Are you completely certain of that? If so, I’ve certainly slipped a lot in under his nose.
I blocked them out as I set up my tent at the end of the road with no light except the faint luminance of my lantern. An inn could have been three steps from the road and unless the windows were lit, I would not have seen it, so deep were the clouds.
I offered Brindle a second night sleeping in the tent with me. He used to sleep in the tent of Sir Branson, from the time he was so small that he rode in a saddle bag. It had always puzzled me why an impoverished knight who could barely keep himself fed, never mind curb the appetite of an enormous dog, would keep one with him, but I was starting to understand his thinking now. Even possessed, the dog eased the loneliness of the road. I had expected him to be nervous and anxious with the idea of sleeping with me instead of the old knight, but he had adapted without complaint.
He turned a circle, spreading the scent of doggy wetness everywhere, and then plopped down, panting and huffing.
Tomorrow the true fun begins, the voices in my head reminded me. Don’t forget your prayers.
And thus, I spent my last night in a land touched by men and aspects in prayer. And if it helped with what came next, then I dread to imagine what it might have been like had I not prayed at all.
Chapter Five
Vagabond Paladin
I would be the first to admit that my education was slapdash at best.
Well, yes, do excuse me for that, my girl. There was just so much to show you, and the things people think of as education are … well, sometimes they don’t seem like a real priority when you can be looking at how a blue jay puffs in the cold or how to best make a fire draft well. I mean, seriously, one must enjoy life a little.
One must. In fact, could I suggest enjoying it right now? Maybe find a nice treasure to steal and break all your vows, hmm?
While I knew one hundred and forty prayers by heart …
See? I did teach you some things. Though, most of the rote prayers came from your dearly departed mother.
And while I could sing both the melodies and harmonies of the Hymnal Vox, and could recite the thirty-seven ways to ceremonially cleanse a site of demonic influence and the twelve great castings for the removal of a demon, along with the four ways of discerning between spirits, and the smoke rites of the dead and dying …
I did better than I thought. That’s a prodigious list. I wonder if I could be awarded a posthumous medal of some type …
I knew all that, but I knew very little of ancient architecture and geography.
Stuffy nonsense, anyway. Which Vagabond Paladin need know those things? Tell me the name of the puffed-up fool.
Me. I was the puffed-up fool.
The geography of the current world is enough to keep our feet on the path and the quick reading of other humans tells us whom to help and whom to fear. You may yet thank me that you learned those lessons well.
When I pushed my way out of the tent, it had snowed in the night. I bit my lip so hard in my effort to control my frustration that I drew blood.
Not confident of your ability to track in the snow?
There was a mocking note to that.
It was not tracking in the snow that was the challenge. It was following tracks under the snow that was problematic.
This close to the Rim, it was still winter, though south of here it was deep into spring.
The sun rose in that strange way it sometimes does in a snowstorm, where a snow mist has risen up, cloaking the world around you in a fog of ice particles thick as milk, but glowing so brightly in the area close to you that it seems nearly as golden as the heart of an egg.
It was almost heavenly. Almost divine.
Hardly. Your theology knows perfectly well that heaven is not merely a golden haze but the next adventure for the righteous.
That was certainly Sir Branson. He had lectured me on the same often in life, since the day I found him in the village square and begged to be made his squire supplicant. I had eleven years to me at that time. My parents were taken by the grippe quite suddenly. I was lucky to have survived it. When I came to Sir Branson with my request to join him as squire, he sold his second pair of boots to buy me a teddy bear. I was far too old for it. But I kept it anyway until I gave it to another child just last year. I wished now that I’d not gifted it away.
That’s not a sniffle I hear in my mind, is it?
It’s harder when you’re distilled to just your heart. You lose the outer shell. Defenseless as a newborn babe. Don’t look. It’s embarrassing.
