Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

With a final, tight pull on the boiled leather cord, Vilon bound the bundle firmly against the cantle of his saddle.

Chestnut snorted in sharp displeasure at the newly added weight, his heavy hoof stamping the autumn leaves. ”Easy, boy. Easy,” Vilon murmured soothingly, reaching up to scratch the beast right behind his flicking ear.

To his quiet relief, the courser allowed the touch without snapping his yellow teeth. Perhaps the animal was finally softening to him; or perhaps the small mountain of sweet orchard apples Vilon had been feeding him over the past three days was working its quiet magic. Now that silver jingled warmly in his scrip, the diet of both knight and mounts had earned a grand elevation.

When the gods saw fit to throw an extra crust your way, it was only fair to toss a bite to the beasts that carried you.

He gave the rope one last, hard yank to test the knots. It felt entirely foreign. For leagues, his saddlebags had hung limp, hollow, and threadbare; now they bulged proudly with clean woolen shifts, hard wax-wrapped cheeses, salted pork, fresh oats, and even that sealed clay pot of strawberry jam.

Stranger still, they were no longer sharing a single set of bags. Beside him stood a second packed saddle, cinched tight across the broad back of Thunder.

Say what you would of Owen, but the lad was utterly bereft of poetry when it came to christening livestock. The mount was a sturdy, heavy-boned rouncey, solid brown from muzzle to tail save for a single jagged slash of white cutting straight down its broad chest. It looked about as much like a thunderbolt as a turnip did, but the horse belonged to the boy now, so the naming rights were entirely his to bungle.

”Everything tight on your side, lad?” Vilon asked, glancing over his shoulder.

Owen was vigorously working a stiff horsehair brush down the rouncey’s flank, much to the beast’s groaning satisfaction.

”Aye, Ser! All cinched, fed, and watered,” Owen replied, turning with an enormous grin. The expression pulled awkwardly across the right side of his face, where a hideous mix of plum-purple and yellow-green bruising still marked the exact spots Ratio’s steel gauntlets had landed.

It was an ugly sight, to be sure, but both of them were at least whole enough to sit in a saddle. Sufficient, the medic had called it, though Vilon’s cracked ribs still flared with white-hot fury whenever he twisted his torso too sharply. The army leech had nearly finished the job the Vulture started, bellowing curses at Vilon for tearing his stitches while he bound the knight’s chest in fresh linen so tight it made drawing breath an ordeal.

”Are you truly so eager to ride for Yarzat?” Vilon asked, pushing the memory of the bloody medical pavilion from his mind.

”Eager as a pig in fresh slop, Ser!” Owen beamed, his bruised chest swelling with pride. ”I’ll have a mountain of grand tales to shove down mama’s throat! I can’t wait to trot through the village square in real leather and boots, riding my own horse! Mama swore by the Weaver I was an utter half-wit and that I’d end up in a ditch with my throat cut if I followed you down the road.”

”Your lady mother had the right of it, Owen,” Vilon muttered under his breath, adjusting his sword belt. ”You came within half an inch of proving her an oracle.”

Despite every attempt to keep the lad clear of the butchery, trouble had a way of hunting them down like a bloodhound.

Vilon paused, his fingers resting on the pommel of his father’s blade. A sudden lump rose in his throat as the memory rushed back, the wet earth, the suffocating weight of the Vulture Lord, the iron broadsword hovering over his windpipe.

”I never properly thanked you, Owen,” Vilon said softly, his voice dropping into quiet earnestness. ”For what you did back in that clearing. I was dead where I lay. You saved my life, lad.”

”I’m your squire, Ser!” Owen said brightly, shoving the horsehair brush into his leather kit-bag, much to Thunder’s immediate, grumpy objection.

The boy wiped his runny nose on his sleeve and puffed out his chest, his battered jaw set with solemnity.

”That’s what a proper squire is supposed to do, ain’t it? Besides, how could I let you go and die on me now? You haven’t even knighted me yet, Ser! I’d look a proper fool wandering the road as a squire to a ghost!”

