I know how the nobility can be.
I was in my first battle when I was 14. Young, full of rage at life, not realizing what was wrong with me, drafted into the peasant levy. Show up with whatever you have for weapons and armor and if you want to eat you need to bring food.
I found out why they say it's better to be lucky than good. It was a bloodbath. Footmen with proper armor and swords slammed into us. We learned the only way to take one of them down was to mob him, six or seven on one, and hope he didn't kill too many before we could use our knives to find the weak spots in his armor. I walked away with a sword that I took off a body, and three empty places at my family table. Half of the men in my little village didn't come back, and some who did were too badly injured to be any help in the fields.
I found out later from rumors that the battle, and even the war itself, was to determine who could marry a princess.
I know how the nobility can be. Uncaring of the lives of their subjects.
We tried to continue as normal, but there weren't enough to finish the harvest that year. We went hungry. The next year was no better. When tax time came, we couldn't pay and we were run out of our village. No excuses. One of the tax men tried to take my sword as partial payment. Still full of rage, I killed him. And had to flee. Some bright tax collector had brought a few bowmen and I caught an arrow in my shoulder as I fled.
I honestly don't know how I evaded pursuit or even how long I stumbled through the forest. All I know is I woke up to a young woman about my age packing my wound with herbs and wrapping it in a vinegar-soaked bandage. She smiled at me, told me, "I know who you are," and when I told her my name, she shook her head and said, "No, that's not right." And then she left me a loaf of bread and walked away.
I know how the nobility can be. Solving the smallest problems with violence at a remove, lest their hands get blemished.
I was an outlaw for a couple years, scrounging in the forest. Those couple of years, though, changed me enough that I was able to walk to an actual city, give a false name, and become a sellsword. Merchant caravans at least fed me. After a few years, in my ignorance, I signed on with one whose master had spoken out loudly against the king. Rich off his profits, he counted on his wealth to protect him after hiring town criers to create scandal after scandal.
Two days out, we were attacked. They said afterwards it was bandits, but no bandits wore chainmail and heraldic tabards. I did what I could, trying at least to defend the people I was next to and damn the contents of the cart. What armor I had been able to piece together was not enough and I was struck down, left for dead.
I laid there for some time, how long I don't know. And then I was loaded onto a cart and pulled into the woods, too weak to protest even if I wanted to. Next thing I knew, I was on a straw pallet and the same woman as before stood over me. She bound my wounds again and bid me rest, recover. Again she said she knew my name, and again when I told her she said, "No, that is not right either."
Weeks of bedrest as she fed me simple foods and my wounds healed far faster than they should have. After I was able to walk, I insisted on helping with chores. Chopping firewood, collecting acorns for the winter, and finding some herbs for her to dry for the winter. My hair began to grow longer and when I thought about it, I liked how it looked, how it felt, how much it looked like hers. This person who lived a life I envied. And if a couple of times at night I awoke to her sitting in front of the dying hearth with my sword across her lap and her softly singing, so what? She could sing and polish it, I trusted her. It was always back in its scabbard in the morning and always looking stronger, sharper.
As fall turned to winter, I felt a need to leave. I couldn't explain it any more than something was wrong. I attributed it to the destruction of the caravan, to needing to right the wrong. I'm sure I was at least partly right. But I needed funds. And so I bid goodbye to her and walked to the king's city, tears trailing down my eyes from sunrise until midday.
I know how the nobility can be. Thinking of themselves and their comfort over the lives of everyone around them.
I gave a different name again at the gate. I took riskier jobs, ate sparingly, guarding the body of various people, whoever could pay now. Standing guard while nobility drank and feasted to excess, easy prey for anyone with a grudge. My hands itched each time one of them fell into a wine-induced stupor, but each time I held back. Instead I talked to their servants. Learned the secrets. Almost all of them were heartbroken when a servant died, but the servants told me it was because their feast plans had been thrown awry and not because of the loss. Comfort, digging a grave, helping to mend a garment, even finding some of the sweet-smelling herbs I had learned went a long way towards tips that let me get better and better employment.
