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He finds Henry by first finding the dog.
Mutt is lying flat on his side in the drying mud, stretched in the shade across the open door to the Trosky baths. The dog lifts his head as Hans approaches, his keen eyes locking onto Hans’ face, and his tail begins to thump lazily against the dirt even as he lets his head fall back down against the soil.
“Oh, don’t move on my account,” Hans says as he awkwardly steps over him. In response, the dog’s tail only begins to hit the ground more quickly, happy little thump-thump-thumps at being acknowledged.
Hans expects to find Henry mid-soak, but the few tubs in the little room are empty. Henry is perfectly dry, in fact, sitting at the back of the room, fully-clothed – dirty, even. He is a patron of the baths who comes not to bathe, it seems, but instead to listen to an old woman chatter away at him as she scrubs clothes over the washboard.
Hans does not get the opportunity to hear what has Henry so enraptured; the woman notices Hans’ entrance immediately, and her face shutters in the way that all peasant faces do when Hans enters a room. It is the way of things, and it never bothered Hans before, but lately – maybe because of the noose, maybe because of the weeks in the wilderness alone – he has found it less desirable.
The laundry woman’s voice trails off, smile dropping from her face as she looks up at Hans, and the sudden change makes Henry look over his shoulder.
Henry stands, stool legs scraping loudly against the floor, sudden and alert.
“Sir Hans,” he says, a bit too loud in the small space.
For the first few days after the gallows, Hans had been almost entirely wrapped up in his own mind. The noose, even untightened, seemed to have rattled his brain around in a way he does not yet fully comprehend: a newfound jumpiness that he had not previously suffered, an inability to sleep through the night, a greater distaste for closed doors and the darkness that waits behind them.
So it had taken Hans an ashamedly long time to notice it. After the rattling in his head had lessened to something slightly more manageable, after his thoughts had become something more recognizable as his own, only then did he notice that something in Henry had changed, too.
It’s there, subtle and strange, at the edges of Henry’s motions: the way he stands to greet Hans whenever he enters a room, now. The way he sticks too close, too often. The newfound eagerness to please, even when Hans interrupts him at leisure.
Behind Henry, the woman turns back to her washing, the sound of the cloth against the washboard a strange, rhythmic background noise.
Hans tips his chin up, paying her no mind, and tells Henry, “We’re going riding.”
Henry’s brows come together. Hans watches the divot form between them, as it always does when Henry is troubled.
“We are?” Henry asks. He adjusts his weight, leaning, his eyes sliding past Hans’ shoulder to look through the open door, out toward the courtyard. “It’s a bit late, isn’t it?”
The sun inches closer to the horizon with every breath, and Hans taps his hand against his leg.
“Is it?” he says. He aims for a casual tone, but his voice comes out a bit tight, a bit high. He swallows, and he sounds more himself when he adds, as if he’s just thought of it, “Then we should plan to make a night of it. In fact, I think it’s a splendid idea. We’ll make camp, sleep under the stars. It’ll be lovely weather, I hear.”
Henry is still for a protracted moment, his eyes focused on Hans’ face. Hans braces himself for the usual brand of Henry’s possible arguments: the Are you mad? or the Are the feather beds too soft for you, your lordship? or even, perhaps, if Henry is feeling particularly biting, the Have you forgotten what happened the last time we made camp?
Hans taps his hand against his leg again. He is already crafting his defenses in his mind when Henry says, lifting one shoulder slowly, “If you like.”
Really? Hans thinks.
He claps his hands together and says, instead, “Perfect. You’ll see to the horses, then, won’t you? And the supplies.”
“Of course,” Henry says, nodding. “Just give me a half-hour.”
“Great,” Hans says, with a confidence that he doesn’t entirely feel. “I’ll meet you at the stables.”
He retreats to the winding halls of Trosky, ascending the narrow stairways where the walls loom and tilt. In his borrowed room, he sits on the edge of the bed and wipes the sweat from his palms onto his hose.
He knows now that all the talk of the demons of Trosky is more than just rumors and gossip. There’s something he hates about this place, something that shakes him at his core. The crushing stone around him and above him, the ridiculous labyrinthine walkways, the closeness of the walls, the ugly murals and tapestries.
It is bearable in the daylight. But at night, the shadows stretch longer and the walls lean closer and sleep becomes tumultuous and ragged and torturous.
With every moment he stays, he despises the nights at Trosky all the more.
The trunk at the foot of his borrowed bed is, embarrassingly, nearly empty. He has only what has been gifted to him by von Bergow: some fine tunics that are a little tight in the shoulders, some well-crafted hose that come up a little short on him – all tailored with someone else in mind and given to him in a hurry. The clothes he wore to the wedding – the coat that took him weeks to save for, days to convince the butcher to order for him, hours of attempts to take his own measurements to sneak to the tailor – have all gone missing. Taken when he was imprisoned, and pilfered, no doubt, the moment the first bell chimed.
If he sees a man walking around Trosky in that coat, he might kill him.
For now, he changes into the warmest layers he has been given and pulls the pourpoint over it all.
Lord von Bergow is at his desk when Hans is let in. He reacts to Hans’ announcement of the night out with the requisite amount of polite concern, but he drops it quickly enough when Hans sells him a few lines about the quickness of their jaunt and a promise that they’ll be staying at an inn. He’s a much easier mark than Hanush, who has long since learned all of Hans’ favorite lies.
“You won’t be doing any hunting, I take it?” von Bergow says, lips curling in amusement at his own joke. Hans bites his tongue to keep a comment at bay, the pain sharp and grounding, and he forces a polite laugh.
After they exchange the bare minimum of pleasantries, Hans excuses himself quickly.
The sky is just beginning to discolor – pink licking at the bottom of the clouds – when he reaches the stables. He’s early, but Henry must have spoken to the grooms, indeed: their two horses stand out in the fading sun, a pair of young hands working on the last of the tacking. Pebbles, seeing Hans approach with his small bag over his shoulder, stubbornly steps forward despite the hand holding her bridle. She pushes her soft nose into Hans’ shoulder as soon as she is in range, lipping at the fabric of his hood.
“You’re a spoiled one,” Hans says to her, patting the muscle of her cheek as she dips her head low to check the purse on Hans’ belt. “Seems you’ve conveniently forgotten all your training from back home.”
