by W. C. Conner
“I know,” Wil replied, “but I don’t know why. I don’t feel old either. All my life I’ve avoided responsibility and I’ve lived hard – too hard at times for my own good. I hated being at university; it was boring and I saw no point to all the discipline and monotonous repetition of the worthless information they tried to teach me, so I quit after two years before they could throw me out.
“Then my stepmother arranged a marriage with the daughter of a friend of her family. She was a well-bred young woman of pleasant enough appearance and temperament, but there was never a real love. She and our daughter both died in childbirth toward the end of our second year together. I felt some guilt that I wasn’t devastated by her loss but there was nothing to be gained by pretending I was.” Wil looked at his hands.
“I’ve pretty much been on the move since then. I’ve tried my hand at all sorts of jobs. I’ve worked as a laborer, a teamster, a school teacher, a scribe, and many other things, but none of them took my interest and I was encouraged by my employers to move on after just a few months, or weeks in some cases.” He looked over at Scrubby. “It’s a fact that the work itself here doesn’t thrill me, but there’s an honesty and earthiness about it that satisfies something deep inside me—something it feels I’ve been searching for all my life.”
He looked back over to Tingle. “Scrubby found me in his hog pen the morning after my sixty-fifth birthday. I had convinced myself I was a failure and I had nobody to make me believe otherwise. I was so unhappy with what I had never become that I wanted to kill myself, but like everything else I’ve tried in this life, I couldn’t even do that right.
“I sat drinking alone as usual in Three Oaks that night of my sixty-fifth birthday. There was no one to toast me. No one to congratulate me. No one who cared whether I was alive or dead – including me. My self-pity overwhelmed me and I got blind drunk in a bid to summon the courage to end my life. I vaguely remember staggering out of the inn looking for some painless way to get it done. I don’t remember whether or not I had my bag with me but I must have since you found it at the edge of town. I know I fell down several times as I staggered around looking for a way to kill myself. I undoubtedly just wandered away from it after one of the times I fell.
“I don’t remember falling into Scrubby’s hog pen, but it’s the only time I remember getting up afterwards because I woke up with the nose of one of Scrubby’s sows inspecting my face at close range.” His face colored as he remembered. “I vomited on Scrubby’s boots and do you know what he did?” Tingle shook his head to indicate he didn’t know. “He took me into his home and washed and fed me, and gave me a place to be and a friend who shared without thought, who accepted me just as he found me.
“For the first time in my life, I’ve found peace and contentment and a sense of belonging here in Wisdom.”
Wil stopped his tale at that point and Tingle stretched and twisted his back, then straightened up and looked into the sky.
“Well, well, just look at the position of that moon,” he said eagerly. “This has been most interesting, Wil. My own suspicion is that there is much about you that you yourself do not yet suspect, and I look forward to the possibility of more conversation before I move on to my next destination. For now, though, while I hate to drink and run, I owe a most attractive young lady a very generous tip, and she made it abundantly clear that I must do so upon pain of ... well, upon pain.”
With that, he stood up and took the two empty tankards from Scrubby and Wil. “It will be my pleasure to return these for you,” he finished, bowing with an exaggerated flourish. “Until the morrow, then.” Turning on his heel he strode briskly away, whistling the tune to one of the many racy drinking songs he had learned during his travels.
As he watched Tingle walking enthusiastically toward Three Oaks and a night of intimate companionship, Wil could not help but contrast Tingle’s easy acceptance – indeed, pursuit – of casual intimacy with his own inability to become emotionally close to anyone in his life since his father died.
“Wilton, bring yourself here this instant.” Wil flinched inwardly as his mind once again resurrected the detested voice of his stepmother as she had been shortly after his father’s death.
“Coming, ma’am,” his five year old voice replied within his head.
“Where have you been hiding now?” she demanded, peering down her narrow nose at him, her nostrils white as they flared in anger.
“I wasn’t hiding, ma’am. I was just outside at the fence listening to the men in the wizard’s robes talking about healing the land.”
“You stay away from such as those, boy,” she shouted at him, her spittle spraying his face in her anger. “Wizards are never to be trusted. They lie and they covet and they steal. They’re all power hungry and they’ll suck the life out of you to feed their insatiable lusts. It was a wizard left me in this situation with you. I don’t ever want to see you around such as them again.”
“I don’t see what’s so bad about them,” Wil had responded just before her open hand swung toward his face.
He put his hand to his cheek where his stepmother had slapped him so hard it had knocked him off his feet and his eyes regained their focus to see Scrubby starting to walk toward home.
“Your wife and child are dead and you seem not to care.” It was his stepmother’s voice once more berating him for not being exactly what she wanted him to be.
“I care, mother,” he had replied, “but she was your choice for me, not mine.” Her eyes had turned harder than before, if such a thing was possible.
“She was far too good for you,” she had yelled at him, her spittle spraying his face as it always did when she was angry, only now she had to look up instead of down at him as she had the many times she had knocked him to the floor with a slap when he was younger. “I arranged a marriage for you far above anything you deserve, and with a dowry enough to keep all of us comfortable forever.”
