The caravan supplied wages and enough food and drink to keep its guards going. Everything else was their own responsibility. Weapons, horses, even a few extra pieces of dried meat came out of a man's pocket. Replacing an injured guard did not entitle Oliver to the man's equipment.
He and Kellan would have to buy what they needed.
Nearly two weeks had passed since they found their way back among people. One thing had followed another, leaving them little time to rest. Now there was a little breathing room, and Redfield had shops worth visiting.
At the smithy, Oliver sold the captured weapons, added some money, and arranged for the defeated pirate leader's mail and helmet to be altered for Kellan. The smith promised them in three days.
Horses came next. One for each rider, and a third to carry their belongings. They searched the village without finding anyone who dealt in them, then returned to the manor to ask the steward.
“Good horses, ser? You won't find them among the villagers. His lordship has the best animals. Whether he'd sell, I'd have to ask.”
He went to find Roderic and encountered Harrick coming out of the house. The young man asked what was wrong, heard the explanation, and took charge.
“No need to disturb Father. He's counting cargo with my uncle. I'll show our guests the stable.”
The steward accepted that after a moment's thought. The son of the house had authority too.
Five horses stood eating behind the manor. Harrick took beans from a sack and offered them to a dapple-gray.
“That chestnut mare is Father's. This one's mine. You can choose from the other three.”
Oliver folded his arms and examined them with an air of consideration.
How was he meant to choose a horse? He had mastered riding in the game, but as a tauren he had ridden kodos, phoenixes, icy dragons, and long-legged birds. He had never actually sat on an ordinary horse.
“Kellan. Let's see what you think. Which would suit you, and which should I take?”
The boy accepted the test without suspicion. He went along the stalls examining heads, chests, hooves, and teeth, touching and inspecting until he settled on a yellow-brown stallion and a black mare with a white face.
“These two, Master.”
Oliver nodded. “Good choices.”
Neither had much on the Light-blessed kodo he'd ridden at level sixty, but he doubted that comparison would help.
“I should mention,” Harrick said, “Old Bones is fourteen. An old horse.”
Kellan's face reddened. Apparently his inspection hadn't told him that.
“That's all right. I could see he wasn't young.” Oliver regarded the stallion. “Old horses can be like old soldiers. Less lively, perhaps, but they know what they're doing. Can we try them?”
Harrick had a groom bring saddles. He mounted his own gray and led them to a low hill beyond the village, where they rode for a while at speed.
Kellan did know something about horses after years of caring for his father's. Old Bones responded well to a light rein or a squeeze of Oliver's legs. He seemed to understand what was wanted of him, a quality Oliver appreciated greatly on his first ride.
“How's yours?” he asked.
Kellan slid down, sweating and delighted. “Wonderful, Master.”
Having a mount to call his own again was enough to make him happy.
“What do you want for them?” Oliver asked Harrick.
“A warhorse is usually around a golden dragon. Depends on the horse, of course. Father took Old Bones during the campaign against the Iron Islands. A fine animal in his day. The mare's only a little over two, and she hasn't been named. Good prospects. Two dragons for the pair.”
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Oliver looked at Kellan. The boy offered no help. Caring for horses and buying them were evidently different skills.
“Since they're your father's, perhaps I should speak to him first. If he doesn't want to part with a war trophy, there's no need to trouble anyone.”
Harrick adjusted the offer at once.
“After what you did for us, I shouldn't ask so much. One golden dragon and twenty silver moons. There is something I'd ask in return.”
“Go on.”
“While you're here... would you teach me swordsmanship?”
“Your father's a sworn sword. Why ask me?”
“Father's gift is for trade. Organizing things. Fighting isn't what he's best at.” Harrick grew more serious. “Without you, we might have lost everything. Even if Uncle Dornel sent men afterward, he'd have found ruins. He might have taken the holding back. I keep thinking about Beambridge. If I were half as good as you, perhaps so many people wouldn't have been hurt.”
Oliver could see why the fight had impressed him. He would be training Kellan anyway. Another pupil for a few days was hardly an impossible burden.
