The Shadow Companion - Laura Anne Gilman [5]
That sight did not improve Sir Matthias’s mood at all. As they reached the larger tent which served as his home and headquarters, Sir Matthias shook his head, this time in resignation.
“Either gambling with dice or fighting. I have a desire to take them all out and horsewhip them, save it would do no good but make them surly.”
“Sir, if I may be so bold…”
“Go ahead,” Matthias said, lifting the door-flap of the simple canvas pavilion. He gestured for Gerard to go before him.
“Is it always like this? When they’re not being watched, is it always thus?”
As he entered, Gerard saw Ailis out of the corner of his eye. She was seated on rugs piled four deep, putting something away. Her expression was one of deep thought and mild discontent.
At the very beginning of the Quest, Sir Matthias had taken one look at her—Ailis being much the same age as his own daughter back home—and had insisted that she sleep in a corner of his tent, for propriety’s sake.
Ailis hadn’t done anything other than curtsey and say “thank you,” but Gerard got the feeling she wasn’t happy staying here. He didn’t understand it—he’d gladly have traded the discomfort of sleeping on roots and dirt for one of those rugs underneath him at night and a roof, however simple, to keep out the rain. Hadn’t the three friends complained of exactly those things during their mad rush to find Morgain the first time? They still rode together most days, when Sir Matthias didn’t require him, and Newt wasn’t helping out the various pack animals elsewhere….
“No,” the knight said, distracting Gerard from his thoughts. Sir Matthias unbuckled his sword belt and dropped it carelessly on his cot for his squire to put away. One did not carry a blade into a monastery—not without extreme cause—and so he had left his great sword in the wooden stand inside the pavilion by his bed. From there it could be taken up at a moment’s notice, even if Matthias was just waking from a deep sleep. “No, it’s not always like this. When men have purpose, when they have a direction, they are magnificent creatures.
“You know this from your own adventures. The sense of life that fills you, the surge of inevitability, knowing that the day can only end one way.”
Ailis was shamelessly eavesdropping now, her expression less gloomy. Her hair was braided and pinned up on her head. Gerard missed the sight of her red plait swinging freely over her shoulder, the way she wore it back in Camelot when they were younger.
Sir Matthias saw Gerard watching Ailis and moved his body between the two, an obvious move to break Gerard’s study of his friend. Despite his growing fondness for the girl, Sir Matthias had clearly decided that any deepening of the relationship between Gerard and Ailis would be unsuitable.
The knight went on with his commentary as though nothing had happened. “But for now, chasing after this dream of ours, we are lacking that surge, that sense. And so men find other things to do with their energy. And that will include bragging and brawling, if I do not give them direction. Lord, to think that this is the best of Camelot!”
He pulled off his formal surcoat and replaced it with a more comfortable, worn one. To this he added a simple belt, and an ivory-handled knife in an unmarked leather sheath. “I must go speak to two particular troublemakers now, to make sure they do no further damage to each other. Do not hold up the evening meal for me.”
With a nod to Ailis, he walked out, sure that his unspoken reminder to Gerard—that he was not to spend too much time with the girl—was understood.
Gerard understood. But despite his respect for Sir Matthias, it went unheeded.
“You think he will succeed?” he asked Ailis, referring to both the two troublemakers and the Quest in general.
“Not without a horsewhip,” she said grimly. He stared at her, but she merely went back to whatever she had been doing over in her corner. She pulled a small wooden box the size of her palm out of her pack, slipped her