Chapter 1438: A chance for peace(2)

He took another long swallow of the sweet milk, finding he had precious little stomach to pick up the iron hoe just yet. He still intended to finish the furrow before dusk swallowed the sky, but the dirt could wait a minute longer.

In truth, he didn’t need to break his back out here at all. He could fling the tool into the ditch, wander back to the cottage, and snore on his straw pallet until midday tomorrow if the whim took him. He was paying for every bowl of pottage and every inch of roof with good, hard silver, far more lavishly than a hedge knight ought to throw around for a roof like that, truth be told.

Yet pride was a stubborn beast, or perhaps it was just the itching dread of sitting idle under another man’s thatch.He personally blamed his father for that. He always had to keep busy whenever his father was awake or mrerely not drunk.

The mere thought of lounging by the hearth made his skin prickle; he felt the phantom weight of unseen eyes judging him as nothing more than a useless, oversized beggar in mail,or at the moment in linen. Instincts beaten into a boy in the mud were the last damn things to die.

Perhaps we could ride back this way, the reckless thought flickered through his mind. Once the tourney is done and the purse is won, we could linger another moon. Let the lad have his fill of his kin before the road claims him again.

Owen had blossomed like clover in the spring rain these past days. The boy strutted through the village lanes like a conquering prince, leading Thunder by the reins to show off the mare’s great, muscular shoulders. The plow-horse was a patient saint of a beast, enduring clumsy toddler rides and hauling timber without so much as an annoyed snort.

New Chestnut, by sharp contrast, was an absolute bastard. They had foolishly attempted to strap the plow-harness to the destrier on the second morning, and the great brute had nearly kicked the village headman through a barn door before attempting to bite off Vilon’s left ear. After a half-hour of cursing, thrashing, and near-homicide, the villagers had collectively agreed that the warhorse was best left to eat oats and look terrifying.

Hence why an anointed knight of the realm was currently acting as the village’s second-best draft mule.

"Care for a swallow?" Vilon offered, extending the waterskin toward Josephine’s sullen, pinched face. It unsettled him to see her so quiet; usually, the girl had a gap-toothed grin plastered from ear to ear.

She offered a tiny, solemn nod and took a polite, bird-like sip from the nozzle.

"Did a badger bite your toes, little one?" he asked gently. Aside from Owen, the lass had been glued to his shadow since his arrival, trailing him across pastures and barns like a faithful hound, though Vilon had the distinct impression her mother had nudged her to keep a watchful eye on the heavily armed stranger in their midst.

Josephine stared down at her feet, digging her toes deep into the cool, dark soil. "Owen came to the house with the milk-pail... He meant to tell you something, but you weren’t in the yard."

"Did he now?" Vilon raised a brow, resting his forearm on his knee. "And what’s got the boy’s feathers ruffled?"

The girl pressed her lips into a tight, miserable line, refusing to meet his eye. A heavy silence hung between them, save for the distant buzzing of horseflies in the clover.

"The carters came back from the market town," she mumbled at last, her voice trembling with childish despair. "The ones who went to sell the spring lambs. Owen ran down to the road to speak with them the moment their wagons crossed in the village."

Vilon took a deep breath, he didn’t need the Five Gods to whisper the rest.

"They brought news from the capital, didn’t they?" he said softly.

Josephine sniffled, wiping her nose on the fraying sleeve of her smock. "Two weeks," she whispered. "The crier in the city square said the King’s tourney begins in two weeks’ time. Owen told my mother... he said he has to tell you to saddle the horses, because you ought depart on the morrow."

Vilon let out a long, weary breath that sounded like dry leaves scraping over stone.

Their quiet respite was at an end. It was foolish to feel the sting of it so sharply, but the thought of trading this sun-drenched valley for the stink of campfires and horse dung left an ache in his chest he hadn’t prepared for.

He would miss this soil. And he would miss this fierce little scrap of a girl.

"Will you come back?" she asked, peering up through her unruly brown fringe as he took one last, slow swallow of the milk. A wild surge of affection rose in him. "One day?"

"I have something for you," he said gently, brushing aside the question whose answer lay only in the lap of the Five. "A gift meant only for your hands." He forced a broad grin to his face, though inside he felt hollow as an old stump.

Reaching to his belt, his fingers closed around the rough horn hilt of his hunting dagger. It was an ancient, unadorned thing he had stripped from his father’s cold belt alongside Old Chestnut, a threadbare cloak, and a notched broadsword. Of all those bitter inheritances, only the horse and the blade had stayed with him this long.

"For me?" Josephine eyed his hip with dark suspicion.

He drew the steel from its oiled rag, he had never possessed the silver for a proper scabbard, and held it flat across his broad palms. The metal was dark with age, nicked along the spine, but the edge still held an honest, wicked bite.

Josephine’s eyes went round as duck eggs.

"A sword," she breathed in hushed reverence.

Vilon did not correct her. "Aye. A small sword for a small girl."

"I am not small!"

"Next to me, you’re a sapling."

