by Sam Farren
“Turn back around,” Sir Ightham said by way of letting me know she was finished.
I'd spent so long enduring tales of the Knight that I'd convinced myself armour was part of her being, carved from an extension of her own bones. All that made her gleam was gone; the chainmail, helm, scaled boots and all else were in a pile at her feet, looking as strange without anyone filling them as Sir Ightham did dressed in leathers. It was as though a terrible creature's flesh had been torn away, bones collapsing in on themselves.
The Sir Ightham from within the armour was but a memory. I stepped back, hand on my chin, taking in the sight of her. The leather coat, dark enough to make her pale skin paler, reached the back of her knees, where it was promptly met by a pair of boots, black trousers tucked neatly into them. Her white shirt was obscured by a leather chest piece, as tough as paper in comparison to what she was used to wearing.
“Well?” she asked, scrutinising me as I took in the sight of her. It was hard not to look away, with the sharpness of her gaze. “How do I look?”
The question was to point, no ulterior motive flattened by her tone. She wasn't looking for a compliment. A woman like her never would've had to fish for one, even without the advantages of high society and the tremendous power she wielded.
“... not very much like a Knight at all, Sir,” I said, and it pleased her well enough.
With a hmph she knelt down, gathered her armour and threw it into the bag her clothes had been in. I winced, doing all I could to refrain from telling her to be careful. The armour was dragon-bone; she could've spent the day beating it against a rock without getting a scratch on it. She lifted the packed bag, swinging it my way without any prior warning. I braced myself, caught it, and found it wasn't half as heavy as I thought it might be.
“Come,” she said, already striding away with half of the bags on her back. “You wished to see the town, didn't you?”
It didn't matter that she said it dryly, unable to grasp what could possibly be so exciting about a town. I rushed after her, not feeling the weight of the bags I'd gathered, full of too many questions to ask, too many fears to feel in earnest. I thought of all the things there were to be afraid of, all the whispered warnings of towns with their pickpockets and pane and violent drunks, and decided none of it mattered; I was there with a Knight. A Knight who was taking a painfully leisurely stroll up to the town, but a Knight nonetheless.
“When we reach the town,” Sir Ightham began, “You aren't to call me Sir. Least of all Sir Ightham.”
“—right. It must be a pain. I bet everyone wants to meet a Knight, and my village made a big enough deal about it. I can't imagine the fuss a town would make,” I said, deciding that must be it.
Sir Ightham looked down at me as though surprised, but not in a good way.
“Exactly,” she said, looking straight towards Eaglestone.
The town rose higher and higher as we approached, a thousand tangled sounds reaching our ears, and I tugged on the straps of the bags, hoisting them higher on my back. Eaglestone had stood for hundreds of years, and would be there for a hundred more. It wasn't going to crumble to dust on the hillside if I didn't charge towards it.
“What should I call you, then?” I asked. In a strange sort of way, it'd only just occurred to me that Sir Ightham had a first name. Sir Ightham knew me as Rowan Northwood, the only two names I had to offer, and I wouldn't have presumed to call her anything but Sir after Eaglestone. It was an innocent enough question.
Sir Ightham glanced at me, looking away just as quickly.
“Do not call me anything,” she said, voice as hard as ever. Something slipped through the cracks, something like disgust. Whatever her reasons for bringing me along, I was still nothing more or less than a necromancer. Of course she didn't want me addressing her.
I could've argued my worth to her. I could've argued my worth to the village at any point over the last few months, but I hadn't. I let Eaglestone capture my attention, thoughts flowing outward. Guards stood at the gate, some merely manning their stations, others greeting those who drifted into the city.
“Good morning, good morning,” a woman with a smile as sharp as her spearhead said to us. Sir Ightham ignored her, marching into Eaglestone as though there were neither guards nor citizens, but I caught the guard's eye and nodded. “Welcome to Eaglestone!” she called to the man dragging a cart of turnips behind us.
