Geraln glared at me. The morning sunlight cast him in orange highlights, accentuating the bruises on his face, dark black smudges beneath his skin along his nose and cheek. He frowned through a swollen lip, then shook his head and turned down the road without a word to me.

I’d be spending a week on the road with him and Davod.

Davod stood, wrapped up with Runya in an embrace. She stood on a large boulder and reached her arms up over his shoulders to wrap around his neck and kiss him on the lips. The two of them shared muted giggles, sweet moments of remembrance with his hand splayed out over her arse before he pulled away towards the road, only for her to tug that bloated buffoon back to her for one more kiss.

As for me, I lowered my cheek into Sarina’s hair, feeling for the last time those soft, tiny curls in my skin as she wrapped her arms around me. She didn’t press. She used to press her whole body into mine, enfolding me into her and making us one.

I’d ruined that.

It was a friendly hug, one that ended with her setting those black eyes at me devoid of the longing I’d longed for. “Goodbye, Caleb.”

I didn’t want to tear away. I wanted to tell her I was sorry, to make her understand. “I’ll come back. Things will be different.”

She gave a cursory smile. “Don’t wait for me.”

“But…”

“I know you, Caleb; you’ve been a brother to me and I’ve known you my whole life. You’re going to ‘behave yourself’ for a little while, then you’ll get distracted.”

“I won’t! I promise!”

She smirked. “You will. And stop acting like you made a mistake.”

“But, I did! It was a mistake!”

“No.” She rested her hand on my cheek. “God made you exactly as you were meant to be, and there’s a girl out there who’ll grab your attention so well that you can’t even see any other. I love you so much. You have given me so much more than words can say, shown me so much more than you can know. You will always hold a special place in my heart, but I cannot be the sun in your sky. I’m sorry.”

I fought back a tear, then another. A third one escaped my grasp, and the weight of whatever war was going on in the world suddenly meant nothing to me. “If God wills it,” I said, “we will be together.”

She smiled and looked down. “I’m not waiting for you.”

“But…”

She returned her gaze to me. “It would break my heart if you wait for me.”

“If God wills it…” words escaped me, drained out from my eyes.

Sarina took one last hug from me and said it. “Goodbye, Caleb.”

With that, I took in the last remnant of mountain lily oil she liked to put in her hair, ripped my attention from her, and turned down the road. I didn’t get a few steps before I heard rapid footfalls brushing through the grass behind me. I turned around in time for the blur of little Teryn to throw her arms about me and squeeze me tight. I embraced her in turn while she pleaded, “I don’t want you to go! Everyone else is so mean to me!”

After a full minute, I crouched down low so as to look into her watery eyes—hard to believe she’d gotten so tall that I’d be looking up from here. “Hey!”

She wiped her cheeks and sniffled as she looked at me.

“Can you do something for me while I’m gone?”

She nodded.

“I need you to look after the little ones. Make sure they’re doing their lessons every day, and don’t let them skip out on their chores all the time. Just sometimes. Look out for them the same way Sarina and I look out for you. Can you do that for me?”

Teryn sobbed, then tried to nod again as she wiped away more tears. “I don’t want you to go!”

That hurt. “I don’t want me to go, either, but sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to do. Come on.”

I stood and took her hand, and led her over to where Sarina gazed at me with a warm smile.

“What?”

“Nothing,” she laughed. “Come Teryn,” she said, “let’s go braid some pretties into your hair.”

As they walked off, Teryn glanced back at me, turning more than most so as to see me with her good eye and continued to sniffle. Sarina glanced back once more before rounding the corner of the church just as I was passing my eyes up and down her backside one last time. “I saw that!”

With that they disappeared, and Teryn’s words echoed deep within my soul. I turned and made my way towards the bridge at the center of Gath, towards the path I was to follow.

Davod and Geraln had long since set about down the hill and were near the end of the village where the beige cobbled street gave way to the muddy road leading us south. I caught up with them at the Flaming Wyvern where Dariana stood talking with them. The morning sun bathed her sandy-green hair in yellow light and she ushered me in for a hug, still wearing a simple cotton nightgown stained from years of wear.

At length, she pulled her body away and held onto my hands, fixing her bright green eyes up into mine. “Take care,” she said. “It would break my heart if I lost any one of you three idiots.”

Davod laughed. “Such a kind thing to say.”

She smiled, then turned to Geraln, who hadn’t removed his eyes from her once. “Go on, then. Go… kill your enemy or… whatever.”

He responded, “We’ll do a proper burning, looting, raping, and pillaging. Don’t worry.”

“Don’t rape anyone.”

“OK.”

“I’m serious,” she passed her eyes one by one to each of us. “I know what men do when they go off to war. If any one of you does that, I’ll carve you up, eat you, shit you out, then grow a tree out of your shit, chop it down and burn it to the ground.”

