Correl of Otley
Correl actually had planned for the new sleeping schedule to be a regular thing. For the remainder of their trip back to Gauwynn and hopefully the rest of her time serving as a squire under Lord Brighid. Which her master griped about, of course. But Correl was becoming something of a warden with the way she went about it.
Personally, Correl wondered if Lord Brighid had ever had a squire before. Because it was becoming obvious with how much she had to fight her on normal things she was taught to do, that the Lord knight had never experienced this before. She had teased her about her knowledge on the subject, and yet, with every day that passed Correl found she was proving herself right.
It was about three days into their trip to Gauwynn that Correl asked why Brighid wore no armor. Most accounts of seeing the woman had her fully clad in armor that was especially made for her size and weight, and on the few times Correl had seen Lord Brighid at a distance before they were formally introduced, she was fully decked out in her iron garb. Lord Brighid’s only response was that she felt the armor was too bulky and too heavy for the journey, so she left it at home. Correl was…well she wasn’t annoyed with the answer, but it struck her as odd.
Later in the same day while unpacking their things to wash in the nearest river, Correl found Lord Brighid’s sword, tightly wrapped in leather, and buried under the bed rolls in one of the bags Trillion usually wore on him. When she asked about that, Lord Brighid waved it away saying she’d forgotten it was in there, and that Correl could carry it if she wanted, but she wouldn’t.
“Wouldn’t it be better to keep this with you, what with the dangers we’re facing?” Correl asked. While it was a squire duty to carry their knight’s weapons for them, she hadn’t even known it was there! In the bags they’d been carrying for days now! They’d fought what amounted to a dragon person who destroyed a good chunk of a fort built for protection, for goodness sake. Correl found the attitude Lord Brighid had for it very flippant.
Lord Brighid was quiet for a moment, and it seemed stuck in her thoughts, before answering in a flat and almost dangerous tone, “It’s of no use to me.”
She let the matter drop for the moment, but she did carry the sword on her back, and carried her own short sword on her hip. She couldn’t be sure why it wouldn’t be useful to her. But questioning it felt like the wrong move.
That didn’t stop Correl from wanting to question other things, they’d been blessed with time, and not a single assassin or monster seemed to come for them. So she questioned things. Like why she was allowed to ride on Trillion when Lord Brighid herself didn’t. Or why Lord Brighid hadn’t even thought to pack armor for a quest where she was most likely going to be attacked several times.
The answer for the latter was a simple, “she could move faster without the armor on”, which was understandable at least given the nature of the quest. But the former question? The answer was, “We both can’t fit on Trillion.” Correl reeled over that one, why would they both be riding Trillion??
It was throwing much of what she was taught, and what she expected of when becoming a squire out of the window. Or maybe she had simply held a different image of Lord Brighid of Gauwynn in mind? And what she was seeing now was truly how the woman acted by herself. Her thoughts of Knighthood and what it was supposed to look like aside, Correl was…enjoying herself.
Lord Brighid was more laid back than she thought, given her status and stature. She was rarely angry, even when passerby’s would stop to chat with her, or when watching the night for monsters to jump out and attack them. She had felt that maybe she’d be more on edge, but aside from a few moments when she felt they were being watched during the nights, she was calm and, on rare occasions, funny. Maybe she was trying to downplay it. The amount of times she’d apologized for Correl about pulling her into this investigation with no time to prepare… maybe she was trying to make sure her squire wouldn’t lose her nerve in the off days of an ongoing quest.
“When we get to Gauwynn, what will we be doing?” Correl asked, as they traveled once more on the road, while the sun had began its traditional descent from the sky. She watched as her lord’s eyes looked to the dusking sky.
“I had planned a route, to take me around the land of Yor and meet with my persons of interest. But I need to change it… it seems like I was being followed. So… we’ll go home, regroup, and create a new route, something that shouldn’t be trailed, because I won’t share it with anyone else aside from us two.”
Correl looked up to the sky as well, “Won’t you get into trouble with the lords who have already been informed of your arrival?” There were definitely among the many lords and houses that make up the nobility of Yor some who would take offense to Lord Brighid’s matter of thinking, and many among those who had power in terrifying forms. And these were specifically the ones who had access to magicians, who would wield…well, magic.
Lord Brighid shrugged in the same nonchalant way she always would, especially before throwing away some time-honored tradition, or basic information too, about the way the world works. “I would much rather live to face their wrath, then die in a trap someone else set up for me.” Correl chalked up the courage her lord has as something that surely all lords would have. Who knows? Maybe they would be lenient after she explained herself.
“And,” Lord Brighid emphasized, “You may be able to set up your room, in Gauwynn! You’ll be making that your new home, you know!”
Correl had forgotten about the whole, “moving to a new place” thing. She’d imagined a life on the road more often than not, when she envisioned her time as a squire. But that was part of it, they would have somewhere to return to to rest after long stretches of time. To recoup and gather their thoughts. Not some perfectly squared-off room with a slightly off-tilt window. But something new… Well, at least she hoped there were even leveled windows in Gauwynn. What would be the odds of getting almost exactly the same room in a different building? She wondered, and part of her wondered if she would truly be upset with the notion.
