“Well, I would prefer not having to make the climb up that hill every day, so lodging would be nice,” Harou said agreeably.

The two men went around to the house’s rear courtyard.  A training dummy and a hay target had been set up on one side.  Harou looked at the butler.

“What do you want me to do?” he asked.

“Pretend I am the child and instruct me how to attack the dummy,” the butler replied.

“Very well.  Do you have a practice sword?” Harou asked, looking around.

The butler walked over to the dummy and picked up a wooden short sword propped up against it.

“Come stand here,” Harou instructed, tapping the end of his crutch on a paver a short distance from the dummy.  The butler complied.  “Let me see your form,” Harou said.

The butler shifted into a fighting stance.

“Not too bad,” Harou said, eyeing the stance critically.  He used his crutch to move one of the butler’s feet back, widening his stance.  He lifted one of the man’s elbows and pulled the other one closer to his body.  He pushed his hand down so the sword was pointing more out than up.

“There, that’s better.  This is the proper form of the stance you took,” Harou said, and launched into a short lecture on why it was important for his student to maintain the stance.  He deliberately spoke slowly, forcing his “student” to hold the stance for an uncomfortably long time.  When the butler slipped, Harou rapped the offending appendage with his crutch and scolded him for slipping.

“Now, you will swing your sword forward, and then return to your stance.  You will not hit the dummy,” Harou instructed.  He ran the butler through the drill for several minutes, correcting his stance if it was incorrect, and giving tips for how to swing more straight.  Finally, the butler lowered the sword.  His brow beaded with sweat.

“Alright, enough.  Your lesson is kind of boring, but it is clear you know your stuff.”

“Unless you want your ‘Young Master’ to end up a soldier like me, it’s best if he finds swordplay rather dull,” Harou observed.

“Hm, perhaps,” the butler said.  “My name is Seamus.  You can call me ‘Mister Seamus’ or ‘Sir’ while you work here.  The boy is to be called ‘Young Master’ and his parents will be ‘Sir’ and ‘Madam’ or ‘Milord’ and ‘Milady’ as due their rank.”

Harou nodded.  It wasn’t that different from when he was a soldier, really.  He could follow orders and kowtow to rank if the job called for it.

“Here is the key to the guard house,” Seamus said, handing a plain bronze key to Harou.  “You will start tomorrow morning, after breakfast.”

Harou accepted the key and turned to head towards the guard house.

The guard house was a well-maintained little tower.  The bottom floor was a small, single-room apartment.  A small vestibule at the front  contained stairs up to the top of the tower, where there was a lookout post that connected to the estate’s walls.  The apartment itself was only slightly less barebones than a soldiers’ barracks.  There was a lumpy bed, a side table, dresser, and a wobbly dining table with two rickety-looking chairs seated near the fireplace.  The fireplace was equipped with a pot hook, metal brackets meant to hold up a flat, rectangular pan, and a set of pokers.

A quick search of the place told Harou he would need to get a few things, like a pot and pan for the fireplace, a skin rug for the cold, stone floor, and at least a broom for keeping the place tidy.  Bathing in here was going to be a bit of a nightmare.  Harou figured going to a public bathhouse was going to be the only thing manageable.  At least that would give him an excuse to keep going into town to hunt for leads.

The lycan soldier unpacked his meager belongings and spent a few minutes trying to punch some of the lumpiness out of the mattress, with limited success.  He sat down on the bed and put his head in his hands with a sigh.

After a moment, his hands shifted down to rub his injured leg, and he winced whenever he applied pressure to an envenomed area.  His muscles ached from a combination of the venom, the spasms the venom induced, and the strain of walking in an unfamiliar way from favoring his leg.

He was so tired.  He needed to go buy at least the cooking implements he needed, and some food to cook, but he was just so tired.  He flopped back onto the bed and curled up, leaving his wounded leg straight, because it hurt to bend.  He didn’t have the energy to get what he needed to make dinner, let alone actually make it.  He decided he’d just wait until morning to deal with it.  Maybe if he went to sleep early tonight, he could get enough rest to make up for how frequently he woke up in the night ever since that battle.  If it wasn’t from pain, it was from nightmares where he relived that day.  Maybe, if he got enough sleep tonight, it would make up for going to bed without dinner, and he’d have the energy to get himself some breakfast.

Maybe, so many maybes.  He wasn’t sure if he really believed his thoughts or if he was trying to convince himself.  Harou took a deep breath and cleared his mind of disruptive thoughts.  He meditated until he finally found sleep.

The next morning, Harou was woken abruptly, earlier than he intended, by someone slamming on his door.

Bewildered, the soldier grabbed his crutch and limped to the door, shirtless.  He opened it to a maid with a try.  She immediately blushed at the sight of his bare chest and squeezed her eyes shut while thrusting the tray at him.

“Mister Seamus said to bring you breakfast,” she mumbled, the words spilling out of her in a rush to keep from stammering.  Harou ignored her fluster and accepted the tray with an inward sigh.  Feigning obliviousness, like he always did around women who acted like that, he gave her a bemused look.

“I wasn’t aware I’d be receiving a meal service,” he said, his tone questioning as he raised a brow.

“Oh, well, n-normally you wouldn’t, but it’s your first day and Mister Seamus wanted you up early, since the Young Master must rise early for your lessons before going to his academy.”

Harou snorted softly.  There was no way that stuffy butler believed a soldier would sleep later than a schoolboy.  Based on the darkness outside, Harou figured he had about an hour and a half before the boy would get up.  Harou didn’t need that long to get ready and walk up to the main house.  Even with his bad leg, he wasn’t that slow.

“Right.  Thanks,” he said flatly, not hiding his skepticism.  The maid curtsied and scurried off.  Harou shook his head, bemused once again.

Harou took the tray to the little dining table and sat down gingerly, half fearing the chair would break on him.  He took his time enjoying his meal, refusing to let some snob rush him.

When he was finished eating, Harou got dressed, and stepped outside with the tray and dishes.  He wasn’t sure what he was meant to do with them, and he couldn’t very well carry it up the hill to the main house while using a crutch.  With a shrug, he opted to leave the tray on a bench in front of the guard house.  The maid could come fetch it whenever she wanted.

Harou hobbled up the hill to the main house.  He circled around, following the path to the back courtyard, where the training dummies were set up.  The sun was barely up, and there was still a bit of mist swirling across the grass.  The ethereal feeling the sight evoked reminded Harou of his brother-in-law’s castle quite a bit, and he felt a pang of longing for home and family.