Not long after they had cleared the off the path when a dozen men on horses, along with a trio of pack horses in tow—although these were of significantly lesser quality than the ones bearing riders—came thundering past. At the head of this other group was none other than Rupert Knightson, with his father’s Pennant held proudly out in front for all to see. A horse length behind and to the side of his son came a man in metal plate armor, astride the biggest, most powerful warhorse Falon had ever seen. From his top-of-the-line equipment, to his top-of-the-line horse, and the way he was taking up the center of the road like he personally owned it, it could be none other than Sir Reginald the Free.
Falon watched with hooded eyes as the party of horsemen thundered past them without so much as a single head turned in their direction. By the way they were being ignored Falon could tell that as far as Sir Reginald was concerned nothing anyone from East or West Wick could say or do would be in the least bit worthy of his attention.
Minutes later, they had come and gone, and the Wick Militias were once again free to resume travel on the road. Despite herself, Falon couldn’t help but be impressed by the solid quality of their horses and the unthinking competence of their riders in the saddle.
“They make a pretty sight, don’t they son,” Vance remarked, stepping up beside her. Out of the corner of her eye, Falon was aware of Duncan and Ernest slowly fading back in amongst the village men.
“Very dashing,” Falon agreed, keeping her eyes on the retreating figure of Sir Reginald’s cavalry. She silently wished that her first look at a professional fighting force had not been of an arrogant Knight and his mud-splattered cavalry—no matter how good they looked with their swords and armor.
“I understand if yer feeling a bit upset with the rest of us right now,” Vance said after a small silence.
“Why would I be?” Falon asked coldly, still refusing to turn and look at the Blacksmith. But before the Blacksmith had a chance to reply, another man interrupted.
“Thou just got thyself knocked off thy horse in a sneak attack and none of us so much as lifted a finger to help thee, that’s why,” said the Headman of the West Wickers.
Falon turned to stare at them.
“Yes lad,” Vance said evenly, “ye have to understand; it’s not our place to get mixed up with the quarrels of noble folks. However much we might like to, we have to think about our families first.”
Before they started talking, Falon had not felt the slightest bit upset. But after their explanation she was feeling more than a little bit betrayed. It wasn’t exactly logical—she knew there was nothing they could do again a Knight—but she felt it all the same. So instead of what she should have done—which was to say that she understood—she instead said.
“I can take care of myself. Come on Hermiony,” she replied stiffly. Putting words to action, she grabbed the reins of her horse and led her back on the road.
As she turned her horse back toward the road, she could see the top village men look at each other and shrug helplessly, but she didn’t let it affect her. They had a lot of distance to travel if they wanted to reach Lord Lamont’s Keep before nightfall. As far as she was concerned, the sooner they joined the muster, the sooner she could fight and the sooner she go home—or be killed and be done with it all.
She deliberately didn’t think about some of the more gruesome possibilities. They would only unnerve her and make it harder to do what she needed to do in order to get home. More importantly, her sisters were counting on her not to mess this up. When she put in that light, what the villagers did or didn’t do to help her was really outside of her control. They would do what they would do.
What was most important right now was not getting mad at Vance, pointing fingers, or picking fights. It was keeping her head down and fulfilling her role as a Squireson that she needed to stay focused on. That those two objectives seemed more and more at odds the longer she went was something she was just going to live with.
Chapter 11: Dealing with Sore Feet
After the meeting with the Knightson, the pain in her foot seemed to recede. She couldn’t explain it, but she was relieved all the same. Too caught up going back over the knightly party in her memory, she paid little mind to anything other than putting one foot in front of the other.
How could a Landless, Lord-less Knight afford to equip a dozen men with horses and armor, she wondered? It was a puzzle, and one far more captivating than being mad at the villagers for standing by and doing nothing while she was so rudely dismounted. It wasn’t the villager militia’s fault; they were peasants, Goodmen and their sons. There was nothing they could do in the face of nobility. Not even against a watered down, lowly son of a Knight who was working as his father’s Herald.
