Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

The lamb was as good as anything Vilon had ever tasted, perhaps the finest meal of his life.

The meat was tender, rich, and dripping with juices, practically melting off the bone with the gentle pull of a thumb. Lambs came into this harsh world pure and unblemished, and Vilon reflected dryly that there was a very fine, poetic reason why their meat remained so sweet.

Spoonfuls of buttered peas had been served alongside the roast. Vilon had never tasted real butter before, he only knew, in a vague sort of way, that it was churned from thick cream, and though he had choked down plenty of plain, dried peas over campfires, he now understood the quiet magic of having the two combined.

Even the heavy barley bread was a marvel: thick, warm, and freshly pulled from the hearth oven, its crust crackling satisfyingly between his teeth.

Both knight and squire possessed deep, bottomless stomachs it seemed, tearing into the lamb and wiping their wooden bowls clean with thick chunks of bread as if they hadn’t eaten in a moon.

Vilon watched the lad out of the corner of his eye, feeling a quiet warmth settle in his chest. Owen was only fourteen, still clumsy in his own skin, with a long way yet to grow. Who knew? With enough hard riding and proper meals like this, the boy might end up as tall as Vilon himself.

Now wouldn’t that be a sight? Vilon thought, a faint smirk touching his lips. A knight as tall as me and as thick-chested as Owen. That’s a brute I’d certainly pity anyone having to face in a tourney.

Perhaps there wouldn’t even be a horse capable to hold him, then he would have to ride on an ox. He certainly would not be the first, who knew perhpaps some of his ancestor was the bastard son of Manor Breakhorse.That would certainly explain the thickness.

Midway through devouring his second rib, Owen paused, wiping a smudge of grease off his chin with the back of his sleeve. He raised his eyes, catching Vilon staring.

For a second, the boy looked self-conscious, as if expecting a scolding for his lack of table manners.

But Vilon merely offered him a smile. Seeing it, Owen broke into a broad, grease-smeared grin of his own, and in the quiet corner of the dreary tavern, both knight and squire shared a low, breathless chuckle.

”Don’t choke on it, lad,” Vilon said softly, his voice dropping into a tone far warmer than his usual gruff cadence. He reached across the timber table and gently pushed the wooden pitcher of cool creek water closer to the boy’s elbow. ”The meat isn’t going anywhere. We’ve got the table for the night.”

Owen swallowed hard, taking a long, grateful gulp of water (that they had gone personally to take from the creek) before leaning back against the wooden bench with a deep, contented sigh. He patted his belly, looking at the clean-scraped bone on his plate as if it were a mound of royal gold.

”I don’t think I’ve ever felt this full, ser,” Owen murmured, his eyelids already growing heavy in the warm, wood-scented air of the tavern. ”Not even on feast days back home.We don’t get to kill our goats.We either bring them to the capital to sell to butcher, or keep them for ourselves for winter.”

”Get used to the feeling while it lasts,” Vilon replied, though there was no bite in his words. He picked up a last crust of warm bread and popped it into his mouth. It was dryier than the meat but still good ”Roads have a nasty habit of growing long and lean when you least expect it. But tonight...’’ he chuckled ’’well tonight we rest.”

From the side, the tavern owner appeared at last, stacking both clean wooden plates into the crook of her arm. ”Can I bring you anything else?” she asked, her tone far less abrasive than before. ”Perhaps another serving of the lamb?You certainly look like you can scarf another down”

Vilon glanced across the table at his squire, whose heavy eyelids and slow, contented breathing offered a clear answer. The boy shook his head.

”We are satisfied as we are, mistress,” Vilon replied, resting his forearms on the timber. ”We are, however, looking for a room to pass the night. Do you offer lodging?”

”We do,” she said, though a tired, familiar look settled onto her face. ”But as you can see, this is a small place, and we’ve got very few beds.”

Vilon recognized the refrain before it even left her lips. ”They are all taken?”

She nodded. ”The last bed was claimed a couple of hours before you rode in. Bad luck, ser.”

”Is there no other place in the village to lay our heads?”

