A/N: This story is a part of a series being written by the Jane and the Dragon fanfiction. A complete list of stories can be found in my profile. Now with hyperlinks!
This little excerpt follows our story thingamabob, and falls around Kyra4's Complications but before Jatd4ever's Nothing to Fear. Gunther has not yet written his letter/poem or asked for the dress. It's going to be 120-122 outside this week. If I have to suffer, so does Gunther.
It was hot.
Unrelentingly, atrociously, hellishly hot.
A sudden wind barrelled across the field, bending the drying stalks of wheat before it. Gunther flinched in anticipation, too tired to actually turn his reddened cheeks away from the sand-filled gust.
Ugh.
Heavy and punishing, it was like standing in front of one of Pepper's ovens.
Aren't breezes supposed to be cool?
Evidently not.
A second blast of hot air slammed into him, nearly knocking him over. This time he did turn away, pausing to press his face against his mount's neck. The wind lashed against him, roiling around and around, the debris grating against any exposed skin.
In grudging deference to the summer sun the troop of knights had dismounted, walking the horses. If an emergency arose, the horses would be fresh enough to respond. Hopefully. It would be several hours before they reached the next source of water- a creek in a small forest where they'd camp for the night.
Assuming the summer sun hadn't burned the trees to a crisp and left the creek bed a dry cracked basin.
Optimism he had not. Where was a chipper little cloud of silver linings when you needed her?
It. Needed IT.
Bah.
The fickle rush of hot air changed direction, rocking him back on his heels. Gunther wondered if being on foot actually spared their mounts, or if (as Gunther suspected) the horses resented being made to plod along at the sluggish pace of their short-legged counterparts. His own horse, a nondescript gelding from the castle's stables, eyed him with discontent and semi-companionable misery.
This heat is making me fanciful.
After a moment, the gritty eddy subsided. Gunther straightened, pushing his too-long hair out of his face. It would need to be cut soon. Maybe he'd trim the sides short and leave the top long.
Would Jane think me handsome?
Oh.
Oh, bother. Where had that thought come from?
No. No, thank you.
Soon he'd been prancing around, preening his feathers like a popinjay in spring.
Gunther shook his head sharply -whether it was to clear his face of hair or to clear his head of lingering thoughts- he wasn't sure. He'd been attempting, with marginal success, to forestall that line of thinking. It was, after all, why he was here.
Another hot gust chased after the others. Gunther gagged as a few errant strands of hair blew into his mouth. Maybe he'd just shave it all off.
Close mouth. Secure hair. Continue marching.
If only the patrol wasn't so damnably boring. They had travelled through the occasional small town or - like the field they were currently skirting- outlying homesteads, but for the most part the landscape was flat and uninhabited. In this part of the kingdom hills and settlements were few and far between… as was, everything else apparently. No trees, no rocks, no gullies, no streams.
Nondescript. Featureless. Mind-numbingly boring.
Just what he needed.
Maybe too much so.
In the spring the grasslands would scream color with the successive blooms of wildflowers, but spring was past. Spring had waived its hello and kissed its goodbyes. Now it was summer and the countryside was a dull dried brown. Long stretches of krinkled grasses and boring nothing.
Sweat dropped into his eye.
Yes. This was exactly what he had wanted.
Planned for, even.
Gunther's gaze swept around him. Vast rolling hills of dried scrub.
Completely.
…
Perhaps the featureless topography left something to be desired.
The company wasn't any better. Their patrol route was well within the borders of the kingdom, and regularly travelled. These particular lands were sparsely populated, the plains too low to host any major predators, pickings too slim to support bandits. They'd be lucky to see a wild boar.
It was an undemanding ride and as a whole, trouble-free.
Usually this meant the men were quick to banter, trade stories, sing.
But..the heat.
The sheer unflagging intensity of the weather was wearing them down. Had worn them down. It also made padding and armor positively torture to wear. It was like being wrapped in thick blankets which somehow became heavier (and scratchier) with each passing hour.
For once, Gunther was grateful for his father's pretentiousness. His own shirt -while well-worn and sodden- was of a fine linen. Only the best for a Breech! Long-sleeved but light, it provided adequate protection against the harsh sun without being confining.
As a squire, Gunther's armor was minimal. His current leathers wouldn't provide much protection in an actual fight, but it didn't restrict his movement and thankfully didn't chafe.
The other men in their small group could not say the same.
