He may have been a knight, but that didn’t mean he was any less of a fool for it. He wasn’t cruel like Ser Harys or Ser Maleor, but he was still dumb.

Dumb as an ox, his father always used to say.

He was young and he was thick, so he didn’t truly know what men did in the shivering hours before a battle. His father had always spoken of the charge, though Vilon wondered now if he’d been riding Chestnut then, or if there had been other horses before the old beast.

He spoke of the ponderous, terrible weight of a cavalry strike, of how the earth would tremble as if it wanted to swallow everything above it. He described the blood boiling in your ears as the wind whistled past, and the jarring, holy feeling of release when a lance shattered against a man’s chest, claiming a life just as it claimed your wood.

An uneven exchange, to be sure. Or maybe not? A lance might cost a silverii or so, but how much was a human life worth when the crows were the ones doing the counting?

Whatever the answer, Vilon knew nothing of the labor of war, yet he never would have expected that men would go farming before a slaughter.

Ahead of him, the plain was swarming. He saw hundreds upon hundreds of men, their backs bent under the wide, pale sky. They weren’t sharpening swords or praying to the Warrior; they were planting small wooden stakes into the dirt. The stakes were modest things, just tall enough to sprout from the thigh-high emerald grass like ugly, wooden weeds.

They didn’t plant them in neat rows or tight walls. They left a dozen steps between each one, hammering them down point-first with heavy, rhythmic thuds. Thump. Thump. Thump. Vilon scratched his head, his head feeling heavy.

Why? What was the use of a few blunt sticks scattered in the grass? They weren’t tall enough to stop a man, and they weren’t sharp enough to impale a horse. To his eyes, it looked like a monumental waste of wood and sweat, a madness brought on by the heat of the sun.

And yet, that wasn’t even the queerest part of the toil.

While the hammer-men worked the stakes, the majority of the laborers were occupied with the river. A long, weary line of men moved back and forth from the banks, carrying heavy wooden buckets sloshing with water. They didn’t bring the water to the horses, nor to the kitchens. Instead, they marched out into the tall grass and began to pour.

Vilon watched, bewildered, as they drenched the earth around the stakes. They moved with the same patten emptying bucket after bucket onto the dirt until the ground turned from a firm green carpet into a dark, sucking mire. They were watering the field as if they expected a harvest of steel to grow by morning.

Such a queer thin-

"YOU!"

The voice cracked like a whip. A man came staggering through the high grass, his face a map of sun-scorched rage. He wore a dented breastplate and a steel pot helmet that sat crooked on his head, some sergeant or taskmaster who looked like he hadn’t slept since the moon was full.

"What are you doing here, you damn air-waster?" the man spat, closing the distance with a predatory heat. "Standing about counting clouds? Grab a bucket and get to working! Unless you favor a bloody back. In this camp, the one who doesn’t work doesn’t eat!"

He didn’t wait for an answer. He grabbed Vilon by the shoulder with a hand like a meat hook, spinning him toward the river. "Go!"

Vilon felt the heat rise in his neck. He stood tall, trying to let the sunlight catch his mail, before recalling it had a wool cloth over it.

Anyway he could not be treated like this, he was a knight !

"I—I’ll have you know I have the honor to be a knight."

The man didn’t even blink. He didn’t look at the mail, the sword.He probably did not even hear him.

He just saw a large, idle body.

"Still here? I’ll bash your head in, boy! GO. GRAB. A. BUCKET!"

-----------------

How stupid that man was, Vilon decided, and besides how dare he!Ordering him around!

He bent down and scopped a bucket-full of water.

Telling him to grab a bucket!

He was doing this just because he wanted, and certainly not because he had been ordered. No one could order him but a prince or a lord!He just hated dallying around without nothing to do. Yes this was his choice!

And he had chosen to get himself to work, that was all.Nothing besides that.

His wool breeches felt heavy as they clinged to his skin while he bent over the bank. He tried to stay close to the shore, terrified that a slip would send him and his mail clattering to the bottom. He didn’t even know how to swim.

The water was unnervingly clear; he could see his own toes wiggling beneath the surface, looking pale and small.

He paused, gasping for breath, and watched a man stagger past on the bank above.

The stranger was carrying four slopping pails, two in each hand, balanced as if they were sacks of wool. He was, without a doubt, the thickest human being Vilon had ever set eyes on.

He wasn’t just tall, as a matter of fact Vilon was taller, but he was wide, built with the square, immovable density of a castle foundation. He looked less like a man and more like a bull that had been taught to walk upright.

Vilon must have been staring like a fool, because the mountain of a man stopped mid-stride and turned to him.

Panic flared in his chest. He remembered the brawls in camp, the broken jaws and the hangings. He was a Kakunian-born Ezvanian in a camp full of Yarzat tempers. He expected a punch that would take his head off, or a headbutt that would cave in his nose.

