Chapter Text
It was fun being the most grown up of the six of them – not only the oldest but also the most experienced! Particularly with the ladies. Mainly he had experience, as Violet and Melissa reminded him constantly – rude! – in getting shot down by girls, but hey, you had to start somewhere, and Gray was, you know, started. Unlike the rest of them. Point for Gray. Violet could shut it, she was only nagging because she’d scared off all the Ram boys already.
Also, he was always the first one to carry home big news or gossip, which irritated Kliff’s mother to no end (always a bright spot in Gray’s day, as he truly despised that woman – who did she think she was, trying to get Kliff to associate with ‘better’ people and forcing him to learn all that boring merchant-y stuff when he didn’t want to) and made Gray the talk of the town for, gosh, entire hours probably.
Of course, it wasn’t all fun and games. Melissa and Violet didn’t come any more because of the recent bandit attacks, so it was just Gray and his dad and a few other men from the village, mainly people Kliff’s father employed. Gray was painfully aware that, at only 15, he was still the best and most experienced fighter of the lot of them, thanks to those lessons with Sir Mycen which were turning out to be more relevant than anyone would’ve wished.
He carried the sword Sir Mycen had given him and put on a brave face whenever they travelled to Frodesia, pretending like he wasn’t worried about any sodding bandits. Not that he was, really! He’d already faced trained knights, he could take a handful of bandits!
Except for that part of the road where the woods were so crowded either side that they were difficult for a lone person to move through, let alone the oxen and wagon, where the ghost of Mycen’s old tactics lessons came back to haunt Gray and he couldn’t help but think what an excellent place this was for an ambush. If Gray were a bandit, he’d have archers in the trees and the rest of the group would rush the caravan from behind – closer to home – with the strongest two or three fighters blocking the way out from the from the front. The caravan would be slaughtered in minutes, whether Gray was there or not.
Nothing troubled them there, however, and Gray put on the stupidest, most vapid smile he could manage until they turned a corner of the road and the perfect ambush spot was out of sight.
It turned out that the bandits could’ve done with some tactics lessons from Sir Mycen too, because when they hit them on the way back, they didn’t use the obvious ambush spot at all. Instead, they came charging over the hill when the caravan was virtually safe and dry.
Wait, really? was Gray’s first thought. You pick now?
But then it dawned on him that there really were bandits charging down the hill towards them, and everyone, even his own father, was looking to him as though he had the answers. Which was terrible timing as Gray’s mind had gone strangely blank and he felt like he was just a boy again, armed only with wit and bravado against a knight—
The feeling passed after another moment when one of the bandits tripped up during their run down the hill and went head over heels. No. These aren’t trained soldiers. This time, it’ll be easy peasy.
There were… a lot of them, though. Gray counted eight, to the caravan’s five. Could there be more in wait—?
No time. They were close enough to the village that Gray would’ve sent a runner for Sir Mycen if the numbers weren’t so badly against them, but they couldn’t spare the men.
“Get in the wagon!” he said, or tried to say; it kind of came out as a shout without him meaning it to. Most of them were only armed with pitchforks and sharpened sticks – Gray was the only one with a real weapon. They needed protection. “Use the reach to keep them at bay!”
The bandits were nearly upon them, and Gray made sure to keep the wagon to his back, eyes darting about, trying to see everything at once. Real swords and axes, but rusted and badly maintained—so they’d had access to weapons but didn’t really know how to handle them—maybe conscripts who had deserted and stolen some weapons—wait, no, that’s not important—
Then they were on him.
The first bandit was the tallest and probably thought he was the strongest; at least, Gray thought that might be why he swung an axe at Gray’s head but left himself totally open to attack. He seemed slow to Gray, who diverted the axe with a single blow and then stabbed the man in the throat. The bandit’s momentum carried him a few inches down the blade, and he looked surprised as he made a gurgling sound in his throat.
Gray pulled the sword out as quickly as he could and moved to the side, letting the sword of the next bandit bite into the wagon a few inches to his left. He hesitated to attack Gray, maybe surprised by how easily he’d dispatched the larger guy—
A pitchfork stabbed down into the gap between the bandit’s neck and his shoulder. He dropped the sword, clutching at the wound, but Gray’s father only stabbed him again.