Of course, even the mere son of a Knight was head and shoulders above a mere Squire’s daughter. This running around masquerading as one of her brothers was more exhausting—not to mention physically damaging—than she had ever expected!
It was far more entertaining to look in her mind’s eye at Sir Reginald and his strapping cavalry, which she did for as long as she was able. Her imagination had just taken a flight of fancy, with one of the younger cavalry men she had glimpsed transformed into Prince William, the King’s Marshal who had summoned up the muster.
In her daydreams he was used to traveling in secret so that his enemies would not catch him. Because of this, he spotted her for the girl she was and instead of exposing her, they began a romantic courtship, consisting mainly of significant looks and small gifts easily hidden under the flap of a travel pack.
She was just getting to the good part, where the young Prince was about to defy convention and declare his infatuation with her to the entire camp in a wild declaration of marriage, when her foot twisted on yet another rock.
A half hour of a life far better than anything she could hope for in a thousand years suddenly vanished in a haze of ankle-twisted pain. Fighting back tears (because she had seen how the boys liked to twit anyone who dared release so much as a single, pain-filled tear) she womanfully kept from crying out.
Hobbling over to the nearest wagon, she grabbed a hold of the side for support. For a few steps all she wanted to do was hop onto the back of the wagon and ride for the rest of the day—she didn’t care if she appeared weak or womanish! After all, what did it matter to her if a bunch of stupid boys thought she was acting like a girl? She was a girl after all, and almost a woman grown, at that!
Certainly she was old enough for marriage, and she didn’t care what Duncan or anyone else thought about her riding in a wagon. She lifted her nose in the air and started to climb on, however when she glanced around to see if anyone seemed to have observed her climbing into the back of the wagon, she was silently furious with herself. The whole point of not caring what anyone else thought, was the ‘not caring what they thought’ part!
Taking herself firmly to task and grumbling under her breath, she finally admitted to herself that she did care, and she had no desire to be the butt of the joke for the duration of the war, battle, or however long they were gone from home. More than a little irked at herself, all she could do was sit there sullenly and stare at her foot.
It was simply too painful to keep walking on. Looking around the back of the wagon, Falon was gratified to see the Healing Wench right where she was supposed to be, or in this case, sitting atop a sack of grain.
Swaying from side to side with the movement of the wagon, the Wench seemed more than half asleep and it seemed almost a crime to wake her. But Falon’s foot was killing her, so she took off her boot.
Staring at her right foot in dismay, Falon was taken aback at the foul odor coming off both her foot and the stinky old boot. Then she caught sight of the side of her heel. There was blood, and a small flap of skin hanging loose! Sickened but unable to stop herself from looking, she leaned closer and observed that in addition to the open sore in the side of her foot, she also had a pair of slightly larger blisters that looked ready to pop right beside the so
re.
Falon gasped, wondering how she could have possibly done this to herself without noticing. Then she quickly corrected herself; it’s not that she hadn’t noticed the pain or that something was wrong, it was just…how could she have done this much damage without being forced to stop?
Uncertain if the damage to her foot was a serious problem or not, she leaned over and tapped the Healer on the foot. When the first tap failed to elicit a response, she tapped harder.
With a snort the Wench shook her head and quickly looked around. Seeing Falon sitting beside her—if a few feet distant—her brow wrinkled as a look of recognition flashed across her face. Then the Wench spotted her foot and the confusion vanished.
“Can you help?” Falon asked, pointing to her foot.
“A right mess you’ve made of your poor foot,” the Wench said with a sigh, and Falon was surprised at the mix of upper class accent, and lower class word choices coming out of the other woman’s mouth.
“Is it…” Falon looked away half afraid for just a second, “bad?” she finished, her voice a clear question all by itself.
