Goodbye to the Knight✔️

11. What a scumbag

With horses and bags in tow, we follow Leo towards our doom, well towards the knights camp.

"Right this way Sirs," Pipes up Leo. We get led around a few tents and see knights along with a few other people are wandering around, talking, eating, looking after the horse, and all of them are looking at us. Some giving us the side eye, whilst others openly watching us, no shame in their bearing down gazes.

We round the corner and see the tent, culprit of the loud bang. Around it, crawling in and out of it like ants, are people working on rebuilding it. We pause and watch on at the madness.

Shouting, or rather heated ordering, fills the air.

"Wrap it around that pole — no not that one, that one — THAT one!"

Limbs pointing are flailing everywhere.

"Which one?"

"That one! No, no, no, that one — oh just pass it here, let me do it."

Chaos. Pure chaos.

Sage leans over to me, "Aren't knights supposed to be good at this type of thing?"

"That's what I thought as well!"

"Come tie your horses up over here," Leo interrupts our talk, Zuri is now gone, Leo must have tied him up elsewhere whilst we were distracted. We lead Griffin and Winnie over to a temporary post in the ground and start to tie them up. "Those are only the squires — knights to be." Leo explains, I didn't even realise he could hear us.

"Ah, how much longer till they become knights?" I ask.

"Some still years, others any time now, they just need to prove themselves."

"Prove themselves?"

"Yeah, they need to do something knightly, which is usually courageous, then they can be knighted."

"Wow."

"Yeah, I'm only a page." He then walks off into another tent.

And I'm supposed to be a male. I need to be more careful. Hopefully Leo doesn't realise it's odd how high my voice has been for a male.

"I'll hopefully be able to help with Zuri pretty quickly then we can be on our way and each Burnley tonight." Sage tells me.

"Ok, I'll keep my head properly down. I almost blew my cover just then."

Suddenly a dark shadow falls onto the ground in front of us.

"What are you filth doing here?"

I spin around, before us stands a young man with a haughty face. I open my mouth to talk, then shut it quickly, this time there will be no chance of blowing my cover.

"Well?" He demands, eyes narrowed.

"We're here to help." Sage speaks.

The man steps forwards, trying to scare us. "You, peasant, can help me or any of the other knights here?" The disgust in his voice comes out as clear as the small bits of spit that land on my face, gross.

I try not to make my own nose crinkly obvious, wouldn't be good to offend a knight anymore it seems we're doing by just being in his breathing room.

"Yes, we're to help tend to Zuri,"

The man lets out a laugh, but no joy is in it.

"Zuri needs no help from you, a dirty peasant, he has his own personal stable boy."

"Actually Peter, Bennet went his own way at Fosscombe and we have no other horse doctors with us," Leo tells the man.

"I knew that Leo, don't tell me obvious things," Snaps the man called Peter.

Leo lowers his head, the fire in his eyes dying, "Sorry."

What a scumbag Peter is, every word that comes out of his mouth makes me dislike him even more every single time.

"You will be if you keep up the attitude." My eyes widen and I look towards Sage who has what I can imagine an exact copy of my expression on his face too. "What are you still doing here? Show them where to help and get out of my sight," he leans even closer to Leo and lowers his voice, "every second they're here tarnishes our group just a little more, we don't need dirty scum here any longer then absolutely possible, if they stay longer there will be consequences."

Peter then turns up his slightly crooked nose and strides back to the half built tent.

"Peter isn't even a knight yet and still believes he can boss me around," Leo tells us quietly, tears of anger and frustration threatening so spill over his cheeks. "Killian is my master, not him, and yet he still gets away with it. It's not fair."

My heart goes out to him. My proof, that Anne's idea of a knight is right, is growing and growing. And if Peter is only a squire, well lets just say the pit of dread in my stomach is growing more and more anxious with every thought of meeting an actual knight.

"Don't let him get to you too much, he's just trying to seem as though he's tough, probably to impress other people," Sage tries to cheer up Leo who lets out a sad smile.

"I'm sorry you had to experience Peter when you're only here because you generously offered to help,"

"Don't worry, it's okay, there's enough Peters in the land for me to know not to take it to heart."

"Really?" Leo looks up with his big blue eyes.

"Yes, there are many people out there who are just mean," Sage explains, "you just have to ignore the horridness and continue on with a brave smile."

I smile, imagining Sage and Isabelle becoming parents; they would be more than good at it.

"Okay, I can do that,"

"Yes, you can." They both smile at each other.

"Let me now show you to Zuri where you can take a proper look at him, and," he pauses briefly, "I was also just told by Luther, another knight in this group, to tell you that after you have dealt with Zuri, to come and meet with him and get him up to date with all of the news from Tanhorpe and anywhere else that away that you have come through."

And there goes that very, very slim chance, that I knew we wouldn't get but still hoped that we could avoid talking to a knight.

A/N:

Boom! Another chapter done and dusted and on time, I'm kinda going with a chapter each week. But we shall see, my time for writing varies a lot, so lets take each week as it comes :)

SouthernAlps over and out...