Squire's Honor

by Peter Telep

  She lifted her head, stared solemnly at him a moment, then nodded. “You were off to your first battle with Lord Hasdale.”

  He closed his eyes. “I remember thinking that I had to come back, if only to stop your tears.” He drew in a deep breath, opening his eyes as he let it out. “’I’m a fool, Brenna. I ruined both of our lives.”

  She bit her lower lip, as if trying desperately to keep something in. Her blinking became forced and excessive, and finally she closed her eyes. “You did not ruin our lives, Christopher. What has happened has happened. I wish there were a way to undo things, but there isn’t.”

  “I’ve wished that many times,” he said. “If there was a way back, I would not have betrayed our love, for I know now that it is something that will never die in me.” It must have been the notion that he might never see her again that had made him utter his last; he was suddenly angry at himself for pouring his heart out to her, yet somehow relieved at finally admitting aloud that his love was still there. He would remember the moment as a time of weakness, a time of great release.

  “I don’t need to tell you how I feel about you,” she said. “I want—”

  “—your actions speak loudest,” Christopher interrupted her. “I don’t want to hurt you, Brenna. I’ve done enough of that already. I wish I knew where to go from here.”

  “’I’m going home,” she said. “That’s all I can do. And I was wrong.”

  “About what?”

  “I love you, Christopher.” She stepped quickly up to him, kissed his cheek, then drew back and bowed her head. “I had to tell you that.” She turned swiftly away and started off.

  He remembered their past agreement: he would tell her why he had asked her to marry him if she would tell him if she still loved him. “I asked you to marry me,” he shouted after her, “because in some other life you are my bride—and will always be.”

  He knew she had heard him, but she kept moving.

  First moon:

  For a half score of days Doyle and Christopher followed a natural path through the bluffs that rose over the coastline. The days were hot and humid, the nights windy but still humid. It seemed that the farther north they traveled, the farther inland their course took them. They tried to keep the ocean in sight, but soon the cliffs became too steep and rocky for the rounseys. They re­ soned that Seaver would have encountered the same problems and he, too, was surely following the easier course through the sparsely wooded foothills that shied behind the mighty bluffs. In the valleys, there were pines and live oaks and several other trees that Christopher did not recognize, along with gorse and ivy. At first he began to keep an eye out for fauna, catching a glimpse of a hare here, a small fox there, but soon his vision blurred into the masses of sky, tree trunks, and ground.

  They came upon a narrow stream that trickled down from the foothills into a small valley. They watered their horses, and Doyle was able to catch a fish with his bare hands. Unfortunately, Montague had forgotten to pur­chase a flint stone for them, and while Doyle was able to eat the strong-smelling meat raw, Christopher declined, calling his blood brother “a true barbarian.” Rested, and now preparing to leave, they spotted a man descending a slope to their north. He approached them unsteadily, and soon Christopher saw that his off-centered gait was due to his age. He was a broad-shouldered man with a barrel for a waistline, and dressed in tom, sun-bleached breeches and drawstring shirt. He had a sack slung over his back. When he saw Christopher and Doyle, he froze for a moment, then waved and came forward.

  “Hello,” Doyle said as he stepped up to the old fellow. “Been coming here for over fivescore moons,” the man began in a voice that sounded like he had food in his mouth yet it appeared he did not, “and in all that time less than a half score of travelers have visited me and my runnel. And less than half that number have been Celts.”

  “We did not mean to intrude,” Christopher tossed in. “We just meant to water our mounts. We’re leaving now.”

  “Stay a while if you choose,” the man said. “It’s been a rare moon, this one, for twice have I had the pleasure of company, and it’s not my runnel, really, but any of the leeches you may find in it are mine.”

  “Is there a town nearby? A doctor you work for?” Christopher asked the leech gatherer.