“What a bunch of stuff and nonsense,” the Healing Wench rolled her eyes and scooted over to place a warm hand on Falon’s foot. It was a hand that got warmer and warmer the longer it stayed on her damaged extremity.
Falon’s eyes got really wide and her mouth dropped open. “I thought you couldn’t do a healing spell during the light of day,” she gaped at the Wench removed her hand.
Shoulders drooping with fatigue, the Wench leaned back on the sack of grain she had been resting on before Falon came and woke her up for a healing.
“That would have cost you a good piece of silver—or a handful of coppers at the very least—if we were still back home,” The Wench said with a wink before laying her head back on the sack of grain, while Falon just gaped at her.
“But—but the sun,” Falon stammered, pointing up at the still-burning globe that had yet to so much as touch the horizon, let alone return to its home in the sky.
Eyes popping open, the Wench pointed to a different object in sky. Falon’s brow furrowed when she realized she was looking at the moon.
“Healing works by binding moonlight,” the Healing Wench said matter-of-factly, “the presence of the sun doesn’t stop us; it’s the lack of the moon that shuts us Wenches down.”
Unable to help herself, Falon’s mouth made a perfect little ‘O’ of comprehension.
“So this is one of the few times the moon was still in the morning sky,” Falon said wonderingly.
“Morning,” the Wench remarked, casting her gaze up at the sun, hanging on the wrong side of the skyline for it to be morning, scornfully.
Falon flushed, then shifted her gaze down to her newly healed foot and the white, mushy skin that had grown to cover the former crater in her heel. To her surprise, the pair of blisters had also disappeared and other than a slightly red discoloration, she couldn’t even tell they had been present before the healing.
“Healing during the daytime, and barely half awake, isn’t really my cup o’ tea,” the Wench said with a jaw-cracking yawn, one hand held up to partially block the sight of her mouth.
Her mind working through the process, Falon was suddenly reminded of something her mother had once shown her. “Your magic has something to do with walking the moonlight path, doesn’t it?” Falon asked before her mind could catch up with her mouth, too excited by this revelation to hold back.
The Wench looked at her sharply. “I’m no Witch, merely a simple Healing Wench, and you’d do well to remember it,” she grated, as something entered her eye that made Falon’s breath catch.
“I didn’t mean anything—” Falon said quickly.
“Just mind the foot, little Thorn, ” the Wench said balefully before shaking her head and looking off to the side of the wagon, no doubt to take in the scenery now that she was awake again.
Falon’s backpedaling quickly turned to confusion at the Wench’s use of the term ‘Thorn.’ Maybe the Wench had been talking with Ernest and Duncan, who repeatedly called her ‘prickly?’ “I’m sorry to bother you,” Falon said quickly and started to put her boots back on.
“All I did was quick patchwork,” the Wench said dismissively, causing Falon to stop with her sock half on. “Mind you keep off that foot for the rest of the day, Squire’s Heir,” she said with a snort, “else you’ll reopen the wound and cause it to fester. I’m too tired from all the healings of the past few nights to do a proper job of it right at the moment.”
Falon stared at the Healing Wench in surprise, but apparently other than a hard look and some no-nonsense advice, the other woman seemed to be willing to let the talk of magic pass.
Falon kicked herself for openly displaying such knowledge before the Wench. It was only a single comment, but it still marked her down as learning something that was normally never passed down to the boys—unless they showed an uncommon talent.
Magic, at least when it came down to peasants in the country, was something that Mothers passed down to Daughters, and Aunties to Nieces. It was not normally something to be shared with the men, especially when it came to the New Blood villagers who thought magic was the proper business of Wizards and Nuns, and not something to be taught in the home setting. Healing Wenches were one of the few exceptions to this rule that the New Blood were comfortable with. It was hard to accuse someone of the dark arts when all they did was run around saving lives and fixing broken bones in return for a few coppers or a silver coin.