The duo traveled in cozy silence once more, before settling behind a thicket of trees not even five feet from the treaded road. They set camp up there for the night while Correl’s mind wandered. She wanted to ask so many more questions,What was Gauwynn like? Would she really set up her own room? Would she be given new clothing… Where would they go now if they were being followed?
Correl sighed, sucking on her teeth as she stoked the fire for the night. After fighting that monster at Fort Hawke, she wanted desperately to rest and take a moment to forget it ever happened. She would close her eyes sometimes and still see black blood pooling into the floor in clumps, as if it had been mixed with mud. If she wasn’t paying attention, the cries of predator birds throughout the sky would send her into a small state of, eyes darting around to find the obvious scaled beast it came from. She would rather focus on setting up a room in Gauwynn. She would rather train with fighting dummies and practice her reading, or be anywhere but on the road in the middle of the night, where something could and would hurt her.
She had to give Lord Brighid her credit. For all that had gone wrong, in that moment, she always apologized for the time of her apprenticeship as a squire. Apologized that she couldn’t have left her out of this battle. She swore her master saw going home and setting up a room as a welcome treat, all things considered.
When Correl looked over at Lord Brighid, she was setting up their beds. Correl had managed well to keeping the older woman on a strict sleeping schedule. Usually no more than a few hours at most per night, but it would be enough to keep her on her toes and ready for the action she so believed they would see in the dark of the night. And Correl was getting better and watching over her. Especially when Lord Brighid’s nightmares started. Correl herself hardly ever had a bad dream she couldn’t wake up from, a rare thing for an orphaned girl. But for the past few days she noticed that nightmares were all that Lord Brighid ever had.
Not the tame kind either, from what Correl would see when she would wake up. Screaming, crying, sometimes raking her nails across her arms. And that panicking motion she would do when she became nervous: clenching and unclenching her fists. Correl realized that she was hardly aware when she did this. Eyes cornered and hard, inspecting everything she saw. Sometimes, in her dreams, Correl would hear her mumbling about iron or fire. Or crying about getting away, about staying safe…
All Correl could do was wait for Lord Brighid to stir awake, screaming or not, and fetch her fresh water. Pretending that the nightmares never even happened. The few times she’d fish for an answer were met with hard rebuttals, or immediately redirected to something else. Correl snapped herself out of her thoughts to see Lord Brighid already laying down to rest for the night, “You’re going to bed now?” She asked, trying to keep the shock from rising.
“Yes. Might as well, we’re almost a few days out of Gauwynn,” Lord Brighid gestured towards the trees of all things, which under the dark of night, took on deep reds and oranges for the colors of their leaves. “There will be so much to do and look into when we’re back that I won’t really have the time for it.”
“You say we’re close to Gauwynn because of the trees?” Correl asked, when she looked at them, they were pretty but hardly told her where she was going. “How?”
“In Gauwynn, the mountainside is littered in trees that look like that. All year round.” Brighid stated, matter-of,factly as she fumbled into her bed roll, wrapping herself up, “The leaves are peculiar little things, smaller and flatter than the leaves elsewhere in Yor, it resembles more of a half-circle, than a star. Each one seems to have little notches in them, as if they’ve all fought their own battles and came out with scars…” Brighid settled finally, face turned towards the fire, and with a laugh she added, “Despite this so many call them ‘maidenhair’ leaves.”
Correl hopped up from her spot in front of the fire and walked towards the trees. Some were still star-shaped, and pointed, or triangular, but among the bunches of dead leaves there were a few that resembled half circles. Just as Lord Brighid said. “Why maidenhair?” She asked, having grabbed one of the more in tact semi-circled leaves and settles back into her own seat in a careful drop.
She could see Lord Brighid still awake, even with her eyes closed, she could tell her master was looking around their makeshift camp. Lord Brighid’s answer came with a yawn, “Something about the… way fairer ladies wear their hair on the other side of the mountains connected to Gauwynn…” Correl accepted that answer for the moment and watched the fire in silence, her own questions dancing around her brain. Lord Brighid had a point to her early rest. Even if Correl was planning to make a rather wicked soup with the food they’d gotten for a meal.
Correl sat in the dark, watching as their fire cast shapes onto the ground and trees around them. Sometimes she would startle to a sound in the distance, or the sight of the trees shadows along other trees or even the ground. She was sure after a while that Lord Brighid had finally fallen into her restless sleep, and stalked over to sit beside her in her own bed roll. She would do this too once Brighid fell asleep, sit in her own bedroll beside her to be closer, just in case she needed her. It made her watch a little easier too, since she felt less alone. Even though this put her at odds with the cold, as their bed rolls were a good ways away from the fire she’d made. But it was usually like that, if Lord Brighid were the one to set them up. If Correl set the beds closer to the fire, her master would drag hers away a good distance before sleeping, choosing instead to bundle up more in her roll.
It was just another odd thing about the Lord of Gauwynn.
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