“Sorry, sir,” the hired hand says, flustered. He yanks at Pebbles’ bridle, then pushes at her chest and clicks his tongue, but Pebbles remains unmoved.
Hans can admit – if only to himself - that this may be a monster he has helped to create. He has, perhaps, snuck a few handfuls of treats to Pebbles since their reunion. She is a dumb animal, and an ugly little nag, but she’s also a piece of Rattay. A member of the company that Hans lost. A survivor. He had been happy to see her alive, is all. Hans’ own horse had not been so lucky.
He slips his pack from his shoulder to pull out one of the apples he had nicked from the plate in his room. Pebbles tries to take it from him before it’s even fully out of the bag, large teeth grabbing. Hans fights her on it, an amusing little tug-of-war. She finally manages to rip half of the apple from his hand, and she crunches loudly, whole head bouncing in satisfaction as she chews.
Hans steps past Pebbles to give the other half to his new horse, the gift from von Bergow. Aethon is too well-trained to step out of position, but he eyes the apple keenly as Hans steps close. His mouth is gentler than Pebbles’ – a well-mannered young man. Hans pats his neck as he chews. Aethon may not be from Rattay, but they’ll get along just fine.
A sound at his heel makes him look down; Mutt pants up at him, tongue lolling. Hans cranes his neck to see Henry standing a few paces behind him, a large pack slung over his shoulder.
“Don’t you like to say that I spoil the animals?” Henry asks. He’s wearing his set of scratched and worn armor, all of it mismatching – the same set he wore recently on their trip to Nebakov. He’s patched the pieces of it together from God-knows-where. One of the first things Hans will do when they are back in Rattay is commission Henry a replacement set of yellow armor, one that befits him, one that he can wear with pride. One that he will not lose.
Hans tips his chin up. “You do spoil the animals,” he reminds Henry. “Horribly.” It’s an old argument, now, and one without any particular venom – even if Henry is far too lenient with his obnoxious dog.
Pebbles shakes herself free of the boy picking her hoof to clop forward and greet Henry as well, nosing at his shoulder.
“It’s only Pebbles, anyway,” Hans adds in his defense, watching Henry pat Pebbles’ neck. Pebbles is one thing, but Hans would certainly sooner be caught dead than to start spoiling the dog. “She’s a member of the company.”
Henry’s face goes a bit soft at that, and he dips his head as if attempting to hide it beneath the rim of his helmet. He swings the pack onto her haunch, tying it in place to the saddle. He looks at Hans over Pebbles’ withers when he says, “Just don’t start getting any ideas about taking her as your own. She’s my horse.”
As if Hans could be fit to be seen on the haggard little mare. He says, instead, unable to resist the urge to poke and prod, “You wouldn’t give her to me if I asked? I don’t think you can deny a request from your lord.”
He means it as a general rule – that Henry shouldn’t be denying the requests of any lord – but instead Henry says, his hand stroking down the hair of Pebbles’ mane, “I do seem to have trouble denying you anything.”
It’s too much of a reminder of the changes since the noose, the strange newfound obedience that Henry seems to have settled into, that it sets Hans back for a moment.
Since the noose, Henry has been docile. He hasn’t argued with a single decision, has not offered an unasked-for opinion, has not shown the least of his usual obstinacy.
Hans knows that he should, technically, be grateful for the change. His bodyguard learning to be less brash, more dutiful, more attentive – more like a proper aid. A reliable little minion. It certainly bodes well for Henry’s future – he is sure to climb the ranks more quickly if he manages to be more obsequious, more solicitous, to whichever lords come his way.
But it makes Hans feel a bit as if he’s looking at a stranger.
“Oh, keep your ugly horse,” he manages eventually, a bit weakly. “At least until I can get you that estate I owe you. Then we’ll let Pebbles decide where she would prefer to live.”
“I think it was two estates now,” Henry reminds him.
“At this point,” Hans says, “I may as well gift you all of Pirkstein.” He quickly ties his own pack to Aethon’s saddle. The hired hands have stepped back, evidently finished with the tacking and hoof-picking. Hans sets his foot into the stirrup and swings his way up into the seat. “What say you, Henry? When we return to Rattay, perhaps I’ll return as the blacksmith and you can deal with Hanush’s tiresome, lordly lessons.”
“I think I’d sooner swallow hot coals,” Henry says on a grin. But he steps forward to take Aethon’s bridle in hand, and when he looks up at Hans from below the rim of his helmet, his smile has dissolved. “Are you sure you want to go just in that?”
Hans looks down at himself. “Did I forget my hose again? Oh, no, there they are.”
“I mean,” Henry says, then seems to catch himself. He finally manages, “I’m sure Lord von Bergow could lend you some heavier armor.”
In weeks past, Hans might have bristled at Henry’s tone, at his nagging, at this apparent belief that Hans is a child that needs to be led by the hand. But he looks down at Henry by his knee and realizes – it is not condescension. Perhaps it was, once, but it is not now. It is just Henry meaning to do his job.
For a brief moment, Hans actually considers it: getting off his horse and ambling back up into von Bergow’s room and asking him to pile him high with plate armor and chainmail. It’s a strange impulse.
“No,” Hans says. He shifts in the saddle, feeling the need to justify himself – a foreign feeling. Another change. “I’ll be fine. I’ve come to know these parts rather well, after all, and I know which places to avoid. I have no intention of running us into danger tonight. I know that I… That is, that last time…”
Aethon, sensing the increased tension in Hans’ body, shuffles a step forward, dipping his head. Hans forces his legs to relax.
Henry pats the horse’s neck, distracted. He keeps his eyes on Hans’ face.
Another strange impulse, then: the desire to tell Henry to forget it. To go back inside and drink himself senseless and sleepless under the crushing stone of Trosky. Anything to avoid that strange look in Henry’s eyes.
Hans has never been an indecisive man, has never been one to doubt a choice once made. He does not like it. He does not recognize it in himself, this shifting fear.
“All right,” Henry says, as if he has received an answer somewhere in the silence. He pats Aethon’s neck once more, then turns and pulls himself heavily up onto Pebbles, his armor clanking as he settles into the saddle.
Hans swallows, suppressing a rising wave of gratitude. He quickly spurs Aethon forward into a walk.
