Squire Hayseed

by S E Zbasnik

  Hayley growled but kept her hands dangling far to the sides. She did roll her eyes high, her body swaying back and forth as if she could pendulum her way out of this conversation. “Ya know, when we heard that Frederick was kidnapped,” she said to Marco while keeping an eye on Larissa, “I thought ‘at least it’d put his squire in chains.’” Now she turned fully to the green eyes fuming, “God can’t even get that one right.”

  “You…” Larissa lunged forward, swinging her paddle towards Hayley as if she intended to bash her brains in with it. “You heathen!”

  For her part, Hayley only watched the oar end. Her muscles tensed should she need to dodge or grab it, but she wasn’t scared. She knew how to deflect. “What? Gonna…starch me to death or something?”

  “How are you still in a knight’s service, you prattling, worthless weed?!”

  “I dunno, but I sure as shit ain’t the one with a knight stuck inside a dungeon.”

  Both girls got right into each other’s face, Hayley finding she met Larissa eye to eye. That winter of eating real food must have paid off as she shot up an inch or more. The fact caused Hayley to smirk, and she crisply cracked her knuckles.

  “Wait!” Marco waved his plate in-between them, cutting off the fight before it even began. “Stop. Please.”

  Hayley backed off a bit, but Larissa snarled. “For all that is decent in this world. You can’t hide behind that massive lug forever just because he’s foolishly attached to you.”

  “What?” Hayley turned to Marco, but the boy’s distant head was turning everywhere but to her.

  “Speak ill of my knight to my face ever again,” Larissa hissed, extending the paddle as if she was going to try and take out both Hayley and Marco in one go, “and you shall not enjoy the consequences.”

  With her threat finished, she stomped off towards the river. Hayley took the time to cup her mouth to amplify her shout, “Duh, that’s why they’re called consequences and not happy-fun-times!” Sighing deep in her gut, she glanced at the silent giant. “What’s her problem, anyway? I mean, now. The entirety of her problems would take weeks.”

  “She is lost,” Marco said. He wouldn’t look down at Hayley, his watery gaze sharpening towards Larissa.

  “Meaning she can’t find a place to piss…?” Hayley waved her hand around in confusion. Larissa wasn’t the only one lost.

  Marco snickered, “A squire without a knight is lost. None to give them orders, none to keep them in line, they must answer to the Order’s management instead.”

  “So Larissa can’t act all prim and prissy ‘cause she doesn’t have a pretty knight anymore,” Hayley spat each p, finding it fun.

  “Pretty?” Marco gulped, his mile-high eyes finally snapping to Hayley but she was busy glaring at Larissa’s shadow. The girl was indeed slapping her laundry oar into a mess of shirts in the pond. Was that what happened?

  “If she don’t have a knight,” Hayley asked, “how come she’s scrubbing their shirts?”

  “With no knight, she’s no better than a random servant the Knight-Captain hired off the streets.”

  So Erin was having to keep Larissa in line. For the first time, she pitied the Knight-Captain. Hayley glanced back to the others squatting on the tables. Their pinecone sat in the middle, all the heads bowing deeper as the finality of the situation landed on their heads. How many other squires were left in this limbo?

  “What happens if…if, I mean god forbid and all, but they don’t get their knight back?” Hayley asked, flinching at the thought.

  Marco gazed around, his shoulders falling in tight. “It is possible another would take them in, but…a squire without a knight is like a dog without a master.”

  Hayley wanted to laugh at the idea of calling Larissa a dog — though she’d be one of those prissy ones you have to brush all the time. Her lips opened to crack a joke, but none would slip free. If Larissa was left to wallow that meant that Ser Frederick was lost, meaning dead. As much as Hayley despised Larissa and her braid of fire, she didn’t want anything bad to befall him.

  And what about you?

  What if in this rescue attempt Gavin were to…? Nah. That’s stupid to think upon. Everyone was constantly blathering on and on about his skill. He’d be fine.

  “Squire!” a voice shouted and damn near every person in the mess area snapped up straight. Even Hayley, much to her surprise. It wasn’t to the table full of castoffs, or Larissa, or even the deflating Hayley the command was meant, but Marco.

