The Camelot Spell - Laura Anne Gilman [17]
“I hate you,” Newt told him matter-of-factly.
To the stable boy’s surprise, the squire laughed a clear, shining note. “More so now than when I bested you in fight?”
“You did no such thing,” Newt retorted, swinging into the saddle and gathering up the reins. His companion did the same, moving with ease despite the boiled leather armor that buckled over his chest and lower legs.
“I would have, if Lancelot hadn’t stopped us.”
“You’re dreaming,” Newt said and kicked his gelding into an easy trot, forcing the squire to keep up with him, not the other way around as would have been expected.
“You’re an ignorant servant who smells of horse.”
If the squire thought that was going to insult him, he had a lot to learn. Horse was what he tended, horse was what he would smell like. It was an honest smell.
They continued in that manner all day, trading mild insults to ward off the fear that lingered just below the surface, until the sun began to set into the western hills. Before the light faded, they found a small stream, hobbled the horses and mule beside it to graze in the soft grasses, then took the pack off the mule.
Out of the pack—and Gerard suspected Ailis’s hand in it more than the stable boy’s vague directions to the servant children—the squire took two blankets and set them down on the ground where there seemed to be the fewest stones. Meanwhile the stable boy gathered twigs and branches from a nearby copse of trees to build a fire with.
It wasn’t the way knights would have done it. Knights would have come with more than just one pack animal, and they would have had the proper equipment to raise a simple tent, or perhaps even a pavilion with their banner flying from the top post. They wouldn’t have made do with rough blankets on the ground and a small fire to ward off the darkness and heat the bread and cheese they had brought to supplement the game they were too weary to hunt.
No, a knight would have handled things much better. But all the knights lay asleep in Camelot’s Great Hall.
“I’m sorry, Sir Rheynold,” Gerard said to his absent and sleeping master. “I know you say that a good knight always has a plan. I don’t have a plan. I have a hunch. A thought. A maybe. But a maybe is nothing to ride out on.”
His words were directed up to the stars, but the sound barely carried past his lips. Across the fire, Newt lay on his side, one arm flung over his face, his breathing heavy and nasal in sleep. It might have been any other night of his life, the way he had dropped off into slumber.
Gerard envied him, for the moment he himself lay down, it seemed every rock in the vicinity had crawled to rest under him, digging into his flesh no matter how he turned or twisted. And likewise, their journey dug into his mind.
“I so wanted to join the Quest. I wanted to be part of the Grail’s finding, make my reputation, earn my spurs so that everyone would know my name. And now I—”
Something in the bushes beyond the fire sneezed.
Newt went from sound asleep to wide awake in the time it took Gerard to come to his feet and grab his scabbard from its resting place. The sword, a sturdy but unlovely length of metal, was gifted to him when he turned ten and was judged ready for a man’s weapon. It rested heavy in his hands.
Newt, his dagger likely to be useless in this situation, scooted on his hands and knees toward the bushes that had just sneezed, ready to lunge. Gerard watched until Newt was within tackling distance of whatever it was.
“Show yourself!” Gerard called, willing his voice not to crack. Thankfully, this once, it heeded him.
The bushes remained still and silent.
Gerard looked at Newt, who stayed focused on the area the sneeze had come from. His posture was terrible; any half-trained page could take him out. But, remembering their fight, Gerard allowed that the other boy might be useful in an unarmed scuffle if it came to that. Besides, Newt was all he had to work with.
“Show yourself!” Gerard demanded again, and when there was no response, he made a sharp gesture with his free hand, indicating that