The streets of Trosky are crowded – people finishing their work for the day and walking home, or heading out to begin gathering and drinking. When they pass the gallows, Hans looks up at its crossbeam, refusing to bow to the discomfort that shivers through him. Christ, but it is horrible. Each time he sees the structure, he swears he can feel the coarse rope against his neck, the shaking log beneath his feet. It’s as if it has injured him, scarring his skin, causing him ache: an injury that he cannot see.
They step out through the gates of the town, and the sky opens wide above them: clouds wispy and pink-purple against the still-blue sky. Hans watches a flock of birds wheel far overhead for so long that he nearly goes dizzy with it, and he has to tip his head back down to the Earth.
Hans turns them southwest. Minutes from Trosky, the road goes clear and quiet. The horizon is a distant line across the fields. Hans watches a shepherd, a dark figure in the distance, usher his sheep toward their pen, the bells on the animals’ necks clinking faintly.
Henry clicks his tongue and brings Pebbles into step beside Aethon.
“So,” Henry says. His tone is carefully casual. “Are you going to tell me the real reason we’re out here?”
“What?” Hans asks. “I told you, I felt like camping. Fresh air, Henry! The open sky. We are never closer to God than when we are out in His divine wilderness.”
Henry does not immediately reply. He turns his head, keeping his attention on the road ahead. Mutt darts ahead of them, crisscrossing the path at will and scaring birds out of the tall grasses beside them.
Somehow, Henry’s silence feels heavier than any word he’s ever said – even the painful ones he spat at the pillory.
“I just,” Hans says, his voice quieter. He bites his tongue, briefly, to ground himself on the sharp spike of pain. “I just needed some air,” he concludes. “There’s something about that place…”
He lets himself trail off. It sounds weak to his own ears, but it is better than speaking the full, embarrassing truth: that he would sooner throw himself from a window than spend yet another night under Trosky’s heavy stone, where the rattling in his head caused by the noose does not allow him to sleep, where the shadows of the gallows seem to bend impossibly through every window, where his thoughts don’t yet fully feel like his own.
It makes him feel like a child again, just a boy shaking himself awake from nightmares.
“Yeah,” Henry says. “I’m glad to get the break from it. Too many bad memories there. Feels like you can’t get away from ‘em.”
It shocks Hans each time it happens – when Henry will say something so aligned with Hans’ own thoughts that it’s as if he has opened Hans’ head and reached inside to pluck a sentence out with his fingers. Before meeting Henry, Hans had had no idea that people so aligned to his mind could exist. Now, it surprises him mainly that it should come from a man raised in such different circumstances to his own.
“Yes,” Hans says, emphatically.
“And anyway,” Henry continues, perfectly frank, “the longer we stay there, the harder it’s getting to stop myself from lacing the chamberlain’s breakfasts with bane potion.”
Hans laughs, tossing his head back.
“Just a little bit,” Henry adds. “Just a weak one. I wouldn’t kill him or anythin’.”
“No?” Hans asks.
“Nah.” Henry tosses a hand. “Just give ‘im a few bad days, that’s all. Maybe a week.”
“Ah, Hal,” Hans says, the air leaving him, some of the tension going with it, “You always know just what to say.”
Henry sits a bit straighter in the saddle, shoulders going back, and Hans spurs his horse on a bit faster.
Hans had not initially had a destination in mind – nothing beyond the desperate need to get out under the open sky – but his weeks spent hunting in the wilderness have made him nearly as familiar with the land as he is with the woods around Rattay. He leads them until the rolling fields give way to lumbering trees and bushes leaning close over the road. Hans knows of a comfortable little copse where the soil is soft and the sightlines are well hidden. He had never used the spot for his own, given that it was a bit too close to the road for his preference, but he thinks it will do nicely now. It’s close enough that they will manage to beat the falling sun, and it will make for a fine camp.
They’re nearing the mark where they’ll have to turn off the road entirely when Mutt begins to bark.
Henry whistles for him, but Mutt, far ahead on the road, ignores him and continues barking at something around the bend, something that is hidden by the close trees.
Hans stops his horse, hair at the back of his neck beginning to rise. Pebbles steps up beside Aethon, and Henry, hand already on the pommel of his sword, says, “Let me go ahead and see.”
“No,” Hans says, putting his hand on his own sword, “you blockhead. Though I will let you go first.”
Henry kicks Pebbles forward, and Hans follows a few strides behind. They hear a voice beneath Mutt’s barking even before they turn the bend. There, revealed through the trees, is an overturned cart, its nose in the ditch beside the road, one wheel still spinning, slow and helpless, in the air.
The owner of the cart stands in the center of the road. He is well-dressed, his coat a deep, rich purple, and he is the one who is yelling.
“Not there,” he snaps. “You’ll break the entire axle, you incompetent fool.”
His manservant, a man with hair just as gray as his master’s but with a face more deeply lined, appears to be struggling in the ditch to attach their horse’s lead to the cart.
“We’ll be consumed by this horrible dog before you-“ The cart owner looks back at Mutt, and in doing so, finally notices the pair of horsemen approaching. He startles, then waves excitedly. “Jesus Christ be praised,” he gasps. He scurries past Henry to approach Hans, his palms clasping together before him. “Good sir, you must be Heaven sent!”
“Oh, yes?” Hans asks. “What seems to be the trouble?”
Henry is tense in the saddle, his head turning as he scans the trees around him. He must suspect an ambush, and though Hans admires his attention to his duty, he thinks it is ill-placed. The stranger is a true merchant; his hands are too soft for him to be a bandit in disguise.
“We must have hit a rock in the fading light,” the merchant says. “Ah, who can say? My driver, he is… Well. We’re lucky the harness snapped and didn’t bring down the horse with it.”
Hans looks over at the skinny draft horse, head low, in the road.
“Would you lend me your man for a moment to help us get the cart upright?” the merchant asks.
There is some small thrill, Hans finds, in the idea of helping a citizen in need with such a simple request. It’s what a knight ought to be doing.
“Henry,” he says benevolently. “You heard the man. Off you go.”
Henry, still looking a bit uneasy, swings from Pebbles with a heavy slide. With his dismount, Mutt finally stops barking and comes to heel at his side. Henry hands Pebbles’ reins over to Hans, and gives him a look that says, Be on your guard. To which Hans replies with a look that says, Yes, yes, off you go now.