“That’s a bit…”

“... Then I’ll piss on the ashes and salt the ground to make sure nothing ever grows from you. I’m fucking serious.” She pointed her finger at each of us in turn. “Don’t rape anyone. Don’t do anything like that. You hear me?”

“We won’t,” Davod assured her.

Geraln wasn’t finished joking, though. “Not even a little bit?”

She stepped over to slap him, but he dodged out of her way. “I’m warning you!”

“All right, all right,” he conceded. That made me smile. Then he caught a glimpse of me again and turned away, dropping his playful self completely.

Dariana turned back to me. “I know you won’t.”

I shrugged.

“Go on, now,” she said, “and please come back, all of you.” Then she swatted my arse as we headed out.

And that was the end of Gath. Dariana stood at the doorway to her tavern and watched as Davod, Geraln and myself took the road away from the only home we knew. I turned round to see the top of her head peeking over the dirt road watching until the very last as we descended into the forest gully. The trees were small at this part of the road, a young forest just one generation removed from having been harvested, but tall enough to block the morning sun while yielding to the blue sky above.

Davod’s voice cut through the chorus of birds singing over the accompaniment of wind in the trees. “I know you’re not going to wear that chain mail all the way to Carthia.”

I answered him. “I can’t figure if that was supposed to be a question.”

“Why are you wearing that armor?”

“Because it’s heavy. If I put it in my pack, I’ll strain my shoulders. If I wear it, I spread the weight around.”

Geraln shook his head and spat out, “stupid.”

Davod looked at him, but didn’t address the word. He turned back to me. “Has it started pinching your skin yet?”

“Is it supposed to?”

“Look, man, I was raised by a smith. You understand what I’m saying?”

It took me a minute. “You’re saying I should pack it up.”

“Nah, man. Go ahead and wear it. Then every night, you’ll get to spend an hour cleaning the sweat off and oiling it up unless you want it to rust before someone tries to stab you. Not to mention eight days of that heavy pack over your shoulders, those rings are going to dig into your skin something fierce. But, it’s up to you.”

I could hear Geraln murmur under his breath, “fucking idiot.”

I stopped, while the two of them kept walking. I took off my pack, took off my armor, and carefully folded it into my pack. By the time that was done, the two of them had gone far ahead of me.

Off to my right, a small dirt trail led into some heavy underbrush, a small enough hole for a deer to fit through. As I descended further, the sound of rushing water began to overpower the birds in the trees, and a cool breeze met my face. Off to my left, a giant oak had been left alone while a modest grove of diamond trees paid tribute to its overpowering branches. There was a cut branch from one that had previously loomed over the road too low to allow a cart to pass, and the wound had grown gnarled with splotches of wood to where one could hardly see the smooth remnant of a saw cut.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Further down one could barely see the remnant of the old shack Doren the Hermit once called home, the same man who once tried to get a little too friendly with Guenevieve when she was only ten. The roof had caved in and the walls were torn apart by vines. What stood was an old stone chimney that was covered in bright green moss. A bird flew into it, and I kept walking.

He’d said a thing to Sarina once, too, something not worth repeating.

The symphony of rushing water crescendoed as I reached the bridge Hakon built. All of us, really, but while Ryoan and Tor were busy sword-fighting with sticks they’d found, Davod and I helped set stones in place. It seemed stronger than it had the day we finished it—a wide, stone masterpiece that stood a relic meant to outlast him and become a permanent fixture of the landscape for time immemorial, just like the carved totem that matched the one outside the Flaming Wyvern with the falcon sitting atop the mountain goat with its wings spread wide.

I caught a glimpse of my travel companions up ahead as the road turned left and followed the hill as it climbed through pine and eupin trees standing as tall toothpicks with a canopy of needled branches overhead. Up and up the road went until I found Geraln sitting on a section of a giant boulder split in two with a young diamond tree growing from the crack and whorling its roots all over the pieces like some greedy miser.

"... I'm just saying," he was talking to Davod, "it's got uses."

"I’m fine without it."

"What's going on?" I asked.

Geraln turned to face me; his chubby cheeks were flush. "I wasn't talking to you."

With that, he stood up, grabbed this pack, and faced Davod. "I'm good. You ready?"

With that, we set off again. The packed-dirt road meandered around the side of a mountain on the left, with trees climbing up beyond where eyes were permitted to go. To the right a small, flat plain filled with grass that hosted a noisy creek, beyond which the ground rose up once more untold distances with snow-capped rocky saw blades at the horizon.

The two of them walked ahead, while I stayed several steps behind. I could scarcely hear the topic of conversation, but whenever the wind died down I could make it out. Unwittingly, I found myself walking a little faster so as to insert my thoughts into the conversation.

