The Sword of Stone - Sworn Honours

Chapter 9: Choices to Make

The walk up the stairs was strenuous on the paladin; having been cooped up in the dungeons for the past month made Rolan's muscles weak, making the simplest tasks, such as climbing stairs, feel like he was going up a mountain. The guard had to aid him, with Rolan taking a grip on the man's arm, though he refused to be carried as the guard offered. I may be ageing, but I'm not that old, he thought, pressing on with determination to make it up these damnable steps. 

As they continued up the spiralling steps, he could feel the moist air hit his face before seeing the midnight sky as they stepped out into a clearing. Rolan took in the sights around him, including the sky and stars he saw above, with a full moon hanging over them. 

The moon's light illuminated the remains of a large ruin sprawled across the large clearing, filled with many hastily erected wooden structures. To his left, he saw the glittering water of a lake wrapping itself around the tower from which he had just come. In the distance, beyond all this, he could see the shadowy figures of the tall redwood trees looming yet never intruding, as if fearful of growing close to the ruins.

As Rolan took in all this, it struck him that the ruins must have been a part of a castle or fort. The architecture, however, was foreign and almost unnerving. He could make very little out through the thick moss that completely swallowed the stone. His attention was drawn to the sound of laughter and singing as he was led around the tower's base. A set of rough men was seated around a large fire, set some distance from a red tarp that concealed the entrance to the tower's bottom half. They all wore ragged clothes, while others wore thick bear pelts around them. Some sat quietly; others chatted; one man sang poorly to the rest of the men, with his friends laughing at him. No one cared to notice the guard and Rolan.

The paladin was taken into the tower, where he saw the simple man, Arnick, keeping a fire going with wood that he placed into the fireplace, his hands seemingly untouched by the flames. Rolan noticed in passing the iron plate that was crudely screwed into the back of his head that looked to have melded with the flesh. Arnick looked at Rolan and grunted. What that meant was beyond Rolan's understanding. 

'Right, Arnick, go to bed,' the guard told him. Arnick grunted a response before sluggishly rising and wobbling his way out. His lordship will be with you in a minute. In the meantime, take a seat and behave yourself.' With that, the guard excused himself. 

Rolan took the offer of a seat to rest his weary legs and looked across the room, seeing a table pushed up against the wall. On it lay a banner. Bearing the sigil of house Greycrow. Yet under it was the depiction of a river. The paladin found it odd that the banner would be in a bandit encampment, and even more bizarre was the different design. That wasn't the only thing strange about this room, as it wasn't furnished like any bandit camp he would've expected. It had none of the trappings that one would presume from a bandit chief. No trophies mounted on the walls, no skulls sat on the table, no piles of coins sprawling from a chest to display their wealth. It was more modest than he expected. It was more like a noble's hall, kept clean and well-presented.

Across from the paladin was a window, stained and painted with a depiction of a humanlike creature with pale grey eyes and thin, long ears kneeling in desperate prayer as an ominous hand reached down from the heavens, the fingertips dripping in blood. It was a heathen design of some sort, one that made the paladin distinctly uneasy. 

Rolan was so focused on it that he failed to notice the figure at the top of the steps. 'Not the most glamorous of rooms I know, yet it gets the job done,' Rolan saw the lord fully as he reached the bottom of the steps. In his hands was a letter that he had rolled up, approaching the fire and tossing it inside, then facing the paladin.

His face was hard, and his eyes seemed cold yet watchful—as if he were both here and somewhere else at the same time. He wore an amber-tinted gambeson embroidered with the sigil of house Greycrow along the chest, the blue river under it as the crow soared over. Rolan studied the man's features—familiar ones. Rolan was about to get up before the man.