Chapter 1380: A pebble for an avalanche(2)

A solitary bell began to toll in the distance, drifting across the village. Vilon stood outside, drawing a long, crisp breath of fresh air into his lungs for the first time since he had opened his eyes.

With the aid of a wooden walker that Owen had somehow managed to procure from the locals, the knight was making a slow, excruciating lap around the settlement.

This was the very place he had been riding toward for days before getting sidetracked by those five brigands down at the creek. It was a peaceful, unassuming hamlet, and unlike the last desolate ruin they had passed through, this place possessed a warm, welcoming air he hadn’t expected to find in a war-torn frontier.

Owen had informed him that he’d been unconscious for more than a day after being dragged inside.

"Gods, ser! You had blood running down your side and bubbling through the rings of your mail like a fountain!" Owen blurted out, his voice practically shouting in Vilon’s ear. The boy hovered at his elbow, his arms outstretched toward Vilon’s wounded ribs, ready to catch him the instant he faltered. "Your left eye was swollen as big as a plum and turned completely black! And your neck! Your neck was a deep purple, ser! We thought your throat was crushed! When I brought the Hounds down to the bank, you were lying in the mud, stone-cold, breathing like a dying hound!"

From the lad’s hysterical retelling, Vilon sounded as though he had been into the Weaver’s realm with one foot in and one out. And from the way Owen fussed over him, shouting warnings at every pebble in the path, a man would think Vilon was a fragile old grandfather rather than a knight in his prime.

The village apothecary, however, had painted a far less tragic picture. The elder had dryly assured Vilon that his wounds were mostly dramatic rather than fatal, not that they weren’t serious but with good enough treatment the worst was evaded. The heavy mail coat had absorbed the brunt of the spear thrust, preventing the iron head from penetrating deep into his side. Most of the agonizing pain he felt was merely deep tissue bruising and soreness Logen’s violent tackle, the spear head had entered only a tiny bit and hadn’t hit any organ. The apothecary promised that with proper rest and decent broth, he would be back on his feet in no time.

For the next few days, however, horseback riding was strictly forbidden. He was restricted to short, grueling walks for "rehabilitation", which was the only reason he was out in the winter sun when he would have much preferred to rot peacefully in a dark bed.

Until he recovered, he was to stay in one of the empty timber homes kindly provided by the village headman, cottages that stood vacant on account of the recent war.

A far too common occurrence in these lands.

Vilon leaned heavily on his walker, surveying his surroundings. Dozens upon dozens of settlements just like this one were popping up across the countryside, the direct result of the Prince of Yarzat’s massive relocation initiative, designed to jumpstart food production in the scorched borderlands as quickly as humanly possible.

A few dozen sheep and goats frolicked lazily across the commons. In the adjacent fields, pairs of farmers walked behind oxen, breaking up the dark earth in preparation for early spring grain. In other plots, hardy winter crops like cabbages were already peeking through the soil, having been planted months ago when the first wave of refugees arrived. From the look of it, Owen had noted, the cabbages would be ready for the cookpot in less than a moon.

He found the entire scene to be so... peaceful.

He felt a strange, quiet tug in his chest. A man could easily lose himself in a place like this, put down the heavy sword, bury the blood-stained past, take a soft-spoken wife, and sire a few noisy sons and daughters. It was an honest, quiet life. Far from the bite of cold iron, far from the terror of battle, away from it all... it was a life that he did not deserve

"They all look so terribly happy, don’t they?" Vilon muttered, resting his full weight against the wooden frame of his walker as he caught his breath.

Across the green, he spotted a young girl, no older than thirteen, laughing bright and clear as she walked alongside a young farmer. Friends, or perhaps something more? From the blush on her cheeks, Vilon bet on the latter.

Every soul in this village had their own bloody story to tell, no doubt, each having survived months of terror and displacement during the war. Yet here they were, picking up the stones of their broken lives and building new hopes upon the ruin.

"They are reclaiming lives they thought were lost forever, ser," Owen murmured softly. Seeing that his master was stable, the boy finally lowered his outstretched arms. "You might not fully understand it, ser, but the bond between a farmer and his land is entirely different from the bond between a knight and his steel. At heart, I’ll always be a farm boy. My mama taught me everything there is to know about the soil."

Owen looked out over the freshly tilled fields, a thoughtful look settling over his young face. "A whole family’s survival rests entirely upon the harvest. It depends on the weather, the cabbages, and the grain. What do you think happened to these people when the armies burned their fields, destroyed their homes, and shoved them into crowded refugee camps alongside thousands of starving strangers?"

Vilon tried to imagine the equivalent for himself, losing his sword, his armor, Chestnut, his very identity, and being forced to sit uselessly in a mud-drenched tent city. He cringed at the mere thought.A knight may not be made from armor and sword, but a knight could just not be without them.

"The boy got the proper gist of it, he did!" a raspy voice rumbled from the side of the path.

