Chapter 4: Traveling Rough
"Keep going," Logan said as the boy paused.
The kid groaned, the first audible sound of complaint he'd heard from Lee all day. Logan sympathized; carrying Logan's saddlebags wasn't easy, with Logan's armor in it, but Logan wanted to start building up the boy's muscle. He didn't have much to begin with, he was too small to have much…but Collan had told Logan what squire training was like in the King's castle. The older squires picked on the smaller boys relentlessly, and the castle's boys (the pages and young sons of the lesser nobility) picked on them too. Logan wanted to get Lee to the point where the boy could defend himself if Logan wasn't around. Lee could learn swordplay with the rest of the squires; but he had to survive the training program and living in the castle first. The older, bigger boys could be extremely rough in their pranks; and the sons of the lesser nobility could be downright cruel. This boy, with his long black eyelashes and big blue eyes, would be a prime target for anyone in the castle. Not only was he smaller and younger than anyone there, but he was, unfortunately, too pretty to escape the jeers and taunts that would be inflicted. Logan had to toughen the boy up, even if it meant he had to be cruel. The boy would understand one day.
Lee paused for a moment, putting the saddlebags down, but Logan didn't stop the horse. Lee finally picked up the saddlebags and hurried on, panting, sweating profusely in the mid-afternoon heat, and Logan grinned to himself. "Kid," he said seriously, "There are a lot of boys in the trainin' program, an' they're all gonna be bigger and stronger than ya. All I can do right now is try an' build some muscle in ya, an' teach ya some basic fighting moves so ya can defend yerself when we finally get there."
"How much further?" the kid panted.
Logan sighed. "Probably about another week or so before we get to the castle, boy."
"No," the boy puffed. "How much further till we stop for the night?"
Logan squinted at what he could see of the sun through the canopy of green leaves high overhead. "Looks like a storm comin'," he said gruffly. "So we're gonna stop soon. Keep movin'."
It wasn't a long time later that those heavy black storm clouds Logan had seen started rolling in. "We stop here," Logan said, stopping his horse under the sheltering boughs of a large pine tree. "Gather some wood for a fire, and get it started. I'll go see if I can rustle up some food for us, but I don't expect I'm going to have much luck. We may have to eat the dried stuff in the saddlebags." He paused. "Ya ever made a lean-to?"
Lee looked mystified, and Logan sighed. "Use vines ta lash together a buncha leafy branches until ya got a small shelter we can sleep under. My horse's tough, he can sit out in the rain…hell, ta his sweaty hide, that rain'll feel good…but we ain't gonna like gettin' wet." He went off into the forest without another word.
When he came back, empty-handed, Lee had made a shelter of sorts. Logan inspected it. The branches were lashed together fairly snugly to a frame made of wooden sticks. What surprised him was that the branches had been woven with other branches, forming an up-and-down, left to right weaving of branches and leaves. The roof of the little structure would keep all the rain out. It wasn't the way Logan would have made a lean-to, but it was something to keep the rain off, and Lee was tending a fire in front of the small shelter. He'd untacked the horse, hobbled and tethered the animal to the trunk of the tree they sheltered under, and had brought the saddlebags in with him. One saddlebag was at the head of Logan's unrolled blanket, the other was at the top of a small cleared place on the ground, cushioned by dead leaves. Logan reminded himself that he'd better get the kid a blanket.
"We'll have to eat the dried meat in the saddlebags," he said grimly to Lee. "Couldn't find anything." Lee nodded, and dug around in the saddlebags, finding the food pack and pulling it out. The dried meat was salty and as tough as old leather; Logan choked down several strips of the stuff before he gave up on the attempt and curled up to sleep in his blanket. The kid finished his portion and crawled to the pile of dead leaves, lying down with a sigh and stretching himself out. His eyes drifted closed, and he was almost immediately asleep.
Logan lay there, watching the boy in the firelight for a long time. He had a lot of respect for the kid; the kid hadn't whined once the whole day. Logan figured he'd had the boy carry the saddlebags for a good four or five hours. Tomorrow it would be six hours, regardless of the kid's aching arms. There was only a week until they got to the castle; Logan was going to make sure the kid could hold his own against any of the other bigger boys before they got there. Tomorrow night they would stop a little earlier and Logan would give the boy some hand-to-hand combat lessons.
He studied the boy's face. Lines of exhaustion and grief were etched into the boy's round face, the shadows under Lee's eyes almost as dark as his hair. The small body curled up on the bed of leaves. Logan reminded himself to tell the boy to wear his shoes while asleep out here; if something happened one couldn't spend precious time trying to find one's boots. And the kid's feet were the smallest he'd ever seen on a boy; shoes that little would be easy to lose. And the kid would not like to have to walk all the way to the castle barefooted, if he did indeed lose his shoes.
