Not a Chosen One
(Day 26 of @thewatchau‘s Annual Prompts!)
He remembers the man who approached his father. They were dressed in a red and blue tabard, the mark of the griffin standing proud.
It was a Saturday, when Pa would open up the front of the shop to customers and Gus would watch and try to pay attention to how it all worked. He was a big boy now, his Pa trusted him with the forge every morning.
The man in red and blue was talking about this big project, but Gus wasn’t listening as much as he should be. Just outside the shop were two figures in shiny armour.
He looked between his Pa and the man, and they both seemed distracted. So without anyone noticing, Gus slipped away from the shop and went outside.
They were standing either side of the door, dressed head to toe in shiny metal armour, with red and blue tabards and helms covering their faces. Gus only reached as high as their hip, so they didn’t see him immediately.
He stared at the swords sheathed at their hips. He didn’t know that these were not the standard arming swords of the Guard, they were a bit fancier with detailing on the crossguards and pommels, while the scabbards had the same red and blue of their tabards, along with the symbol of the Guard.
He startled back a little as the shop door opened and the man who’d been talking to his father came out. The man paused, quickly spotting Gus.
“You’re the blacksmith’s son, aren’t you?”
“Yes sir,” Gus squeaked, wondering if he was in trouble.
“I’ve just given your Pa a big order, are you going to help with it?”
Gus nodded earnestly.
The man thought for a second before crouching down to Gus’s level.
“What do you want to be when you grow up?”
Gus hadn’t really thought about it until now, but he just looked at the swords on the Guard’s hips. They had noticed him now, looking down at him with their eyes but otherwise not breaking position.
“A Guard huh?” the man ruffled Gus’s fluffy black hair. “Well hopefully I’ll see you at the Whetstone in a few years time lad.”
They straightened up, and with a wave to Gus, walked away. The two Guards marched after him, keeping perfect step.
“Gus!” his Pa called from the chop, sounded worried.
“Coming!” Gus scampered back into the shop.
---
It was rumours at first. Something that customers would mention to each other, thinking that Gus and Griff couldn’t hear them. Or gossiped about around the wells in Archath.
The Red Knight was riding again, having donned his gambeson.
Gus was supposed to be working, helping Pa with orders, bringing water from the well to douse the metal in or assisting in the forging. Instead, the moment he heard anything that sounded like ‘Lord’ or ‘Jack’ or ‘Red’ or ‘Knight’, he’d stop everything and listen.
School, when he went, wasn’t much better, and the time Gus had free was spent trying to find what Lord Jackie did before he was a Lord.
He made a decision then, that he would be the Red Knight’s squire.
He spent ages picking a name, trying to work out what he would wear when he joined the Red Knight saving people in the kingdom and fighting the Enemy, the coward who hid in the Western Forest.
He challenged his Pa’s apprentices to sparring matches, not that Gus really knew how to fight, he was just strong.
He made plans to run away and join the Red Knight. When the workload was down, so it didn’t affect the forge too much. When they got an apprentice again. When it got warmer.
Suddenly no one was talking about the Red Knight.
He’d vanished.
---
He had joined the Guard now. That was where Lord Jackie had trained. Since Lord Jackie seemed to no longer be around, someone had to take his place. Someone had to be hero.
Gus felt like a hero. Each movement felt right. His weapons felt like extensions of his own arms. His armour as light as a feather. He could do anything!
“Hey Bellows!” a Squire in his year sat on his bunk while Gus polished his boots. “Time off tonight, want to ride out to the tavern?”
Squires were supposed to be disciplined, but they were also only human.
“Sure!”
---
Something itched inside Gus’s brain. Standing post in a nowhere hamlet called Glenbeg. This wasn’t what he wanted. This wasn’t what he was meant to do!
Be patient. His mind whispered. Climb the ranks. Be the best.
That was a point. He’d been waiting most of his life. He could wait a bit longer.
---
Gus winced, nursing several injuries as a nurse patched him up.
A group of fighters from Fort Conchúr had been asked to help out in House Brody with recent raids, and Gus couldn’t wait to go with them.
His first real battle had been shit.
It was like everything he’d ever learned about fighting had vanished from his head and something in his core had frozen solid. He’d just watched as a horde of creatures he could barely even see came charging at him.
Something had clicked and he began to fight. Endless drills had made all of this second nature, but this hadn’t been sparring. They weren’t going to stop when a claw nicked his arm. Or when another got his leg. Or when something had jumped on his chest, knocking the wind of him and shoving him to the ground.
“It doesn’t hurt too much does it?” asked the nurse wrapping up his arm. “I can get you something for that.”
“It doesn’t hurt,” Gus lied. It didn’t hurt that much. Not as much as his pride.
The nurse hummed under their breath and carried on.
“You lot did good out there. Kept ‘em off the village.”
Gus just looked away. They couldn’t be talking about him.
“Now, are you being modest or do you disagree with me?”
“…It went to shit.”
“Really? Between all of you, you kept them off the village, we managed to get the planting finished. No one died or went missing. All in all, it went pretty well for us.”
Gus looked up, confused. “But I-”
“It’s not all about you,” the nurse interrupted. “It’s a nice story, for a chosen one to rise up and defeat the evil. A chosen one isn’t going to end this. It’ll be ordinary people on the ground. You, me, the person writing the maps, the farmers. We’re all in this together. So get your head out of your arse and use the brain you were born with!”
Gus sat up a little straighter, and nodded. He wasn’t sure he believed them, but what they were saying did make sense.
(This one, as you can see, jumps around quite a bit. The first section is in 1597. The second one stretches across 1600 to Feb 1601. The third is late 1605. The fourth is late 1609 or early 1610, haven’t quite decided. The last one is March/April 1612)