The cart is a little thing, just two seats and two wheels. Henry drops into the ditch, and after a sharp word from the merchant, the old manservant joins him. He and Henry set their shoulders to the cart and push, but instead of beginning to flip, the cart instead pivots around where the manservant’s power fails to match Henry’s.
“Pathetic,” the merchant grumbles, standing by Hans’ knee. “Been in my service twenty years and still can’t manage to drive down a road safely.” His tone is sharp with his frustration, with his impatience, and with some venom that runs much deeper.
Hans shifts in the saddle. “Hmm,” he says, noncommittal.
“Push from the bottom!” the merchant yells, too loud, too sudden. Pebbles, her reins still in Hans’ grip, steps nervously to the side, closer to Aethon. “You little weasel, use some muscle!”
Hans can see, even in the fading light under the overhanging trees, that there’s something wrong with the manservant’s left arm. It must be some old wound, or some arthritis, because he keeps it curled close to his chest. He seems to have very little mobility with it, and the other arm shakes with effort where it presses against the cart. His face is growing red as he dips his shoulder and tries pushing again. His thin gray hair falls in wisps around his wrinkled face; his mouth twists in discomfort.
“From the bottom, I said, you simpletons!” the merchant yells.
Hans drops from his saddle. He curls both Pebbles’ and Aethon’s reins in one hand and presses them directly against the merchant’s chest. With a tight smile, he says, “Be so good as to hold them for me, would you?”
Hans steps into the ditch beside the old manservant. He flaps a hand dismissively, but his voice is low and soft when he says, “Step aside now.”
The manservant stumbles back up onto the road, and Hans dips his shoulder low against the cart. Henry mirrors his position, facing him, and for a moment something flashes over Henry’s face, some emotion that Hans does not quite manage to read before it is gone and replaced with the normal brand of Henry’s determination. Henry nods at him, and thus signaled, Hans begin to push. Step by step, they move up the ditch, pushing up and up and up, and the cart begins to roll. Within just a few moments, it crashes back onto its wheels, thumping and shuddering and righted.
“Incredible!” the merchant cries, clapping as if he has just watched a performance, the clutched reins dulling the sound. He rushes up to Hans and grasps his hand, proprietarily. “You truly are a Godsend, sir, truly a gift from the Lord Himself.”
“Yes, well,” Hans says. He pulls his hand back and wipes the sweat from his brow and looks past the merchant’s shoulder. The manservant is already attempting, one-handed, to reattach the skinny draft horse’s snapped harness. “You’re welcome.”
Henry follows his gaze and steps forward to help with the draft horse.
“I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t come along,” the merchant continues. Hans steps away, over to where the contents of the cart have spilled across the road and down into the ditch. He wants the excuse to get away from the simpering, but the merchant is undeterred, following at Hans’ heel, dragging the horses behind him, prattling on about their destination and the importance of their cargo and the dangers of these uneven roads as he watches Hans haul the bags back into the cart.
When the draft horse is successfully reharnessed and the cart reloaded, Hans brushes aside the merchant’s paltry attempts to pay him. He takes back the reins from the merchant and watches as the two old men remount their cart. As they drive off, wheels rattling, Hans can hear the merchant complaining to his manservant about the embarrassment he has caused him.
Henry steps close. “That was easy,” he says.
“Was it,” Hans says, still watching the cart shudder its way down the road.
Henry’s brows come down low. “Aye,” he says slowly. “At least it didn’t take long.” Hans feels fingers against his wrist. Henry slips Pebbles’ reins from Hans’ grip, leaving Aethon’s behind. Henry is looking at him carefully, eyes flicking over his face.
Hans turns and pulls himself on Aethon’s back. “Let’s go,” he says. “There won’t be much light left for us if we don’t hurry.”
Henry mounts up onto Pebbles. He says nothing, and the silence hangs tightly between them, an invisible cord, as they continue down the road. It’s not long before Hans leads them off the path and into the woods, between the dark trees. Hans’ memory holds true, and he finds navigation easy enough. The small campsite is precisely where he remembers it: a little clearing surrounded by trees. There are remnants of the countless travelers who have come before: a rock ring in the center for the firepit, ashes piled dark and high; a little pile of unused firewood; old chicken bones and a discarded spoon.
Twilight has officially begun as Hans hops down from Aethon. He grabs his pack from the saddle but otherwise leaves the horses to Henry. He moves for the firepit directly. They’ll need a fire quickly before the light fully fades.
He throws the unused logs into a pile and uses the flint from his pack for a spark. The handful of pine needles he uses for kindling is reluctant to take. Behind him, he can hear Henry muttering comfortingly to the horses as he removes their saddles.
“Is there water near?” Henry asks, finally breaking the thread of silence between them.
“To the west,” Hans says. “Not far.”
Henry clucks his tongue and Hans listens to the horses’ clopping feet as they follow him to the water source. When he can no longer hear their footsteps at all, Hans sits fully on the soft soil and watches his little embers begin to grow into a proper fire.
For almost two weeks, after the pillory, this was how he spent his nights. The chittering of the bugs, the bright Milky Way, the mundane fascination in learning how to repair his own clothes, how to skin an animal more cleanly, how to sharpen his own blades. What to do when rain made the fire impossible. What to do when human voices came just a little too near.
There had been satisfaction in it, in managing to solve each little problem as best as he could manage. Satisfaction in having no one to rely on but himself. Satisfaction in each little victory, in each refusal to give up, in each successful little task mastered after dozens of failures.
But, he can admit, the loneliness was unbearable. The butcher was willing, sometimes, to chat with him when he delivered the meat and pelts, but otherwise Hans was very much on his own, and assumed he would remain so until he could get to von Bergow and then could get back to Rattay.
He had not expected Henry to have stayed. Had expected even less to find him still working to complete their mission, too.
He knows that Henry is capable of refusing to follow orders he dislikes. He knows, too, that Henry is capable of punching a noble he feels has slighted him. Henry is stubborn, and intelligent, and sometimes arrogant, and often steps far above his station, and yet, after everything that Hans has said and done, Henry has inexplicably become more obedient of late, not less.
He doesn’t understand, exactly, what the noose has done to both of them.
The stamp of hooves grows louder, shaking Hans from his thoughts. Henry ties the horses up at the edge of the clearing where some thick grass grows, and they dip their heads, contentedly grazing. Hans watches for a few moments as Henry checks their hooves in the dim light. Mutt emerges from the undergrowth dragging a huge stick, tail waving wildly. He carries it straight over to Hans, who has the misfortune of being eye-level with the beast.
