“The entire thing. Tomas here cleaned it up for me. Burnt the wound and everything. Still hurts like shit, though.”
“I bet it does.”
Rilan shrugged. “I’ve had worse.”
“What could be worse than losing a finger?” Tomas said sarcastically.
“That beating I got from pa when I stole his mead that one time when we were, what, twelve years old?”
Tomas chuckled at the memory. “Thirteen, I think. Snuck off and drank the whole thing.”
“Left me with a black eye and a broken rib. I don’t know what hurt worse though, the beating or the hangover!” Rilan laughed.
Landry smiled awkwardly, unsure of how to react. But Rilan and Tomas were quietly chuckling to themselves, and he couldn’t help but smile along with them. Rilan, in particular, had quite a distinctive, hoarse laugh that made it difficult not to join in.
“I got flung from my horse while practicing jousting with Ser Carsten the Mighty in Shadowshore a few years ago,” Landry chimed in. He lifted his tunic, revealing a scar on his side, easily several inches long.
“Ouch,” Tomas said, wincing.
“Fell onto a wooden post, snapped and went straight through me. Took all day for the physician to get the wood out, but luckily nothing major was pierced otherwise I would have died then and there.”
“Alright, you win,” Rilan smirked. “What about you, Tommy? What’s the most painful thing you felt?”
“Probably watching you fight the other day. Was like watching a toddler on stilts.” Tomas said. Landry burst out with laughter.
Rilan’s expression turned to a scowl at the joke, but he couldn’t hold his grumpy expression for long. He let out a cackle as the three snickered to themselves. It felt good to let out some of the tension from the past few days in a healthy way. Tomas could feel his stress already beginning to lift.
Rilan’s face turned a little sour. Something had come up on his mind. “I keep thinking about the battle,” he spoke. “I can’t stop asking myself, why?”
“Why what?” Tomas said.
Rilan kept his voice down to keep the conversation private. “The vanguard at Barrowtown. We were not at all prepared for what was to come. None of us had any training. Few of us had proper weapons or armour. But Gharland’s army did have trained soldiers in it, as well as the cavalry on standby.”
Tomas nodded. He hadn’t thought about it much until now. In fact, he was trying very hard to forget the whole affair.
“So why were we put in the vanguard? Why was the vanguard made up of untrained, ill-equipped peasants?”
The three sat silently, pondering over the question. Tomas thought back to the angry mob who had attacked Gharland at the war camp the night after the battle, claiming he had purposefully led most of the army to their death, simply to set a trap for the invaders.
Tomas could not conceive such a thing. Could somebody really put hundreds of men to death, just for a better chance at victory?
“You were used as bait,” Landry whispered. “For the cavalry.”
Tomas and Rilan’s fears appeared to be correct.
“I knew it,” Rilan said, shaking his head in frustration. “I fuckin’ knew it. We were fodder.”
“It matters not, now,” Tomas said, trying to calm Rilan down.
“We were expendable,” Rilan said. An expression of sorrow covered his face. “That’s what we are to him.”
“Rilan, you and Tomas survived. We are here, we are away from the war.”
“Aye, but we are still under his command.”
Tomas was uncertain of what to say. Rilan was right- Gharland was a dangerous man, possibly the most dangerous one there. He clearly had no issue in sacrificing the lives of lesser men in order to achieve victory.
What does that say about a man? Can such a thing be justified?
“What scares me was that battlefield,” Landry said, looking deep into the firepit with his leaf-green eyes.
Tomas recalled the empty battlefield when they had left Barrowtown. Blood-soaked, muddied earth, devoid of any corpses.
“What happened to those bodies?” Rilan asked rhetorically.
The three boys remained silent. None had the answer. Every conceivable possibility had been disproven. The Barrowtown war camp had not removed the bodies, the Imperial Akurai army had fled the area and could not have done it.
Where did the bodies go?
As the night grew darker, most of the company had fallen asleep. Conversations simmered to quiet whispers, mixing with the cracks and sizzles of the fires.
Tomas was picking at the dirt under his nails with a rusted dagger. Rilan and Landry stared into the glowing flames.
“So, Landry, why did you become a squire?” Rilan asked abruptly, cutting through the silence.
“I want to be a knight someday, and a lord after that. After my father dies, I will be Lord Heradin. Father says it is expected of me to be chivalrous, noble, brave, and above all, experienced.” Landry paused. “I don’t want to disappoint my father. ‘Being a squire is a good place to start for that learning’, he says.”
“Pardon me for asking, but how does cleaning the Captain’s breeches and brushing his horse teach you to become a lord?” Rilan asked.
Tomas couldn’t tell if he was joking or being sincere.
Landry thought about it for a moment. “It teaches me how to take orders. ‘A leader cannot lead without learning how to listen, first.’ That’s what father always says. And, I guess, it teaches me to be patient, work hard, and have respect for the chain of command.”
“If I were ever that man’s squire, I’d probably take a piss in his soup before serving it to him,” Rilan said, making sure to keep his voice down. “Man’s a cunt.”
Landry couldn’t help but crack a smile. “And that’s why you’d never be a squire.”
“Speaking of piss, I’m gonna go take one,” Rilan said, standing up awkwardly
