The Vampire & Her Witch

Chapter 1686: Remember the Fallen (Part Two)

No one had ever expected anything of Juhel LeGleau. With two older brothers, the chances of him inheriting were minuscule, even in the frontier where sickness could decimate whole families in a single season. With two older sisters in addition to his older brothers, Juhel’s father, Onen LeGleau, had long since stopped planning for his children’s future.

"You’ll understand when you have children of your own, Son," Onen had said when he turned thirteen in the summer and became old enough to serve as a squire only to be told that his father couldn’t afford to outfit him for another year or two.

"Let me get through Fillia’s Coming of Age banquet first," Onen said. "And, if we’re lucky, things will go well between Stephlie and young lord Amhar in Crew... they aren’t asking for a very large dowry. After that, you just tell me what you want to do. The Holy War will have started by then, and the losses are likely to be the heaviest in the first year... Plenty of new knights will be looking for a squire or veterans will need the extra help."

"We can find someone who can help you to find a future of your own," Onen promised, leaving out the part that even his youngest son understood. A future that didn’t require the strained LeGleau purse to support.

Juhel had been prepared to spend the next two years idling away until one of his father’s oldest retainers had stepped in with an offer that felt like the only opportunity he was likely to get.

"Sir Brychan Dey," the young man said in a fragile, frail voice. "Sir Brychan was my tutor in swords and in riding, and... so many other things," Juhel said, clenching his hands into fists as he tried to blink back the tears that threatened to overwhelm him.

"I hated him," he admitted. "I, I thought he was old-fashioned and out of touch and... I wanted to learn how to fight with a sword, and he spent a whole month just teaching me how to walk with one," he said bitterly, recalling the lessons that he thought Sir Brychan had been napping through. Walking with the sword in his right hand and a shield in his left. Walking with the sword in both hands. Walking over rough ground. Forward, backward, sideways... always walking until the muscles in his arms burned and his legs felt like jelly.

"It was the same with riding," Juhel continued. "Walk, trot, walk, trot, practice, practice, practice... I didn’t feel like I was learning at all."

"I was wrong," he said, looking at the Center Table where his father sat with watchful eyes. "During, um, during Lord Owain’s hunt," he said, stammering slightly as he wondered if he should mention the fallen lord. "Some people fell from their horses and I, I thought they were stupid for it," he said, blushing slightly in embarrassment while Serge Otker looked like he wanted to crawl under the table to hide.

"But it was because Sir Brychan taught me how to stay in the saddle no matter what happened..." Juhel admitted, biting his lower lip as he tried to figure out how to say the things that built up in his heart since he woke up this morning and realized he would never have to get up before the sun for a lesson with his teacher again.

Suddenly, spending a morning doing ’walking practice’ while the old knight droned on about the virtues of a knight didn’t feel so tedious anymore.

"He was old," Juhel said. "And old-fashioned. And I miss him..." Juhel finished as the sobs he’d been holding back overwhelmed him at last.

"Juhel," the young man’s oldest brother, Greon, said, standing up and throwing an arm around his young brother. "I’m sure Sir Brychan knows how much he meant to you..."

"But I, I never said it to him...." Juhel sobbed. "I never told him... I...."

"Then tell him tonight, when we light the pyres," Greon said softly as he pulled his brother back toward his spot on the cushions at the low table. "Think of everything you want to say and I’ll help you write it down so you don’t forget..."

The air in the Great Hall felt impossibly heavy in the face of a young lord’s grief and several faces glistened with tears that no amount of aristocratic pride or restraint could keep contained. Sir Brychan Dey hadn’t been a ’hero’ that anyone celebrated. His fame, what little of it he’d had, had faded from living memory many years ago.

But in the end, he’d been a different kind of hero to one young man, and somehow, losing that kind of hero to something as wicked as the dark powers of the Lothian Throne cut deeper than losing a rising hero in his prime ever would have.

At the Center Table, Ashlynn and Ollie shared a brief, private look before Ashlynn gave the Cypress Knight an approving nod while mouthing the word ’later.’

Whether Sir Thane would be willing to take on another young apprentice, or even meet with the young man from LeGleau, remained to be seen. Juhel might not want anything to do with a future as a knight in the world that was about to change dramatically.

But if he wanted to learn from a knight who was a bit old-fashioned, who would push him to master the fundamentals and steep him in the greatest traditions of knighthood, neither Ashlynn nor Ollie could think of someone better than a century-old vampire-knight who had already been a veteran swordsman for many years by the time Sir Brychan Dey was born.

From her seat beside Lady Ashlynn, Adala watched the silent exchange and arrived at her own conclusion. From the moment she’d entered the Great Hall, it was obvious that the first woman to rule Lothian March as its Marchioness intended to make changes.

Now, as she considered her own place at the Center Table and the look that implied that Lady Ashlynn would be recruiting young Lord Juhel, she started to wonder if the Marchioness intended to focus more on the young who were still growing into their power rather than the old guard like her father who fiercely guarded it... In which case, there might be opportunities for a few other young lords, or ladies, to rise along with her...