“I am no longer a knight, girl, and you have no right to question me! Leave me be!” With that he tried to brush her aside, but she was stronger than she looked and stood her ground. She had the effrontery to put her hands on his arms to stop him.
“But you’re a legend—you’re Flinn the Mighty!” she cried.
He grimaced and then savagely pushed her away. The undergrowth caught her fall this time. Through clenched teeth he spat, “The man you’re looking for is dead. Dead. There is no more ‘Flinn the Mighty’.” The words were bitter on his tongue.
Amazed, the girl stared at him. Flinn shook his head in disbelief and walked into the undergrowth, leading Ariac and Fernlover, his mule.
Deliberately, he closed his mind to what had just transpired.
He quelled the small voice that prompted him to turn around and ask for her forgiveness. The matter was settled. He wondered how the child could be so foolish as to search for Flinn the Mighty. His thoughts threatened to grow darker yet, and deftly he cut them off, dismissing the girl from his mind completely. The last seven years had taught him how to ward off painful thoughts.
Flinn pushed through the brush and hurried Ariac along. The home trail lay just ahead; if he could reach it in the next hour, he would be back to the lodge by true dark. He suddenly longed for the comfort and safety of his little home, a crudely built house of logs. “Some warrior,” he muttered to himself. “I didn’t used to need a haven.” All at once he felt weary and indescribably old.
Always before, Flinn had called a campfire his home. Whether he was on the trail of an orc troop as a knight or hunting bear as a trapper, Flinn had spent more than two decades by a fire. Now, he only wanted the safety and privacy that his own hearth could provide. That longing disturbed him. After thirty-seven winters, he was content with a lap-robe and a fire and a good pipe?
He glanced behind him to make sure the girl wasn’t following. Nothing but dark tree branches met his gaze.
His mind wandered back to the morning’s events. For some reason he had dreaded entering the village, even more so than usual. Flinn’s semiannual sojourns into Bywater—every spring and fall—accounted for all of his social contact. His long solitude made these contacts more painful over the years. He couldn’t help feeling a superstitious twinge at how this particular trip could have turned out, and he dreaded what the next might hold.
As always, the children of the village had come out to taunt him. He had grown inured to their words, though, and hadn’t given them any notice. The boy with the rock had been a different matter, however. Never before had one of the children threatened to stone him. Flinn wondered what would have happened had the girl not intervened. Then he wondered why she had. He thought about trading his furs elsewhere, but the nearest place was the castle he had once called home. Flinn snorted. He would never return to the Castle of the Three Suns again. No, Bywater had proved ideaclass="underline" one day’s ride from his home, small, but with a large enough mercantile to supply most of his wants and a merchant whom Flinn trusted as much as he could. In a larger town, he might encounter someone from the order, and that he couldn’t abide.
The mule brayed eagerly, and Flinn saw the scraggy pine that marked the clearing where his cabin stood. His thoughts turned to the business at hand. As always after having been away, he approached his camp warily. On the little crest overlooking his place he stopped, his eyes straining in the dark.
Nothing seemed amiss. On the right stood the cabin, dark and undisturbed. On the left loomed the barn, home to Ariac and Fernlover. Along one side of the barn rested a stone cellar with heavy wooden doors, doubly barred. Flinn kept Ariac’s meat there. The smell often drew wolves at night, but the stone walls and stout wood had kept them at bay in the past. Thankfully, no wolves nosed about the camp now. A divided corral abutted the back of the stables. He sensed rather than saw that the top bar of the gate was down. “Perhaps it was the wind,” Flinn murmured.
Something appeared next to him. “What’s wrong?”
Flinn jumped violently, his hand reaching in reflex for his sword. He could just make out the girl’s form in the gloom. “What in Thor’s Thunder are you doing here?” he demanded angrily. He hadn’t thought of her during the last hour of the trip and was badly startled by her sudden appearance. My reflexes are rusty, he thought.
She pointed down the hill toward the camp. “Is something wrong?”
“No,” he said gruffly. “I always check out the camp before I go in.” He blinked, realizing he had volunteered information.
The girl shrugged. “It’s too dark for me to go back to Bywater tonight. I’ll clean your barn for a night’s lodging and supper.”
“You’re claiming pilgrim’s rights, I take it?”
The girl nodded. “You bet I am. It’s too cold to bed down under the trees.”
“One night’s worth—that’s it,” Flinn replied.
She nodded again, then took a deep breath, her eyes scanning the treetops. “Think you’d answer just a few questions about how to become a knight at the Castle of the Three Suns?” the girl ventured, one hand touching the cheek he had slapped. Her tone carried a faint suggestion of hurt.
Flinn stared at the girl. By Diulanna, he thought, I am guilty! I had no right to hit her! He pursed his lips and then said curtly, “Too late for questions tonight. In the morning, perhaps.” Then he led the griffon and mule down to the stable, resolutely ignoring the girl who followed him. Briefly Flinn checked out the fallen rail and decided the wind did indeed blow it over; he resolved to find a longer pole in the morning. Opening the shed doors, he let the animals loose while seeking the lantern that hung inside the doorway. With practiced ease, he grabbed the tinderbox next to it and sparked the light.
Ariac and Fernlover eagerly sought their respective stalls.
The griffon made mewling noises and clawed his bedding as he sniffed the warm and familiar odors of home. The mule grazed his head along a rough-hewn log, scratching an itch against a familiar burl in the post. Flinn carried the lantern over to the griffon’s stall and hung it on a nearby wooden peg.
“You can start by seeing to the mule,” Flinn said gruffly, then entered Ariac’s stall and began loosening the saddle on his back. He removed the saddle, blanket, and bridle, taking care to gently remove the bit from the griffon’s sensitive beak. He went outside, his eyes adjusting quickly to the lack of light, and retrieved a frozen rabbit carcass from the meat cellar. Ariac clicked his beak eagerly when the carcass landed in his food trough. Picking up a coarse brush, Flinn began to rub down the griffon’s lion hair.
The girl had entered the mule’s stall and was worrying at the knots that held the supplies to Fernlover’s back. But the knots were of Flinn’s own design—he was certain the girl couldn’t loose them.
“Best leave them to me,” he stated briskly, appearing at the front of the stall. He realized he had said more words today than he had spoken in the last year. “The knots are—”
A sudden whump announced that the pack had fallen to the stable floor. The girl was watching Flinn expectantly.
“Let me guess,” he said sarcastically, “you worked as a sailor’s mate.”
The girl grinned. “Close. I knew an old man who mended nets down by the wharfs of Specularum. He taught me a trick or two.”
Fernlover sniffed the pack delicately, then gave the bundle a tentative nibble.
“Ssst!” Flinn leaped across the barn floor and swatted the mule. The animal jerked his head and backed away. After pulling the pack out of the stall, the warrior returned to finish Ariac’s grooming. The girl began removing Fernlover’s tack and preparing him for the night.