“Thank you,” he tells Mutt as the dog drops the drool-covered stick on his lap. “You know, I was just thinking that this is what I have been missing in my life. A wet piece of wood.”
Mutt pants directly in his face, pleased. Hans sets the stick aside. At least he can use it for kindling – after the drool dries.
Henry approaches then, his step heavy in his armor, chainmail clinking quietly. Hans hears him stop just behind his shoulder.
“I can offer something better,” Henry says, and over Hans’ shoulder he lowers a wineskin.
Hans takes it. He pops its cap to sniff the contents. It’s something rich, a deep red that he knows will be good. When Henry lowers himself to sit a few paces away, his pack beside him, he’s watching Hans with some level of self-satisfaction.
“Where the hell did you get this?” Hans asks.
There is a fact that Hans learned early on about Henry, one that seems to have misled nearly all others around him: Henry is not the innocent Godfearing simpleton that he likes to portray.
Henry lies like breathing. Hans might never have caught it, might have spent his whole life believing every word that emerged from that wide-eyed, pleasant peasant face, if not for luck. Outside of Talmberg, in that long stretch of days as they waited for the construction of the trebuchet and the beginning of the siege, Henry would spend the daylight off running errands for every lord or captain who so much as glanced at him, and he would return to the camp in the evenings and seek Hans out, collapse next to him wherever he was, and tell him all about it.
It was the longest amount of time they’d spent together, at that point, and it gave Hans a strange little thrill of satisfaction: that Henry should regularly choose him as his companion of choice at camp above all others – but of course he would. When it came to conversation and a bit of fun, who could compare to Hans?
But there were countless other soldiers around, and Henry seemed to have the habit of approaching every human being with even the barest suggestion of a pulse to grill them with personal questions. And his low voice tended to carry, and he didn’t watch his volume so well when he’d had a bit to drink, and Hans overheard more than one conversation that was, more often than not, absolutely full of shit.
Hans would never forget it: the way Henry’s face did not so much as twitch, the way his tone was even and casual as he told lie after lie. To a soldier: Ah, I bought it from the butcher in Samopesh, when he had just told Hans of the difficulty of killing the large stag by hand. To another: Oh, the priest’s books have gone missing? I’ll keep an eye out, when Henry had been lounging in Hans’ tent with one not an hour before.
He knows that Henry has at least a half set of loaded dice. He knows that Henry has a set of lockpicks tucked against his wrist in his left glove at all times. He knows that Henry’s favored pair of shoes, the ones he wore up and down the streets of Rattay to the point of tatters, looked suspiciously similar to a fine pair that had once belonged to Hans and that he had, unfortunately, seemed to have permanently misplaced somewhere.
So Henry lies. He lies just as well as he swings a sword or rides a horse, and Hans has never quite been able to tell if Henry has ever lied to him.
Now, Henry shrugs a shoulder. “I borrowed it from von Bergow’s cellar.”
“Borrowed it!” Hans echoes, incredulous. “So we need to return it, do we? Shall I simply swish the wine around my mouth a bit and spit it back in?”
“Well, it would only be polite,” Henry says, eyes wide in the way they get when he’s trying not to smile.
Hans quickly tips the wine back, his own trick to hide his amusement. The drink is indeed very fine: smooth and sweet and perfectly aged. He takes two more swallows, fast and satisfying, before holding the skin out to Henry.
“Is this how you spent your half-hour before we rode out?” Hans asks. “Sneaking into cellars and stealing wine?”
Henry takes the wineskin and holds it between his hands for a moment. “I thought you- Well. I thought we deserved it, after everything. Thought we could use it.”
Hans watches Henry take a deep pull of the wine and wonders if he has influenced this in him. If that night in the baths in Rattay, when he asked Henry to traipse across the city to pilfer some wine for him – if that didn’t settle something in Henry’s mind to think that his duties to lords would always include pilfering wine.
Perhaps in twenty or thirty years, a graying Henry will still be stealing wine from cellars and secreting it to a graying Hans.
The memory of the merchant on the road sobers him immediately. The manservant’s curled and shaking and useless hand. The way his master looked down at him in that ditch.
In the dark nights in the woods before the wedding, Hans had thought a lot about the pillory and the afternoon that preceded it and the words that he had spat, heavy and spiked, at Henry. After enough nights alone, the anger and the defensiveness and the disgust had worn down, time shaving the jagged edges off like river water against stone, until all that was left was the simple shame and the ugly regret. He was a noble and an adult and a knight, and he had behaved like an insolent child, and it seemed like the more he tried to pull away from Hanush’s perception of him, the tighter it seemed to ensnare him.
It had cost him everything. Nearly everything.
Henry holds the wineskin out to him, and Hans looks at him flatly.
Hans says, “I don’t know why you won’t let me apologize to you properly.”
Henry slowly lowers the wineskin, his arm dropping back to the Earth.
Henry, for all his idiosyncrasies, is a deep thinker. He is quiet now, but his eyes flash in the sputtering firelight as he tries to follow Hans’ train of thought – back to the pillory, back to the stupid brawl at the inn.
“You already did,” Henry says finally. “Twice, as I recall.”
A sputtered half-sentence in the dark of the jail, an interrupted attempt under the gates of Trosky. Both times, Hans had been prepared to opine, to detail the extent of his mistakes, and both times Henry had stopped him before he could.
“For a man on a months-long revenge mission for a stolen sword,” Hans says, “you sure can be quick to forgive.”
Henry’s expression darkens, marginally, before clearing. “Well, yes,” he says. “For the little things.”
“Little things?” Hans snaps, voice cracking high. He tosses his hands up, exasperated. All of the words and deeds that haunted him so thoroughly in the woods, evening after evening... “You consider all of that little?”
Henry shrugs so broadly that his arms flap a bit; the wine sloshes in the skin and nearly spills. “If it would make you feel better,” he says, “go on, then.”
Hans bites his tongue, temporarily aghast at Henry’s audacity. Telling a lord to go on.
“Let’s hear it,” Henry continues. “I’m ready to hear your grand apology.”
Hans feels his face heating. His emotions tangle in his chest: rage and shame curling hot. He wanted to apologize, yes, but not when Henry is being so glib about it.
“You’re nothing like that merchant in the road, Hans,” Henry says.
