The Knight Who Sought a Crone
Chapter Six

We lingered the night by the waterfall. I prepared a fire pit in a clearing several yards away and gathered a pair of rabbits hunted in the woods. We gnawed at the meal like rabid predators consuming proteins after a long period of drought. The canopy above masked the stars although the slivers of a full moon snuck through. She cuddled against my shoulder as I listened to her open into a whispering song to the rhythm of the fire flickers. Her deep, green eyes twinkling ablaze to reflect the nourishing light as I offered a small peck upon her forehead. She smiled to affirm as I listened to her tell her poem.

I leaned back against the tree trunk, my sword resting in my lap to my bent knee. Our clothes laid to dry permitting us only to rest in simple undergarments. The horse we stole carried a rucksack with blankets and camping supplies. We got lucky as we lay upon a woolen blanket beneath our bodies and surrounded ourselves in the huddle of a cotton shroud around us. A skewer lay across the fire pit dangling the remaining bits of the two rabbits we had consumed. I listened to the fire crackle and burn, her singing turned into soft breathing as she rested into my shoulder.

I needed her answers more than her affections. A certain fragility existed in her, promulgated by her past. My mind raced to the vision I had when we fucked. She knows magick, this much I could surmise. Perhaps she was the target for the Magi hunt? I couldn’t think of it long. My head hurt, I needed a drink. We avoided villages and towns willfully, swinging through them would draw attention to her, myself or worse, my sword. Prying eyes would want a glimpse perhaps to sell it. Their glimpse would end up costing them with broken bones or death.

Rysa. Your name means “renewal” in the Old Tongue. Too much symbolism in a pantheon steeped in it. Nothing I’m not familiar with personally, but too surreptitious to be coincidental. You renewed my body, this much I can attest, but you also renewed my curiosity. I listened to the fires dim to ember sparks as the smoke cleared from the pit by our feet. I listened to the pre-dawn birds chirp to their morning meals as cracks of sunlight broke to shades of blues and pinks above as the sunlight crept across the mountains to our east.

I woke Rysa to the early brightness of the sun and coaxed her to ready for the day’s ride. We gathered the supplies and mounted the horse and steered it to ride northward. For several days we rode, taking rests for the horse and so we may sleep and eat. We surmised Sarat was many weeks ahead of us by horse and without a reason to hasten pace, casually steered the horse along off-beaten paths and trails before clearing the mountain range and leading towards a primary road leading westward towards the capital city.

For several nights of sleep, I was awoken by the same dream only with different visions. I yearned for a hard stout more. I needed to clear my head from the pain I awoke to; suffering, crying and the acrid taste of war that stung my lips like a hard punch. And every time I awoke from the nightmare, Rysa was there to comfort me and ease me back to sleep with her melodic voice. What a damsel, she didn’t deserve her lot. By the gods, I didn’t and I have a duty to uphold.

“Who are you exactly, Tedarin?” I heard Rysa coerce from her seat behind me as we continued our ride the following morning. It was a question I’d expected, but never imagined I’d ever be ready for from her tongue.

“Excuse me,” I stuttered trying to suspend her inquiry. I listened to the birds chirping in the trees nearby as the winds blew through the meadows along our path. Quaint solitude, as every day on this journey, we found ourselves alone, passing by lone merchants hauling their carts or passing through the occasional farming village. We began to skirt the northern edges of Lake Highstorm to our west as we continued along a frequently traveled path marred with wagon ruts and hoof prints.

The winds brewing across the lake cooled my lips as I struggled to ready my next words. Elegantly colored flowers adorned the lake shores as several fauna took a drink from the clear waters. I could see a distant village along the edges of the frontier marked by stacks spewing smoke and the rise of bell towers. A decent town, I surmised, we should make it by sundown for a soft bed.

“Yes, why are you a Temple Knight? What brought you to this life?”

“I suppose dumb luck. My father was a writer, my mother an artist in Kora. I wanted to be neither. Educated folk. Learned from the university. But I wasn’t like them. I failed at my subjects except with the bow and sword. I wasn’t fit to create. I was fit for battle.”

“But you could have written grand plays or painted a prized mural.”

“Probably,” I peered towards the distant tower, rocking with the horse’s motion, “Had I done so, you’d still be in that tavern.”

“Did you leave from Kora on your journey?”

“Aye. I returned to Kora after my time in war. Needed to come home, at least once more before I got summoned again, visit my old home. My parents died before I became a Knight, the reason I did. I took my trials at the seven temples and I took my oath upon our sacred sword. Immovable, immutable, rumored to only be removed by the man who claims to be the True Verdui. The sword brands us, gives us our mark to dedicate us to the temple we are bound to serve.”

“True Verdui?”

“I don’t fully understand it myself. Legend states when the darkness befalls Roth, the True Verdui, the Verdun Sadakem or First Man, will be risen and possess the powers of the gods. When he does, he will be able to remove the sword from its position and wield it against the darkness. The legends state he existed once, thirty thousand years ago.”

“Why would he return?” Her inquisition told me she doubted.

“No one knows. Perhaps it’s just a story meant to help people sleep at night. A savior returned to our land to give people hope.”

“Do you believe?”

Her question hit me in the gut like a sack of bricks to be followed by my jaw dislocating, “I saw this sword embedded on its dais with my own eyes. I saw the magick sear my wrist. I believe in the sword. I believe in the Knights. I believe in the Magi. I hope he does exist someday. To cleanse this world of all of the filth and depravity that inhabits it.”

“What type of depravity?” I hit a nerve.

“There are darker things in this world than immoral men. Kings and rulers have reign over their subjects and what they do behind closed doors is enough to make one wish to gouge out their eyes. No one is free of corruption; not the peasants, the lords, kings or even Magi.”

“Are the Magi not sacred to you?”

I lowered my head to gaze at my brand. Luckily my vicar could not hear my conversations, nor could I hear his. It only served to beckon me to call. To tell me I am needed for a cause. My opinions were my own, not controlled by his thoughts or his wishes.

“I’d just as soon piss on them all. I saw friends die from a Magi summons to aid an empire. We intervene in wars, not fight them. One hundred Knights could quell a warfront, calm the belligerents, let them have a drink or two and a good exchange of prized maidens then carry on their lives in peace at the mere thought of a Knight or two wreaking havoc on their forces. But what I saw in Seuverat, our enemy was not ordinary. They would not stop at the mere sight of ten of us unleashing our magick. They only kept coming like a swarm of hornets. I could feel their fury and all for what? Hundreds of Knights died over the course of three years. Many thousands of normal men, soldiers with homes, with families fell; all for a colony. We will rebuild, there are still several hundred more, but as for Sarat, they will grovel at the Magi for protection from this unseen enemy and the Magi will pander to them and use it against them.”

I could sense by Rysa’s silence she took the story hard. Perhaps an awakening of her own heart to my bitter cynicism. The path to the village crept upon us as we approached the outskirts of small huts and livestock pens. I could see the sign of an inn across from the bell tower. Good, I needed a stout.