Vol.4, Ch.3, P.6
The 5th Order headquarters—three winters past.
Giggles and guffaws filled the training grounds. Content, a crowd of knights wiped their brows and went their separate ways. Left in their wake was a young man, his burly body laid low upon the earth. Rolf Buckmann was his name—swain and Deiva-forsaken. Ever without Her grace of odyl, his fate it was to fail and founder even on these fields of practice.
“Ghh…”
Fist upon the dirt, Rolf rose totteringly to his feet, and there took to hand again the hilt of his iron feder. Though beaten and ablood, the day’s practice for Rolf was hardly ended—a thousand swings was in order. And perhaps a thousand or three more for good measure.
“Well met, my sweeting of a swain,” sang a voice. Approaching Rolf now was a figure fair of face and form: Sheila Larsen, surgien to the Owlcrane Brigade. “You poor thing,” she said softly. “Spent and spat upon as ever, I see.”
“…Indeed,” Rolf replied, hoarse of breath. He kept his expression stilled—guarded, in a way, for the sight afore him was passing seldom, if not suspicious: that of his saintly superior, paying both a visit to these grounds and a mind for her “silly swain”, and in the same hour, at that.
“Your wounds,” Sheila pointed out, “might I mend them for you?”
A pillar of the knightly leadership and a character of competence, Sheila’s mending magicks were nigh on miracles in and of themselves. To receive such succour from so famed and fair a surgien as she—well, what more could a downcast and cut-up knight ask for? Indeed, they who so savoured her salving spells would oft flaunt the very fact to any fellow near at hand.
But Rolf was no knight. Nor was he even a swain of any promise. Thus not once had Sheila ever fancied giving this ungraced a lick of relief. Upon command by her lieutenant Emilie would she oblige, sure. But that was that, and this was this: never by her own volition had the surgien deigned to soothe the swain’s cuts and scathes.
A spurned pariah, wounded and wasting upon the wayside—no sane Londosian would dare give such an eyesore a second look, no matter how generous or well-meaning. Sheila was, of course, very much a feather of that flock. And so did all the skies seem to fall when on this day, the surgien vouchsafed unto the swain a helping hand.
“…‘Mend’?” said Rolf. “Why? If I may ask.”
“Hm?” Sheila blinked. “Oh, a whim of the warm heart, as one might say.”
Not a lint of a lie was in her words: pure caprice was, in fact, her sole inspiration. An urge to beautify the day with a bit of clemency, one worth its own section in the Scriptures, or so she might have fancied it.
“Gramercy, my Lady,” thanked Rolf, slightly bowing, “but I must decline.”
Thus explained Sheila’s displeasure on this day. Her healing—refused? Never could she have foreseen such a flagrant faux pas. And so there Sheila stood, silent as stone, till at length she moved her lips.
“…Humility ill-salves the sore,” she debated back, tenebrous in tone. “Come. Your wounds are many.”
“I would welcome it were war upon us here and now,” Rolf explained. “But mine are the pains of practice; my Lady needn’t mind them.”
Correct exercise, of course, called for a body in good working order. Care and convalescence were thus critical. Yet wounds were a fact of daily life to Rolf. To deviate on this one day and indulge in Sheila’s remedy, therefore, was meaningless to him. Besides, he had by now become quite accustomed to braving the pain, and even knew a few tricks to help ease the burden. Thus not in the least did he miss the miracles of the healers.
“Nevertheless, no mending has ever meant any harm,” Sheila reasoned. “Be not so headstrong. What pauper turns his plight by pouting of his poverty? And an ungraced, his impotence?”
“‘Pouting’…” Rolf thought aloud. “Yes. You make the perfect point, my Lady. Yet ‘pouting’ is, to me, an importance.”
“Sad little swain,” Sheila sighed. “Begrudging your blessed betters is but foolery. Indeed, he is a child who so gainsays another’s goodwill; this, even you ought know.”
Penury and opulence; impotence and power. To Sheila, such were weighed on the same scale: the worth of man as decided by his lot in life. Rolf’s wayward resistance, therefore, was teasing out of her naught but riled nerves.
“My Lady,” he began rebutting, “oft can goodwill from the wealthy wound the pauper’s pride.”
The enterprising impoverished, the fightsome unfortunate, the weakened but unyielding warrior—to such souls can the extended hand hurt rather than help. An enduring mystery this may seem to those more well-off, but to Rolf, it was a lesson hard-learnt and locked away amongst his few remaining treasures.
“…‘Pride’?” Sheila echoed, dubious. “Have you such a thing?”
“Yes, my Lady. I do,” Rolf answered firmly.
An incensed squint of the eye glinted from Sheila’s mien. If anyone’s pride was punctured, it was hers, she felt. For were her remedies not badges of honour to a knight? Tokens to be coveted by one and all? The saviour’s salve, to be graciously presented and gladly accepted? Yet here it was: declined, dismissed, denounced. And by whose hand but this ungraced’s, to whom all benevolence was undeserved, who himself ought spend every hour onwards stooping in gratitude for this fleeting moment of mercy.
“Why is it, I wonder?” said Sheila. “That so deaf must you be to the idiocies you air? Tell me, my dear swain: what flower might bloom from the barren soil that is the stubbornness of him so abandoned by our Deiva? Is it not your place to prostrate afore us all? To grovel for our gifts?”
Rolf discerned then the indignance simmering in his superior. Kneeling afore her and silently accepting her salve ought have been the correct course of action, one surely taken had he fawned for her any lustily like his knightly seniors. But this, he would not do. This, he could not do. To be maimed by the powerful, and thence be mended by them—nay. He would be no hound’s toy. And accepting such absurdity, to begin with, was to accept the trampling foot upon his one bud of a belief: that in bearing both wound and blade might this lightless path of his lead to some lightful future.
“My Lady, pray understand,” Rolf persisted. “No matter his lot, every man has in him something he would sooner die for than dispense with.”
“…”
A stabbing dagger of an answer.
And bearing it, bitter and wounded silence was all Sheila could give in return.
♰
So drew the curtains over that blemish of a scene.
…One now having its unsought encore as I walked down the manor corridor, lost in thought.
Looking back, ever did he put on airs, the silly little swain. A cur whimpering for scraps, only to snap at any hand that dared a charity. Indeed, how unlovely, how noisome his every word, his every deed. And ever, as well, was he none the wiser, deluding himself with dreams of requital, fancying his trodden path an anvil whence would be smithed out of him a man of any worth.
Certainly, an unknowing eye might mistake such contrivance for conviction. Yet it was only Her eye alone that could pierce through all deceit, Her scales upon which all worth could be measured. And so long as She judged him the black sheep of Her herd, his “conviction” was but a bleat to the wind, futile as it was fevered.
Perhaps he thought himself cunning. Long winters spent in his dark corner, shaping schemes that saw him undoing myself and mine in our blindest hour. Oh, a sickly thought, that—a fool construing lunacy for enlightenment.
“A fool, indeed. And yet, one most pitiful…”
Yes. Displeasing fool he may be, but unworthy of pity he was not. For I felt smouldering in my bosom an ember of guilt: the failure of a woman of Faith to lead the wayward meek back to the rightwise path. Was he truly lost? Beyond all avail? Never to realise, never to accept his lot in Her world? Such was ever the riddle whispering from the back of my mind.
“…Oh, wayward swain,” I mused under my breath. “Indecision was my sin, for I could not stint the fattening of your foolery. But worry not. Your wounds, your woes… as Yoná is my witness, I will see to their mending—once and for all.”
I felt next that bosom-ember stoked to a new shape, unlooked for but welcomed all the same: a gushing joy for the battle to come.
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