Hans goes still, the anger dissipating from him like smoke.
“What?” he manages.
Henry rolls the wineskin between his hands, busy and twitchy, his attention going to the fire. “That’s what you were thinking, wasn’t it?”
For a moment, Hans considers the possibility that Henry really can see inside his mind.
“You’re a good person,” Henry says, his gaze still turned resolutely to the flames. “You’ve made mistakes, but, God knows, I have too. And you insulted me – and I insulted you too. But you’re always trying to do better, aren’t you?”
In the fire, a log cracks and splits, sending embers shooting up like fireflies.
“But I know you aren’t anything like that merchant,” Henry continues, finally slanting a look in Hans’ direction, “because you got off your horse and helped me turn that cart.”
Henry’s smile is soft and confident and familiar.
“Jesus,” Hans says, incredulity finally snapping his control in two, “what has gotten into you?”
Henry’s head jerks back. “What?”
“You!” Hans says, waving his hands as if to encompass all of Henry. “Why are you being so… So…” Hans clicks his teeth together. The words jumble and flutter in his head: subservient, obedient, coolheaded, patient, forgiving, why did you stick around even when I told you to go.
“Kind,” Hans finally settles on, weakly.
The fire casts flickering red shadows, but Hans is pretty sure that Henry’s face goes a bit crimson. His shoulders draw tight, his eyes flicking anywhere but on Hans.
“I’ve always been kind!” Henry says.
“No,” Hans says. “You’ve always been a bit of an arsehole.” Henry of the lockpicks and the lies, Henry of the swinging fists and the stinging remarks, Henry of the stolen books and the snapping temper, Henry of the misguided mischief and the loaded dice. “It’s why I’ve always liked you, tell you the truth,” Hans adds.
Henry goes quiet, his arms resting on his knees, his shoulders curling up. He’s still wearing his helmet, and the curve of its rim hides his eyes.
In the silence, Hans leans forward to throw another log on the fire, watching the embers flip and curl.
Henry is unusually still. He is generally all motion – as if his body never quite wants him to rest. It’s another thing that Hans feels they have in common: the desire to constantly be moving. Henry’s uncharacteristic stillness unsettles Hans more than the silence.
He reaches over and slaps Henry’s shin with the back of his hand, impatient patpatpats. “Give me the wine,” he demands.
Henry passes it over. Hans takes the wine in one hand and rolls a bit closer to grab Henry’s helmet with the other. He tosses it unceremoniously on the soil beside him.
Henry slants him a look, something that barely manages to pass as annoyance, but it seems to break the spell of stillness. He slides his coif back to bare his head and pulls his pack close, digging through it.
Mutt pads forward, sensing the possibility of a handout. He shoves his way between Hans and Henry, and his wagging tail hits Hans straight in the jaw.
“Fuck off!” Hans says, pushing Mutt’s haunch away from him.
Henry passes Hans a wrapped parcel of food, and Mutt noses it, threatening to steal it.
“Henry, your dog is insufferable,” Hans says, clutching the package close to his chest, trying to keep it safe from Mutt.
“Nah,” Henry says. He takes Mutt’s face forcibly between his hands, prying him away from Hans. “He missed you while you were gone, boy,” Henry tells Mutt, wiggling the dog’s jowls. “He wouldn’t stop talking about you. ‘Oh, we have to rescue Mutt!’ he’d say.”
Mutt’s eyes roll to the side, trying to keep Hans’ food in his sightline.
“Don’t listen to him,” Hans tells Mutt. “He’s lying to you.”
“’Oh, Henry, the first thing we’ll do is rescue Mutt!’ he kept saying!”
“Before we left Rattay, I tried to sell you to the butcher for meat,” Hans says to Mutt.
Henry releases Mutt’s face. “I was wrong,” he says to Hans, his eyes alight with humor. “You’re not a good person after all.”
The food parcel contains some bread and kolache. They’re cold, but still soft. “True,” Hans says. “I am an exceptional person.”
---
In the morning, the air cracks cold and sharp.
They kick out the last of the dying embers and resaddle the horses, who hang their heads low, still half-asleep in the morning light. They lead the horses to the creek for a drink, and Hans strips to the waist so he can lean over the surface and splash water over his chest and under his arms. Henry stands a few steps from the bank, still in the armor he slept in, watching Hans shiver in the morning air.
“You’re a lunatic,” Henry says, shaking his head.
“I like being clean,” Hans corrects, teeth chattering. “Unlike you, I don’t wear a layer of filth and pretend it’s an acceptable shirt.”
Henry places two fingers on Hans’ bare back and gently pushes. Hans has to scramble, sinking his hands quickly into the mud before him to prevent himself from tumbling headfirst into the freezing water.
Henry laughs, then laughs harder at the glare Hans sends him over his shoulder.
Hans is already crouched low to the ground, and Henry is distracted, so when he slams himself into Henry’s legs, Henry goes down hard.
Hans knows he doesn’t stand a chance in this particular tussle: Henry outweighs him by half in his armor, all of his sensitive bits well protected, but they spend a few minutes burning out their excess energy on each other anyway, pushing and hooking limbs and attempting to get each other into headlocks. Mutt, an experienced witness to most of their scuffles, runs semi-circles around them, barking and bowing, like he’s cheering them on.
When they’re both panting, muscles burning, they sit on the bank, their sweat cooling quickly.
Hans tries to flake off some of the drying mud on his arm. Once he has the energy, he’ll have to stand and wash himself again. For the moment, he stays. He feels oddly at peace: the open sky and the quiet of the woods and the satisfaction of spent muscles. The events of the last few weeks feel very far away.
He had slept well, under the bright stars and the tree boughs. The few times he woke in the night, it was only to Henry resettling, his armor clanking, his heavy breath loud and comforting in the dark space between them.
“I’m glad you stayed,” Hans says, scratching at his arm again. It threatens to overwhelm him: the gratitude he’s begun to feel every time he looks at Henry. He can’t help but speak some portion of it. “I thought after the pillory that you’d fucked off back to Rattay. I really didn’t think you’d be at the wedding. I thought I was on my own.”
Henry shifts, looping his arms over his bent knees, holding one wrist in the tight grip of his other hand. He says, after a long pause, “Didn’t really occur to me to leave.”