  “A good morning’s walk back there,” he said, cocking a thumb over his shoulder, then lowering it. “She’s not much, and her name has changed so many times that I cannot remember what it is this day, but if you need a place to pass the night, she’ll do. And if it’s Saxons you’re worried about—don’t. They come and go peace­ fully. They stopped their raids …” he trailed off, frown­ ing over what was apparently a lost thought. “Oh, it’s no matter,” he said. “If you’ve time, I’ll take you. Was only a short time ago that I led a man and his sick wife there.”

  “I trust we can find it ourselves,” Doyle said.

  A lever fell in Christopher’s mind, and a gear ground to a halt. “Tell me about this man and his sick wife,” he urged the gatherer.

  “I offered him a few of my leeches to help bleed her, but I don’t believe he really understood me. He spoke Celt, but not very much.”

  “His wife,” Doyle said, picking up on Christopher’s suspicion, “did she have long, red locks? Was she rather pale? And he—was he short”?

  The gatherer squinted into his memory a moment, then looked up, his brow rising. “You know them? Are you, are you following them?”

  Christopher rushed up to the man, and fortunately repressed the desire to seize the drawstring on the gath­erer’s shirt and choke the full story out of him. Instead, he clenched his fist, stiffened his entire frame, then demanded, “Exactly how long ago did you help them”?

  “I don’t know—two, three, four days past. I don’t account for things like that,” the man said defensively.

  “Did they stay at the town long?” Doyle asked, taking up a position to Christopher’s right.

  “I don’t know.”

  “All right then, friend. Thank you,” Doyle replied, gesturing with his head to Christopher that they leave.

  As they swung up onto their mounts, the gatherer dropped his sack, opened it, and began to rifle through it for something. Christopher kicked his rounsey into a leap over the stream, hearing Doyle do likewise behind him. The gatherer beckoned that they need not rush off, that the man and his wife were surely many days ahead and another half day would not matter.

  Christopher fell into the rhythm of his lathering horse, his body pumping as if it were another muscle on the beast’s back. They arrived at the town, scoured it for Seaver and Marigween, then learned that the two had left possibly three days prior to their arrival. They pur­ chased more food and a flint stone with the money Montague had provided them, spent the night at a tiny inn with only two guest rooms, and left the inn before sunrise.

  Second Moon:

  The humidity of the previous moon was gone, and the air was now crisp and tinged with the scent of brine. The foothills slowly donned the many-hued cloak of fall, and it was not until noon that the night’s frost would completely melt away. Christopher and Doyle pulled their woolen sleeping blankets over their shoulders as they forged on. Now some seven weeks into their search, Christopher’s hope was still very strong, but not quite as powerful as it had been the day they had left the leech gatherer. This was due, in part, to the fact that three days before they had lost the tracks left by Seaver’s and Marigween’s mounts. They had come upon an extensive tract of open land that had been due east of the foothills. The earth had been sandy and had been swept clean by a powerful wind that had risen with the nights and had died with the days. And now, the farther they traveled across the heath, the darker and stranger it became.

  “Have you ever seen a field such as this?” Doyle said, looking ahead at the thorny, wine-colored brambles.

  Christopher shook his head, no, as he rode alongside his blood brother. Occasionally, they encountered patches of ground that had bee
n blackened. It was not until later in the day, when the clouds joined into a sin­gle gray mantle, that Christopher realized the origin of the black patches. Thunder resounded in the distance, and to Christopher, it was the drunken applause of some giant spectator who mocked their search. He felt his rounsey shiver. Lightning rippled through the gray wash above, but did not strike the ground.

  “Did you see that?” Doyle asked, his gaze on the heavens.

  “It stays up there,” Christopher said, then pointed ahead at a particularly wide expanse of blackened foliage. “But not all of the time.”

  “We’ll be next,” Doyle said.

  There was no immediate shelter to be found. All they could do was forge on. He whispered a prayer to his namesake. “St. Christopher, guide us through.”

  As night fell, the sky remained gray, and the thunder and lightning slipped off with the day. The expected rain never came. They stretched out on their blankets and stared up into the gloom.

