Chapter I: The Hovel of the One-Time King (Part 1)
Autumn, 7th Year of Jocose's Reign
(18th Year of Adamant's Regency)
515th Year of Independence
'It wasn't supposed to be like this,' Sage thought as he lay in bed, staring at the ceiling.
The room was dark; the only source of light was the window, and the sky was overcast. All week clouds had blanketed the sky, threatening rain but not yet delivering. He might have worried about tomorrow's festival being rained out, if he could have found it in himself to care.
He often got like this, this time of year. As the weather got colder, the days shorter and darker, he found it hard to care about much of anything. With the dark, overcast weather on top of that, it got hard to even get out of bed.
So in bed he laid, even as noon approached, with little to do but think back on his life.
Nothing since his abdication had happened as he had expected.
The plan had been to rejoin the Knights Insularis, but they had rejected him. Most Knights were lowborn, but the core membership had always been younger sons or other relatives of lords who stood little chance of inheriting titles. They had embraced this lack of titles as an aspect of their identities as Knights, and had seen Sage's leaving of their order to pursue titles as a betrayal of that identity.
Sage, Adamant, and Vulpine hadn't been the only Knights to desert their posts and go fight for their families in the Solar War; twoscore knights from their company alone had gone, first swearing a blood oath to not kill each other should they meet in battle. Nearly thirty had survived that Sage knew, and most had returned to the Knights. None of those had pursued titles, so while they had been disciplined for going AWOL they had been accepted. Sage and Adamant, however, had been exiled.
He had lived as a rōnin after that, wandering the Brían kingdoms, renting out his sword. He had been on both sides of cross-border raids, had protected travelers from bandits and vaimon. He had suffered nights in the rain without food or shelter, slept in a lord's guest bed with a belly full of good food, and everything between.
After three years of such a life he found himself in the employ of one Thane Dominance in Wiria, the northernmost Brían kingdom, and there he had fallen in love with a bowyer's daughter named Willow.
Despite her father's disapproval, she had been willing to follow him in his wandering. He, however, had no desire to put her through such hardship and so he had settled down. He had sworn oaths of a housecarl to Dominance and been granted land in the hills, where the other housecarls helped him build a house. He had bought sheep―wool sold better than grain―and Willow had planted a garden. A year into their marriage they'd had a son.
Thinking of his wife might have improved his mood, but he found it impossible―at least in a mood like this―to think of her without remembering how she had died.
Well, no one knew how she had died; she had just disappeared one day. Vaimon were the most likely culprit. The beasts killed men and ate children, but women they stole and took to their homeland across the sea.
Sage and a handful of Knights had once come upon a vaimon raiding party setting off for that homeland with six women. Two women had already died, three of the women rescued had killed themselves within a month, and the one who had survived...
'Shéus send she died quickly,' he prayed as he often had. A horrible thing to have to pray.
His son had not died, yet in thinking of him he still found reasons to be disappointed. Not with that son; Rowan was a fine boy. He was a diligent shepherd―he had risen with the sun, and at that moment was in the hills guarding the flock―and a fair shot with a longbow. Sage was proud of the boy, though ashamed that he didn't set a better example himself.
No, contrary to being disappointed in the boy, he thought the boy deserved better. A house and a flock of sheep was no mean inheritance, but in the past Sage had possessed a better inheritance, which he had thrown away to try and relive the glory days of his youth.
I suppose if I had stayed king I would never have met Willow, and Rowan would never have been born. The thought offered him little consolation.
Noon was an hour off when he finally had a reason to get out of bed: a knock at the door.
He sat up in bed, wondering if he had heard correctly. Rowan wouldn't have knocked, and he rarely got visitors so far from town.
The knock came again. He rose and slid open the hindroom door. As he stepped into the foreroom he paused. I can think of one reason I might be called upon. He glanced to his right, at the greatsword mounted over the hearth.
Again, the knock, and Sage shook his head. Sough wouldn't knock so gently.
"Who is it?" he asked, stepping up to the door.
A shockingly familiar voice came, muffled, through the door: "A very old friend."