”Well... there is plenty of dry space in the stable,” she offered, shifting the stack of plates. ”We don’t get many travelers with horses or mules these days. If you aren’t squirmy about sleeping near the straw, you can rest there. Free of charge, on account of friendship.”

Vilon did not ask whose friendship she meant. He thought it over.

The hard fact was that neither knight nor squire was bothered by the proposition in the slightest. They had slept in far worse places than a clean barn.

”Sorry, lad,” Vilon said, turning to Owen as he dropped a crisp, gleaming silverii into the woman’s hand, the cleanest, newest currency he had ever handed out. ”Looks like we’re sleeping with Chestnut tonight.”

”That’s all right, ser,” Owen murmured, offering a small, sleepy shrug. ”I don’t mind. There’s nothing to be done about a full house.”

Clearly, however, not everyone in the tavern shared that quiet acceptance.

”Something can be done!” a voice boomed from the dark corner.

Vilon tilted his head to the side, while Owen turned completely around in his seat to stare.

”Som—hic!” The man burped loudly, and even from across the room, Vilon could smell the sour, fermented tang of cheap wine wafting over the tables. ”Something can be done indeed!Worms take myself, something can be done!”

The voice belonged to the very same drunk Vilon had noticed earlier, the drunkie who had been sprawled across his own table in a pool of spilled wine. Up close, his skin possessed a sickly, yellowish glow, and his thick brown beard was wild, unkempt, and stained a dark crimson with traces of wine both old and new.

”Something—”

”Can be done,” Vilon cut in dryly. ”You said it three times already.”

”And I’d happily say it a fourth, big man, for indeed something can be done!”

Vilon was fully prepared to dismiss the drunkard as a lunatic and head straight for the barn, but Owen blurted out a question before his master could pull him away.

”What do you mean?” the boy asked, his curiosity instantly piqued.

The knight hummed angrily at his squire.

”I mean,” the drunk said interrupting whatever Vilon wished to say, swaying slightly as he pushed himself up against the wall, ”that I am entirely willing to part with my own room for the night. Provided, of course, that you reimburse me the cost of the bed, buy me another round of wine, and entertain me with a story! A proper, bloody good one.One that I do not know already!”

”A story?” Owen repeated, perplexed.

”A story indeed! How does the old tavern saying go? Every man carries his own tale inside him? Well, I wish to hear yours,” the man declared, gesturing wildly with a hand that ended in filthy, cracked fingernails. ”If I like it well enough, I will relinquish my room to you newcomers.” He snatched up the wooden cup on his table and swung it upside-down. A single red drop hit the floorboards. His face furrowed into a tragic scowl. ”Empty! A tragedy!’’ he exclaimed before burping ’’ But listen here... I have yet to hear a story more interesting than my own! If you can manage to top mine, I’ll not only hand over my key, but I’ll tell you a little secret that’s well worth your while.”

As he grinned, Vilon noted that his teeth were stained a pale, unhealthy yellow, matching his skin. The man wasn’t even old enough to have rot like that.

Owen leaned in, his eyes bright as he tugged at Vilon’s sleeve. ”Ser! Ser! Do you have an entertaining story?”

Vilon thought about it for a quiet moment, running through the long, dusty years he had spent wandering the roads. He shook his head. ”No, lad.”

”Oh, come on, ser!” Owen pleaded, looking thoroughly scandalized. ”What knight doesn’t have a story?”

”Do you have one, then?” Vilon countered smoothly.

”I am not a knight... yet,” Owen muttered, puffing out his chest.

”The lad’s got the absolute right of it!” the drunk roared with a raspy laugh, slapping his knee. ”What knight rides the high roads without a single tale to his name?”

Vilon let out a long, heavy sigh, rubbing the bridge of his nose. He looked at his exhausted squire, then at the drunkard, and finally at the cold rain beginning to patter gently against the wooden shutters outside.

I certainly wouldn’t begrudge a bed...

”Fine,” the knight grunted, leaning his broad back against the chair and crossing his heavy arms over his chest. ”I might have one.Don’t know if you’ll like it but it will be a story all right.”

