Chapter 1406: Farewell banquet(3)

As it became clear that Vilon had shared the same bloody field as the King’s host, the table demanded its tax in war tales.

They were fine, roaring stories. Edric and Rykio had ten thousand of them tucked beneath their scars from years under the black falcon. Edric spoke passionately of the fall of the Fingers, carving the image so sharply with broad gestures that Vilon could see it plain as day. The hedge knight had never laid eyes on the place, so it came as a shock to hear it painted as an eyrie of sheer rock, perched high in the crags and long deemed utterly impregnable to iron.

"And guess who finally breached the maidenly bitch!" Edric roared with a booming laugh, tossing his head back and draining his heavy flagon in one massive, liquid gulp.

That single motion prompted every officer along the trestles to slam their pewter down with a thunderous clatter and match him swallow for swallow. Even Owen, who had been slumped sideways, half-dead to the world, jerked upright as though booted squarely in the ribs the instant the war-shouts began.

Rykio spoke next, peeling back eleven years to a battle from his greener days under Legate Egil. He described the iron fury of the Hounds at the bleeding Plains, how they tore through the enemy heavy lances in a single pulverizing charge before wheeling their mounts to roll up the Herculean flank, serving up total victory for their prince’s feast.

Even Owen threw his own clumsy boast onto the pile, recounting the brutal siege of the Bastion as if it were some grand pageant he would happily bleed for all over again. Vilon merely listened, thinking it far better the lad remember it as an adventure than let the nightmares take root.

Inevitably, the circle closed, and all eyes turned upon the hedge knight.

Vilon searched the quiet corners of his mind, but found nothing he cared to parade. "I fear I have no tales fit for such company," he offered with a self-effacing dip of his head.

"Nonsense, man!" Edric bellowed, waving a grease-stained trencher in mock offense. "A knight who rode with the Bull and broke the Vulture’s line claiming he has no tale? That borders on an insult to the wine!"

"I have already given you the meat of the skirmish at the creek," Vilon parried gently. "And as for the Ford, you know the shape of that butcher’s yard far better than I."

"Then give us the finish," Rykio said, his voice quiet, slicing cleanly beneath the pavilion’s din. "Tell us how the Vulture finally died."

In a sudden flash, memory seized Vilon by the throat. He was back in the wet loam, ancient roots gouging his bruised spine, staring up through a haze of blood at the point of a broadsword poised over his windpipe. He felt the cold terror of a man drowning in his own chest, helpless and alone, the very end Mariol had met moments before.

"It was not my steel that finished him," Vilon said, keeping his tone flat. "The kill belongs to Mariol."

Rykio held his gaze, the warmth of the feast entirely absent from his dark eyes. "Surely you stood close enough to witness how the Hound brought the rogue low."

"The brush was thick, my Lord," Vilon replied, holding the commander’s stare without flinching. "I caught only fragments through the press of my own fight. We were hard-pressed; the bastards had the numbers on us."

"Aye, so Saron reported," Rykio murmured, leaning back slowly. "He spoke at length of your conduct. Said you were remarkably brave, and even more remarkably useful."

He knows, Vilon realized instantly. The steady, assessing glint in the commander’s eye was unmistakable. Saron had sung the true song to his master, yet Rykio wore no displeasure on his brow, only a cool, watchful curiosity.

Vilon ran a tongue over his cracked lower lip. "I was second to Mariol. The honor was his alone."

"The carrion was hardly recognizable when the scouts dragged it in," Edric observed, leaning over the table with a morbid grin. "Looked as though a war-wagon had rolled over his skull. Did the Hound wield a mace?"

"A stone," Vilon answered. "In the scramble, Mariol lost his blade and grappled the bastard to the dirt. He found a rock buried in the leaves and beat the helm until the iron caved and red foamed through the eye-slits."

"Tell it properly," Rykio commanded softly. ℯℯ𝑙.

"Aye!" Edric agreed, thumping his palm on the timber. "A finish like that deserves the telling.Else we’ll need ask all others!"

So Vilon gave them the tale,better him alone than half a dozen others, weaving the lie so tightly with the truth that neither man could find the seam. He did not recount it with grand flourishes, but laid it bare in all its filthy misery.

He painted the brutal weight of Ratio’s plate, the unyielding crush of an outlaw lord who fought with the rabid frenzy of a cornered beast in search of a worthy’s end by blade.

He described the awful rhythm of the struggle, how the damp earth yielded under heavy boots, how roots tore at a man’s flanks while iron rained down like a smith’s hammer upon an anvil.

He told of the breath being battered out of a man’s lungs, of the deafening screech when metal struck stone, and the sheer terror of being pinned beneath an enemy whose strength felt like a falling timber.

Then he wove Owen into the song: the desperate, blind leap of a squire throwing his whole weight against the armored killer to buy a single heartbeat of air. From there, the fight had dissolved into an ugly, breathless tangle of limbs, gauntleted fists smashing blindly into flesh and teeth, the sickening crunch of cartilage, and the mad, clawing scramble through the mud for anything hard enough to crack iron.

He described the dull, hollow thud of rock against the dented visor, once, twice, thrice, until the frenzied thrashing beneath finally slowed, shuddered, and settled into the quiet rot of the autumn leaves, with two corpse laying about like in a lover’ embrace.

A long silence came in as the tale’s came to an end.

Rykio took it upon himself to break it with a toast.

’’To Mariol, the Vulture Slayer.’

From the nearby tables others took the call and echoed it . ’’The Vulture slayer’’

Vilon sipped frmo the cup as he made the toast.

