Eighteen

Chapter 1

      The sun bears down on him despite the early hour. It seeps through his dark blue tunic and warms his skin in a not so pleasant way. Besides him, the horse nickers, head bobbing in agitation. He shushes it, voice soothing as he leads the ornery beasts down the beaten dirt path and towards the pasture.

      "Easy, Sable," he coos, hands tight on the lead even as he knows that he'd be powerless against him. If Sable decides he'd rather go elsewhere, his best options is to the let the horse go.

      Sable is a big horse, born and bred strong and huge. Sable towers over him even though he's not short for his age. And the black beast knows it. Uses it to his advantage as he continues to bob his head until he has no choice but to release the lead or get dragged after Sable.

      "Alright, alright," he concedes. Unhooking the lead from the harness and rolling it up, he steps away from the huge, black beast. "But you are to go directly to the pasture, you hear me? No wandering."

      The horse takes off like a bullet, hooved feet pounding the dirt trail and sending clumps of mud in all directions.

      "Sable got away from you again, I see," a voice calls to his left and he turns to find a woman leaning against a large oak tree. She's a tall thing with cropped, blonde hair, lean, long limbs, and a thin frame hidden under layers of leather. But she's strong. He's seen her hold her own in battle often enough to be sure.

      "Wil," he greets, bowing politely, eyes glued to the glinting, iron sword that dangles from her slim hips. "Isn't it a little too early to be so alert?"

      "One must be aware of one's surroundings at all time," Will replies, lips pulling up into a smirk. She stays in her spot, shielded by the shade of the tree. The sun's rays can't get to her there. Cover in layers of leather and armor as she is, the heat must be unbearable. "Lest they suddenly find themselves with a knife firmly embedded into their back."

      He almost makes the mistake of pitying her.

      Almost.

      Wil is not someone to be pitied. He knows this and, as he watches her push off the tree with something akin to trepidation on her face, he says, "Just make sure the sure that back is not your own."

      She chortles as she leaves him without a proper goodbye. Knowing that Wil has never actually been one for propriety, he doesn't let it bother him as he watches her walk away. All swaying hips and deadly grace, never faltering even while under the onslaught of the sun's punishing rays and this horrid heat.

      But it's the number that holds his gaze. A transparent, black, sprawling thing. Like wet ink threatening to drip onto her head. But it never does. It hovers over Wil, planted firmly onto the spot over her head where it has always been and where it will always be.

      Thirty-five.

      The number is so low. Too low to be normal but, given her occupation, he's not as surprised as he should be.

      A guard hardly ever makes it into their later years. Hardly ever dies a death that isn't soaked in red and riddled in pain.

      He knows this. Everyone knows this.

      A guard lives, breathes, and fights for their king and their kingdom. A death in the name of the king is the only honorable death for those as devotes in serving the king as them. But knowing that guards die young in theory and seeing the evidence laid out before him is two different things.