"Everyone is a sapling next to you! You’re as tall as a windmill!" she protested, her gloom vanishing in a flash of fierce delight. She took the hilt carefully, testing its weight, and gave the flat of the steel a solemn, testing slap against her palm before lunging forward to plant a wet, clumsy kiss squarely on his bristled cheek.

"Mind the edge, you terror," he warned, catching her thin shoulders as she pulled back to admire her new treasure. "Keep it quiet. We wouldn’t want the village lads growing jealous of your iron"

Her grin faltered, her small brow knotting tight over her nose. "My mother will see it. She’ll take it straight away."

"Only if you leave it on the kitchen table," Vilon murmured with a conspiratorial wink. "A proper warrior will find a hollow in a willow trunk or a dry stone under the floorboards. I trust you know your own home better than she does."

He couldn’t help the warm smile that broke through his gruff face. In his lonely youth, he had often wondered what it might be like to have kin, a brother to trade bruises with, or a sister to watch over. If the gods had ever granted him one, he knew in his bones he would have wanted her to possess this girl’s stubborn fire.

"Mind you don’t wave it at the sheep," he added softly. "Steel is no toy."

She barely heard him, her eyes ablaze with sudden wonder. "You’re a true knight! You could teach me to—"

The words caught in her throat. The realization crashed over her small face like a bucket of well-water, and the light died from her eyes. She slowly wrapped the dagger back into its greasy rag, pressing it tight against her ribs.

"You’re truly riding out on the morrow," she whispered. "Will you ever come back, Ser?"

For once, Vilon refused to hide behind easy comfort. "I cannot say, little one. But if the road ever turns this way again... I will look for your hearth first."

A fat tear spilled over her lashes, tracking through the dirt on her cheek. "Do you truly have to go? Papa said you carried a purse heavy with silver. He said you have enough coin to buy a plot of your own and never sleep in the mud again. Can’t you stay? Please... for me?"

The raw, desperate plea hit him harder than a tournament lance. A terrible, familiar coldness settled into the hollow of his ribs.

He recalled the feeling well, solitude.

"I cannot, Josephine."

"Why?" she demanded, stamping. "Who commands it? Aren’t you a knight with steel and a warhorse? Who can force you?"

"Sometimes there is no lord barking the order," Vilon said, his voice dropping low, steady and grave. "Yet you are bound all the same."

She sniffled loudly, wiping her nose with the back of her wrist. "That makes no sense."

Vilon looked past her, toward the high ridges where the road cut through the valley

"The Weaver spins a thread for every man born under the sun," he murmured, his gaze distant. "Some threads are thick and stout, woven to shelter the weak and bind up the broken.

Others are sharp as wire, tearing through whatever they touch without care. If you ask if an army is hunting me down this road, the answer is no. And yet I have no choice at all. Long ago, I stood by and watched three fragile threads snap in the dark when I had the strength to hold them whole.Too many souls are on me I fear. Three souls too many."

He looked back down at her, the ghost of old sins haunting the corners of his tired eyes.

"I’ll be spending whatever breath I have left trying to settle that," he murmured. "I know that much."

"Mama says you only have to pray to the Bringer of Mercy for forgiveness," Josephine whispered, hugging the cloth-wrapped dagger to her chest

Vilon rested a broad, calloused palm atop her head, ruffling the tangled mess of brown curls. "A prayer without blood and sweat behind it is worth less than a dry fart in a gale. The gods want your back bent, not just your knees.I will earn my forgiveness with my sword."

She tilted her face up, her gaze searching his scarred features. "Will it be dangerous? Where you’re going?"

Deadly as an open throat in a ditch, he thought.

Out loud, he gave a slow, measured rumble. "The Five will see fit to look after me, broken as I am, so long as I look after whatever good is left in their world, as small as that is."

He pushed himself up from the rock, the joints in his knees popping like dry twigs. He cast a single, dismissive glance at the half-turned soil behind them. "The sun hasn’t crested the high ridge yet," Vilon said, shielding his eyes against the midday glare. "We have the rest of the daylight. If you’re going to carry an edge, you might as well learn how to hold it without carving off your own kneecap. What do you say?"

Josephine sniffled, wiping the dampness from her cheeks with the back of her grimy wrist, a spark of stubborn fire returning to her eyes. She gave a fierce, eager nod.

"And when you come back... will you teach me how to fight on a horse?" she asked, her a stupid question and yet one Vilon hardened to reply.

A hedge knight knew better than to make vows to tomorrow; the road was fickle, iron was cruel, and life was a pit of hungry wolves. Yet looking into her earnest, upturned face, Vilon swallowed the bitter truth and laid his hand over the pommel of his father’s blade.

An honorable promise made over the sword of a dishonorable man.

"If the Weaver spares my thread long enough to grant me such an honor, I’ll thank her with every breath in my lungs," he rumbled softly, offering the girl an iron-clad grin. "Until then, I’ll endure. If only to keep my word to a terror like you."

He tapped the flat of her wooden training branch with his boot.

"Now square your feet, girl.Let us make true of what time we still have, for only the gods know what the morrow hold."