Arriving early didn't make my first visit to a town any easier. I'd never seen the ocean before, but I was suddenly caught in its currents, knocked back and forth by waves of bodies and foam. I'd always known I was short, but the crowd around me seemed to have formed solely to emphasise the fact, while Sir Ightham was able to lift her chin and make out her destination.
The buildings around me were tall, towering. They seemed as unreal as the houses in my village had, but I didn't doubt that they could topple over and crush me. I couldn't take in the colours around me – the buzz of the crowd drew all my attention, rendering all else grey – but something rose and swelled within my chest when I realised that none of the hundreds of people knew who I was, what I was. Nobody recognised me; nobody saw me, let alone saw through me.
“It's—it's busy,” I said, wanting to cling to Sir Ightham's arm, lest I was dragged out with the tide.
“Hardly,” she said, tilting her head down the street. I stepped closer before she set off, certain that a wave of people were bound to rush between us. “It'll be worse by midday.”
We set off, and a man as broad as an ox pushed past, knocking my shoulder with the side of his arm. I'd been doing my best to weave between people and wasn't surprised when I finally knocked into someone, almost grinding to a halt. The man grunted, paying me no heed. The lack of an apology carried more of an impact than the collision itself.
I kept my eyes fixed on Sir Ightham's back as we wandered down a street twice as wide as my village's main road. Carts were pushed against buildings, and people tried to bellow over one another, boasting that they had the best fruits and vegetables in all the town—in all of Felheim, even. I didn't stop to look. Doing so while moving would've left me dizzy with how much there was to take in, and within minutes, we'd come to an open space large enough to fit half the buildings of my village within.
It was no less crowded than the entrance had been, or the street we'd taken, and the stalls set out and banners draped overhead had all the makings of a market. Not one I'd ever seen the likes of; at the height of my village's prosperity, we'd have twenty different merchants from ten different settlements in once a month, stalls and carts pressed up against their neighbour's, goods overlapping. In Eaglestone, there must've been a hundred stalls, each within their own allotted space, marked out by chalk on the ground.
I looked every which way at once. There were garments hung out on racks, dyed in colours I'd never seen, vases and plates and casks of wine set out on makeshift shelves; an endless array of fruits and vegetables, meat hung off hooks, spices laid out in deep trays, all the scents wafting up and filling the air; the glint of jewellery in the distance, women haggling over weapons as though they were loaves of bread.
Sir Ightham's eyes didn't wander anywhere but her intended target. She made her way over to a stall selling all manner of trinkets, and began turning over a number of compasses without consulting the merchants eager to sell her what she already had her sights set on. I looked over the things – letter openers and paperweights, compasses and pocket watches, so many things that didn't interest me – and my gaze skidded across their silvery surfaces, back onto the crowd.
For all the new things on sale, it was the mass of people that caught my attention. Each of them had their own business to attend to, but they'd learnt to go along with the crowd, to be part of a whole without getting their feet stepped on. I didn't have the best view of the market, but I could see enough. More than enough, I soon learnt.
“S—” I began, catching myself when Sir Ightham's head snapped around. She should've giv
en me something else to call her, and she didn't hiss at me to be more careful when she saw the expression twisting my features. “Is that... is that a pane?”
I lowered my voice, marketplace doing an admirable job of drowning out the cries of merchants, fingers pressed to clammy palms. I couldn't see over people's heads, but I didn't need to. Curved horns rose above the crowd, surrounded by a distinct sense of unease. Sir Ightham looked over to confirm my enquiry, and nothing like concern hastened her actions.
“It would appear so,” she said, immediately turning back to the stall.
My heart pounded, fear creeping upon me like a building roll of thunder.
When I was three, a pane had been to my village. I didn't remember any of it, and neither did Michael, no matter his claims to the contrary. It had come in the dead of night, snarling, half-starved, crouching to pound on doors, demanding to be let into corridors that would've burst at the seams to accommodate it. The villagers gathered what they could to defend themselves, pitchforks and torches, but it was as threatening as facing a dragon with a shovel.
