While the knights dispersed to care for their war-mounts, another rode up to the leader. With tempered agony in his voice this heavy set rider said, "My Lord Protector, are you not anxious to arrive at the castle? In truth, your father impatiently awaits details of battle."
The lord shrugged in response. "Oh, much of it has been dispatched— barely worthy of the town-crier anymore."
"Still, the cry of distant victory is not sufficient to curb the appetite of curiosity," said the knight, with light annoyance. "Not only the lord master but the people must be eager to see you in all your glory to believe it."
The lord chuckled. "Seems to me it is you, baron, who are eager— perhaps anxious for a wench, eh?"
The burly knight laughed. A graying goatee and mustache framed big yellow teeth. "Well, yea, I suppose, there is one aching my groins."
The lord chuckled again while he patted Baron Bennet’s mount. "It is your steed that aches. Remove its mail and yours and pause awhile." The lord-protector turned away to tend to his own steed, then looked back up with a broad grin and added, "Trust me, you will look more regal to your lady in your homecoming mounted on a steed reborn," he offered as he started to peel off his armor. He was a powerfully built six-footer—- unusual for the times but not so among knights. His tabard bore a different coat of arms from Bennet’s.
The stocky knight, Bennet, laughed again, wheeling his black charger round toward the other men and cantered off to rejoin the battalion under his ensign.
A long, lean but broad shouldered youth who had just peeled off his own breastplate, revealing the same coat of arms as the lord-protector’s—a white eagle with a scroll in its talons across a field of purple, dared to speak: "My lord, the baron’s castle is but a two hour ride." He removed his mail headpiece and a thick shock of flaxen hair leaped free.
" ’Tis true, lad, but the horses don’t know that," the lord said calmly. "They have served us well."
"Aye, they have, my lord," the lad agreed, nodding with a smile.
"Besides..." the lord knight pointed to the bloody bandage round his horse’s once powerful foreleg, and grimly observed, "he’s been limping and the leg is swelling."
The youth inspected the leg closer and dourly shook his head. "The lady Rhonda will have our heads for this." He lightly tapped the warhorse’s muzzle.
The lord-protector laughed. "Aye, on the mark, honest Bryan, you know well my sister’s mettle."
Then Bryan removed the heavy saddle and slid off the unwieldy blanket of mail. The mighty horse trotted off, favoring its foreleg to graze as the youthful knight set the saddle down by the tree and glanced at his master and said with a sigh, "If only people were as loyal."
The older knight chuckled. "In truth, Bryan; still, you are as loyal; but..."
"Thank you, my lord, for your faith in me." The youth cut in as he began to spread out the mail blanket to wipe away the dust.
The protector grinned and shook his head. "Because you’ve only recently been dubbed a knight on the battlefield, you find it hard to give up your squire habits—you should be tending to your own, Sir Bryan."
He spread a shy smile, "Still, a strange ring to it....I shall;...still, there is no one as loyal and faithful as Lady Rhonda, I trust still."
The lord chuckled. "Too many stills may put her in frightful flight! Suffice that she’s been waiting starry-eyed these months."
"Amazing how an experienced warlord can turn years into months." The youth chuckled, though suspecting Lance's confusion was his mother’s recent demise.
The lord laughed, then tufted his trim beard over the battle scar on his chin. "How long then?—surely not two years yet."
"Two months over it," the youth said, knees in the heavily linked blanket, then returned to his previous thought, "Sti...Though I have faith, I shall still my breath, till I’m sure!"
The lord shook his head, then looked amicably upon the youth, "Good, lad—that is, good sir—with your polishing and his well deserved rest, my old gray will look refreshed and invigorated rather than a weakened nag when we march into the shadows of my father’s castle. Poor old Stars, he more than I, deserves the honor....But tend to your own faithful steed, the blanket can wait. " The lord knight sat down and rested against the trunk of a tree; his eyes followed his great horse with silvery starry spots gleaming under the sun as it grazed. He added wistfully to the youth, who was uncinching his own dark brown steed, "Without the great loyalty and endurance of the likes of Stars there would be no honor, no knight-hood." He gave a forlorn sigh, knowing his lame horse could serve no more in noble combat.
The former squire scratched his head and asked belatedly, "No knighthood, my lord?—surely, an animal is not cause for such an honored station."
The lord knight laughed. "Oh, but it is; for the finest, and most powerful horses in the land are saddled by knights. That is what separates us from the ordinary fighter who still mounts the imported breed of the traditional past."
"How very odd, my Lord Lance," the youth said as he scratched his flaxen shock; "surely you have heard of the home-grown steeds of the mountain borough. Yet I have heard there are no knights there."
"Indeed, and why they are not in need of ours; for there is no substitute for the likes of old Stars," Lord Lance, said dejectedly as he thrust his chin to the meadow. "Still, I, too have heard of them: beauties, they say."
Bryan, brushing his steed, waxed, "And more,... it is said that the horses there are so swift of hoof, they more than compensate for the heavy protection we require."
"Aye, Bryan," the lord agreed, "there is a point to that. I’ve often thought myself that the paraphernalia of knighthood might well be counter-productive."
Bryan laughed. "With your war record, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that!"
Somewhat phlegmatically, Lance said, removing his riding duster. "We must see for our-selves someday." Silence spread over them, and the lord knight nodded off to dream the dream that he could not escape, nor did he want to.
Copyright © 2008 Richard R. Kennedy All rights reserved. Revised: Sept 8, 2008.
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