Hans looks over at him, trying to read whatever is hidden in his profile. He can’t tell if Henry is lying. Perhaps he never will be able to. But surely – surely – Henry had considered it. Borrowing a horse and riding the two days back to his liege-lord, back to Radzig.
“No,” Hans says thoughtfully. “I forgot – you couldn’t leave. You think your sword is here. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it sooner.”
Henry’s hand twists in the circle he has formed around his wrist. “I didn’t stay for the sword,” he says. He slants a look at Hans. “Did you really think that after the argument that it was- that that was it then? The end of the mission and everything?”
The end of the mission, no. The end of his friendship – of his working partnership – with Henry? Yes.
“I released you from service,” Hans says, voice clipped with shame.
“Yeah, but you didn’t mean it,” Henry says. He looks at Hans suddenly, head snapping. “Did you?”
“No,” Hans says. He shakes his head at himself. “Maybe.” He picks up a twig by his leg and tosses it limply into the water. “What the hell was I supposed to think, Henry?”
He had said awful things. Henry had said awful things. No one could ever be proud of you.
“Arguments happen,” Henry says. “I don’t know. It’s just something that friends do, isn’t it? You argue, you hit each other, you say ugly things you don’t mean, and the next day you go to the tavern and get some ale and everything’s fine.”
Hans has had his fair share of friends. He is quick to make them, but quicker still to leave them behind when they annoy him or when they grow dull. They flit into and out of his life with travel or with circumstance or with disinterest, and Hans cannot now recall any particular occasion where he had argued with someone and chosen, still, to give them another chance.
But he and Henry had argued when they’d first met, and quickly mended themselves afterwards. Maybe Henry was, Hans could admit reluctantly, right. Maybe that was just the normal way of things, when it came to Henry.
Hans stands, stretching the muscles of his back for a moment, arms reaching high. He turns and offers Henry a hand. “Is this your way of asking me to take you to a tavern?”
“Depends,” Henry says. “How many brawls do you plan to start there?” He takes Hans’ hand, and Hans dips his weight low, pulling Henry and all his armor up out of the mud.
“Ah, I believe you started the last one,” Hans says.
“I was a victim,” Henry says, and for some reason he’s grinning, as if he enjoys the memory of being kicked repeatedly on the ground at a disastrous wedding. “Completely innocent.”
“Oh, please. The only day you were ever innocent was your first,” Hans says. “It’s been nothing but mischief and trespasses since. And yet, I’m the only one who seems to know that.”
Henry doesn’t rise to the bait of another fight, not even to remind Hans that the reason he sees Henry’s mischief is because the same thing thrums through him, too, but worse. Henry just stands there, still grinning, the blockhead. Hans turns from the brightness of his eyes to scrub the mud from his body.
---
When the horses step out from under the trees and back out onto the road, Henry’s body immediately goes tense again.
He sits straight-backed in his saddle, head swiveling, helmet glinting under the sun. A watchdog on the job.
Hans leans over his saddle’s pommel, forearms crossed over Aethon’s withers, and yawns. He’s still a bit stiff from sleep, from the cold night.
Pebbles waits patiently as Henry twists in his saddle, looking back at Hans.
“Back to Trosky, then?” Henry asks, not bothering to hide the reluctance in his voice.
As soon as they step under the gates of Trosky, Hans knows it will be back to business. Back to the errands that von Bergow will ask them to run, back to their own mission, back to the politics. Back to the thick walls and the limited sky.
Hans is good at politics. The mission is looking up. Von Bergow seems to be a reasonable man, and he seems to like Hans more with each passing day. Hans has already begun to daydream of the look on Hanush’s face when Hans returns to Rattay with a newly signed treaty of alliance.
But the morning is still fresh and new, and the long day stretches wide before them, and Hans is reluctant to lose this moment, tenuously grasped: warm clothes on his back, a strong horse under him, belly full, the mission back on track, and Henry watching him, loyal and ready.
And besides, there is one thing Hans has left unfinished, one thing that has been bothering him. There’s a reason he turned them southwest out of Trosky.
“No,” Hans says. “We have a quick errand to run, or have you forgotten? I need to deliver Bozhena her repayment.”
Pebbles shifts, side-stepping. Henry says, “Have you got enough groschen for her?”
“Have I got-?” Hans sits upright in the saddle. “What do you take me for? Yes, I have enough groschen for her, you turnip-picker.”
Henry holds both of his gloved hands up in surrender. “I was only askin’. I don’t know where you lords get your money. When you’re not poaching.”
Hans tsks. Henry does not need to know that he had gotten it from von Bergow. Hans had told von Bergow that the guards had confiscated his belongings, including his money, before the execution; he had carefully omitted the fact that it was only nine groschen, and von Bergow had given him three hundred.
“Don’t you know?” Hans asks. “We shit gold.”
He lets Henry lead the way, down and out through the shadows of the woods, out once more into open fields. Pebbles’ pace is leisurely, and Hans doesn’t bother to tell Henry spur her. Hans slouches in his saddle, watching the peasants start their work out in their pastures: the milkmaids and the shepherds, the farmers and the apple-pickers.
Henry is usually good for a conversation, and Hans has a lot he could ask him: more about his time with the miller, about what he meant when he said Bozhena had been through it, about where he got his armor or how the hell he knew all those people at the wedding. He could ask if Henry managed to bed any women at the wedding or otherwise. That’s always a bit of fun: if they’re in a group, Henry will tell him to fuck off. If it’s just the two of them, especially if Henry has some alcohol in him, he’ll spill some horribly awkward and stilted bawdy tales and he’ll hide his face when Hans tries to give him some much-needed advice.
But Hans watches Henry’s back and sees how stiff it is, sees how much tension he seems to be carrying for no reason at all, and keeps his mouth shut.
Hans starts to hum a song, a particular favorite of Henry’s that he often cannot resist echoing back – always so horribly flat, he is, even when humming, somehow – but Henry remains silent.
He supposes he hasn’t really known Henry all that long, really. But he knows his instinct is correct when he catalogues these changes in him: the man who is newly softened to Hans’ orders, the man who is newly hardened in the saddle.
“I think I’ve figured it out,” Hans says.
The sun has risen high enough to begin to heat the air in earnest, and the insects have started their raucous, buzzing songs.
Henry looks over his shoulder. “That’ll be a first,” he says, showing Hans the curl of his mouth to soften the words. “What about?”