Edric noticed his restraint and leaned over the table, tapping the rim of Vilon’s barely touched flagon with his knife. "Why drink so sparingly, Ser? Do you fear the kegs will run dry before the rest of the cohort has their fill?" The Legate bellowed with laughter at his own jape.

"I am not well-acquainted with deep drinking," Vilon said softly, yet with a quiet firmness that checked the lord’s mockery. "My father was. I suppose a man takes his lessons where he finds them."

"Aye, I suppose we do," Edric murmured, his boisterous edge dulling into a reflective grunt. "Mine was an absolute sot as well. Spent half his life in a tavern and the other half sleeping it off under a haywain. How about you, Rykio?"

"My father was a gentle, loving man," Rykio answered smoothly, watching the amber wine swirl in his cup. "Or so my lady mother always swore. The gods took him while I was still in the cradle."

"I am sorry for the loss," Vilon offered honestly.

Rykio gave a faint, elegant shrug of his broad shoulders. "It is difficult to mourn what one never possessed."

"I never had a dada either!" Owen chimed in with sudden, slurred enthusiasm, nearly knocking his wooden trencher onto the floor as he swayed. "Mama always told me he was a tireless worker—hic—and that I got my back from him. Took that right from his bones, along with his name!"

Vilon raised his flagon into the warm candlelight, catching the eyes of the men around him. "To fathers, then?Good and bad?"

The Legates lifted their cups in unison, iron and pewter ringing together over the table. "To fathers!"

As the toast settled and the servants hurried to refill the flagons, Edric wiped a sleeve across his beard and turned a curious eye back on the hedge knight. "So then, Vilon... now that the Vulture has been salted, sliced into parcels, and paraded for the crows, where does your road lead? The Fourth marches north by week’s end, but a wandering sword rarely stays in camp. Of course the offers for our colors is still there if you wish..."

Vilon had known the question was coming. He had spent the morning carefully drafting a harmless answer in his head,something vague about drifting west toward the coastal principalities to seek quiet work, far from the simmering war camps. The last thing he needed was to prick the suspicion of King’s marshals.

He opened his mouth to deliver the lie, but the cider had made the squire far quicker than the knight.

"We’re off to a tourney!" Owen blurted out proudly, his face flushed red and a wide, beaming grin splitting his bruised lips. "In Scidna! Our very first tourney, Ser Vilon and me!We are going to break lances and get songs of us!"

The words seemed to hang suspended in the smoky air.

All at once, the clatter of knives and the low murmur around the high table died away into an abrupt, unnatural hush. The drunken warmth seemed to evaporate from the Legates’ faces in a single beat. Edric’s grin froze, and Rykio slowly set his flagon down upon the oak grain, both commanders turning their unblinking, heavy stares directly upon the hedge knight.

"Toward Sharjaan, Ser?" Edric’s brow furrowed, his voice dropping into a harsh, disdainful rumble. "They are weasels, cowards, and opportunists to a man. What business does a true knight have wading into that sea of scum?"

Vilon kept his gaze locked on the grain of the oak table, his lips thinning into a cautious line. The silence of the high table pressed in around him, sharp and calculating.

"I had hoped to keep the matter quiet, for obvious reasons," Vilon replied evenly, choosing each word with deliberate care. "A grand tourney was proclaimed in Scidna, and we meant to test our mettle in the lists. When we first took the road, it was the only prospect left to two starving vagabonds."

He lifted his eyes, meeting the Legates’ stares without a flicker of deceit. "Now, by your grace, our fortunes are different. We have silver in our scrip, a good courser at the tether, and sound mail and plate on our backs, for which you have my deepest gratitude. But I assure you on my father’s grave, I bear neither love nor loyalty to the Prince of Sharjaan. I care nothing for his politics.

I only ever wished to break a lance in a proper tourney. It has been my dream since I was a barefoot boy running behind my father’s mount."

Vilon watched the tension break. The bristling hostility that had chilled the air evaporated like mist in the noon sun, replaced once more by the boisterous ease of the feast.

"You merely wish to joust in the lists?" Edric asked, a broad, amused grin beginning to crack through his scarred face. "That is the whole of your reason?"

"Aye," Vilon murmured with a faint smile. "I swear it by the Five."

"Then why in the hells ride all the way to that viper’s nest in Sharjaan?" Edric bellowed, slamming his palm onto the table until the platters jumped.

Vilon blinked, caught entirely off guard. "My Lord?"

"Yarzat, man!" Edric beamed, gesturing grandly with his flagon. "The king has proclaimed a grand tourney to celebrate his coronation. The lists open come the turn of March. Lords, champions, and knights from every corner of the realm and nearby are riding for the capital. It will make Scidna look like a muddy horse fair."

"SER! SER!" Owen practically shrieked, bouncing upright on the bench, his drunken stupor instantly incinerated by raw, unbridled excitement. "A tourney in Yarzat! We can ride right past the old croft! We can see Mama and Harl and sis and tell them all of it, the hounds, the battle, the Vulture! A tourney in Yarzat, Ser! In the capital!"

The boy’s wild joy was infectious, drawing hearty chuckles from the surrounding officers and even coaxing an approving smirk from Lord Rykio.

Vilon looked from the beaming commanders to his ecstatic squire, feeling the strange, gentle pull of the Weaver’s thread tightening around him once more. The road to Sharjaan was a treacherous gamble, but the road to Yarzat was paved with glory, kings, and home for some.

"Well, lad," Vilon said softly, raising his flagon of amber cider and letting a genuine smile touch his lips. "It seems our road has just been chosen for us once again."

He turned to the other men at the table. ’’To Yarzat then!’’

They echoed back in cheers.