Run
We thought we were running away from the grownups, and now we are the grownups. – Margaret Atwood
Kennan is awash with thick, soft mud. From the Keep, Cleon can see the flood waters slowly recede, leaving a carpet of fertile river soil. The scene is not picture-pretty as the golden wheat fields and browned off livestock runs he remembers from his boyhood, but it seems to him that this is a happy mud. He has spent his days pushing the mud out of cottages and off the lower roads with the men and women of Kennan and his new bride. He relishes the backbreaking, exhaustingly honourable work.
Ermelian opens up to him in the late afternoons, as she pushes a wooden broom through the sludge her barriers break down and she talks to him as a human being. They have even struck up a friendship in all this work; a friendship Cleon secretly believes makes going to bed even more awkward. He has learnt some of her dreams, fished out the story of her court scandal and underplayed the depth of his romance with Keladry of Mindelan (the same censored version he had told Inness when his knight master had asked how Cleon's courtship with his baby sister was going). Ermelian has even proven herself as a mathematician, organising her dowry to pay Kennan's debt, insisting bullheadedly that she has every right to sell the jewellery her grandmother left her. Cleon always feels the need to kiss her when she's sitting with the account books in front of her. Account books he would have had to prize from his mother's cold dead fingers, Ermelian had demanded in the archly commanding tone he has only ever seen a beautiful lady master.
The letter came after just over a month of married life. When the strong new shoots of wheat and barley were pushing through the mud and Cleon was just beginning to think they might be able to collect a late harvest, if the frost didn't bite too soon. The messenger wore the colours of the king, a palace boy too young for Cleon to know, he delivered his letter and rode on to the next fief without waiting for lunch.
Ermelian was with him in the field, separating the hay she had bought into pieces as he had taught her and throwing it out to the gathering goats and sheep. She wiped the sweat from her brow, smearing it with dirt and dust, and leant against him to read the brief missive from the King. He had two weeks to return to his post at the front.
"So soon…" Ermelian's breath came out as a sigh and Cleon expected her to continue.
"I can only play at being a simple farmer for so long. The King payed to train me and now he may demand service. In this, of all wars, he needs knights willing to go face the machines." Cleon thought he might kiss her then, but instead pocketed the letter and returned to tearing apart the hay. He spoke again with his back to his wife, "I'll have to leave tomorrow, it's a two week trip."
That night Cleon made love to his wife, to his friend. He kissed her lips and whispered, more to himself than to her that he would be coming home soon. Breathed that he was coming home to her as he died inside her and lay still in her arms. Watching as her chest rose and fell and she fell into a soft, satisfied sleep. The fear of riding to war never quite left him at night, not since his father had ridden away and returned on his shield in the days Cleon could not remember but dreamt of frequently. He tucked Ermelian's gentle, pliable body against his chest and breathed in the smell of her hair.
Cleon left with the sunrise; snuck out of the bed Ermelian was still sleeping in and rode up to the top of the ridge. Kennan had transformed since he had ridden in just over a month ago. Much was still left to be done. Wholesome work that would make Ermelian as much part of Kennan as any villager as she worked alongside her new neighbours. Cleon realised that by the time he next returned she would probably seem more a part of Kennan than he often felt.
The ride to the front was long and Cleon was forced to bypass Corus altogether in order to make it to Giantkiller within his two weeks grace from the King. He had considered going via Mindelan and collecting his orders from the coast but decided before he hit the north that he would rather stand before Raoul of Goldenlake than Kelady's brothers after his rather sudden marriage. They would insinuate accusations and he couldn't bear to admit that he had been forced to end his courtship with their sister because his fief was failing. So he stood in front of the Giant Killer himself, surprised that they were now of a height, and he was able to look Sir Raoul in the eye.
Cleon forced himself to hold that eye contact as he passed the older knight the royal summons and announced, "Sir Raoul, I have been instructed that I will receive orders to re-join the fighting from you."
"Yes, I have them here." Raoul went to his desk to search through a pile of notes, "Though I was expecting you would have made yourself known at Mindelan and collected your orders from Mindelan… here we are… you're going east, leading three squads, one of veterans and two of recruits, due to leave from here in two weeks." Raoul looked up at Cleon before dismissing the younger man, "One of my clerks will find you and provide you with all necessary details tomorrow."
Cleon was relieved that Sir Raoul of Goldenlake had decided that they would remain friendly and professional. If Cleon were honest with himself, he would admit that the man was far more intimidating when he had been courting his squire.
Some letters from his page friends were found in amongst the documents that were delivered to Cleon the next morning. Cleon left that for last as he read through the lists of men he would be leading to the temporary army base on the front line in the east, instructions to lead the men directly there, information on the temporary fort and its commander, a knight ten years older than Cleon that he thought he had met during his squire years with Sir Inness and the last two reports from that area. The number of metal-men attacking the area was alarming, but Cleon put it from his mind as he opened the letter from Neal.
Dear Cleon,
As always, I hope my letter finds you well, although I'm sorry that it probably means your stuck back up here with us. The weather down at Kennan was undoubtedly better than it has been up here. I'm not complaining about my duty in any way, but I have spent the past month curing sniffles and delivering babies and I'm sure it could have been done just as easily somewhere nice and warm.