Geraln was talking about economics. “... no, no, not the most wealth. We’ve got the highest wealth per capita.”

Davod answered. “What’s the difference?”

“OK, look. Golago is the wealthiest, but also the highest population. Heralia has about half as many people, but if you look at wealth per capita, we have the highest in the empire.”

“So?”

I answered him. “He means per person.”

Geraln turned. "Was I talking to you?"

“Well…”

“I wasn’t talking to you.”

Davod resumed their conversation. “Why don’t you just say per person? To me that makes more sense. I don’t see why you have to make up a new fancy word just to confuse everyone.”

Geraln tried to continue. “What it means is that if you take the wealth of the entire duchy and spread it out evenly so that everyone has the same amount…”

“Why would you do that?”

“Well, you don’t.”

Davod answered with total confidence. “I hope not; that wouldn’t be fair. Not everyone works the same. I don’t see why the loafs should get an equal share as those who work hard.”

Geraln shook his head incredulously. “They don’t.”

“But you just said you take the wealth and spread it out so that everyone gets the same amount.”

“It’s a hypothetical, Davod! You don’t actually do that!”

“Well what’s the point of planning to do that if you never intend on doing it then?”

“No one’s planning on doing it!”

“Well then why consider it?”

“It’s not…” Geraln shook his head in frustration.

I tried to explain. “It’s just a number. It helps to understand the health of the economy, like taking a pulse.”

Geraln turned around and glared at me again. “You’re still here?”

I turned and looked off to the side of the road as it twisted through the woods. The trees grew more and more ancient, with thick, gnarly trunks and branches untended, growing the way they willed without the undue influence of men to chop at them. Above, the forest canopy cast such a shadow on the floor that there was scarcely any underbrush.

“I’m just saying,” Geraln continued. “The numbers tell us how we’re doing. Overall wealth is one, taken with population you have the wealth per capita, and then you have the mean split.”

“The what?” Davod still walked ahead of me and so his face was forward, but I could still hear the muted laughter in his voice.

“It’s the proportional difference between the mean and the median wealth of the duchy. We use it to get an idea of the relative skew of the data.”

Davod was sincerely confused. “The what-what with the what?”

I had to stifle a laugh at that. Geraln turned and glared at me for a moment, then turned back to his explanation. “OK, so… let’s say you have a kingdom with only three people in it. Two people each have a hundred kren, and the third one has twenty-eight-hundred.”

“What kind of kingdom is that?” Davod laughed.

“It’s an imaginary one used to illustrate a concept, nothing more. Now suppose…”

Davod broke out laughing. “Just give it up, man. I’m not gonna understand it no matter what you say.”

“Davod, this is important!” Geraln pleaded.

“Look, man. I work in a foundry; I smith metal. I don’t need to know all that fancy stuff.”

“But…”

“How is it practical? Tell me that.”

Geraln had to take a moment to consider that question. “The Duke! The Duke of Heralia has people who look at the numbers like these and uses that to drive decisions. Those decisions affect all of us.”

“And you think people like us are ever going to be in a position to make decisions on that level?”

“Well…”

Davod turned to me for a moment. “Do you understand any of this nonsense?”

“I’m the one who helped him study for the knowledge tourney in the capital last winter.”

“Right, but…”

I tried to explain. “If the split is two, that says the mean is twice the median. A number like that says all the money is hoarded by a couple of rich assholes. It’s not robust because without a healthy working class any little shock, like a plague or whatever, is amplified by…”

“Well obviously if there’s a plague they won’t be very healthy; I don’t see what that has to do with the economy.”

I laughed at that.

“OK, Davod, look,” Geraln tried again. “Poor region, plague, nobody can afford medicine, no doctors, everybody dies. There’s not enough seed capital to regrow the economy…”

“Why would you need to regrow the economy if everybody dies? Seems to me there won’t be no need for an economy after that.” Davod just turned to him with a great big grin across his face.

“You’re joking. Please tell me you’re joking!”

Davod slapped his shoulder. “Look, man. I don’t need to know any of this. You might, sure. You was always the smartest of all of us, especially that runt behind us.” He turned and shot a quick glance at me. “I’m sure you’ll end up in service to a powerful lord somewhere, and you’ll be in a position to do all the good stuff you want to do with the fancy numbers. As for me, I know my path and I’m happy with it. I’m gonna smith, same as my dad, then go home and make ten babies with Runya, grow old in the mountains of Gath while I sit back with a mug of ale and watch the children weasel their way out of some sort of mischief.”

“That’s it?” Geraln inquired. “That’s the limit of your ambitions?”

“Yeah,” Davod answered without the slightest hesitation. “That sounds like a good life to me. If the gods allow it, I’ll take it no question.”