In the end, hunger won out. The pane made off into the fields and tore a flock of sheep to shreds with its tusks, more gruesomely than any wolf could think to, and had never been seen again. The village kept watch for a month, just to be certain.
And now a pane roamed free in Eaglestone. I hoped it wasn't hungry.
I hoped Michael was mistaken when he said they could smell fear.
“Very well. I'll take it,” Sir Ightham said to the stall-keeper. I'd missed the crossfire of bartering, and kept one eye on the pane's steadily retreating horns as she reached for the leather pouch at her hip. A glint of gold pulled my attention from nearby monsters, but it wasn't merely a trick of the light. Sir Ightham really was paying with a mark.
It was a rare day that silver coins changed hands in my village, and even when my contribution ensured that we thrived, I'd never seen a gold one before.
The merchant flustered himself in trying to dig out enough change for her, and in a display of either generosity or impatience, Sir Ightham held out a hand and told him it was fine. She swept a handful of coins off the stall and into her pouch, while the merchant protested, “No, please, that isn't even half—”
Sir Ightham simply bid him good day.
“I was remiss; I left my compass in your village,” Sir Ightham explained, tucking the new one into her top pocket. “Come. We'll find you something more suitable to wear.”
“What's wrong with what I'm wearing?”
I already knew the answer – my clothes were Michael's patched-up hand-me-downs, ill-fitting and wearing thin – but my mouth moved automatically while I scanned the market, trying to pinpoint the pane, lest I blink and find it towering over me.
“You don't look fit to be my servant, much less a squire,” Sir Ightham said bluntly, and then, neither irritated nor amused, added on, “Pay attention. The pane isn't going to eat you.”
I flinched at her words, determined not to seem more trouble than I was worth, but I knew I wasn't the only one in the marketplace made uncomfortable by the creature's presence. Just what did it want? Best not to find out, I reasoned.
We came to a row of clothing carts, and Sir Ightham told me to pick out something suitable. I looked to her for guidance, but she stood with her arms folded across her chest, still as a statue. There was too much on offer, styles that weren't familiar to me, fabrics the merchants assured me had been imported from Canth, and after a long, indecisive moment, I picked out the plainest things I could find.
A loose white shirt, dark-green trousers and black boots. I burrowed a hole into the ground with my gaze as Sir Ightham paid for my things, but it only took me a moment to realise that money was of no consequence to her.
“We'll be covering the same distance again, before night falls,” Sir Ightham said as I used my shoulders to nudge my way through the crowd, arms full of clothing. “Will your horse manage?”
“... I've still got plenty of bitterwillow, if that's what you mean.”
She sighed.
“If you were to eat bitterwillow, you'd have no problem in running to Praxis and back. Physically speaking,” she said, holding out a hand to silence the man eagerly offering us a sample of wine as we passed. “Mentally, it'd be a different story. You'd be exhausted.”
“Um.” I frowned, shuffling the boots around in my arms. It took a moment to hit me. My horse. She was worried about my horse. I saw a flash of orange out the corner of my eye and caught up with myself. “No, no, Charley will be fine. He's tough! But—listen. I promised him I'd get him carrots at the first market we came across.”
Sir Ightham came to a halt. I took the chance to hoist the boots and clothes properly into my arms, lest they ended up trailing across the floor, dirtied before I had a chance to put them on.
“You promised your horse you'd buy him carrots?” Sir Ightham asked, lifting her brow. “Will he be affronted if you return from market without them?”
“Well—”
“You've no money,” she pointed out.
I thought that was to be the end of it, but Sir Ightham veered off to the side, striding over to the carrots that had jogged my memory. By the time I thought to hurry after her, she'd procured two dozen carrots wrapped in brown paper, which she promptly dropped into my arms.
I felt sorry for her previous squire, and was glad when I realised she was leading me out of the town. It wasn't until we were passing through the gate that I could process it properly: the smells faded, all the spices and cooked meats filling the marketplace, trying to drown out the sour stench that people were made of, replaced by the crisp spring morning air. The rest of the world seemed empty, endless open plains broken up by nothing more than trees and rocks, while hundreds of people hid behind stone walls.