  “Ser?” the boy rumbled, taking the two steps necessary for him to cross to Ser Cal and Gavin in a seemingly heated debate.

  “Secure the campsite,” Cal ordered.

  “I already…” Marco began when Cal glared at him. “I will, Ser!” the boy shouted, his fist thumping a salute before he barreled off towards the mess of tents. Maybe Hayley should follow. She had a few questions left to ask about his last letter, though the toe thing had been the most pressing. Just before she moved to walk off, she watched the two knights with their heads bent together.

  Their whispers were fervid, snapping at each other as they seemed to talk about nothing important. While Cal being testy seemed unsurprising it was how short Gavin appeared that had Hayley twitching. She hated to admit it, but he was her canary. Even during the big blizzard when people were running lines out of the manor house to get to the barn without freezing into an ice cube, Gavin was a calm presence. He was assured in everything he did.

  And now, frown lines sunk so deep into his cheeks they should be called canyons. His shoulders hunched up high around his head, practically smothering his ears while he kept trying to shout Cal down but not loud enough to spook the other squires. Hayley swallowed deep, wondering what would happen to her if the worst came to pass. No way Erin would suffer her long, but how would she get rid of her?

  Was Hayley’s final fate to be back to the noose or the chains?

  “You’re insufferable,” Larissa’s voice grated over Hayley’s internal panic like lye. Everything else was forgotten as she tried to escape the horrible burning of Larissa’s presence oozing closer to her shoulder.

  Hayley gritted her teeth and whispered, “Get a mirror.”

  The beast snorted. “Take your knight, the state of him.”

  “What about him?” Hayley didn’t stare too long, but Gavin looked fine. Dirty from the road, not that most everyone here wasn’t. But he didn’t have a shark stuck to his legs or anything.

  “Tension draws up his entire spine,” Larissa narrated as if she was trying to explain how to butcher a chicken, “his arms are knots, and legs likely to cramp from such stress bleeding poison into his body. And you do nothing to alleviate it.”

  “What?” Hayley spat, her entire face crinkled in confusion. Okay, so he looked a bit out of sorts, sure… Everyone was.

  “You are his squire. You tend to his needs,” Larissa kept on whatever was up her bonnet. Hayley was about to laugh at the thought, suggest she wasn’t his mother and couldn’t tell him to get to bed early when she caught something in the girl’s eye. It was like chasing a reflection on the open sea, but it hung right on the surface a moment before vanishing.

  “Tend?” Hayley wrenched the sleeves of her tunic down over her thumbs, her stomach boiling at the thought. That couldn’t…no. She had to mean something else. Surely, Hayley wasn’t expected to do that for her knight.

  “Squires are expected to do as asked, whatever the asking,” she continued. Her voice was smug as shit, but her cheeks deflated and lips hung limply.

  “Well, Gavin ain’t never asked for anything like that from me!” Hayley spat back. She wanted to laugh at the thought, but Larissa’s cold eyes dissected her apart.

  “Hmph,” she snorted, “given the look of you I suppose I’m not surprised he has to turn elsewhere.”

  That bitch! Hayley swung her fist back, ready to make good on the payback Larissa deserved, when Gavin shouted, “Squire.”

  Shit. She kept raising her hand higher
as if to stretch and turned to him, “Ser?”

  “If you’ve finished catching up with your friends,” he began, nearly causing both Hayley and Larissa to vomit at the thought, “I need you to check in with the missives. Anything from the Knight-Commander should be brought to me immediately.”

  He held his head up high, the shoulders back and spine straight, but Hayley spotted the crinkles and wear. Something was eating him up inside and he…he didn’t have his pretty mystery blonde lady to soothe it all away.

  “Sure thing,” Hayley called. It wasn’t as respectful as Marco, but Gavin turned back to Cal without hesitation, certain that she’d do as ordered. Were there other things though, things she was supposed to do that didn’t come with orders? Things that were only spoken of in whispered shadows?