Gray pulled his attention away. Another, holding a very rusted sword with jagged edges, almost offensively badly cared for. The man took a step away when Gray looked at him, and maybe he would’ve run away, but Gray was already swinging—
Instead of opening up the man’s chest like Gray intended, it made a deep cut in his arm. Blood poured out of it. Gray forced himself not to look too closely, keeping his eye on the man’s weapon as he held his own sword in a ready position.
But the man abandoned his sword and retreated. The other bandits were hanging back, warier now of attacking. They’re just opportunists, Gray thought, and we aren’t as weak as they were expecting.
Someone at the back muttered something that he couldn’t hear, but he noticed when it was taken up by the rest of them, a nervous murmur like the buzzing of an insect.
When the first man turned to leave, Gray was more relieved than he’d expected. It felt like something heavy had been taken out of his limbs, and he sagged as his muscles slowly, slowly relaxed when the rest of them turned tail and fled.
The air was quiet but it seemed somehow crowded with unsaid things. Gray felt like all eyes were on him but he didn’t want to turn around to be sure of it. Instead, he busied himself with cleaning his sword – bandit blood, gross – and sheathing it after he made a show of checking that they had really gone.
When he wandered back, they were still talking about him. Gray heard his name and then an awkward silence fell.
Couldn’t you have finished gossiping before I came back? Gray thought about saying, but the joke got stuck in his throat. It was easier just to pretend he hadn’t noticed anything, even if it made the silence even more awkward.
“C’mon, we’re nearly there,” he said, trying for cheerful but sounding more like demented instead. “Let’s get going.”
The walk back to town seemed agonisingly slow, but if Gray wanted to run ahead he'd have to ask, and he just... really didn't want to draw any more attention to himself. Which was weird because he was normally quite keen on attention, actually.
But he liked being Gray. Funny, charming, handsome—all of those things and more!
Not... dangerous. Not frightening.
It felt a little like the sword was getting heavier with every step and Gray imagined that he could still taste the blood in the air, lingering. He didn't want to have to go into Ram and say, "Hey Tobes, Faye, Klifface, You Other Two. What's up? I killed two men today and it was really easy! So, who’s up for a spar?"
But he also wanted to find them all and say, “Hey, I killed two men today. That’s okay, right?”
That would’ve been a weird and sappy thing to ask, so it was probably for the best that Sir Mycen was waiting for them at the gates.
"There's been trouble recently," Mycen said without preamble. "Bandits." He cast his eyes over the group, and even though Gray was pretty sure there weren't any telltale 'Bandit fighty' signs on any of them, he seemed to know. "How many were there?"
"Eight," Gray said, forgetting that he was trying not to be in charge.
Mycen raised an eyebrow at the other men.
"The rest ran away after we killed the first two," Gray felt the need to add.
Mycen nodded. "Gray, walk with me. If the rest of you have no injuries, you should put the goods away. We're building some rudimentary defences and organising a watch. Contribute if you feel able; if not, we can talk about that tomorrow."
Now, Gray was pretty damn brave, if he did say so himself, but it would take a man with a spine of solid rock not to buckle under Sir Mycen's steely gaze. Yikes, he's looking even more veteran knight today than usual.
But to his surprise, Mycen didn't immediately start to grill him on his battle tactics or anything. Instead, they walked in silence for a while around the perimeter of the village, Mycen inspecting the defences and Gray pretending to know what he was doing when he nodded along. It was all fairly normal, as his interactions with the hero of Zofia went.
"So... was anyone hurt?" he said, after the silent patrol started to move from 'welcome reprieve' to 'someone's about to murder me, aren't they?'
"Not this time," Mycen said. "But there will be other attacks, no doubt. How are you feeling?"
"Uh..." This wasn't the interrogation that Gray was expecting. "Fine?"
Mycen smiled thinly. "Is that a question or a statement?"
"Well. I mean. I am fine." He made a point of looking down at himself. "Look, remembered my arms and everything!"
