Chapter 1379: A pebble for an avalanche(1)

A bystander with grand dreams.

That was what Vilon had always been.

He had suffered many pains throughout his miserable existence, but none cut deeper than the gnawing, venomous bite of guilt. It would forever sit in his chest, its sharp claws tearing at his insides, refusing to let him forget, refusing to let him ever forgive himself. For a time he had managed to ignore it, to live his life.A life that was not his , a life he was borrowing.

But it had all come back, as it always did.

A life spent wandering the dirt roads was not the noble adventure song-singers lied about; not all men were built to sleep in frozen ditches, and few could endure its brutal severities. His father had learned to survive the misery by wielding it as a weapon. During the long, agonizing years Vilon had trailed behind the man like a beaten hound, he had rarely seen him draw his steel for a righteous cause. Never, not once, unless there was gold to be had.

Injustice was the only constant of his youth. Vilon had been forced to witness horrors committed by evil men just like his father, and, far too often, by his father himself.

He would never, so long as he breathed, forget the hunt.

They had been hired to track down an escaped family who couldn’t pay their debts to some local lender.

Vilon’s father might have been a foul, rowdy drunk, but when a bounty was promised, he could become what he usually never was, an efficient man.

In less than two days, he had all three of them bound in heavy hempen rope.A father and two small children.

This is my judgment finally catching up to me, Vilon realized, his bloodshot eyes staring numbly up at the rough-hewn wooden rafters of the ceiling.

This agony in his ribs, this bloody hole in his side, it was his rightful punishment for standing by and letting it happen. It was the Weaver’s whip for witnessing absolute evil and simply looking the other way.

He was a fraud, and a false knight beside.

He had spent his whole life dreaming of being a just, true knight. But on the one night when he first had the power to actually be one, placed directly into his hands waiting to be used , he had buckled like a rusted blade.

His father had been asleep back turned to the dying fire. It was a light, restless sleep, the old man hadn’t touched a drop of ale that night, which meant he was in a particularly foul, dangerous mood. But he was asleep. Vilon had been awake. That was all that was needed, his small fingers trembling over his hunting dagger but cutting, he should have cut. He could have slipped across . He could have sliced the ropes holding that terrified family. He could have gifted them their freedom that all gods had given men when first put into the dirt; it had been entirely within his power to do so.

To do what the gods had intended. They had chosen him to see what he would. And he failed.

He failed spectacularly.

He knew the hell that awaited them when his father dragged them back to their master. There was only one thing that awaited those that could not pay back what they owed.

And he had done nothing.

Lying here now, bathed in his own sweat and blood, his skin bleamish and sticky against the hair, he felt the exact same crushing weakness, the sickening, pathetic frailty of his own mind and spirit. The memory of their eyes flashed before him: wide, white, brimming with pure terror and unwashed tears, that was the same eyes Martha had in that moment.

He recalled the hope in her eyes when he charged, he recalled how happy and warm he had been to see it. It was the proof that indeed he could be a good man.

How dare I? he thought now, his soul twisting. How dare a craven like me preach to Owen about what a true knight ought to be? How dare I spit words of virtue when I watched a father and his babes dragged off into slavery, and turned my head away?

Why had he done it? Or rather, why in the five hells hadn’t he done that?

Was it the fear of his father’s fist crashing down on him? Was it the dread of a beating he was so accustomed to receiving?

No, Vilon admitted, tears of bitterness finally burning his eyes. It wasn’t the pain. I didn’t fear the fist.

He had feared what came after. He had feared being left behind. He had feared the vast, empty cold of being completely alone in the world. Even the suffocating presence of that cruel, evil man was a nightmare he preferred to the terrifying void of abandonment.

What a pathetic, monstrous little coward he had been.Searching for a love he did not deserve.

And as he laid there, every breath a stabbing agony in his side, the clawing ache in his crushed throat reminded him of the monster he truly was.

That was his punishment, to continue living, to keep lying to that sweet boy.

He might give alms to the poor, and aid those in need, but a good deed would never cancel out what he wished to forget. Try as he may, that night he was as guilty as his father was.No he was double that, for his father never wished to do the right thing, he did but he simply lacked the strength of will to do it.

He should have died down by that creek. Dying in the mud would have been justice. It would have been his only true repentance, giving his useless, blood-stained life to save a woman, be it a woman who sold her purity for coin, she was still worthier of life than himself. He could have finally paid the debt for the day he betrayed everything he pretended to be now.

Yet he had not died.

Why?