He. Logan was starting to have a lot of problems with the word 'he' as it applied to this boy. Lee was too damned pretty, for one. And he didn't walk like a boy, or talk like one, or behave like one. Logan thought, with those eyes and that pretty face, he could have made a passable girl.
And then he grinned at himself. Girls wouldn't have lasted a minute out here. Every girl Logan had ever met was a silly, giggling, empty-headed creature; and he had met a lot of girls. There wasn't a single girl in the castle who hadn't thrown herself at him at least once. Being a twenty year-old knight, the youngest knight in the realm, made the silly chits swoon over him. He, however, found their attitudes annoying, their only slightly-veiled comments and hints to share his bed annoying. He stayed away from them. No, the kid couldn't be a girl. If Lee was a girl, Logan guessed she'd be somewhere about his age; and any girl that pretty and that old would be married by now.
He sighed and closed his eyes. The shelter was pretty good, as far as keeping the rain off him was concerned; he had to give the kid credit for that. Well, at least they'd sleep dry tonight.
He was awakened the next morning by the sound of hoof beats. Rolling out of his blanket, he squinted down the road they'd been traveling and saw two other horses and riders caparisoned with King Richard's colors, the same colors that Logan's saddle blanket and bags wore. He ducked back into the small shelter and nudged the sleeping boy with the toe of his boot. "Come on, kid. Up and around. We got company." He scraped the ashes away from the embers of their campfire as he waited for the kid's inevitable groaning.
When none was immediately forthcoming, he risked a quick look behind his back. The kid was rolling up Logan's blanket and strapping it to the back of his saddle, and packing the remainder of the food back into the saddlebags. Logan raised an eyebrow. The boy was moving stiffly, and was clearly suffering from aching muscles and joints, but not a word was escaping his lips. Logan was impressed.
He was dousing the embers with dirt when the knight he'd seen coming down the road stopped. "Fair day to you, Logan!"
Logan looked up at the man astride the big roan gelding. "Fair day ta ya too, William," he greeted the other knight, reaching up to grasp the other man's forearm in the traditional greeting. "Headin' back ta the castle too?" He gave a brief nod toward the second rider, William's squire Robert.
"Yep," William replied. "Not our turn to serve the winter out on the borders of the King's land." He raised an eyebrow as Lee slipped out of the lean-to and made for Logan's horse to saddle the horse. "Who's that?"
Logan looked back, and grinned. Lee was saddling…or trying to saddle…Logan's black horse. The horse wasn't cooperating. "That's my new squire, Lee," he said to the knight. "Boy's an orphan. Armed men went through his village an' killed everyone, includin' his parents. Presumably mercenaries hired by Duke Gilbert ta scare the village folks in his lands to increase their tithe." Logan snorted. "Went back to the boy's village; the whole place's been torched, an' everyone was killed. The boy was the only one left alive. He didn't have anywhere ta go, an' nobody left ta take him in, so I figured I'd haul him up ta the castle an' make him my new squire. Once he becomes a full knight he can go an' call Duke Gilbert out fer orderin' his village destroyed an' his family killed."
The other knight watched Lee for a while. "He's awfully young, Logan. How old are you, boy? Ten? Twelve?"
Lee paused in the act of bridling Logan's horse and bowed. "Twelve, m'lord knight," he said, respectfully. "Thirteen at the winter solstice."
William hemmed. "Don't look thirteen to me," he said as Logan mounted up.
"He's one o' them rare foreigners from way back east, an' I think I heard say that they come a lot smaller'n us. He's a mite short fer his age." Logan turned the horse around, letting the horse flex his muscles, and nodded to Lee. "Pick up them saddlebags an' let's get goin'." Lee bent to pick the bags up, and William watched in surprise as the kid started to walk determinedly in the direction they were traveling at. "He's going to carry your bags?"
Logan dropped his voice as his horse fell into step beside William's. "Look at the boy, William. He's a skinny little thing. Ya an' I both went through squire trainin' at the castle; ya know how hard it is. And ya know how the pages an' the nobles' sons are. Lee's gonna get pushed around an' kicked around if he don't develop some muscle an' learn ta defend himself. I got a week till we get to the castle; I'm gonna spend that week pushin' him ta his limits ta toughen him up 'fore he's gotta face all them boys at the castle." He turned to William's squire. "Robert, ya wanna talk ta the boy 'bout what he can expect from the pages and other trainees? Ya been through it all already." He grumbled, "Hell, I been through it only a couple years ago."
"Yeah, we both did," William said, grinning at Logan. "You were the runt of our group, too, if I remember right. And you did get picked on a lot, especially in the beginning. Remember John? He hated you, and you hated him. Remember the time he bloodied your nose; you turned around and broke his arm! Think he left you alone after that."
"Yeah," Logan rubbed the bridge of his nose, remembering. "He did, more or less. I wanna teach Lee how ta protect himself so he don't gotta put up with anybody bullyin' him around."