They stopped suddenly, and he nearly tripped over his own boots. When Gray recovered his balance, he found Sir Mycen giving him a long and careful look. "That is not what I mean, Gray."
Hm, maybe he should've gone for the 'ask the Sensitive Pals' gambit after all. It might've saved him from having to tell the greatest living knight how he thought he might cry a bit if Tobin looked at him the way the men in the caravan had.
"It's just..." He pretended to be watching a new section of the defences being put up so he wouldn't have to look Sir Mycen in the face. "Killing them didn't really bother me at all. Except that blood is gross and it smells really terrible when there's a lot of it. But they were trying to kill me and all that." That was the easy part out of the way. Without even looking at Mycen, Gray knew he was watching expectantly. "It's just. You know. I'm still me? And I don't want anyone to think that I'm... not."
...Wow, that was literally the worst possible way I could've phrased that. Good going, Gray. Now Sir Mycen probably thinks you're an idiot as well as a wuss!
"You are still yourself," Mycen said. It sounded very final when he said it, as though it was just a fact of the universe and if the universe had a problem with that, it could answer to him.
It gave Gray the courage to add, "They just looked at me different. After. And, c'mon, I've been training with you for four years now, right? It's not surprising that I can defend myself!"
Actually, thinking about it made him a little angry, because they looked to him to keep them safe but he was only allowed to know nice, pretty ways to defend people, and not where you could stab a man to have him bleed out in seconds or where an injury would be crippling, but not fatal—
Mycen's hand clamped down on his shoulder, bringing his train of thought to a fault. "In a sense, it's not their fault," Mycen said. "They've lived a life of peace and plenty, untouched by danger. In Ram, that's perhaps more true than anywhere else in the kingdom. Fertile lands, but not enough riches or wealth to draw the ire of mercenaries or the king."
"You know I've lived here my whole life too, right?" Gray said dubiously.
At that, Mycen actually laughed, patting Gray on the back hard enough to wind him. "You aren't unacquainted with violence, Gray."
He was talking about the knights in the woods, of course. At times it seemed to be something that happened a lifetime ago, maybe to some previously unknown but exceptionally sassy twin of Gray--and other times it still felt like he was right on the edge of something terrible, and he always felt the urge to check on his sisters and the others.
One thing that hadn't really registered at the time, but that he'd thought a lot about after, was the way the knight had looked at Celica like she was a prize.
They'd never talked about it, not to Celica, and not to each other. Gray didn't know what that had been about and he was pretty sure he wasn't meant to. But since then... since then, it felt like he'd been standing on the edge of a cliff, waiting for the day when he would have to jump. The idea that Celica was in danger somehow had always lingered at the back of his mind, even when she made him flower crowns or tried to emulate Faye's regimented stitching with her tongue poking out of her mouth in concentration.
So even though fighting the knights had really been something Mycen did, it felt like the beginning of something ominous and deadly for Gray, too. For all of them.
"I guess," he said.
“Things are only going to get worse, I suspect,” Mycen said, barely acknowledging Gray’s answer. Then again, did he really need to? There was a reason that they’d all been eager to the arts of war from him, and it’s wasn’t just boredom. “The bandits for now will be made up of the most desperate, who are often the least equipped to really fight for what they need. But if the poor harvests continue, it won’t stay that way.”
Not to mention whatever was going on with Celica. Or not going on. Whatever.
“Go and tell the others,” Mycen said.
Gray’s face fell. “But what if…”
If Celica won’t make me flower crowns and Tobin won’t make me babysit his kid brothers and sisters and Kliff won’t be deliberately annoying until I burst and Alm won’t call me ‘Gray, the sidekick’—
Which was a weird thought because those were all things that Gray did not normally enjoy—the gods alone knew how Tobin’s littlest sister always, always managed to be sticky—and you’d think he’d be glad to see the back of them, except they were all things that marked him as safe.
“Even if they do,” Mycen said delicately, “you’re the eldest, and it’s something you need to teach them.”