Vilon turned his head slowly, his eyes alighting on what he was certain had to be the oldest soul in the entire village. She was bent nearly double over a carved ash-wood walking stick, her scalp almost entirely bald save for a few stubborn wisps of white hair that drifted in the winter breeze. Her skin was deeply weathered, dark as cured leather from a lifetime under the sun, and hung in soft, saggy folds beneath her chin. Faint, cratered pits dotted her cheeks, the old, fading scars of the pox.

Yet, despite it all, she wore the warmest, most radiant smile Vilon had ever beheld. It unnerved him to realize that very smile was directed squarely at him.

"This earth is our life, ser," she said softly, her breath misting in the cold air. "It is all we have ever known, and all we shall ever do."

Vilon stared at her in quiet wonder. How someone of her frail age had managed to survive the horror of the late war, and the brutal, starving winter in the refugee camps, was nothing short of a miracle. He knew well how scarce the rations had been; he had seen men slit throats for a half-moldy loaf of rye, and young wenches sell themselves for a handful of dried beans. Had she possessed a family strong enough to shield her from the dark?

"It was not easy, mind you," she said suddenly, as though reading the unspoken question right off his face.

She turned her head slightly, revealing that her left eye was completely clouded over with milky white streaks, the iris a pale, ghost-like blue. She was half-blind.

"My sons kept me alive in those wretched camps," she murmured, a sudden, heavy sorrow dimming her one good eye. "I had three of them once. Three strong, beautiful boys. Then the prince’s meat-collectors came through the village with their drums and their iron, dragging them off to fight a war none of us understood.But that’s the thing of us , no?To give without trouble. I never saw two of my boys ever again. They are cold in the dirt somewhere, I reckon."

She paused, leaning heavily on her stick as she gestured with a trembling, spotted hand toward the empty cottage where Vilon had slept.

"That house you are resting your bones in... it was built for my youngest. Serbio. He was in a sweet panic to finish the roof, as he was in a cohoof to marry the shepherd girl, Marie. Oh, I fussed at him so! I told him she was too wild, too unruly for a quiet farmer’s boy... But now my Serbio is dead in some noble’s ditch, and Marie vanished during the sacking... All those bitter arguments I had with him... they seem so terribly stupid and small now, don’t they?"

A heavy, aching silence fell over the path. Vilon felt a familiar knot tighten in his gut, the crushing weight of grief he had no right to claim, yet felt all the same.

"I am... deeply sorry for your loss, " Vilon offered softly, his coarse, ruined voice barely louder than a whisper. "No mother should have to outlive the sons she bled to raise. But... I thank you for allowing me my rest on your house. It is sturdy, and it keeps out the wind. His labor was not in vain, I am sure he was an hardworker."

The old woman let out a soft, dry chuckle that turned into a gentle sigh. She looked up at the battered knight, her one working eye shining with a fierce, quiet grace.

"Bless you, ser, but we cannot lose ourselves drowning in what was ripped from our hands," she said, her voice firm despite her age. "We must anchor our hearts to what the gods have left us. In my case, I still have my eldest boy, Bran. He carries the plow now, and he carries me, though not for long, thank the gods for that.I had been given lead over the effort to rebuild our village, as the eldest in here" She looks about at the reflourishing village and smiled ’’Tis’ not so bad a last thing to see.’’

Owen stepped forward then, a bright, fiery hope illuminating his youthful face.

"And things will be different now, lady!" Owen declared earnestly, crossing his arms over his chest, his eyes shining with the unshakeable certainty of the young. "With the King of Yarzat taking the land, there will be no more forced enlistments! No more meat-collectors dragging farmers from their fields! The war here is done. Now you and your son can finally build a real life again, one that lasts. He is a noble and generous ruler. The taxes won’t bleed you dry, merchants will travel the highways once more, and the roads will be made safe, just as they are in Yarzat!"

The old woman cast an uncertain, heavy gaze upon the boy. Her lips parted as if to offer a sharp rebuke, but in the end, she simply let out a long, weary sigh that seemed to carry the weight of decades.

"I know not this King of Yarzat, lad," she said softly, her raspy voice cutting through Owen’s enthusiasm like a cold frost. "Just as I never knew the name of our own prince. I only knew the cold faces of the men who dragged my boys away into the mud.And I only know this king was at that war. Maybe it was one of his that took one of mine."

She turned her one milky, blind eye back toward the horizon, where the newly tilled fields met the dull grey sky.

"Perhaps what you say is true. Perhaps my remaining son will make a fine living here, and perhaps my grandsons will grow up fat and happy under this new flag of yours. But all I know is that your king came to war with our prince, and no matter what color the banners were, my boys died all the same. For that is the only truth in this world, young lad, no matter who wears the crown, it is always us who pay the bloody price when the lord play their damn games."

She adjusted her grip on her wooden stick, turning her back to the quiet village green.

"I hope my line finds the peace you promise," she murmured, her voice hardening just a fraction. "But as for me, I shall go to my grave with sorrow and hate for the lives that were stolen from my arms. Now speak no more of this king of yours to me. It is bitter enough that we must stomach his fucking dogs frolicking about our fields after they burnt them."