  She moved to walk away, trying to keep from staring overlong at her knight’s form. Sure, he was attractive. The number of women fainting daily at his feet was enough of a hint. But Hayley saw him more like…like that older guy who sometimes slips you an extra slice of moldy bread cause you’re starving. Though, when he was naked behind a keyhole it felt like everything inside of her shifted. Giving orders and the like all she saw was a man in metal, but stripped down to little more than knickers in the middle of a river it got confusing.

  “Hayseed,” Larissa shouted, drawing Hayley from her mental panic. For a beat, the girl drew her eyes over to Gavin and she smiled. “They say stress is a killer. Perhaps your knight requires someone better capable for the task before he winds up six feet under.”

  Whipping her head away before she did something stupid like bull rush Larissa into the pond and try to hold her face underwater, Hayley marched towards the messages tent. If Gavin died, what would become of her? And what if, in the end, his death was her fault?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Metal dragged down her shoulders and flattened what little bit of breasts she had. Hayley kept picking at the sheet of mail, wishing to toss it free as the rising southern sun heated her body, but her knight was insistent she keep it on. Even as they stood around with thumbs up their bums, she had to be prepared.

  Three days the Council of Knights debated, three days they all stared up at the rotting corpses with no decision made, three days Larissa had to serve Hayley. Not directly, but she was often put in charge of cooking or washing — and it seemed as if poor Ser Gavin’s socks could never get quite clean enough. Perhaps if Larissa weren’t so poor at it, Hayley wouldn’t have to come back — sometimes twice in one day. Tsk tsk.

  More of the other knights arrived in due time, along with their squires. Abed was often head bent down near Marco, the two whispering boy things at each other. Funny enough, when Alice’s knight wandered in, Hayley figured the girl would dash to Larissa’s side. Surprise surprise, Alice gave that knight-less squire a wide berth. Not that they weren’t kept busy, running back and forth to the messaging stations to collect whatever they could. But Alice seemed to treat Larissa as if the girl had plagued lice or something.

  “Squire,” Gavin’s voice warned, his eyes darting down to her fingers picking at the mail. She winced, glaring to find her pinkie had tried to wedge open a hole in the chains. It was becoming a nervous habit.

  “This waiting’ll be the death of… boring bored people,” Hayley sputtered out, her face pickling at the thought of death’s claws looming near. When the sky was cloudless, the birds chirping, and fresh grass seedlings wafting under their feet this was a beautiful lakeside camp. Then she’d spy the huddled masses, eyes burrowed under hoods to hide away thoughts, and the knights always praying. They even brought in a monk from some monastery up the mountains who was leading them through their prayers.

  “We wait for word from the commander,” Gavin repeated the same refrain of a very dull song.

  “A commander who’s not even here,” Hayley whistled in her teeth. She wasn’t supposed to know what the council was debating, but even someone as on the outs as her got to overhear shit. “How can he know what’s going on when he’s way off in…” She waved her hand through the air because Hayley had no idea where he was. Some other castle? Some other country? Somewhere in the clouds? The way people spoke of him it seemed possible.

  Gavin, stripped clean of nearly all his knight-wear save the knee-high leather boots, sighed. He stared over the rocky cliffs that circled up to the castle path. The entire place looked like a giant took a club to the landscape, shattering it to the lake, and just missed the castle.

  “I forgot that you are new to all of this,” her knight whispered to himself. Like a watcher installed before a great city’s gate, he stood before the big drop off. Hayley eased closer, curious to see if her club theory held up and if the giant left his weapon behind when a massive wind whipped up from below. The blast barely twitched the body of Gavin, but Hayley scrabbled to keep from first falling on her ass, then tipping forward.

  A hand landed flush to her stomach, jangling the mail. She was so blown about by the wild cliff winds, Hayley’s entire torso leaned off the edge to give her a view of what was below. Rocks. Really points ones covered in seagull shit and what could have been squire guts.

  “Be careful,” Gavin said, “it is a long way down.”

  “I can swim,” Hayley answered even as her face turned green from how closely she became mincemeat.

  “Really?” He seemed surprised, as if that scraggly mop tossed at him couldn’t even walk or talk before he took her on. “Can you also fly?”

  “Dunno, haven’t tried.” She shrugged, bringing a chuckle to him. “How long can this go on, Ser?”