Owen perked up instantly, settling into his bench like a child waiting for a festival bard. Those from the nearby table too stopped to hear.

”It happened a year back,” Vilon began, his voice dropping so that it easily carried over the quiet tavern. ”Back when I trod the highway entirely alone, with no squire to chatter in my ear or convince me to give out free stories to loud drunks.”

He paused, letting the crackle of the hearth fill the sudden stillness before he painted the rest of the picture.

”It was the dead of night, deep in the thick of the northern woods, and a fire was roaring at my feet. It was bitter cold, but clear. I had taken refuge beneath the branches of a great, tree, an oak or a pine, I recall not which. Bright sparks from the hearth-wood rose into the black air, glittering for a fleeting beat before winking out like dry wheat in a harvest fire.”

He noticed the entire room had fallen dead silent. Even the sour-faced tavern mistress had stopped her scrubbing, standing motionless with a greasy rag in her hand. Vilon cleared his throat, wetting his dry lips with his tongue before he pushed on.

”I was cold, hollow-bellied, and heavy with my own black thoughts. And then... I wasn’t alone anymore. A dry branch snapped in the dark, sharp as a whip-crack. In a heart-beat I was on my feet, steel drawn, the long edge gleaming red against the firelight. I thought of the worst.

I couldn’t see who was out there, nor how many, so I planted my iron shoulders back against the trunk of the great tree and waited to sell my life dear.

”I felt a proper fool a moment later,” Vilon murmured, a faint smirk touching his mouth. ”For out from that pale blanket of darkness stepped nothing more than an old woman. She was stooped, wrapped in rags, and blind as a stone. She shuffled into the light, smelled the smoke, and asked if she might warm her bones by my hearth and share a bite to eat. So I gave her what little I had left: the last sweet plums of the season. I parted with them sadly, my own belly growling as I watched her devour them. The dark juice trailed down her saggy, wrinkled skin and over her blue lips. She wiped her mouth with the back of her sleeve, looked at me, or at least turned her head toward I was, and offered a reward in gratitude.”

Vilon paused, his dark eyes fixed on the flickering hearth. ”Though now...looking back I desperately wish she had kept it to herself.”

”What?Did the old crow offer you a fuck?” a voice roared from a back table. ’

Laughs broke out among the local farmhands, but the yellow-skinned drunk man didn’t make a sound. He leaned over the table, his bloodshot eyes wide, ravenous, and greedy, practically begging the knight to continue.

Vilon waited patiently for the cheap laughter to die out before he raised his voice again.

”She left me with words,” Vilon said softly, the air in the room turning strangely cold. ”I do not recall every single turn of her tongue, but she spoke with a voice that sounded like grinding stones. She seemed terribly tired, and crushed by grief.. She wore a stained linen bandage wrapped tight across her brow, but I knew, deep down, that if I had peeled it away, I would have found her weeping.

She called me a summer knight,” Vilon whispered, the words echoing off the walls. Why were those words so bothering only the gods knew. ”She said I was born for the warm light and wind, but that in summer, or perhaps it was in fire, my true test would begin. She foretold that I would deny my blade to proud princes and wealthy kings... until the day I finally lent my steel to the one man who would cause my death”

He wasn’t really scared of that, all men must die one day, what was important was that he lived.

”She said I would die... dancing. No... not dancing. I would perish in the dance. The dance of a son searching for a stolen father.

And it would not be in the warmth of summer that I met my end. No. It would be in the deep of autumn... for....’’ He trailed off’’ I was destined to fall alongside the dying leaves.For that was my story. Not ....that of the oak but of the withering leaves? I think it was like ....that? I do not remember well, my apologies.’’ he noticed now how much interest they were having from his words. And suddendly he grew weary and aware of how much of a muck he was doing of it.

He coughed his embarrassment out and finished the story. ’’When the last words came out her lips...I...slept?Yes, I slept and when I woke she was away, with the only thing of hers being the rough seed of the fruit she ate left on the ground.I never met her again nor I did I give such a long thought about what I heard that night, as a matter of fact I had almost forgotten them..... before now.’’