“I have to go,” Falon said, the thought of staying cooped up in the wagon all evening with the Wench while everyone else walked and Duncan and the other boys laughed at her was suddenly too much to bear.
The Wench shook her head and sighed. “If it weren’t for men and their foolish need to go around beating on each other until they’d determined the biggest cock-of-the-walk, I’d just fix it up for you,” The Wench said rolling her eyes. “As it is, I’m half exhausted from running around all night every night and fixing all the damage from that ‘scramble’ as they’ve taken to calling it. I only just got around to fixing the last few superficial bruises last night…” The Wench trailed off, staring at her knees and muttering under her breath.
“Err, yes, I suppose,” Falon said awkwardly. Actually, she was completely in agreement with the older woman but as this wasn’t the sort of opinion a ‘boy’ would normally espouse, Falon felt the need to be a bit more taciturn and circumspect in letting the Wench know she agreed with her.
In silence, Falon continued to put back on her sock, despite the stench coming off it. She had just finished lacing up her boot and was about to jump off the back of the wagon despite the Wench’s warning when the other woman grabbed her by the arm.
Looking back wide-eyed, Falon started when she saw the Wench glaring at her. “If you are bound determined to ignore my advice and keep walking on that thing, at least go and see Nyia for a complete healing. Ye can tell her I sent you and that I’m too tired from last night’s healings to pamper this male-driven urge to further damage to your body. She should be well-rested and able to take care of it.”
So saying, the Wench gave her arm a push, encouraging Falon to get going.
“Thanks,” Falon said as she scrambled off the back of the wagon. Taking a tentative step, she smiled when her foot didn’t hurt. Other than a little residual tenderness, everything seemed to be working just fine. After lifting her foot and wiggling all her toes to make sure nothing was suddenly going to start hurting, she grinned and hurried to catch up to the lead wagon.
It was such a relief to be walking pain free again that it wasn’t until she had caught up with the first wagon that she saw Nyia sitting on the back of it, swinging her legs. The memory of what she had seen that first night in the bushes suddenly came back to haunt her, and her once eager stride slowed significantly. Falon’s face had just started to blush when the Healing Apprentice’s eyes snagged on her own.
At first Nyia�
�s eyes widened when she saw Falon approaching and she started to pale. Then she must have spotted the blush because she began to smile.
Feeling sick to her stomach, Falon slowed even further. Looking at the other girl was worse than staring into the eyes of a snake close up!
However, it was when Nyia’s tongue slowly licked of her own lips and made a beckoning ‘come here’ gesture that Falon’s nerve broke.
Skittering off to the side, Falon ignored the other girl’s mean-spirited laugh and quickly joined men walking to either side of the wagon. Better to walk until I’m lame than get one step closer to that mean-spirited vixen, she thought, deliberately keeping her gaze pointed away from the wagon.
She had read about a ‘come hither’ look in one of her sister’s poetry books, but never actually seen one before. That another girl would turn such a look on her was more than slightly revolting.
Knowing she was hardly the manliest looking of ‘boys,’ Falon figured that like the rest of the villagers Nyia, probably figured Falon was secretly rich and thus a good ‘catch.’
Shuddering at the mere thought of it, Falon decided it was better to risk the Healing Wench’s wrath than let that Hussy actually put her hands on her—even if it was just her foot. One foot was one too much!
Chapter 12: Trundling In at Night
The sight of campfires as they staggered down the last lonely stretch of road was one of the most welcome sights Falon had seen all day.
The sun had set two hours earlier, but by an overwhelming vote the men of the two Wicks had decided to press on. Finally arriving at the Muster Fields was a relief in and of itself.
Falon was still walking, but to say that it hurt to step on her right foot would have been to put it mildly. However, she was bound and determined to keep putting one foot in front of the other until it was time to stop and set up camp.
If she had to use Ernest as a sort of temporary crutch while she was doing this…well, both he and Falon would likely survive the experience.
The Blooding Page 9