The Ruins of Gorlan- Character Reaction

21

A/N: Power's back on!

Will took the book from Alyss and flipped through the pages until he landed on the right one. Clearing his throat, he began to read.

IN THE DAYS FOLLOWING THE BOAR HUNT, WILL NOTICED A change in the way he was treated. There was a certain deference, even respect, in the way people spoke to him and looked at him as he passed. It was most noticeable among the people of the village. Being simple folk, with rather limited boundaries to their day-to-day lives, they tended to glamorize and exaggerate any event that was in any way out of the ordinary. Will rolled his eyes as he remembered the exaggerated tales of the boar.

By the end of the first week, the events of the hunt had been so blown out of proportion that they had Will single-handedly killing both boars as they charged out of the thicket. Gilan choked as he laughed. A couple of days after that, to hear the story related, you could almost believe that he had accomplished the feat with one arrow, firing it clean through the first boar and into the heart of the second.

"Is that possible?" Crowley mused. Horace grinned.

"Why don't you ask the one that did it?" Will gave him a long-suffering look.

"I really didn't do too much at all," he said to Halt one evening, as they sat by the fire in the warm little cottage they shared on the edge of the forest."I mean, it's not as if I thought it through and decided to do it. It just sort of happened. And after all, you killed the boar, not me." Will made a see what I mean gesture.

Halt merely nodded, staring fixedly at the leaping yellow flames in the grate.

"People will think what they want to," he said quietly. "Never take too much notice of it."

"Halt's Wisdom," Gilan said.

Nevertheless, Will was troubled by the adulation. He felt people were making an altogether too big thing out of it all. He would have enjoyed the respect if it had been based on what had actually happened. In his heart, he felt he had done something worthwhile, and perhaps even honorable. But he was being lionized for a totally fictional account of events and, being an essentially honest person, he couldn't really take any pride in that. Halt nodded. Good boy, he thought.

He also felt a little embarrassed because he was one of the few people who had noticed Horace's original, instinctively courageous action, placing himself between the charging boar and Will and Tug. Will had mentioned this last fact to Halt. He felt that perhaps the Ranger might have an opportunity to appraise Sir Rodney of Horace's unselfish action, but his teacher had merely nodded and said briefly:

"Sir Rodney knows. He doesn't miss much. He's got a little more up top than the average bash and whacker."

"Bash and whacker?" Duncan raised an eyebrow. Halt shrugged.

"It's what knights do."

And with that, Will had to be content.

Around the castle, with the knights from the Battleschool and the various Craftmasters and apprentices, the attitudes were different. There, Will enjoyed a simple acceptance, and the recognition of the fact that he had done well. He noticed that people tended to know his name now, so that they greeted him as well as Halt when the two of them had business in the castle grounds. The Baron himself was friendlier than ever. It was a source of pride to him to see one of his castle wards acquit himself well. Arald nodded and smiled.

The one person Will would have liked to discuss it all with was Horace himself. But as their paths seldom crossed, the opportunity hadn't arisen. He wanted to make sure that the warrior apprentice knew that Will set no store by the ridiculous stories that had swept the village, and he hoped that his former wardmate knew he had done nothing to spread the rumors.