  “It’s been nearly two full moons,” Doyle said in a tired tone. “How much farther north do you think he’s pushing?”

  Christopher closed his eyes. He let the darkness wipe across his head, and then imagined that it engulfed the rest of his body. He wished he could peer through that darkness into a place that would illuminate him, provide him with an answer to Doyle’s question. With his eyes still closed, he prayed for a light in all of the darkness.

  Then he snapped his eyelids open, and the gray sky pervaded. “I don’t know,” he said, recognizing the sad­ness in his voice, feeling his hope slip back another notch. “But we’ll keep after him.”

  Third moon:

  Days away from the heath, and thankful for leaving that Devil’s domain behind, they returned to the foothills, hoping to rediscover Seaver and Marigween’s trail. Doyle remarked that the air smelled like All Saints’ Day. It certainly felt like the eleventh moon of the year to Christopher. At night, he would shiver and shiver, and barely be able to fall asleep. He would manage only a few hours of rest. Their small cookfires never seemed to keep him warm enough.

  They preferred to walk their horses now, to keep closer to the ground, where it was warmer. Their hair and beards had grown a thumbnail’s length longer, but Christopher knew it would take a lot more hair than that to cut the cold. He longed for a pair of gloves, for a hood, for long stockings, and, most of all, for the time to come to eat, a small pleasure that had become the most meaningful and monotony-breaking part of each day. Days would blur into each other, but meals would not. He could remember exactly what he had eaten the day before, and three days before that. He wished now that something would leap out of the landscape and shock them with the fact that it was not another tree, another rock, another brook, or another slope.

  Then Doyle picked up a set of hoofprints. The inden­tation left by the shoes matched the prints they’d previ­ously followed. But there was only a single set of prints. Could Seaver have abandoned the other horse? Were he and Marigween riding on one mount? There was no way for them to know for sure. What was more disturbing was the fact that the prints led off to the northeast, away from the coast. If Christopher and Doyle were to follow the prints, the chances of their encountering the villages they occasionally relied on would grow very slim. They would have to live completely off the land. What would happen when they ran out of bolts for their crossbows? Could they capture their prey bare-handed?

  “I believe we should ignore these tracks and go on. Probably a hunter, nothing more,” Doyle said, his warm breath turning to white vapors that were carried on the breeze.

  Christopher rubbed his palms for heat. “It’s easier to stay on our present course, but what if—”

  “What if we follow the tracks and I’m right? Then we’re far off course, we’ll run out of bolts, we’ll have nothing to eat, and Seaver and Marigween will be long gone. We’ve been through this already.” Doyle pointed an index finger at him. “You have to make a decision, Christopher. I’m not going to make it for you. I’m just offering my opinion.”

  Christopher closed his eyes and rubbed the cold lids. “You don’t want me to blame you if you’re wrong, eh?”

  “I’ll go where you go, and there’ll be no hard feel­ ings,” his blood brother said.

  What would you do, Orvin?

  But the old man wasn’t there to give Christopher advice. There was only land, sky, and the decision. He opened his eyes, ran a finger across his upper lip, for his nose was running, then looked to the path ahead: tree­ covered slopes that slowly ascended to the horizon. He looked to the northeast path that followed the tracks: more slopes, more trees, nothing to indicate right or wrong, no sign, no mystery revealed, nothing. He looked up to the sky and saw a line of clouds that seemed to parallel the path ahead. Perhaps it was a sign, perhaps not. But he made the decision. He’d hold the clouds responsible if the course was wrong.

  They abandoned the tracks and walked on. Both were silent for nearly the rest of the day.

  At sunset, they spotted the silhouette of a structure that stood atop the summit of a slope.

  “Mount your horse,” Doyle said.

