trout already roasting beautifully over a crackling fire, with the crackling fire itself included among the boy’s magical morning surprises.
I am going to buy you a proper set of iron armor and a fine, tall horse for that someday, Vilon would promise himself very often whenever he watched the boy work without complaint.
He was far better than a bastard like him deserved. Far better than a liar deserved.
The only real quirk he had against the squire was that the boy was simply too hardworking for his own good. And a bit thick between the ears.
"And what happens when you’re too tired when real harm besets us on the road?" Vilon reasoned, keeping his voice patient. "There is no creature yet in nature that can go forever without sleep. Your brain turns to mush."
"I stood watch over the fluffy sheep against the bad wolves of the forests already, ser," Owen insisted stubbornly, a proud pout forming on his lips. "I can do the exact same thing with the bad wolves of the road. "
Before Vilon could even formulate an argument against that, a large, heavy nose suddenly slammed into the back of his head.
Thump.
Vilon winced as Chestnut, let out a loud, wet snort directly into his hair. The horse nipped aggressively at the crown of Vilon’s head, tugging on a handful of curls as if thoroughly chiding both of them for making so much noise during his breakfast hour.
"Ouch! Mind your distance!" Vilon grumbled, swatting blindly behind him until Chestnut trotted off to chew on some damp shrubbery.
Vilon turned back to his squire, sighing deeply as he placed a firm, kind hand on the boy’s sturdy shoulder.
"Listen to me, Owen. I am asking you kindly: do not ever do this again. Do you understand?"
Owen’s smile faded a little, his brow furrowing as he tried hard to process the seriousness in his knight’s voice.
"If we go marching into the wild with a lack of sleep, we put ourselves in mortal danger," Vilon explained softly, gesturing to the dark, thick tree-line around them. "This land we are traveling through... it is not like the safe, protected core of the Kingdom of Yarzat. There are not enough royal patrols out here to save us. Remember the first thing that merchant told us when we asked direction for Sharjaan?
Don’t.
The frontier is lawless, and we could be beget by bandits,wolves, or worse danger at any hour of the day. I need your eyes sharp, not heavy. We take our proper watches, or we don’t survive the road. Do we have a pact?"
Owen looked down at the sword in his lap, then back up at Vilon, nodding slowly with a solemn, simple earnestness. "A pact, ser."
"You are a good boy, Owen, and you’ll make a fine knight someday. I know it," Vilon said, offering a small reassuring smile as he stood up on his two feet. "Now, come on. Let us break our fast and get ourselves onto the road already."
And break their fast they did, chewing on a few tough strips of hard-salted beef that they first boiled in an iron pot to soften the leather-like meat. An hour later, with their meager camp packed away and the fire thoroughly smothered, they were both making their way down the path.
The road was muddy, but thankfully not half as deep as it could have been after a winter deluge. Vilon’s heavy boots squelched rhythmically against the soft, yielding ground, while Owen rode much more comfortably atop Chestnut. The boy had been grumbling and protesting the arrangement since they set out, but Vilon had been firm.
A knight had to set some form of discipline for a skipped watch on the squire, even if the infraction was born of pure kindness. Usually, they would take turns riding Vilon’s true charger, but given the well-meaning favor Owen had done him in the night, Vilon found it only honest to return the gesture.
It was grueling, leg-wearying work to walk for hours on end through the mire, but Vilon took a quiet amusement in knowing that Owen was far more uncomfortable watching his master needlessly toil on foot than he would have been walking himself.
To distract his mind from the ache in his calves, he turned his attention to the surrounding landscape. As soon as they swerved around a lone, stunted lemon tree at the bend, the horizon opened up. To his left, a narrow, steep-sided valley choked with gray brush welcomed them.
Behind them, the sharp cliffs surrounding the great lake of Turogontoli rose high against the morning sky. They had tried their hand at fishing there yesterday morning before departing the banks, but they hadn’t met with any real luck. Their hole-ridden net may have done well enough to snare a few fat trout in shallow river streams, but against the deep, dark expanse of a proper lake, it served little to nothing.
Still they were high enough that they could actually see yesterdays’ cliff still.
Vilon was rapidly finding that foraging for food in a strange land was a far harder business than an actual battle. At the Ford, he had been exhausted, covered in sweat, and splattered with crimson, but his blade had been true even then , he had cleaved a man from shoulder to stomach until the poor bastard’s guts spilled into the mud. Now, he was just hungry and cold, and the only weapon he had to fight the elements was the steady pace of his own two feet.
They had finished off the last of their good, fresh provisions a full week ago. Now, they were down to the bare essentials: rock-hard salt beef and a few wrinkled raw onions. They still had a decent handful of coin left over from the loot they had scavenged at the Ford, so the moment they finally reached a proper city or a prosperous village, they would promptly stock up on real supplies for the long, winding road that still awaited them.
Vilon couldn’t wait to show Owen his very first tournament once they reached Duresa. Though, to be perfectly honest, speaking of it so highly made Vilon sound like some seasoned veteran of the lists, hard fact was that it would be his first time being the player in one as well.
He had already decided he would not participate in the grand joust. The stakes were far too high; he could not afford the devastating risk of losing his mount. A hedge knight without a horse was no knight at all, and Vilon simply did not possess enough coin to ransom back his armor and horse if he were unseated by some lordling’s lance.
He would instead test his mettle in the melee, the great mock battle. Of that sort of chaotic, bloody business, he had some genuine experience at the very least as it was on foot.
He was just imagining the sound of clashing practice steel when Owen suddenly reined in Chestnut, turning around in the saddle to call back down the path.
"Ser Vilon," Owen said, his voice flat and simple as he pointed a thick finger toward the ridge ahead. "Look there. We have some company coming up the line."
Vilon felt his heart skip a sudden, violent beat. His hand instinctively dropped to the pommel of his longsword, his eyes narrowing as he scanned the tree line, bracing for the bandits, robbers or worse.
He felt rather dumb, when he discovered It wasn’t a pack of highwaymen armed to the teeth. It was just a caravan, a large, slow-moving merchant’s party with wares to sell rather than wield.
Their heavy wooden wagons creaked loudly under the weight of their iron-bound chests as they rolled down the path.
They were slow, and Vilon felt heat creep up his cheek, as he realised that somehow they had gone slower enough for that procession to catch up to them.He looked up at the sun...it wasn’t like they had departed late.
Still not all bad were truly so.
They at least had someone to ask directions now...