I smiled. I'd done it. I'd really done it. I'd got out of my village and visited a town, a real town. I couldn't wait to tell Michael. I instinctively looked around for him, belatedly realising that he was tens of miles away, and would only be further from me by the time I got to sleep.
“Your village tells me you were deceitful,” Sir Ightham abruptly said, doing nothing to ease herself into the conversation. “They tell me you intentionally tricked them for seven years.”
I waited for her question, but it never came. She stated the accusations plainly, not caring to be tactful, and all things considered, I should've leapt at the chance to speak. I'd never been given an opportunity to explain myself, and all my arguments went unspoken, festering in my mind for the deaf ears they would've fallen upon. But when it came down to it, though there was nothing cruel in Sir Ightham's voice, nothing beyond neutrality, I wasted more than a minute biting the inside of my cheek.
“I realised I could heal people,” I eventually murmured, eyes fixed on Charley, “So I did.”
“But healing and necromancy are two distinct arts,” Sir Ightham returned. “One purifies, one pushes back death.”
“So?” I asked, shrugging. I was the only necromancer anyone seemed to have met, and if I didn't see the point in making a distinction between one sort of healing and another, I didn't understand why anyone else thought they had the right to make that judgement. “I stopped people from dying, from being ill, I fixed their broken bones, their injuries—where's the difference?”
Sir Ightham looked at me, thoughtful. I had to remind myself to keep moving, to put one foot in front of the other; actually being able to talk about my necromancy was making my head spin, every ounce of sense in my body screaming at me to stop.
After a moment, Sir Ightham tilted her head to the side, humming in agreement.
I took it as a victory. I tried not to grin, lest Sir Ightham find some new way to rebuke me, and as we reached the horses, gathered up the courage to say, “... they imprison necromancers in Thule, don't they?”
I regretted the words the moment they skidded off my tongue, as though I was reminding Sir Ightham of a fact she'd forgotten, and was
soon to find my wrists in irons. Sir Ightham turned towards the horses, patting both her own and Charley on the side of the neck as I placed the carrots on the ground, brushing imaginary dirt off my new clothes.
“It is a good thing we are neither in Thule nor heading towards Thule,” she said, fishing a carrot out of a bag and instantly winning Charley over. “Change.”
I did as she ordered, hurrying to get my dirt-stained shirt off, clutching it to my chest, my scars, as I fumbled into the new one. I didn't have the gall to tell Sir Ightham to turn around, but her back was already to me as she acquainted herself with my horse, taking the liberty of feeding him more bitterwillow along with the carrots. I tugged my new trousers on, certain that someone wandering out of Eaglestone would catch sight of me, and then put a boot on the wrong foot.
“Okay,” I breathed, nudging my old clothes with the tip of my new boot. I curled my toes inside, not used to wearing anything on my feet—especially not anything made of stiff leather.
Sir Ightham turned around in her own time, idly raking her fingers through her horse's mane. I straightened when she set her eyes on me, brightly asking, “How do I look?”
She lifted her brow, and I expected that to be all the reply she gave. I crouched down, scooping up my clothes, and set about hanging them off a low branch of a nearby tree, hoping someone in greater need of them than me might wander by.
“Not very much like a Knight at all,” she settled on, and I looked back at her, but it was too late. She was already climbing onto her horse's back, reins gripped tightly in her hands. “We've no more time to waste. Dragons aren't wont to wait around forever.”
CHAPTER III
It was easy to underestimate dragons.
Sir Ightham, while considerably taller than I was, was hardly a tower in and of herself, and she had taken down a handful of dragons on her own. The tales of them were exaggerated, like all reports Michael reiterated, and they could not be as large or strong or fast as anyone claimed. The business of disposing of them almost seemed orderly: Sir Ightham would track down the beast and proceed to slay it, while I stayed at a safe distance, tending to the horses.