Weighed down by the vestments of knighthood, they chafed.
On the second day of their patrol when the sun had gone from beating to really, truly pounding down on their backs, Gunther had not felt the need to disrobe. The knights had not been as lucky. By mid-morning, most of the knights had shed their hauberks or leather armor. Before lunch they had stripped off any padding, finally stuffing their saturated shirts in their saddlebags in the early afternoon light.
Sir Theodore had given the men a disapproving eye and slight smile, but hadn't actually forbid the men from riding around half-naked. There was no one to see them, after all. Besides, the probability of encountering any danger was low. Sir Theodore's only concession to the heat was to tie his long hair into a low pony tail.
Briefly, Gunther had considered removing his shirt as well, but he had seen the slight twist of Sir Theodore's mouth. He wasn't sure what it meant, exactly.
Most of the accompanying knights were long out of the schoolroom...or had trained elsewhere. Gunther was still under Sir Theodore's active tutelage.
He'd seen that smile more than once. Gunther knew Sir Theodore preferred his students to learn their lessons on their own. A lesson was being imparted. Gunther could wait.
Keep his shirt on, so to speak.
By the time they had stopped for the night, the men were a pathetic array of shades, ranging from a worrisome pink to a deep, angry crimson. It was like gazing at a very smelly, very sweaty, very hairy, rose garden.
Prickly, unhappy roses.
The next morning the men had donned their armor with small hisses and yelps. Gunther had done his best to offer his assistance but as the only squire present, he'd been hard-pressed to keep up. More than once he'd afraid he'd receive a cuff for dawdling, but after a small knowing smile from their leader, no one had dared to actually voice a complaint.
Lesson learned.
Unfortunately the dampened spirits resulted in little to no conversation. Not that Gunther would have participated, really. He was by far the youngest in their troop, and didn't...well, belong.
No one treated him unfairly, but there was that untenable distance he wasn't quite sure how to cross. A distance he had -perhaps unconsciously- himself created? It would be easy to blame it on his family name- the old standby- but his recent...understanding? with Jester made him wonder.
Gunther's neck burned with embarrassment as he remembered. Could anything have been more mortifying?
Jane catching me reading that book, perhaps?
Yes. Something could be more mortifying.
He groaned aloud, earning a questioning look from the man marching in front of him. Gunther waved him off, hoping the knight didn't notice the blush creeping up his face.
Gunther wished the troop was in better spirits. Even as an outsider, Gunther enjoyed listening to the knights banter.
It was…friendly.
It would have, under better circumstances, kept his mind busy.
Unfortunately, sunburns baking inside heavy armor did not lend itself to jovial conversation. Questions were met with grunts and any attempt at levity -not Gunther's strong suit to begin with- had received a curt retort.
They marched on in miserable, oppressive, boring silence.
Despite his best attempts to prevent it, Gunther felt his mind wander.
Squish, squish, squish, squish.
Gunther's socks were sodden with sweat, squelching inside of his boots with each miserable, plodding step. Again. He'd changed them once already today, when the troop had stopped for a quick lunch in the shade of a lone haggard tree. Gunther glanced back at his saddle bags, where the now-dry socks flapped stiffy.
Why did I volunteer for this patrol again?
Well, he knew the answer to that.
That question wasn't even hard.
Gunther had fled.
Turned tail, run away, flown, took off, bloody escaped.
He wasn't proud.
He also wasn't sorry, but Gunther was certainly not proud.
Freezing at the ball, that damnable dress, his father's oh-so-enthusiastic parenting, Jane's lurking, Pepper nearly smothering him with kindness, Jester's odd behavior, Dragon's sudden teasing, the return of Lavinia's childish behavior, Adeline and her horrifying diagrams, and the walls…
The very walls of the castle had been closing in on him.
Shrinking, crushing, falling…
The walls were constricting faster than he could reshore his own.
A place that had once been a refuge of steady solace was now completely unpredictable in its chaos.
Gunther wanted -no needed- the normality of the castle.
It was his home.
But without the security of the familiar, the comforting banality of the day-to-day, Gunther couldn't find his bearings.
He felt trapped. Lost. Claustrophobic with the pressure.
And so he had fled.
Surprisingly, Gunther's request to join the patrol had been accepted without comment. Perhaps Sir Theodore thought he was ready for more knightly duties?
