Squire Hayseed

Learning

Clouds pocked the sky, causing beams of unholy sunlight to narrow down in rays. One stubbornly landed right in Hayley's eyes. She tried shutting them, on the assumption the clouds would shift it. But when her heart thudded deep inside, reminding her where she stood, her eyes flared open wide. Too wide. Ouch.

"Hold, Squire," a voice above commanded her. Hayley didn't twitch her head but gazed upward at her knight perched upon the warhorse. Gringolet glistened like a river, gleaming armor protecting the head, neck, and body. Thankfully, Gavin took care of dressing his own horse. Either he figured out Hayley had a severe mistrust of horses, or he didn't want anyone else to do it.

She did, however, have to learn how to dress him in his armor. Bracers, greaves, cuirasses, breastplates, boots of the shiniest metal in the kingdom. He wore no helmet, save a leather cap which shielded his shaved scalp from the sun. It took her nearly an hour the first time to get him dressed, Gavin trying to calmly explain what went where. By now she had it down to twenty minutes, Hayley quickly knotting each scrap onto the laces dangling off his special wool shirt. First time she saw it she thought he let a cat unravel sections of a sweater from the shoulders to the hems.

Her knight coughed once, giving the less than clear signal she was supposed to keep staring forward. No doubt to him perched high on a horse, sword at the side, he could see far towards the embankments currently flooded with soldiers and knights. All Hayley saw was a man's waxing backside. He seemed to be incapable of finding hose that fit, giving her a double moon shot while death could be coming at any second.

The first day she was terrified, her fingers wrapped tight to a pike she should hand to Gavin on his say. That was the extent of his instructions, stand in line and wait. So they all did. Every knight — of which there were a lot and growing larger — stepped out of their tent into the morning sun, mounted on a horse, and formed a great line of glinting death around a castle.

There were average soldiers mixed in as well, most dressed in boiled leathers and whatever wool padding they could find. They tended to clump together like mud clods while the knights fanned out in perfect formation. Green banners, the snake heads whipping in the wind, circled as far as Hayley could see.

When glancing around she spotted Marco holding a mighty banner, the ends of the fabric nearly touching to the ground from its impressive ten-foot start. His eyes were stern and unreadable, the giant body locked in place while that knight of his...C something, kept trying to maintain his horse. Gavin glanced over once and muttered something about how the boy was too young for such a place of importance.

Hayley at first sneered, as if holding up a stick was something only a person over twenty could handle. But after standing still for a few hours, she realized that in a sea of unending glinting metal and brown, all the archer eyes would land upon that green breaking through the sky itself and whoever was holding it. God was she glad she was so short. Her plan, if and when fighting broke out, was to run as fast as she could.

The light eclipsed from her eyes, Hayley looking up. She expected to watch the tea-stained clouds drift by, but it was a great hawk flying overhead. Its shadowed wings stretched from Marco's knight clear towards Hayley and Gavin, blanketing a good twenty soldiers. With hundreds of people standing still in the summer sun, the air stank not only of sweat but fear and bloodlust. Everyone was rigid wanting this stalemate to break one way or another.

Her teeth practically sparked at the tension in the air.

Gavin placed a hand to his forehead and gazed upward. He must have sensed the hawk as well, but he didn't point towards the bird already hightailing it away from a bunch of humans about to spill their guts on the ground. "The flag has lowered," he declared loud enough the other knights beside him looked too.