Lee seemed to hold up better that day, and didn't have to stop so often. Logan wondered if the boy was getting used to the weight, then decided that the boy just didn't want to be thought of as a weakling by Robert. When the four of them stopped for a noon meal, William and Logan went hunting while Robert taught the boy what he needed to do. When the knights came back with a brace of rabbits, he taught the boy to clean and skin the animals, then taught Lee to roast them. The boys made a quick meal, and then as the knights continued to eat, Robert took the smaller boy out to the middle of the field. Logan watched.
"I'm going to come after you," Robert said. "How are you going to fight me?"
Lee shrugged. Robert rolled his eyes, then without any further warning, he lunged for the smaller boy. Lee slid aside so fast Robert stumbled past him two or three steps before he realized Lee was no longer there. Blinking, Robert charged him again. Lee again slid to the side.
Robert lunged for Lee again, but as Lee started to slide aside again, Robert changed direction and grabbed for the smaller boy. In a movement Logan would never have thought possible, the smaller boy bent over backwards, so far back he looked like his spine was going to snap, then executed a somersault on his hands and rolled out of the way of Robert's grasping hands. Robert stopped and stared stupidly at the empty space in front of him for a moment. Lee took that moment to sweep behind the taller, older boy, and kick the back of Robert's knees in. Robert thudded to his knees on the ground.
Logan had to rub his chin with his hand to hide the smile that threatened to slip out. Robert lay on the ground, spitting leaves and grass for a moment, before he rolled over and eyed Lee, who was standing with his hands on his hips and grinning at the older boy. "Where did you learn that?"
Lee looked suddenly uncomfortable. "My mother was an acrobat. She used to perform with a caravan of traveling entertainers. She taught me some stuff. I found it was useful against village boys who thought I was an easy target."
"So you have some experience with fighting, eh?" Robert smiled. "Don't think there's much I can teach you. Oh, wait, that sword you're carrying on your back; can you handle it?"
"No, Logan said that the swordmaster would teach me that."
"Well, it's not going to help much if you can't even pick up a sword. And the wooden ones they use for practice are heavy. The muscles in the arm used for swordwork are different from the ones used to carry saddlebags and packs. Here." Robert drew his own sword, and indicated that Lee should do the same. The tip bowed immediately; Lee couldn't hold the weight fully extended. "Grab the hilt. Both hands; you'll learn to handle it in each hand later from the swordmaster. Now, I want you to hold it out, at chest height and arm's length, as long as you can." Lee obeyed, his arms trembling with the strain, and only managed to hold the heavy sword out for a short time before his arms lowered. "Oh, come on," Robert said, half-mockingly, half-encouragingly. "Longer. Raise it, and hold it longer."
By the time Logan and William were ready to move on, Lee's arms were shaking from the strain of holding such a weight for long periods at a time. As he wearily shouldered the saddlebags and started walking, Robert mounted his horse and walked beside the boy. Logan listened to the stories Robert was telling Lee about the Squires' training master at the castle, and grinned. He could imagine the man's face when he brought the little boy up to him.
When Logan had been presented to the Squiremaster for training, the man had stared at him. "Little small, aren't you?" Logan had been seventeen at the time, but he'd been mistaken for fourteen by everyone because he was shorter than everyone else. However, he'd made up for the lack of height by learning his lessons faster than anyone else, and then later by pushing himself to the limit and getting extra sword practice whenever he could. Now, two years after attaining knighthood, here he was, about to shepherd another kid, like himself, into the program. But Logan knew this kid would be able to do it. What he lacked in height and physical strength he more than made up for in sheer stubbornness and will.
Over the next week he watched the boy improve markedly. The boy got thinner in some places as baby fat melted away, and muscle appeared in those arms that hadn't been there when Logan had picked the boy up. He was still clumsy with a sword, but at least now, when Robert engaged him in sword drills and mock combat when they stopped for meals, the boy could handle the sword with at least some familiarity. He still tired easily, but that was to be expected; he was still growing, after all. By the time the group of four approached the gates of the city snuggled up against the castle walls, Lee was carrying Logan's saddlebags and barely noticing their weight.
Logan smiled as they waved to the guard at the gate and rode on through. He was looking forward to being here for the winter. Last winter he had been on duty riding the borders, and he and his horse had both developed a hearty dislike of the cold. Wintering at the palace meant comfort and a good meal every night. He wouldn't have to rough it. And (he smiled at the thought) he would be able to watch the squires train. He wanted to see how his protégé would get along.
"I'll take Lee to the Squiremaster if you want to get settled in the knights' quarters, Sir Logan," Robert said, and Logan nodded. Lee draped Logan's saddlebags across his horse's rump, then headed off after Robert with one last look at Logan. Logan nodded encouragingly to the boy, and watched as he disappeared out to the buildings where the squires lived and trained.