Tioops
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I'm holding off on posting so I can be later in this turn's order.
Likewise, I'm good with whatever.
Sir Jerel Ban
A smile, a true smile, slipped onto Jerel’s face. It felt good, to smile and make others laugh, like a knot inside his chest was unravelled by its loose end. When he realised, he became overly conscious, and it fell away, and rising up to replace it was some of that same tension that had momentarily abated. His jaw muscle jumped as he clenched it.
He scratched his beard, the horse bone scrimshaw rattling on their braids.
“Do you forget I spend most of my time in a rookery?” Jerel said, his gait sauntering, loose; he was too tired for the rigid decorum he usually demanded of himself, “They eat rotten flesh and shit it back out just as fast.”
He shook his head, a slight smile fighting its way back to his face, "They almost smell as bad as you."
The darkening of Gerard’s features didn’t go unnoticed, but Jerel decided not to comment on them. There was a pit growing in his stomach, and it needed filling.
They took the shortest path to the kitchens.
The bandage stank of herbs and ointments. It was dubious whether such a thing was even needed, given the healing magics. They claimed it aided the process. Jerel thought it served more as a brand, to let their shame be known to all, to hammer home that they needed to be better. As if that wasn’t known already.
And then, a thought. An answer to a private, idle wondering that birthed another litter.
“Ser Gerard, I was not there in the battle. What was it like fighting him? What did you learn?” Jerel asked. What he did not say, but what rattled in his mind, How many men could have stood before him? How many would it have taken? If not for the Knights?
@HereComesTheSnow
Sir Jerel Ban
“Bah!” Jerel barked, waving away the apology like a bad smell, a wry smile twisting at the corners of his mouth, “If she could then she’d have been doing you all a favour.” His pride twinged beneath the joke; it wasn’t too far from reality. It echoed in his wounded arm.Breaking eye contact, he looked over at a far corner of the room whilst talking; the plaster whirled between the stone in circular patterns. The smile fell away. “I do not think what you did was wrong. Sadly, our captain exists as something more than us mere mortals; to have not rushed to her aid for the sake of some lowly girl?” Jerel shrugged, as though shifting under a heavy pack, “At least you left her with a fighting chance. However small.”
“I have my doubts,” Jerel went on, “Whether many others would have thought to do such a thing. Whether they cared, even, for the one thing that kept the fight going, or if they just wanted to wet their blades.”
His eyes snapped, to Gerard, as though remembering he was not alone. “Forgive my blathering. I should not talk of my comrades so, certainly not after..." he motioned at his injured arm to finish his sentence, he bobbed his head downwards with a long blink, a minute bow, and said nothing more of it.
It was then that a young servant boy skittered up to them and began gathering Jerel’s armour. He bowed deeply upon arriving and departing, but Jerel scarcely paid him more than a glare.
“Besides, I do not think you need to learn the subtleties of court,” Jerel glanced sidelong at Gerard, “Unless you plan on carving an illustrious career for yourself, but that takes more than simple deeds. No, I think our lot go there as entertainment, something exotic for the circles of higher society to look at, maybe a bard’s tale or two spun overtop. Clumsy social graces might serve to make you more outrageous of an attraction, so erratic are their tastes.”
From his stomach came the growl of a neglected beast. Trail rations and marching weren’t great sustenance for healing. As before when he could not muster a smile, his brows arched.
“I think the kitchens beckon. Walk with me? If not to the kitchens,” he said, looking the sodden Gerard up and down with exaggerated distaste, “at least until our paths split to the baths?”
@HereComesTheSnow
Stay strong, the weekend is almost here.
Sir Jerel Ban
The healer was rubbing a poultice into Jerel’s arm with glowing hands. It reeked, heady and herbal. The sort of odour that carried, that you might smell for days after its source was gone. It was not even the strongest smell in the wing. “Sir Gerard,” Jerel answered with a level stare. The knight looked haggard, sopping with sweat. Jerel’s mouth twitched, but he could not muster a smile, so instead arched his brows and nodded at the healer as she tied a bandage firmly about his arm and shoulder. With a will too tired to resist, Jerel bobbed with motions.
“‘Tis but a scratch, I’ve had worse.”
The healer finished what she was doing, scribbled something in a ledger, and hurried off into the fog of coughing and groans and too-easy snoring.
A silence settled, dust upon an open page; Jerel knew he could end this chapter now, say no more and close the book. But he knew that he wouldn’t, that he shouldn’t. Here was a chance to not sink further into the quagmire brewing in his thoughts. All he had to do was blow away the dust and read on.
“I fear the greater injury was to my pride,” Jerel said, raising his eyes from the flagstones, “But from the looks of you, you know something of that.” Everyone dealt with their stresses differently, and Sir Gerard was far from the only knight to beat them away. He was, however, among the most consistent. Jerel envied those that strove for improvement, for their seemingly unfaltering direction. They were like landmarks muddled into the wrong places, for they made Jerel feel all the more lost.
The ward curtains seemed ethereal in the light that swam down through thin windows, rolling in the breeze stirred by bustling bodies.