“Join us tomorrow. We'll work on it. But you explain it to your father.”
“Thank you, ser.”
They returned the horses to the stable and went out to finish shopping. Through the steward, Oliver found a villager willing to sell a sound packhorse for eighteen silver moons. They ordered blankets, water containers, iron pots, and the other things they would need on the road.
By the time it was all arranged, the golden dragon from the battle had gone, along with more than twenty Azeroth silver coins from Oliver's purse. At least he now looked the part. An armed man on a horse was a different prospect to an employer than the same man trudging along with his possessions on his back.
* * *
After discussing it with Harrick, Oliver began with the spear. A weapon three meters long gave a man reach against several opponents, and it served on horseback as well as on foot. Teaching it made him consider the choices more carefully himself.
Two days into the lessons, one question began to bother him. Reach was an advantage until someone else could strike from farther away.
Against a longer spear, there were bows and crossbows. Against those, his usual options were unhelpful. A Sunwalker's weapon training hadn't included bows, crossbows, or firearms. The attacks he remembered sending across a battlefield with the Light were useless here: the shield throw, judgments, the rest of his holy attacks. As far as he could tell, that part of him was sealed away.
An agile enemy who kept out of reach and shot at him would cause serious trouble.
He had always liked the idea of riding and shooting well. If whatever had brought him here refused to let him use the Light, he would have to learn something else.
On the day they collected Kellan's altered armor, the smith helped him buy a longbow and more than twenty arrows from an old soldier.
“What are those for, Master?”
“Practice. I'm no good with a bow. The journey to White Harbor should give me time to improve.”
“But bows are for common men, aren't they? The great knights weren't known for archery.”
“Why not?”
“It's a coward's weapon. A true warrior wins honor face-to-face.”
“Who told you that?”
“Father. Lannard said the same.”
Oliver made a face. “People don't all do things the same way. Just because a knight in the Fingers doesn't use a bow doesn't mean nobody in the North or the west does. And being close enough to hit someone doesn't make the act honorable.”
Kellan waited, doubtful.
“Say a bandit stops a woman on the road. She's taking her child to see her mother. He's right in front of her. Does that make him brave?”
“No.”
“A man sees it, draws a bow, and shoots him before he can hurt her. Has the archer done something shameful?”
“That isn't what I meant. I mean two warriors, evenly matched, risking their lives against each other.”
“Then let them use bows against each other.” Oliver stopped him before the next objection. “I'm learning this. You don't have to. Master most of what I'm teaching you now and you'll have work enough. Where I come from, archery has been considered a proper part of a nobleman's education.”
“Then why haven't you learned it?”
Oliver looked at him. “That's why I can't go home.”
It was an answer meant to end the discussion. Kellan heard something very different. A place so demanding that it had sent away a man with his teacher's learning, skill, and character merely for failing with a bow. What must the people who remained there be like?
His curiosity about Oliver's home grew with his admiration.
The spear lessons continued. Polearms were part of Oliver's inherited weapon skills. He still remembered his first, an Ice Barbed Spear earned in Alterac Valley, back when he had played a human warrior. He had used it for a long time.
After a few days, Harrick understood the basic differences between handling a spear mounted and on foot. That did not prevent Oliver from beating him whenever they practiced. Even against Kellan, he lost more often than he won.
Lying awake afterward, he wondered what he was achieving by working so hard.
Oliver told him to keep at it. A few months would show him the difference between himself and a man who hadn't trained. For now, Harrick could at least recognize a different comparison: the gulf between Oliver and his father seemed as great as the gulf between himself and little Nerys.
Yet Oliver kept his promise and taught him diligently. Grateful, Harrick bought him a used carriage from his own funds.
Oliver was delighted. Sitting in a carriage was decidedly more comfortable than riding. To show his appreciation, he worked his temporary pupil especially hard during the two days before they left.
That night, Harrick lay staring at the ceiling, feeling as though his body had been pulled apart and badly reassembled.
What, exactly, was he doing to himself?
On the tenth morning after Oliver arrived in Redfield, Cerran's caravan was finally ready. They set out at dawn.