“Why you’ve been acting so strange lately.”
Hans catches a glimpse of Henry’s eyebrows jumping upwards before Henry quickly turns his head forward again, cutting off Hans’ view of his face.
Some tenderness overcomes Hans then – a sudden distaste for the idea of causing Henry embarrassment or harm, a sudden aversion to the idea of teasing. This strange rising wave of affection. The same he felt when he saw Henry emerge from Bozhena’s hut, limping but alive and whole. The same he felt at the wedding when he first noticed Henry loping around, even as his anger and shame rose equally in turn.
His voice is barely audible over the hoofbeats when he says, “It’s because you think you failed, isn’t it?”
Henry looks at him again, head twisting: a glimpse of blue in the corner of his eye.
“It’s your job to protect me,” Hans continues. “And you did. You saved me from the noose. It wasn’t a failure. It wasn’t your fault.”
Henry looks away. The line of his shoulders under his armor is tense. He’s silent for a long stretch: the hoofbeats, the insects, the loud songs of the birds.
“If you’d have died,” Henry eventually says to the road ahead, “you would’ve been the only one who would’ve said so.”
“Ha!” Hans crows, loud. He puffs his chest, his back stretching. “I was right!”
It makes sense, all the changes in Henry slotting together into one neat explanation: he has been ashamed of his poor showing as a bodyguard since he was assigned the job, and is now trying to set things right. Hans can’t hold any of it against him, truly. It’s like Henry had said at the fire: they’ve both made enough mistakes on this trip so far.
Hans does regret, a bit, that his words in the pillory might have led to Henry’s self-castigation, but if Henry is tired of his apologies, then Hans will benevolently resist the desire to make one.
“Yes,” Henry says. Hans can see the line of his jaw, the tick of the muscle there, the edge of a curving eyebrow, the reluctance in his curling smile. “I suppose you are right, this one time.”
Hans nearly stops his horse. The revelation hits him like a physical blow:
This is what it looks like when Henry lies to me.
Hans tightens his grip on the reins. He can’t understand what he said wrong, what he is missing, and he feels annoyance and anxiety over it in equal measure. There is plenty about Henry that Hans does not know, plenty that Henry chooses to keep tightly sealed within, plenty that even alcohol and Hans’ sweetest expressions can’t goad from him. But in this particular moment, it makes Hans nervous, as if he is missing something vital.
He knows intuitively that he will not be able to crack Henry open on it - not now, not on this road.
He waits, hoping that Henry will offer more, will continue the conversation, but he offers nothing.
“Well,” Hans says, “I didn’t die.”
“I did notice that,” Henry says. “God be praised.”
“And anyway, I already told you,” Hans says, just in case he is mistaken, just in case there is some doubt in Henry’s mind. “You’re the only one I want as my bodyguard. Mistakes and all. It seems we’re quite stuck with each other.”
Henry says, his voice very even, “I noticed that, too.”
The road slopes downward; they need to lean back in their saddles to stay upright. A cart rattles by, pushing their horses briefly into the grasses at the side of the road. They pass a pair of worn travelers taking a break by a cookfire; they nod stiffly at Hans and Henry as they pass. Henry rests his hand on his sword when he nods back.
They should probably spur their horses, Hans thinks – should probably pay more attention to the time they are meandering away. It will be easy enough to complete their circuit before nightfall: to reach Bozhena’s, exchange some pleasantries and coin and maybe grab some soup, if they’re lucky – and return to Trosky well before the light begins to fail. Easy enough, provided they stop dallying quite so much.
“And anyway,” Henry says suddenly. “I haven’t really changed, despite what you say.”
He had been quiet for so long that Hans had forgotten the thread of their last conversation. He thought it had snapped entirely, and now he digs to rediscover its endpoint.
“Of course you would say that,” Hans says. “You can’t see the change from the inside, can you? It’s something a man sees only from an external point of view. That’s why you must listen to me. Because I, as usual, know better.”
“That’s bullshit,” Henry says, amused. “I know when I change.”
Hans hums, unconvinced. “Our current conversation suggests otherwise.”
Henry slows Pebbles so that Aethon can walk with her stride-in-stride. “And how about you, then?” Henry asks. “Want me to list the ways you’ve changed?”
“Nobles don’t change, Henry,” Hans says, for no other reason than to goad Henry into another delightful argument. “We are born in God’s perfect image and remain so until the day we are rotting in our lordly graves atop piles of gold.”
Henry is smiling when he shakes his head. “You’re a buffoon.”
“You are,” Hans replies easily. He’s not sure he’s ever seen Henry quite so keen to smile, quite so at ease. Perhaps that was always the true source of the change. Perhaps it was never the noose, or the wedding, or the pillory, or the realization of his parentage, or the siege at Talmberg. Perhaps it is as simple as this: that every day Henry moves a bit further from the burning of Skalitz, and each day those wounds heal a little more, and each day he grows a little less unhappy.
“Of course I’ve changed,” Hans tells him, honest and simple. He knows it, has felt it. He feels it every day. He is a man who now can skin a roe deer with some little skill. He is a man who knows how to mend his own boots. He is a man who knows what the gallows rope feels like around his neck.
He says none of it. He says, instead, “I hauled sacks around yesterday, for God’s sake.”
Henry laughs – not his usual low chuckle, but something loud and open and far too amused. “I still can’t fucking believe it.”
“I’ll trust you to take it to your grave, of course,” Hans says.
“Of course, my lord,” Henry says.
“Otherwise I’ll have to have you executed, you understand.”
“Oh, naturally,” Henry says.
Hans adjusts his seat, thinking back on that merchant and his supplies scattered all over the road. The curl of the manservant’s hand. The wagon wheel spinning in the air, slow and helpless.
“Hopefully,” Hans says, “it’s all change for the better.” He thinks it is. He hopes it is.
Henry is quiet, so Hans slants him a look, trying to read his face, trying to determine if he agrees with Hans or not. It suddenly matters to Hans, very much, to know.
Henry catches him looking, and his eyes brighten with mischief. “Still too early to tell, I reckon,” he says. “Ask me again in, oh.” His head wobbles, left and right, pretending at deep thought. “Fifteen years?”
Hans shakes his head, amused, comforted. “If I ever speak to you like that merchant spoke to his man,” Hans says, “you have my permission to absolutely bash my head in.”
Henry grins. “I’ll remember that.”