Jerel pulled on a shirt, restricting the motion of his bandaged arm as much as possible. He stood, and smoothed it down.
“Have you heard the news?” He slung his bow over his good shoulder, knowing it unlikely that Sir Gerard had, and looked down at his armour, discarded, a shell. A costume.
“There’s to be a ball. Being one of our dear Captain’s chosen, one might expect an invitation is headed your way.”
With a flick of the wrist, Jerel caught a servant’s attention and gestured at his armour. They nodded, and, presumably, went to find somebody else less busy, trailing steam from a bowl of hot towels.
“I’m sure there will be plenty of women there who have never held a weapon either.”
@HereComesTheSnow
Sir Jerel Ban
A Royal Ball. Faces of those within earshot looked up, or at each other, smiles creasing their faces and putting light back behind their eyes. Mostly. There were those whose brows creased downwards and who left with a jumping jaw muscle or as though trying to pound holes in the floor with their feet. Some did not react outwardly at all, apart from a flinch they couldn’t contain, or a quick flit of the eyes, to the messenger and back again.
Jerel saw this, and more. Even with his world receding inwards, despite even the dull ache in his chest and the throbbing in his temples, he saw, and he cursed his eyes.
He nodded back at Gillian. He knew the connotations carried by that mere gesture.
As the knights broke away into their islands, Jerel stood alone on his.
Perhaps he could have chased the dourness away by meeting the eyes of another of the knights, one of those he considered more than a comrade, and letting loose the words out that bubbled up beneath his breast. Most of those were gone now. He would not have anyway. Even when he should be mourning the loss of a knight he considered only himself. It would have made him feel better if that came as a surprise.
With his features hammered into stony indifference he turned his back on the hall, its display cases and knights, and strode with measured paces to the healers’ wing. He kept his eyes ahead and his mouth a taut line.
He did not remember how many lives he took.
What did they look like? His eyes might not miss much but his memory was as fallible as any other.
His legs carried him forwards, his face remained untouched by his thoughts. Just how, Jerel was unsure.
Far away, outside the stony halls, up and up, were his birds, his books. They were waiting for him. He could feel them pulling at him, urging him to run and lock the door on the world. A Royal Ball.
He had a duty, an oath. He was a warrior in his tribe and now in this kingdom. The others, they would not question so much the justice they dealt. They wouldn’t let themselves get injured by a greenhorn bandit either.
How many?
“HmmmNn mhmm nnnrr?”
The world came back to him. Acrid tinctures and the low complaints of pain and illness. Hard wood bit into the backs of his thighs. Jerel was on a bench.
He raised his eyes to the healer, ready to catch the words if they came again.
@VitaVitaAR
Sir Jerel Ban
At last, they were back.
The familiar low din of Candaeln bounced about the hard surfaces with weird acoustics that made it seem all the more cavernous and empty in light of ringing in Jerel’s ears, which expected something more. He hadn’t realised how loud the streets had been, until they were locked away behind walls and closed doors. All those faces twisted by the current of their collective emotions; adulating and wide, like a polished lake reflecting the heavens - the Knights filled them with hope, their captain most of all; then the ripple of disquiet that sunk smiles here and there for only an instant, when they saw Jerel’s wound and realised even Legends could bleed (he did not let his chin drop until he was inside Candaeln); and then the anger, the anger at the prisoners. It wasn’t blatant and bestial, but insidious, like spiderweb cracks on thin ice hiding waters deep and dark beneath. In those black mirrors, Jerel swore he could see their thoughts, entertaining fantasies - their own perversions of justice and revenge and glory, as if they never would have been swayed if their lives were at stake. As if they weren't thinking the very thoughts that shone in their eyes.
Ter was outside in some private perch, but Jerel could sense him, and took comfort that his bird had not fallen afoul of any moral sundries. Just tired and relieved. Jerel suspected his bird would find sleep far easier than him.
The swords that adorned the room only seemed to taunt him. All these greats in their order and he had been injured by a desperate man likely no more trained than any farmer. And he had killed them too, and that thought more than any other kept coming back; he had killed them and felt nothing and yet now he wanted to throw-up and remove the weight that seemed to be crushing his chest.
Books had softened him. That must be it, he thought as he trudged towards the healer’s to check his wound for bad blood or infection. Too many hours spent reading and not enough training.
But that wasn’t it. What it ultimately came down to was a shift in his view of the world, and perhaps the histories and accounts in the library were responsible for that. Killing, even for the kingdom and Order to which he was Oath-sworn, filled him with remorse. It shouldn’t; he should have every confidence what he was doing was the right thing. Should.
Am I fit to be a knight? I feel I am just some dreadful imposter.
Surely this was no new conflict, and it was likely just the events catching up with him, compounding, or a malaise introduced by his wound. And yet, he felt that he had a decision to make. It’s just, he couldn’t decide if that was -
"Good news or bad news?" (@PaulHaynek)
Jerel stopped at the archway, leaning with one hand upon the wall. He turned to look at Jarde, at the courier. It could have been destiny, or confluence, or coincidence. Perhaps they were all the same.
Still, Jerel waited to hear the answer.
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