keeping the faith (vera)
Somehow or another they'd found a cottage in the winter of the land that had beds to spare. Eragos could remember each terrible step that had brought them here. Until his legs were unsteady and his hands numb with cold. The wound had surrendered a great deal of blood, the owner of the cottage said, but he should be fine in a day or two. Until then? Until then he was as useless to them as any invalid. Yet he refused to rest, he refused to make himself into true dead weight. If his father had ever lost blood in battle he walked until he forced his body to make enough. There was always more blood, always more fire to bring out of a creature. And Valos Feareborne had found most of it. So standing in the cold, with the vibrations of his flambard ringing in his ears, Eragos wondered why his limbs still felt cold and wretched. How long did Valos work at such things before he achieved the end he intended? It seemed long enough ago that Eragos couldn't remember. So he drove the blade into the snow, and thought about what the dawn would bring. Change. For the first time since he'd left his home he rode with a purpose. And a good purpose, an honorable one, at that.
That troubled him.
The difficulties of these people were not his. Yet he remembered one of the first things his mother had taught him about being a knight, before he'd learned the sword. Before he'd learned to break a man with his fists. To be a knight meant to be a defender, not just of dragons or of dragonkind but of those who didn't know how to defend themselves. The wagon masters were loyal to a fault, but terrified of what was to come. The Lady Cithia could barely hold up a sword. The king was well past his prime in combat. That left only her, the Lady Vera, to guard all of them. As gifted as she seemed to be she could not do it alone. And he could not abandon her to a fate that would be sealed if he left. Telling himself that was the extent of it let Eragos keep his focus on the task at hand. It allowed him to forget about the fact that he'd stared at her far longer than was appropriate, far long than was necessary, and taken the measure of her in that time. Bracelets of glass beads and seashells clattered around his wrists. Reminding him of his other again. There were more than he could count. Possibly more than was healthy. Each one was a story he could tell himself at night, when sleep did not come easily.
A story of a man who was a knight. A story of a king who was a fool. This seemed on its surface to be the thing that stories were made of. Only he didn't know if the story would have the happy ending that bards seemed to require. More than the seashells he felt the weight of the dragon scales on his arms, carefully arranged beneath false bandages to hide his tattoos. Those bandages lay bare against the softly falling snow to give him ease of movement. If a dragon could have seen him, would it have blessed him with its power? For justice? In the here and now, knowing what its power was accomplishing, would it have blessed him for it? Or cursed him anew? That question haunted him most of all. Living by the ideas of a church that cast you out seemed uncertain, tenuous at best. He had not slain a dragon hunter in some time. So how long before he would return to that noble occupation? When a man had no purpose in life, no goal, he was empty. The emptiness could drive him to terrible things if he let it. Wretched things that made him into a monster. Searching for purpose was a desperation that anything could satisfy, if the mind was clever enough to deceive the self.
Was his?
"What does a knight contemplate in a snowstorm?"
It was her, the Lady Cithia, bundled against the cold and appearing as if from nowhere. Stripped to the waist and uncovered but for the bandages he suddenly felt raw. Naked in a way that seemed improper. Not until his cloak was settled over his shoulders did he answer.
"The meaning of life."
"The meaning of life?" her laugh sounded more dismissive than she meant it to, in the cold; at least he hoped it did. "That's for the gods to decide, isn't it?"
"My god wanted me to discover it, my Lady, and to tell him when I did."
"So have you discovered it, Master Feareborne?"
"Not yet, my Lady. There's time yet. The night is young."
When she disappeared back into the cottage - summoned there by her father's voice - he was glad to see her go. The cloak slid from his shoulders easily enough. And now that he was alone again his hands closed on the hilt of his flambard. Each series of movements was given a name by his teacher, and each series had its own name. The Rasping Fire. A Dragon Charges Down The Mountain. It was the latter he settled on, with its powerful motions and heavy swings. That might help him restore his equilibrium. If the answer didn't come soon, he might find more than his calm was missing. The scales shifted hard against his skin. All of them save the scale of Rand, the first dragon he'd killed. Rand's voice still echoed in his ears, tugged at his soul.
"She was my star. The jewel of my heart. She despised my violent ways, but she loved me. More importantly, she loved him, vagabond though he was."
"What's a vagabond?"
"A wanderer. A creature without a home. And, I thought, a creature without a conscience."
That was how the world viewed men like him. In any other light the flambard would have been proud, the weapon of a true warrior. Now it looked ancient and forgotten. Neglected. Perhaps a part of him felt that way. As the black beads rattled on his wrist, he let his hand wander to massage his temple. There were other beads, of various kinds, hanging from both wrists and around his neck. A collection of red and yellow beads around his neck, gifts that were supposed to signify power and bold action. The beads on his wrist were for each of the games that he had won. He still remembered receiving the shimmering pale beads called 'pearls' in the south. It was his first victory, before he'd met Rand. Before his life had been changed forever.
His mother, tears welling in her eyes, tugging them over his knuckles with trembling fingers. Telling him in a voice that shook how very proud of him she was. Eragos had always thought her voice had been trembling because she was scared for him, worried for him. Afraid of what might happen. He'd been filled with so much fear back then, so much confusion and trepidation. Even with all of his training, he hadn't known - what would it be like? What would he have to do? And who would he have to hurt, to do it? That same fear had come crawling into his belly when he'd learned that he was proscribed, one of the cast-aways.
But now, the fear was gone. Just as he had with becoming a Dragon Knight, the idea of becoming a knight errant had settled into his heart. He'd become.. used to it. Even if he despised the thought of it, of abandoning the thing that felt like part of his code, he couldn't escape it, could he? Only if Bahamut willed it.
"The sounds of your torment shall never reach the dragon-king," he quoted the words from memory. "You shall forever be an exile to the mercies of the greatest god."
Find the meaning of life and tell Bahamut. How could he tell the meaning of life if the dragon god couldn't hear him? That, he decided, was the purpose of the punishment. His swings became more brutal at the thought of it.