Sir Theodore was usually reluctant to let Gunther join the farther-reaching patrols. Magnus may have sponsored Gunther's training, but he had made it clear where Gunther's duty still lay. Any time spent away from the dock warehouses meant double work when Gunther returned. At least, until he was knighted.
Sir Theodore had no use for an exhausted squire.
But after yet another day spent shooting arrows into unsuspecting trees and barrels, (what had they ever done to Gunther?) another day hitting anything and everything except the actual target, Gunther had been at his wit's end. He would have pleaded -begged, gotten on his knees and begged- to be allowed to join the patrol.
Thankfully, he didn't have to. Sir Theodore had smiled and told him to gather his gear. They would leave in the morning.
Gunther had joined the patrol to escape. To clear his head. To run away.
It would be easy -oh so very effortless- to blame it all on Jane. To resent her for ruining the comfortable no-nonsense ebb and flow of his life.
It would be just as simple to blame everything, all of it, on the dress. Perhaps it was that straightforward? One singular bright spot in time that had exploded into a thousand cruel stars which pulsed frightening realities of their own.
A dress that set into motion a thousand other happenings, stirring about in their own turbulent bedlam.
It was nothing to explain it all away.
His beloved enemy.
It was far harder to face it with candor. That secret, uncomfortable, aching truth.
She was his weakness, his destruction...a bloody thorn he couldn't remove.
Jane was his infection, slow suffering.
When would it end?
How could he forget her?
Gunther brought himself up short. What fresh hell was this?
I am writing poetry.
I've wandered out into the sun-baked, god-forsaken, unshaved forgotten armpit of the kingdom to escape that gloriously fire-headed nuisance and rather than finding mind-numbing relief in the most tedious and boring of patrols...I am instead writing poetry? Bloody POETRY as I trudge through puddles of my own foot sweat?
How had it come to this? Had she really crept into every part of his brain so that even the most miserable experience somehow was overshadowed by her light?
It had done him no good to run.
She wasn't like the sun. She was the sun. Jane pounded at him with the unforgiving intensity of the star above him. Gunther was just as burned and miserable as the men around him.
He couldn't escape.
There was no escape.
He wanted to punch something. Kick something. Shake a tree, boot a rock, anything.
Gunther glanced at his horse.
No.
If he kicked his horse he could anticipate a most righteously painful kick in return and -worse- a long, scorching walk home.
His head was full. A frazzled mess of emotion and thought and word. Gunther wanted it gone. Purged. He needed it out.
POETRY.
Sweet lord in heaven.
He could feel it buzzing.
It had to go.
Later, after they made camp -the summer had not, in fact, dried the trees to kindling or the creek to dust- Gunther sequestered himself in the knobbed nook of an old tree. Having used his knife to sharpen the sad remains of a molted feather, Gunther scratched, scratched in the margins of his psalm book. He filled the empty space with disjointed ramblings, dulcet verses, harsh prose.
He wasn't worried about the ruined book. He'd buy another. Gunther just needed it out. OUT.
His thoughts, his feelings, his complete and utter lack of understanding.
No one would see it. He'd burn the book once he was done.
It was probably blasphemy, but Gunther didn't care.
The thoughts, they had to go.
Ridiculous poetry.
That dress.
Gunther was so absorbed he didn't hear the light tread of his Sir Theodore's approach. The older man cleared his throat, startling Gunther. He let out a yelp of surprise. Thankfully, Sir Theodore didn't laugh at Gunther's discomfiture.
"Did it help?"
"Sir?" Gunther queried, confused. He looked up, his eyes bleary from squinting in fierce concentration. He was almost too frazzled to notice the knowing glint, the amused twinkle in Sir Theodore's eye.
"Leaving the confines of the castle. Did it help?"
"Sir? I…" Gunther swallowed. Steady now. He took a deep breath. "No, Sir, it did not."
"Ah, that is most unfortunate." Sir Theodore nodded to the book clutched in Gunther's hand. "May I assume you've found a better means of dealing with your problems than retreat?"
Pig pimples.
Sir Theodore hadn't brought Gunther along out for training, or out of pity, or duty, or some newfound respect. Sir Theodore been teaching him a damn lesson. MAGGOTS. Gunther reddened.
"Yes, sir." He barely managed the reply. Sir Theodore pretended not to notice.
"Excellent. Another day through the plains and then we'll circle back. I expect you'll have arrived at some sort of a solution by then, yes? Champion. Carry on then."
Gunther watched him leave, and resumed his scribbling.