In his haste to get on his guard, Vilon’s fingers slipped. He dropped his wooden bucket.

He watched in slow-motion horror as the pail hit the surface with a hollow thwack, bobbed once, and then surrendered to the current. It swept away instantly, dancing toward its bank with agonizing speed.

With the bucket lost to the current and not a chance of fishing it back, Vilon braced himself. He kept his fists raised, jaw tight, waiting for the impact of a Yarzat fist that would surely send him spinning into the Lampianis.

He waited, and he waited... and yet he just kept waiting for that punch that never arrived.

He peered from his jumble-guard, to see that the giant’s mouth fell open, wide and round. He pointed a thick, sausage-sized finger toward the retreating wood as it bobbed away toward the Oizenian lines.

"Oh!" he cried out. His voice was surprisingly high, pitched with a genuine, frantic distress. "Your bucket! The river took your bucket!"

He looked at the empty, swirling water and then back at Vilon. His face was a mask of pure, unadulterated tragedy, as if he had just watched a small child drown.

"Your bucket! You lost your bucket!" he wailed, his eyes wide. "Ser is going to be angry! Ser will be so angry!"

Vilon slowly dropped his guard. His knuckles were still white, but the confusion was overriding the fear. What in the All-Knower’s name was happening?

He watched as the massive man set his own pails down on the grass with agonizing care, as if they were made of fine glass rather than sloshing wood.

"Ser is going to punish you!" the giant whispered, leaning in. "Did I scare you? I am sorry. I didn’t mean it.Just found you staring at me and wanted to ask if you needed help. Here... take one of mine."

"I... thank you," Vilon stammered, reaching out for the handle.

"Name’s Owen," the man said, a sudden, shy smile breaking through the gloom of the lost bucket. "Big Oaf Owen, they call me. What’s yours?"

"Vil—Ser Vilon of TallRoast." He straightened his back, trying to look the part of a man who belonged in mail.

"Ser? Are you a knight?" Owen’s eyes went even wider, gleaming with a sort of holy awe.

He seemed... childish. Vilon looked at the sheer scale of the man, the boulder-like shoulders and the neck as thick as a tree trunk, and found it hard to believe such a soft soul resided in such a mountain of meat.

"I have the honor to be one, yes," Vilon said, his chest swelling just a bit. "I came with the Prince of Kakunia to aid your Prince in the battle."

"Kakunia? Prince?" Owen scratched a grimy cheek, his brow furrowed in deep concentration. "There is another? I thought we only had the one." He paused, his face lighting up again. "Wait! You are a knight! Do you have a horse?"

"I do. He is a brown sorrel. And he is called Old Chestnut."

"Can I see him!" Owen’s feet thundered against the riverbank, the impact making the mud quiver. He looked like an oversized child who had just been promised a sweetmeat at a midsummer fair. "Can I? Can I really?"

"He’s in the stables..." Vilon looked down at the spare bucket in his hand, then back at the giant. "If you’ll give me one of yours so I don’t get my head bashed in, I’ll even let you ride him."

Owen stopped his hopping, his expression turning solemn. He stepped closer, peering into Vilon’s face with an intensity that made the knight want to blink.

"Are you a friend?" Owen asked softly. "Are we friends now?"

Vilon paused. He looked at the giant, at the mud on his boots, and the simple, honest hope in his eyes. He thought back to the villages he’d passed through with his father, always moving, always the "bastard" or the "stranger." He could not recall ever having a friend, not one who didn’t want a copper or a fight. People usually went away after a few days, or he did.

A slow smile spread across Vilon’s face. "Why not?" he said, feeling a strange warmth that had nothing to do with the sun. "Aye, Owen. We’re friends."

"Friends!" Owen roared, his laughter booming across the quiet plain , loud enough to make the men with the stakes turn and stare. "A knight friend! And a horse called Nut!"

"Nut! Nut! Nut!"

"Chestnut," Vilon corrected, his voice lost in the booming joy of the giant. Owen didn’t seem to care for the prefix; he marched along with a rhythmic stomp, chanting the horse’s new name as if it were a battle cry.

They fell into a strange, lopsided labor. Owen hauled a massive pail balanced on one shoulder and a sloshing bucket in his free hand, moving with the effortless strength of a draft horse. Vilon followed behind, struggling with his single replacement bucket, his mail shirt jingling with every uneven step.

They waded to the bank, dipped into the cold glass of the Lampianis, and trudged back out into the tall emerald stalks. The grass really was beautiful, swaying in the breeze like a silk sheet, hiding the treacherous, black muck that was thickening beneath their boots. Vilon looked at the lush blades and felt a pang of guilt.Chestnut would have loved to spend a day grazing here; it looked far tastier than the dry, dusty oats in the camp.