  They kicked their rounseys into trots and ascended the slopes before them. The silhouette grew slowly lighter, black fading into a dark gray into the light gray of stone. The building was no bigger than a small barn, and judging from the pale green vines laying siege to its walls, it had been deserted long ago. They dismounted some twenty yards away from the ruins, then weaved through patches of yellow grass and leafless shrubbery to look for an entrance on the structure’s opposite side. They came upon an arched doorway, where a good por­tion of its right wall had caved in. The mound of debris that blocked the entrance was not very tall, but it was fused together with ice that had formed in its cracks, making for a dangerous ascent. Gingerly, Christopher mounted the rubble, keeping a hand on the opposite wall for balance. Doyle followed him, and with only a· few slips, they crossed the rocks and made the small leap inside.

  Christopher turned to see the building’s door leaning against the wall to the right of the doorway. The wood was warped and had been ravaged by insects.

  “What do you think this place was?” Doyle asked, bending down to examine something on the dirt floor that had caught his eye. He rose with a small object in his good hand.

  After shrugging at Doyle’s question, Christopher asked, “What have you there”?

  Doyle huffed in surprise. “It’s a shoe nail. It looks fairly new.” He turned and let his gaze sweep over the floor. Then something else caught his eye: a view through an arched hole in the wall that was once a win­dow. He moved quickly to the stone sill and rested a hand on it. “Better come over here.”

  Christopher crossed to the window and stared down into a wide, sparsely wooded valley that was split in two nearly equal parts by a long rectangular shadow. A haze rose above the shadow, and on first glance the distorted air seemed an illusion created by the setting sun. He blinked, stared again, and then knew.

  “That’s an army down there,” Doyle said in grim con­firmation. “Care to place a bet on whose?”

  “Blast,” Christopher said, under his breath.

  “This place was probably an old looking post,” Doyle said. “If we go east, we’ll probably find the remains of an old motte-and-bailey castle.” He lifted his hand, stared at the nail between his fingers, then rolled it around. “This must’ve fallen out of someone’s pack.”

  “Forget about that nail. What are we going to do about that army?” Christopher asked, tipping his head toward the great shadow below.

  “Besides avoid them? Nothing.” Doyle left the window and headed for the doorway.

  “Where are you going?” “Wait here.”

  Christopher took another look at the valley, then turned from the window. His gaze fell upon the corner of a small ditch that sneaked out from the side of a fallen wall stone. He stepped to the stone, moved around it, and then stopped.

  “Doyle? Doyle, come here!”
r />   His blood brother raced over the mound, slipped and collapsed at its bottom, then came to a tumbling and grunting halt. Christopher rushed to him and offered a hand.

  “I hope this is important,” Doyle said, wincing as he waved off Christopher’s hand, rose, then brushed him­ self off.

  Christopher pointed at the stone. “There was a cook­ fire behind that stone. I touched the ground. It’s still warm.”

  Doyle held up the nail. “This one matches our own.

  The smithy was the same.” “Which is to say—”

  “Yes, they might have been here.”

  Fourth Moon:

  On the day they guessed was the eve of Christmas, Christopher and Doyle traveled well into the evening. Since leaving the ruins of the looking post, they had not found a single clue that would indicate they were headed in the right direction. Ironically, Christopher had employed the old scouting skills Seaver had taught him to avoid the army, which, it had turned out, was from Pictland. Doyle had looked up to the sky and had asked God not to throw another army in his path; he had stumbled upon too many thus far, and enough was enough.

  The moon was nearly full and it seemed brighter than normal, as if polished to a sheen by the clouds that wan­ dered past it. Christopher looked for the Great Bear in the sky, but the pattern was lost in the moonlight. He abandoned the sky and looked ahead.

  They had returned to the foothills, having turned west some days back, and the beech and pine trunks that were by day a cold brown and an even colder gray by night, were now like pillars of silver, and Christopher’s imagination ran away with the idea that these pillars supported a fine, glossy canopy over a grand walkway that led up to a castle of gold, a castle where Marigween sat on the throne. He walked just ahead of his horse, kept his lead on the reins short, and smoothed out his shirt with his free hand. Now he was prepared to greet the queen of the castle of gold.

  “That’s enough for today,” Doyle called from behind him.