Never mind all that, I forget myself, because I meant to write to congratulate you on your marriage. So congratulations, even if your mood last time we spoke suggested you would not appreciate the congratulations. At any rate, I am so jealous that my congratulations are only barely sincere. I was meant to be married before any of you little boys. It is rather unfortunate that I was called away so soon after being knighted. Are you aware that in peacetime many green knights take a year off to go and 'find themselves'? Alanna, of course went and brought back the two great jewels of our kingdom, the Queen and the Dominion Jewel, but I know exactly where I would like to 'find myself'.
I don't suppose His Majesty would give me leave to visit Yuki if I described my tears as a flood? I'm sorry to trivialise like that but I am aware that you said all was fine last time you wrote me. I suppose not anyway, as I am always called a whinger when compared to His Highness, Prince Roald. I say I am far more of a Romantic and people turn up their nose as if the royal romance is the only one worth following.
All is going well here at Haven. We've only been here a month and a half at present but building is all going very well. Kel is doing fabulously as commander. I know none of our other friends will mention her but I've decided that you simply must learn to deal with hearing about her. She is the youngest knight to be given command in this war so far and she's already set up duty rosters and put herself on all of them (you know how mother is, and you should have seen her face when the carpenters refused to let her near a hammer).
Merric is here with us, too, he's in charge of defence and, despite a rather desperate need for more squads if we are ever to face action, is really proving himself. None of these hardened convict squads have guessed that most of his dislike for his betrothed stems from the fact that she giggles at him when he blushes and stutters as he tries to talk to her. The convict squads were in the most appalling state when they first arrived, they were only just being kept alive down in those mines. Still makes me shudder, but they're in good spirits here, they respect Merric (probably because in this cold his ears are yet to turn the same colour as his hair) and they're completely loyal to Kel.
The rest of Neal's letter followed much the same pattern falling into a draft of Neal's most recent sonnet on Yuki's grace and beauty that Cleon had to admit was a huge improvement on his early poetry. But Cleon found himself reading those paragraphs about Kel's new command over again, almost surprised that his new friendship, his more-than-friendship, with Ermelian had not eclipsed his feelings for Kel. Feelings that now felt more like a curiosity he couldn't let go of than infatuation he remembered feeling.
Most of Cleon's time on the front line was spent waiting and training, staying in a constant state of readiness. It soon became the kind of tense routine that he had become used to fighting in the north as a squire. He became friends with the squads he was leading and friendly with his commanding officer. Most of the men were older than him, and it didn't take him long to forget that he was now a married man, the lord of his own fief and no longer a green knight.
The men he led were a mix of rough and ready soldiers that had been serving since the immortals war and new recruits with varying levels of training. Cleon quickly established a rigorous training schedule that even Lord Wyldon would have been proud of to bring the new recruits up to speed, working as small units to complete drills designed to take down the metal men. Discipline and anxiety meant that everyone improved quickly.
Rotations meant that Cleon's squads spent two weeks on an extended patrol picking up raiding parties and one week on guard at the fort, that rarely saw any action. Everyone sent east understood their assignment: the temporary fort was not a target for Maggur, nor would he attempt access to Tortal so close to the boarder with Tussaine, but any squads that crept through in the east would prove dangerous. The men bonded quickly during patrol and relaxed, as much as possible on the front lines of a major war, while at the fort. The fort lacked the discipline held at Mastiff or Giantkiller. It was filled with the type of women that follow soldiers to war and the mess hall regularly felt more like a friendly lower city pub than a military institution. Cleon found himself bluffing his way through bawdy conversations again.
Battle, when it hit, brought the taste of bile back to Cleon's mouth. The skirmishes facing those automaton war machines were the worst, as Cleon's men were often injured – three of his men had been killed, though that was lower than it would have been if not for the drills and the new chain lined nets that were now issued – and terror gripped even the most experienced soldiers.
After the monster was destroyed, Cleon and his men had seconds to collect themselves before the Scanran raiding party would surge forward. If Cleon was most fearful of the automaton, he was most disgusted by battle against the frenzied Scanrans. They often came out of the trees shirtless, frothing at the mouth. It was an impressive spectacle, but when they met the Tortallan's superior training and numbers, they were slaughtered like rabid dogs. They rushed under the feet of Bison, Cleon's warhorse, and were trampled. They bared their chests to make an almighty swing of their axe and Cleon's sword darted in to rip a hole from their stomach to their chest. Cleon was a man before he realised he was sickened by fighting like this. A man with a duty to protect Tortall and service owed to the King that had trained a boy to become a killer. No matter how he sharpened his sword, it could not move smoothly through the deep flesh of a man's torso. His axe would jam in the chest after he forced it down, smashing a man's clavicle.
At the end of a skirmish like that they would leave the enemy dead for the circling stormwings, send their dead and wounded back to the fort, and continue patrolling.
When they reached the end of a patrol like that one, they would crawl to the mess hall. Drink until they were able to laugh and let the women tell them they were heroes. Only then would Cleon be able to visit the wounded, often repeating the same words that had lifted him, and remind them that he expected them back at training as soon as possible, ready for the next patrol run.
But they were not always attacked. And the winter was blessfully quiet.