And that—yeah. Gray didn’t want to admit it, but… they still had to be prepared. It’s real outside and you don’t get to escape it, and really, you always knew this was coming. And he did feel all those responsible, big-brother-y feeling type things that maybe meant… a bit… that he wanted, needed, them to be safe more than he needed them to love him.
But gods he hoped he never had to consciously think that thought again because Gray had an image to maintain here.
The others weren’t hard to find, together as they always were. The drier Gray’s mouth got, the more casual he tried to act, until there was a desert on his tongue and he couldn’t get anymore relaxed without literally laying down to sleep.
Naturally they all knew something was dreadfully wrong basically immediately.
“Are you alright?” Celica said. “We heard there was trouble on the road.”
She was in the middle of tying together another one of the defensive fences. Gray raised an eyebrow at her. “I heard there was trouble here, too.”
Tobin rolled his shoulders, wincing. “And you were late to the party. Like always.”
Alm just shrugged, a little sullen. “Grandpa took care of it.”
And that was part of the problem, wasn’t it. That Sir Mycen wouldn’t always be there. That it wasn’t a game, and you shouldn’t sulk because you didn’t get a turn, but the talk was so easy and familiar that he didn’t want to break it with a serious talk or some kind of lecture, or…
Kliff was watching him with narrowed eyes, the bastard. Probably doing smart stuff again. Like thinking. And noticing.
He was really quite good at that.
“We should go chop some more wood,” Kliff announced.
The rest of them groaned, even Celica. “I just brought over this big pile!” Tobin said, gesturing at them violently. “My shoulders feel like they’re going to tear off! Come on, Kliff.”
“It’ll be dark soon,” Kliff answered, as implacable as a wall. Gray had only ever seen him fold to Sir Mycen. Once. “You can’t gather wood in the dark, and we still haven’t covered half the village with these things.” He sneered. “If you can’t carry them, then I guess you can stay here and do the knots.”
Tobin made a noise that was actually quite close to a growl, but like, one of those small dog growls when they were trying to pretend to not be scared of you. “Fine, fine! But I swear if you boss me around again…”
The threats continued as they moved as a unit, Gray trailing behind everyone else at the back. Poor form, Tobes, you used that threat two days ago! Kliff’s going to think you’re not even trying. You’ll hurt his feelings. All, like, three of them.
He didn’t notice when Faye fell into step beside him, only that after a while the others had pulled further ahead, and it was just the two of them, walking in silence.
I guess I am only the oldest by a month, Gray thought, wrinkling his nose.
He would’ve been afraid to say something, but it was Faye. People – even people in the village who’d known her for her whole life and really should know better – thought that Faye was soft, because she liked to wear pale colours and arrange flowers and braid hair and was basically the perfect housewife just waiting to be snapped up by someone.
Actually, Faye was more like flint. She was hard and intensely practical, with gaping weak spots where you could break her if you really tried. You’d just have to get through Gray first, and good luck with that.
“I killed two of them,” he blurted. “The bandits.”
“Oh,” was all Faye said, not disturbed at all by this information. “Was it hard?”
“No.”
She nodded. “Okay. That’s… good.” They walked a few more yards in silence. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
“Well, obviously,” Gray said, and then, softer, when she scowled at him: “Me too.”
“Do you think I could kill bandits?”
He looked her over, frowning. She literally could, yeah; Sir Mycen had trained all of them. But Faye… Faye was good at mending things. Then again, this was her home… “Maybe,” he said sheepishly. It was a really lame answer.
Faye scoffed but he could follow the trail of thought as her eyes slid away from him. ‘What if I can’t protect Alm and the others?’
He bumped her shoulder, making her stumble into a nearby tree. “Gray!” But she was smiling a bit when she started to chase after him. “I’m going to drown you in the river!”
Alm rolled up his sleeves in an exaggerated fashion as Gray dashed past—Faye might find it funny but she really would shove him into the river and it was so cold at this time of year—and said, “Oh look, it’s time to rescue the sidekick. Again.”
He’d tell the rest of them later, around a fire, probably, when it was quiet and dark and whilst the village prepared for all the fights to come. He’d tell the rest of them then.
It was funny to realise it suddenly, but he’d never really been worried what Faye would think.