Recognition dawned.
“The dowry is yours, mother,” he said quietly.
He picked up his cloak from where it hung on a peg beside the front door and slung it over his shoulder. “I’m leaving to find a place I belong before you make that choice for me also. It’s clear to me now that I never belonged here.”
“You?” she screeched at him as he opened the door and started down the path to the road leading away from this detested house, carrying nothing from this old life with him, “You will never find a place to belong!”
Until now, he realized as he hoisted his bag onto his shoulder and trotted to catch up to Scrubby.
Wil draped his arm over Scrubby’s shoulder as he came even with him. The smaller man stopped and turned to face Wil, causing the arm to drop away. “Am I really your friend?” Scrubby asked as if he truly could not believe it.
Wil nodded. “The only true friend I’ve ever had or wanted.”
Scrubby turned back toward his home and placed Wil’s hand back on his shoulder, then reached up to put his own on Wil’s shoulder. “Me too,” he said, and the two of them walked back to Scrubby’s wattle and daub hut, each with his arm on the other’s shoulder, each acknowledging a friendship neither had experienced before.
As they walked, they talked of Tingle and sniggered suggestively when they spoke of the tips that he and the formidably attractive Thisbe would be sharing that night.
Wil turned restlessly on his pallet, unable to fall asleep despite the four tankards of ale he had consumed that night. He now lay facing the ceiling, his eyes open as his mind replayed the evening.
“It was a wizard left me in this situation with you.”
He had forgotten his stepmother had said that. Now it flooded his mind. He had felt it at the time and, even now in retrospect, it could mean nothing other than that his father had been killed by one of those evil wizards, leaving her widowed with her own two daughters and him. That was the only explanation that would make sense. That would explain why she wanted him to have nothing to do with wizards.
It was no wonder he had always disliked wizards. His father had been gentle and loving, and for those few short years before he died, he had shielded Wil from the woman he married after Wil’s real mother had died. They had been close and then he was gone and some wizard had taken away the only comfort in his life, leaving him at the mercy of a bitter, vindictive, and occasionally violent woman who favored her daughters from a previous marriage over the son of this man who had died and left her alone and struggling with little money.
And there had been Polly, also, of course. Cute little Polly who lived next door and with whom he often talked and whom he worshipped when he was twelve years old because her figure was beginning to show and he wanted her to approve of him. Any time she saw a person dressed in wizard’s robes she would make the sign against evil and he had asked her why.
“Why? It’s because they’re arrogant and hateful and they’ll steal your soul if you don’t protect yourself.” And she had said it with such conviction that he just knew she was right. She was, after all, a full year and a half older than he was and knew much more than he did.
They had made love one time, the night before he was sent away to university. It was the first time for him, but far from the first time for her. By the time he came back a short two years later hoping to see her again, she had married and moved away.
Wil turned onto his side and closed his eyes, wondering as sleep finally overtook him what Polly looked like now. It never occurred to him that she had passed to the other side three years before, a bent and toothless old woman for many years already.
Because he had never truly been aware of the black nightmare that had pursued him throughout his life, he also was not aware that his sleep had not been visited by the nightmare since the morning he had made the decision to stop running and settle down to the simple life as Scrubby’s assistant. His only dream that night was of Polly’s face, smiling at the wonder and lust in his eyes as she opened her bodice for him the night they lay together before he left for university.
4
Morgan stood at rigid attention, only his eyes moving as they followed his liege lord stalking angrily back and forth on the huge hearth, stepping around his great danes as they worried the marrow out of some large animal’s leg bones. The Duke stopped and placed his hand on the high mantelpiece, his head bowed.
“By all the powers of good and ill, Morgan,” he said, the strained control of his voice barely covering his raging anger, “have you no good sense at all?” He drew himself up to his full height, a most imposing and impressive sight even when not angry, but a truly intimidating one when his anger was provoked. He turned toward Morgan who remained silent, his eyes staring challengingly into those of Berlayne, the seventeenth Duke of Confirth.
“You’re the finest warrior ever to serve in my personal guard,” he continued. “For that and the friendship we’ve shared since our childhood, I have forgiven you many grievous offenses. And more, I have disbursed no little amount from the treasury to soothe away the hurt of those damaged in body or soul by your reckless behavior, but this?” He clenched his fist at Morgan. “This is beyond my ability to forgive or to purchase.” He shook his head and his shoulders slumped ever so slightly as if he felt himself defeated. “I cannot buy my way out of this as if you had offended a woman’s honor or provoked her father’s or husband’s outrage, or damaged a tavern because of a perceived slight by its owner or his patrons.”
He turned his back to the fireplace and clasped his hands behind his back. “I asked you to perform one simple task for me – something you have done many, many times during your lifetime – and you refused. Bad enough that you defied my direct order to you but in your refusal you have offended Greyleige, and he is an enemy I can ill afford. You have left me no recourse.” He looked down as if what he was about to say pained him, then nodded towards the scribe whose quill was poised to record every word.