Vilon stared at the lad’s crooked, bruised grin for a heartbeat, then let out a dry, rattling chuckle that made his ribs ache in protest.

”Well, you need not fret on that account, lad,” Vilon said, hauling his boot into the stirrup and swinging his weight up into Chestnut’s saddle with a quiet grunt. ”If you keep throwing yourself at armored lords with nothing but your bare hands and a river stone, I’ll likely be burying you long before I find a reason to tap your shoulders with steel.”

”Or maybe it’ll be the pair of you lying cold in a ditch long before you ever lay eyes on the tourney field,” a raspy voice called out from the timberline.

”Saron,” Vilon murmured, turning in his saddle. His cracked ribs flared with sharp, white-hot fury at the motion, making him wince.

”Easy there, Ser Knight,” the Hound captain chuckled, sauntering over with his single eye glinting with amusement. ”The army butcher only just finished stitching your hide together. Don’t go tearing the thread over a polite greeting.”

Behind Saron, Selm and the GreenRiders sat mounted, waiting near.Strapped across a wooden litter on the ground lay a dark, salted shape wrapped in burlap,Ratio’s torso, butchered and tied off like a winter hog for slaughter.

Vilon tried with all his might to look anywhere else, but the gruesome parcel drew the eye like a fresh fire in the dark.

”As you can see, the pack rides out,” Saron said, catching the knight’s stare. A wicked, yellow-toothed grin split his scarred beard. ”A long, bloody trek ahead. We have to drag this carrion from one end of Oizen to the other. I see you’re eyeing the prize. Sure you don’t want a rib for your saddlebag? You know, as a keepsake to remember the dance. At the least a finger?”

”A generous offer,” Vilon replied, managing a thin, strained smile. ”And charming as well. But I’ll pass. I could hardly forget this business even if I prayed for it, especially not with this strapped to my chest.”

He tapped a knuckle against his newly issued cuirass. The dull clink of solid iron rang out clean and true. It felt foreign to his frame, heavy enough to feel it, yet surprisingly balanced across his shoulders. He would certainly never complain of the added steel. His desperate scuffle with the Vulture Lord had taught him the bitter truth of iron: trying to parry every stroke while searching for a seam in full plate was a fool’s errand.

”Aye, I noticed the new shine on you,” Saron mused, nodding in genuine approval. ”Standard issue for the cohorts. Say what you will of our King, but the man knows how to forge an army. He truly thought out the iron.”

”How so?” Vilon asked, adjusting the leather straps at his waist.

”Well, look at the cut of it,” Saron explained, tapping his own cuirass. ”You’ve got a solid breastplate, articulated pauldrons, sturdy vambraces, and greaves. Better steel than nine out of ten men you’ll meet on the high road, even if it falls short of the gilded, bespoke plate of a high lord.”

The captain leaned against Chestnut’s flank, crossing his arms. ”Those grand princely knights? They need a squire, two grooms, a stool, and a quarter of an hour just to buckle themselves into their shell. If an alarm sounds in the dead of night, they’re caught in their linen shifts. But the King’s kit? Every legionary is drilled until he can strap the whole damn harness on his own back in under three minutes flat. Ready for war at a moment’s notice.”

Saron winked, pointing a thick finger at Vilon’s side. ”Aye, it leaves the armpits bare for the mail and the backs of your knees open to the wind, but that’s what your shield and your wits are for. A wandering hedge knight can hardly afford to spend half the morning fumbling with buckles while bandits circle the camp, eh?”

Vilon offered a polite, knowing nod and a dry smile.

He wisely kept his mouth shut about the fact that earlier that very morning, it had taken him and a thoroughly confused Owen nearly twenty minutes of cursing, dropped tongs, and pinched skin just to get the front plate cinched to the back.

Perhaps, Vilon thought, stifling a grimace as he shifted in his stirrups, the boy and I will need a few drills of our own before we reach the capital.