Still, the question gnawed at him. He watched the water vanish into the dirt, turning the firm earth into a soup that sucked at his heels.

"Friend," Vilon called out, his voice feeling thin against the vast, empty sky. "The rain will come soon enough if those clouds hold. Why bother watering the weeds?"

Owen stopped, his massive frame silhouetted against the sun. He shrugged, a movement that made his shoulders look like shifting boulders. "Ser told me to," he said simply. He offered a wide, vacant smile that reached his eyes. "We’re making sure the ground is good and not thirsty. Right, Friend?"

Vilon sighed. It wasn’t exactly the tactical insight he’d hoped for. He looked at the giant beside him, wondering how such a man had ended up in the middle of a gathering of killers.

"Where do you come from, Owen?" Vilon asked, dumping his bucket and watching the water turn a patch of clover into a puddle. "Where is your family?"

"From home, and at home" Owen replied. The answer was immediate and bright, as if the word itself was a warm hearth.

"And what have you been doing all these months? Before you came to this field?"

Owen’s face took on a look of profound concentration, his brow furrowing as he reached back into his memory. "I stayed at the Bastion," he said. "With some friends.They were kind. Gave me bread and told me I was a good boy. I helped move the stones. Big stones, heavy stones. I put them where the Ser told me and let go when they told me.Usually at other men that were below us.They were evil men. Friends told me that."

He nodded to himself, satisfied with the recollection. "The Bastion was loud. Lots of shouting. But Friends were kind to me."

Vilon went quiet, thinking of the stories he’d heard of the siege at the Bastion, of the blood on the walls and the desperate defense against the Oizenians. He looked at Owen’s hands, large enough to crush a man’s skull, yet currently gripped gently around the handle of a wooden pail.

"It must have been hard..." Vilon murmured, his voice caught in the steady slosh-slosh of their bucket-march.

"It was," Owen said, and for a moment, the giant’s face clouded over like a storm front. But then the sun broke through again, brighter than before. "But then I saw the Prince! He came to us, just like my friends said he would. He rescued us! I saw his face, Vilon. He kissed me right here, upon the cheeks. ’’ he thrusted a finger to his face ’’He did it for the others, too. But when he came to me, he looked up and told me I was a brave man. A brave, strong man. And then he gave me silver."

Vilon frowned, his boots squelching in the thickening mire. He knew little of this Prince of Yarzat.

He knew half the South clamored for the man’s head,that he was as lowborn as he was tyrant, and Vilon had always reckoned that if so many people wanted a man dead, he must be a villain of the worst sort. And yet... the Prince Owen described didn’t sound like a monster.

Wait—silver? Vilon looked the big man up and down. He saw no coin-purse at his belt, no bulge in his tunic.

"Where is your silver, friend?" Vilon asked, a sudden spark of worry lighting in his chest.Before suddendly realising he looked like a thief. "You have to pay attention to it. There are men in this camp who would cut a throat for a single copper, let alone a Prince’s gift." He silently prayed to the Weaver that the big oaf hadn’t already been bled dry by some camp-follower.

"Oh, it’s safe!" Owen chirped, nodding vigorously. "There were some men... kind men. We gave our silver to them to keep it for us until we go home. All my friends did the same. They gave me a piece of paper, gonna let you see it in my tent? And they had me press my thumb on it. Something black remained behind on the parchment. Like a step on mud."

He laughed and smiled like a child on summer. "I can’t wait to go home," Owen continued, his eyes drifting toward the horizon where the sun was beginning to dip. "I’m going to walk through the door and give all that money to my mother. She’ll be so happy, Vilon. She’ll tell me I’m a good boy again. We’ll buy a new cow. A fat one with big spots.She was so sad when I left home, can’t wait to see her again!"

He laughed, a deep, rumbling sound of pure, untainted joy.

Vilon looked at the smiling man, whose hands were stained with river-mud and whose heart was filled with spotted cows and a mother’s hug.

A mother....was hers still alive?And if she were, he wondered, would she hug him?

His father told him his mother was a whore, and there was a dime for a dozen of them everywhere they would go.Did he ever see his mother?In that dozens that they must have travelled to?His father was oft to visit brothel, had she ever laid with his mother more than once?

He looked at the thigh-high grass and the black, sucking muck they were creating together. He thought of the battle that was to come.And suddendly his thought of his mother became less urgent.

Even if she were still alive, he reasoned, his mother wouldn’t want for him. It wasn’t like for Owen.

He gripped his bucket a little tighter, offering a silent, desperate prayer to the Father Protector of Laws and the Weaver.

Let him go home, Vilon pleaded.

"Aye, Owen," he then said, his voice thick. "A fat cow. The fattest in the village."