Geraln answered, “not me, man. I want to make a difference.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know yet. Maybe… I’ve always had this idea that maybe I could study law and go to Golago, make a case for ending slavery throughout the whole empire.”

“That would be really good,” I said.

Geraln shot a quick glare at me. “I wasn’t talking to you before, and I’m not talking to you now. Can you please butt out?”

I shrugged, but then Davod asked me, “what about you? Where you going if we survive this war?”

“I don’t know. I pray that God will show me the way I’m to go, and that I’ll be able to hear Him when He calls me.”

Geraln turned to the side of the road and spat. “Fuking traitor. Born Herali, doesn’t believe in his own gods.”

“I was raised in that church.”

“We all know that, man.”

“Listen, man, Falcon didn’t feed me, didn’t clothe me, and didn’t give me a place to sleep at night. None of your gods did. Father Yewan and Mother Searnie gave me all that and taught me my lessons, too.”

“And some devout shit you turned out to be!” Geraln continued. “Name one girl in the whole barony… in the whole county you didn’t fuck around with!”

“I never went all the way.”

Geraln was incredulous. “Like that matters, man! You keep playing around the hole, sooner or later you’re going to fall in.”

Davod turned to face him directly. “I thought you said you wasn’t talking to him?”

“I’m not!” he protested. “I’m just saying, he knows all that idiotic Goloagi scripture and what good is it if he still goes around kissing every damned girl he sees? Oh, wait, that’s perfectly fine because he doesn’t go all the way. Just… you know… most of the way. And then he wonders why they get so pissy at him.” He then turned back to me. “Like seriously, man, why would Sarina ever warm to you when you and Guenevieve are out walking around the courtyard naked together?”

“I told you. Teryn took our clothes.”

Davod smirked. “Did you explain why you were naked with her in the hot bath to begin with?”

“Teryn took her clothes, and so I went to bring her a robe. She invited me in, then Teryn came back and took mine. Nothing happened.”

The two of them looked at one another and laughed. Then Davod turned back to me. “Didn’t work, did it?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Geraln answered. “How long did it take you to convince Sarina you were serious about her after that? And, did she actually start to fall for your bullshit before you were kissing Talys by the pool with everyone, including Sarina, seeing your dick sticking out?”

It took me a moment to respond. “I never lied to her.”

Geraln stopped altogether and pointed a finger at me. “You lied to Talys.”

“What do you mean?”

“Fucking what to I mean! You told Talys you wanted her to be your Naveris! Why did you fucking lie to her like that?”

“Because I was drunk.”

Geraln stood and studied my face for a moment. He had a line of dried blood running down across his lower lip and he clenched his jaw as his eyelid twitched. It was Davod who broke the silence. “We was all a bit drunk, wasn’t we?”

Geraln stood and stared. I stood and stared. I hadn’t known if he’d have been willing to accept that meaningless explanation. The audacity of the word, the insult, the immediacy of the moment, all of it could be washed away with a simple explanation. I was drunk. He was drunk. And with that, all would be well. Rather, Geraln stood with a lock of dark hair drifting lazily down framing his round face in earnest, and he refused to break.

“We was all drunk,” Davod insisted, a little more forcefully this time.

I shook my head. “I had way too much last night. I don’t know about you…”

Images of wine dribbling down his cheeks refreshed themselves in my mind’s eye, and this man snapping his fingers at her, the hate that welled up inside me as he shot such derision in her direction only to swallow his wine with gross contempt only to ask… demand… his cup be filled with more and more hate as the evening wore on.

He clearly wasn’t satisfied. Davod then slapped his arm. “You!”

Geraln broke from his spell and looked at him. “What? I’m not willing to…”

“You petulant shit. Did you even hear what you said about Sarina last night?”

“I don’t see what that has to…”

Davod shouted at him. “She’s one of ours, man! I don’t give a rat’s shit whoever wherever her people came from or what color her skin is; she’s one of ours. We’re her people. She grew up with us and she’s one of us. That girl never said anything unkind to you for you to cut into her like that? I should have got my own licks in, you ungrateful pest.”

Geraln stood still, staring at him with a blank expression. His chest lifted up and down as the air wheezed through his nose.

Davod then took a deep breath and reiterated his point. “I think we all had too much to drink last night. Wouldn’t you say?”

At length, Geraln let out a deep breath and looked towards his feet. “Yeah, I don’t usually drink that much. I was pretty out of it.”

“See?” Davod slapped both of us on our shoulders and kept walking.

With that concession, Geraln smiled, even broke out laughing at the absurdity of the situation. He then shook his head and almost laughed, “I was so drunk, man!”

I couldn’t help but to laugh it off as well.