  “As long as it takes,” he said those dreaded words no kid wants to hear. Seeing as Hayley wasn’t a kid, she loudly blew air through her puffed out cheeks and sneered. “We are waiting to hear from the commander…” Gavin held up a hand to keep her from interrupting, “to see if there are reinforcements coming from across the bay.”

  Oh. Hayley turned to gaze out over the choppy blue-white waves. The horizon glistened like a mirror, nothing more than sea beyond it, but there could be a second army. Send in another one to back up the first outside the doors. Made sense. More or less.

  “Is that why we ain’t sieging it?” Hayley knew of the word, people spoke it in harried whispers around the camp.

  Gavin’s head lifted and he stared at the others in their own breezy spring-wear trying to keep busy, “A siege would not help us.”

  “What if…?” Hayley leaned closer to the shoreline. Her knight sat up higher, clearly reaching to protect her, when she got a fist of his tunic to steady herself. “Why’s that there?”

  A great rope ran clear down from the middle of the castle on the hill into a cordoned off lake below. Gavin caught it and smiled. “It is their water supply.”

  “Bet if we were to climb down these rocks we could cut it,” Hayley surmised. The cliffs weren’t friendly but they weren’t insurmountable either. Go carefully and even she could do it. “Ya know,” she thought he’d see the wisdom in her idea, but Gavin’s face remained blank, “starve ‘em out. Well, not starve. Drought them out? Make ‘em give up and come to us.”

  It was a good plan. It’d keep them all from having to fight and they’d be done in like a week. She didn’t understand why no one else seemed to notice or suggest it.

  “Squire,” Gavin’s eyes closed softly as he breathed in the lake air. “We have our people trapped behind those walls. If we eliminate their water source, who do you think they would let die first?”

  Oh. Hayley clawed at her ear, trying to dig the stinging feeling away. She didn’t know who all was in there, but the fact Frederick was one put a brick in her gut. Sure, watching Larissa have to clean squire underwear for the rest of her life would be funny, but not at his expense.

  Nor at Gavin’s.

  “I’m…I’m sorry, Ser,” Hayley sputtered.

  “It is all well.” Gavin tried to smile. “To be fair, some of the others had suggested the same.”

  “No, I mean�
�” She dug her fingers into her thighs, the familiar tread of callus calming her. “I’m sorry about your friend being, I mean, I think he’s your friend and all… I should shut up.”

  The wince was strong, but Gavin bobbed his head. “Thank you. I…” His eyes drifted over to Erin, who was currently trying to keep the drinking to a minimum amongst the knights. It wasn’t going so well.

  “I should commune with the council once more,” Gavin said. That was usually code for Hayley to go stay by the tent and wait. Sometimes she read but not much. There was only one book and she’d been through it twice already.

  Hayley went to take a step towards her duty when Gavin smiled. “Why don’t you remain here, or visit the messenger station.”

  That’d be something to do, at least. Bobbing her head, Hayley wandered along the twisting shoreline. It slumped lower, meaning she’d probably survive the initial fall to the rocks but bleed to death. Luckily, the wear in the grass path led her away from certain doom and towards the Master of the Birds.

  A massive wire cage rested upon a table, cooing erupting from within as the Master Bird stuck his head inside. He oohed and ahhed at the winged rats, even flapping his arms as if that might give them cause to think he was one of them. All Hayley saw was the beady eye of disinterest, though she didn’t react quite as strongly as some of the others. Marco in particular nearly fell flat to the ground when one of the message birds flew close to his head. After that, Hayley offered to snatch up whatever messages were for her knight or his. He seemed grateful for her suggestion but Hayley didn’t much care.

  Pigeons seemed like quaint gentlemen after the geese.

  “How are they doing today, Master Glomen?”

  The bluest eyes she’d ever seen short of jamming sapphires into your sockets turned and got right into Hayley’s face. She used to leap away but got used to his particular greeting. They darted down her nose as if trying to see if she grew a beak or not.

  After a moment, Glomen smiled. “Ah, Squire Gavin.”

  That was how those who thought memorizing squire’s names was beneath them got on. Some, especially the knights with grey hair sprouting out of their pointed ears, clung tooth and nail to it.