He raised his head but was unable to look Morgan in the eye. “Morgan, it is my judgment and sentence upon you that you are dismissed forthwith from my service and banished from this duchy with the decree of death upon you if you are found within these borders five days hence. Greyleige is certainly looking for nothing less than your execution, but I am being lenient because of our long history together. Further, it will be recorded that your heritage is forfeit; you may no longer name yourself Morgan of Confirth to the world. Confirth no longer claims you.” He looked now directly at Morgan’s face, his lips compressed, his eyes looking suddenly fatigued.
Morgan bowed slightly at the waist in acknowledgement of his lord’s judgment. “By your leave, my lord,” was all he said. At the smallest nod of the Duke’s head he turned smartly around and strode quickly away.
“Morgan!” The Duke’s command stopped him short of the door. He stood without turning.
“Fare you well, Morgan,” the Duke said, the anger gone from his voice.
Morgan gave an almost imperceptible nod of his head in acknowledgement of this last parting kindness, then pulled open the heavy door and departed his lord’s chamber for the last time.
Morgan looked around the empty barracks hall. His former companions were carefully avoiding his presence lest they draw down upon themselves the wrath of either the Duke or of Greyleige.
The heavy, drooping mustache and white line of a scar across his forehead from an old battle wound gave his ruggedly handsome face a menacing look. His long dark hair was peppered with gray now, but this hinted at the number of years he had spent perfecting his trade of dealing sudden and violent death to those who had earned it. He was tall, though not as tall as the Duke of Confirth, and his lean, supple body had been tempered to that of spring steel by the daily exercises he performed in the weapons yard as he honed his fighting skills. In battle he seldom attacked head on, preferring to move as if in a dance, sliding and shifting, now into his partner’s arms, now twirling away to dance briefly with another, getting one to commit and another to lose a step and stumble or fall.
Morgan truly was a warrior of legendary skills who embraced a personal code of honor to which he would all too often find himself struggling to adhere, and which would occasionally manifest itself in unexpected ways and at unexpected times.
Lifting his bag to his shoulder, he opened the door and crossed the normally bustling but now eerily empty squad room, then started down the hallway toward the kitchens and the stables beyond. Prior to his banishment, an orderly would have been carrying the bag for him, but none within the Duke’s house dared be near him for fear of both their lord and the powerful wizard that Morgan had angered.
He passed through the kitchens hoping to catch a glimpse of Peg, the scullery maid who had secured her position three years earlier by virtue of his intervention. She at least, he felt, would be willing to risk the wrath of the Duke to see to it he had a bit of food for his journey. But Peg was nowhere to be seen, and any of the cooks and servants who did look his way acted as if they had seen nothing where he stood.
Outside the closed stable doors he found his war horse fully tacked and tied to a post. He tested the girth, tightened it slightly, then rubbed the side of the horse’s neck with one hand and held the other at his mouth which moved softly against his palm looking for the scraps of carrot Morgan customarily brought him. “It’s just the two of us now, Tenable” he said, scratching the stallion at the base of his mane. Tenable leaned sideways into him in obvious pleasure.
There was no one visible, so he tied his bag behind the high cantle of the saddle and mounted. “Let’s be off,” he said as he turned the horse’s nose toward the castle gate. Clucking Tenable to a walk, they moved slowly away from the stable. The guards at the gate turned away as Morgan rode slowly past, then resumed their idle chatter as soon as they deemed him out of hearing.
Like the castle, the shops and homes clustered near the castle walls were empty of activity as he rode. As he passed the last building, however, a solitary figure rose up before him and he reine
d Tenable to a stop.
“Where you go, I go,” said the young woman as she lifted a sack from the ground where she had been sitting.
Morgan smiled for the first time in several days. “Get you up behind me, Peg,” he said. Leaning down, he took her hand and swung her up to sit atop his own duffel bag behind him. The tempting aroma of a freshly baked meat pie teased his nostrils as he took Peg’s bag from her hand and hung it from the high pommel before him.
Her arms circled his waist as he once again clucked Tenable to a walk and the three outcasts started their journey, their destination being anywhere beyond the borders of the Duchy of Confirth.
5
The last feeble grayness of dusk was long past as Morgan and Peg walked along the road beside Tenable who was heavily favoring his right front hoof. He had come up dead lame when he stumbled as they crossed a rock-strewn stream several miles back, putting all three of them afoot. They had been walking since then and now had only a sliver of moon dodging between scudding clouds to weakly light the road as they looked for a likely place to put up for the night.
“I’m not comfortable about these woods,” Morgan had told Peg when she suggested they simply set up camp next to the stream where Tenable had injured himself. “There’s something about this place that feels like trouble. We’ll go on for a bit until we can find a more defensible spot.” Peg knew him well enough to trust his instincts. He had not survived this long as a warrior without having learned to trust those feelings that warned of trouble.
In the distance an orange light grew slowly as they walked. At first it was difficult to tell whether it was the light from a lantern fairly close or a fire farther in the distance, but the longer they walked, the more obvious it became that it was a campfire.
“Hello, the fire,” Morgan called loudly from out of the darkness as they approached.