SSS Awakening: I Become The Strongest Breeding Knight

Chapter 100: 100. You Don’t Answer a Man’s Good Memories With Something Clever

Garrick held them out.

She took a small iron key from her belt, turned it in the left cuff, then the right, and the two bands of rune-carved metal dropped into the grass with a heavy clang.

He rubbed his wrists slowly, as if he’d forgotten they were attached to him.

”Here’s the deal,” Sharon said. ”You walk with us as a witness, not a prisoner...”

”You tell the truth to any court that asks, and you tell it the same way every time...”

”If you run, I’ll run you down, and I’ll be in a bad mood about it... because I’ve got a hurt shoulder and no patience for cardio.”

”Understood?”

”Where would I run?” Garrick said.

His voice was dry and level, with something underneath it that I couldn’t name. ”That road ends at my village.”

”That’s not a promise.”

”It’s the only one I have.”

She looked at him for a long moment. Then she looked at me.

”He’s my responsibility,” I said before she could ask. ”If he walks off, that’s on me.”

”I’m the one who told him he’d get to the Tribunal alive, and I meant it.”

”It’s on both of us, then,” Sharon said gruffly. ”Don’t get possessive.”

”I wouldn’t dream of it.”

”Good... Everyone, move out!”

We went into the dark in a long, quiet line. As we crossed the first low ridge, I checked the panel out of habit.

[STATUS]

[Lust: 100%.]

[Aether Reserve: 100%.]

[Resonance Surge Token: Active. 72 hours remaining.]

[Physical Condition: Good. Please do not tempt fate by saying that out loud.]

I didn’t say anything... I’d learned that much.

Garrick took us through the mountains like a man walking into his own house with the lights off.

Ten minutes after we left the main road, he led us up a narrow, nearly invisible track that wound along the spine of a high ridge, and I understood why he’d looked so pleased when I told him about the convoy’s route.

The wagons had to follow the old toll road, which curled around the whole northern range in a long loop, because a heavy cart couldn’t climb where we were going.

The rim trail cut straight across the top.

By his estimate, it would save us about a full day.

”The shepherd kids used it,” he said, pointing his crutch at a gap between two boulders so narrow that I wouldn’t have thought a goat could squeeze through. ”We drove the flocks up here every spring, to the high meadows above the village...”

”It’s not a road... It’s a rumor with a few cairns.”

”That’s a very honest description,” said Laura, who was sketching the trail in her notebook by the light of a shaded lantern.

”It’s the only kind of road we had.”

The track was every bit as bad as he’d promised. It climbed in switchbacks so tight that I could look down and see the heads of the people ten steps below me.

In places the ground had crumbled away, leaving a ledge about the width of a bookshelf with a long, dark drop on one side, and Holt went along it with his shield strapped to his back and his lips pressed together like a man walking over a very thin lie.

Dessa skipped across the worst of it, humming. Wynn simply stared straight ahead, put one boot in front of the other, and never once looked down.

Behind me, a small crisis was developing.

”Duchess,” Eveline whispered. ”Duchess, please... It’s just a path.”

The gray mare had planted all four hooves at the foot of the first narrow ledge and was refusing to go any farther.

She wasn’t spooked. Oh boy... She was offended.

Her ears were flat, her lip was curled, and she was gazing at the trail with the cold disdain of a duchess being asked to dine in a stable.

”She’s very sensitive,” Eveline told me, in a pleading voice. ”She doesn’t like heights.”

”Then why did you bring her?”

”Because she’d have eaten Oswin.”

”That seems like a fair trade.”

”Carry her,” Sharon said, from somewhere ahead.

Eveline went pale. ”I’m sorry...?”

”Carry the horse! She’s got a rabbit’s legs and a knight’s strength... It’s a few hundred yards.”

”Lady Sanford, she weighs at least six hundred kilograms.”

”Then you’ll get a good workout.”

I thought it was a joke, and so did everybody else.

But Eveline looked at Duchess, then at the ledge, then back at Duchess, and I watched her jaw set with a kind of horrified determination.

She handed me her notebook, rolled up her sleeves, stepped forward, and wrapped both arms around the horse’s chest.

Holy fucking shit...

She actually lifted her... I saw it with my own eyes.

For about two seconds, Duchess’s front hooves left the ground, and the mare let out a strangled neigh that sounded exactly like a woman being picked up by a stranger at a dance.

Then Duchess, mortified beyond all endurance, wrenched herself free, shook out her mane, and marched across the ledge with her nose in the air and her tail twitching.

She didn’t stop on the other side. And she didn’t stop for the next half mile.

”That worked,” said Sharon, with deep satisfaction.

”I’m so sorry,” Eveline told the horse’s retreating back. ”I’m so, so sorry...! I didn’t mean it!”

I handed her the notebook. She took it, and for a moment, her fingers brushed mine, and neither of us said anything.

Garrick had slowed to walk beside me.

The crutch slid on loose gravel, and I’d gotten into the habit of keeping one hand near his elbow without being obvious about it.

He let me. I think that was the first sign of how far he’d come.

”There,” he said, nodding toward a scorched stump beside the trail. ”Do you see that?”

”Somebody carved their initials in the bark, and the lightning split it... That was my sister.”

”She was nine... She wrote ’LENA V. WAS HERE,’ and she made the V upside down, and she was so proud of it that she told everyone in the village.”

”Was it still upside down?”

”For years.” He smiled, thin and sad. ”She used to say it was how you could tell it was really hers.”

I didn’t say anything. I’d learned that you don’t answer a man’s good memories with something clever.

You just walk beside him and let him have them.

He told me a few more, in small pieces, as the night went on. A goat named Colonel who ate Father Aldous’s hat.

A bad winter when the whole village had survived on turnips and spite. A summer when Lena had decided to teach every sheep in the flock to count and had gotten about as far as the number two.

He talked quietly, with long pauses, and I listened. He never once touched on the big thing, the thing waiting at the bottom of the valley.

I didn’t ask him to.

Somewhere around midnight, the clouds parted, and I saw the stars hanging over the black ridgeline like frost on glass.

Alicia, at the head of the column, raised one hand, and everyone stopped.

She’d been the commander for three days now, and not one person had questioned it.

”We camp here,” she said. ”No fire... make sure we have two watches.”

”Roland, you have the first, with Eveline.”

”Awww...” I frowned. ”Why me?”

”Because you’re good at it.”

”I’m exactly as good at it as everyone else.”

”You’re better, and you’re modest.” She gave me a smile so sweet and so innocent that I should have known better than to relax. ”Don’t argue with your captain.”