We were on the move. Shilling and Black Caleb ranged ahead, keeping their eyes peeled for anything, terrain features or old forgotten ruins, that might be of use to us. Farthing ranged behind, sweeping back and forth trying to judge where the wyldemen packs were, and if they were gaining on us.

The rest of us remained in our armour, weapons close to hand, as we kept our eyes on the horizon. Shortly after we left our rest, I decided I needed to have a conversation.

“Giadine,” I said, catching her attention as I rode up next to her near the front of the small caravan we had formed.

Giddy closed her eyes and took a breath. Knowing her, she’d been rehearsing what she would say to me. “Jon,” she finally said. “That bitch deserves to be punched in the throat.”

I pursed my lips. Alright, not what I was expecting. “I need you to listen to me, Giadine. You chose to stay with Gresham and I, and we’ve been thankful for it. You are… important to us. Neither of us knew what would happen when I accepted that commission from your father, but this certainly wasn’t what any of us had planned. You have the sort of value that makes it difficult to imagine continuing on without. But…”

Giddy was looking at me confused. “What are you doing? Why are you talking like this?”

“Giadine, what you just did, the way you talked to Sir Constance? You made things hard for all of us. We are travelling with that woman to go fight a monster for coin, and I’ll be riding into battle beside her. And now, because of the situation you put me in, I don’t know how much she and I can trust each other. That could be the difference between life or death in the next hours or days.” She tried to interrupt me, tears welling in her eyes, but I kept talking. “I know things aren’t the way they were. I’m not the dashing Free Lancer, riding from tourny to tourny, you might have been expecting when you decided to stay with Gresham and I.”

“I knew that already,” Giddy finally did interrupt me. “Lost gods, Jon. You don’t think I knew that? You know I’m not some city girl who's never cracked a nail or smelt of a hard day's work. Are you sending me away? What is this?”

“What?” I asked, frowning deeply. “Giddy, I’m not sending you away, I’m fucking reprimanding you. If you were a man and had talked to any Free Lancer like that, you’d have likely gotten a kick in the mouth and everyone would have called it fair pay. But you’re not, and she’s not any Free Lancer.”

Giddy opened and clothed her mouth a few times, looking altogether like a pretty blonde fish fresh out of the river. “I’m… sorry?” she finally said.

“Did you think I was on your side in this?” I asked.

“Well, not entirely, but the way you spoke to her…”

“Giadine, you are important to me. To the troupe. But if you ever do that again, I will throw you over my saddle and give you a whooping that will leave you regretting the need to sit in a saddle for a month,” I said.

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She flushed and bowed her head. “I understand, Jon.”

“Good,” I said. We cantered next to each other in silence for a few minutes, and I was tempted to cut the awkwardness with a quip about Constance but bit it down. I couldn’t be that person for Giddy, not right now. I needed to know she was going to fall in line because if something went wrong, it could be her life. I’d seen men killed for less of an insult as a boy back in Bloodbraid Hall.

Eventually one of the packhorses got cantankerous and Giddy shifted over to pull it into line, giving me a chance to drop back. Not so different from what I was doing, I mused, watching her sidle her riding horse up next to the packhorse and give it a yank on its harness to straighten it out.

“You sounded like you were leavin’ the lass behind and goin’ to war,” Gresham said.

“What?”

“You panicked the girl, Jon. She thought you were planning on leaving her behind.”

“You could hear us?” I asked. I’d talked quietly, trying to make sure it wasn’t a public rebuking for her sake.

“Just barely. More her than you,” the old man said. “She thought if you were mad at her, y’ would have told her off. You spooked her by treating her differently than the lads. I told you taking her into the troupe was going to cause problems.”

“You said if I gave in to her ‘womanly wiles’ it would cause problems,” I retorted. “And I haven’t laid a hand on her.”

“Ain’t mean you’re not caught in the wiles though,” he shrugged. “I ever tell you about my wife?”

“Which one?” I asked.

“Good point,” Gresham grunted. “I mean Penelope, the one I’d married a couple years before I retired alongside your father. Well, when your Pa called it quits, I figured that was about the right time for me to go as well. So off I went, and trotted off to the little cottage I’d set us up in on the coast near Timberdown. She’s all shocked to see me, and I’m thinking it’s because she’s so happy, and for a few days things are blissful. Except she ain’t exactly randy to see me, which is odd ‘cause she’d certainly been the last time I’d been able to visit her. Two weeks goes by, and she’s getting snippy with me, and we ain’t touched each other once. Then one day I go out for a wander down to the town, have me a jaw wag with some of the local fellers, and when I head back I find a fucking carriage parked outside my cottage.”

“Now, here I am thinking that ol’ Jon or some other mate who kept their money about them must have come to visit or summat, but as I get closer I see that there’s men loading all my shite onto the back of the carriage. Turns out my lovely wife, that black hearted bitch, had fallen in with some Port Prince half my age with more gold to his name. An’ when I’m furious, which of course I fuckin’ was, she had the giant fuckin’ testicles to tell me she’d had our marriage anulled the year prior on account of her thinking I’d be dead anyways. So then I pull my knife, cause I’m fuckin’ retired and I figured I ain’t got to carry a sword on me for a fuckin’ jaunt into town, and then the Port Prince pokes his head out of the carriage along with a whopper of a heavy crossbow pointed right at my chest. Well I’m a good ten paces from him, so there ain’t no way I can get to him before he fires, so I’m stuck watching his servants pack up my shite, and then they drive off.”

“Gresham,” I said. “What the flying fuck does this have to do with Giddy?”

“What?” Gresham asked. “That was a story about my ex wife.”

“Yes, I know,” I said. “But you were telling it to me because…?”

“Oh, right. Because even if you ain’t fuckin’ ‘em, you can still get fucked by ‘em.”

I took off my helmet and wiped my forehead of sweat. “Alright, Gresh. Thanks for the advice.”

The old man grinned through his bushy white mustache at me. “Any time.”