He felt something damp and warm rasping against his cheek. With a slow, agonized twist of his neck that set his shoulder ablaze, he forced his eyes open. A scruffy barn goat was standing over him, calmly licking the salty sweat from his brow, utterly untainted by the knowledge of how wretched and hollow the man beneath it truly was. ℯℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

Vilon weakly swatted at the beast. The sudden movement sent a violent spike of agony tearing through his side, and he let out a pathetic, high-pitched whimper.

He panted heavily, trying to breathe past the fire in his ribs. The goat, offended by the rejection, let out a sharp, piercing bleat that rattled inside his skull like a blacksmith’s hammer falling on an anvil.

"Stop... stop it..." he moaned. His voice came out as a ruined, gravelly rasp, barely recognizable as his own. Every syllable was torture; every time he tried to swallow his own dry saliva, his crushed throat burned as if he were gulping down liquid lead.

Hot tears spilled over his lashes, tracking through the dirt and dried blood on his cheeks. He moaned into the straw, weeping quietly from the sheer, overwhelming misery of it all. He wanted it to end. He wanted the blackness to take him. He was not made for this grand, heroic suffering, he was just a coward in rusted steel. Why was his heart still stubbornly beating? After all his cowardice, all his silent sins... why?

The goat simply stood there, bleating loud and demanding, mocking the crying knight.Naming him the sinner he was.

Then, the wooden door roared open, slamming hard against the wall. A silhouette burst into the sunlit doorway, breathless and frantic, before plunging straight toward the bed. It none else, but the finest, most faithful squire the five gods had ever forged.

As he saw him Vilon understood what had happened, he had suspected when he saw himself on a bed , with white bandages over his body.

He had done it, in the end Owen had saved him.

He truly was wasted on him.

The boy collapsed onto his knees beside the cot, his hands hovering over Vilon as if afraid that touching him might shatter him to pieces. With a kidness that he did not deserve and with tresh tears that streamed down Owen’s red, wind-chapped face, but behind them was a blinding, radiant burst of pure relief and joyful adoration.

So clear was his gaze, and so much care and love in his eyes, that it almost burned him.

Vilon stared up at the boy through a watery haze. In Owen’s wide, shining eyes, he saw the exact same thing he had seen in Martha’s back at the creek. He saw the lighted gaze of a soul looking upon a grand, selfless hero who had brought them through the dark at the cost of himself.

And it broke Vilon’s heart into a thousand more pieces.Even so he became afraid once more, just another stone added to the bunch already lying there, weighing him down. For that was what fear did, pull a man lower.

And now there was one more stone there, he now feared breaking that image.

Deny it as much as he wished, he liked the warmth seeping inside him , he liked that adoration. He liked being thought the man he was not.

He had never felt half as happy when he thought he would die to save her. What a little liar he was.

He wanted to scream at the boy. He wanted to tell him the truth, that there was no hero lying on this bed, for while he might have saved one live , he condemned three more..

There was only a fraud, a liar, and a craven who was far too weak to even die right.

And even more coward for not telling the truth.

"Ser... you are alive! Gods be good and praised, you are alive!"

Owen repeated the word like a sacred prayer, over and over until it lost all meaning and all sense. For it was no word, it was a principle. Alive. Alive. Alive.

And with every repetition, the word drove like a dagger into Vilon’s chest. All he truly deserved was to be dead , dead and dead.

It was only then that the boy noticed the wet tracks streaming down the knight’s bloody cheeks.Except there was no blood of them, he had been cleansed of them.

His skin was no pure and unblemished of the only right he had done.

"Ser... does it hurt that badly? You’re weeping..." Owen’s voice wavered, panic creeping back into his wide eyes. "Should I go fetch the healer? The villagers told me to call for him the moment you woke! They said—" He swallowed hard, his throat bobbing as if terrified of the answer. "Are you unwell, ser? Is the pain too great?"

Vilon had no idea who this man was, a local hedge-healer or a village priest, likely. But it mattered little. No midwife, apothecary, or holy man could ever mix a potion to heal the rotten, cowardly soul that truly ailed him.

He had been born and he would die with it.

Owen grew visibly distressed at his master’s silence. trembling, he reached out and gently pressed his palm against Vilon’s clammy forehead, checking for a fever. At the very least, the heat had not yet taken hold.

"Ser..." Owen asked, his voice dropping into a soft, frightened whisper, so small was his tone that he might cry. "Please... are you all right?"

Vilon stared up into the eyes of the boy who looked at him as if he were a giant among men.

And then, as he had done his entire miserable life, Vilon did what he did best.

He smiled and lied.