Once a season, I walked back to her house in the forest. I hid my profits from my jobs there. She was always happy to see me again. After my first return, she finally told me her name: Derica, but I could call her Deri. And every time I returned, she would ask my name. When I told Deri, she would shake her head and said "No, that's not right" and I would smile, enjoying the game while wondering what she knew that I didn't.
Eventually she invited me into her bed to sleep, while making it clear there was no other reason. I accepted both her offer and her terms, and slept better than I ever had in my life.
Every time I visited, I found myself more like her upon my leaving. Skin properly cleaned and made softer, more supple. A piece of ribbon in my clothing, in my armor. My walk gentler. And always, my sword as renewed and refreshed as I was.
I know how the nobility can be. Thinking more for money and power than for others' lives.
After nearly a decade of this, I was hired to guard the king on his sixtieth birthday. The same king who had called a battle which left my childhood home desolate. The same king whose tax collectors evicted my entire village. The same king who was known to have ordered his knights to destroy the merchant caravan I was in and leave no survivors.
I will not bore you with too many details. Suffice to say I knew more about the palace servants and their lives than I remembered about my own birth family, and with a question here or a silver coin there, I found myself alone in the king's bedchambers as his bodyguard and chamberlain left to investigate a fight that had been spurred by swirling rumors that had been planted. The two of them wouldn't back down from the insults, and even if it was discovered that the insults were false, they shouldn't be implicated as anything other than as tricked as the rest of the staff.
The king I slew with his own sword, thrusting it down through his heart, pinning his body to the bed. And then I took all of my coins, a decade in the earning, and forced them into his mouth before leaving.
I returned to Deri that night and, finding her door latched, sat outside on a chair and dozed. I had slept in worse, and even with age creeping in it was only for one night.
I know how the nobility can be.
They arrived just after sunrise. A half dozen armored men riding war horses. I didn't know how they knew to follow my tracks, but they had. And it was too late to lead them away.
I heard one say "That's her, the tall one who killed him". Her. Her. Her. The word reverberated in my skull, almost driving me to my knees, and at the worst possible time. I had to protect Deri, she had been nothing but kind, caring, even loving to me. And these knights wouldn't even ask if she knew me, they would just slaughter her and destroy this cottage. The one she had built. The one whose rafters I had repaired two summers ago. The one whose hearth I knew precisely how to stoke. The one that smelled of herbs, and bread, and oil, and Deri.
I saw the smirk as the lead knight raised his sword. The word echoing around my skull found a home behind my eyes. "Yes," was all I said, and I felt them blaze with light. I brought my sword up, and it too shone like the sun. One after another, I screamed my rage and defiance at them, my voice cracking, higher than I had heard it in a generation. One after another, the knights fell to my blade.
I awoke some time later, Deri again sitting by me in bed, stitching together cut and pierced flesh. My sword lay next to me, blackened and perhaps smoking. Or maybe that was just the effects of her salves.
"So," she asked, "what is your name?" It sprang from my lips unbidden, unknown to me until this moment. "Brigid. But you may call me Bridge," I said, laying a hand on hers.
Many years have passed since then. Deri has given me a daily draught to drink every morning. It was a year or more before I looked in the rain barrel, saw the changes to my face, and began weeping with joy. And the changes have continued as the years have gone by.
We still sleep next to each other, as comfortable as we could ever dream of being. When I see that gleam in her eye and that barely hidden smile, the evening is far less chaste than it used to be.
No one has come to harass us. My sword has been sheathed since that fateful day, except for when I take it out to tend to it. Aside from needing a little oil, it has never needed much, and has remained just as sharp, just as keen. And I am ever ready to wield it again to defend Deri as her sword-maiden.
Because I know how the nobility can be. And I know that All Knights Are Bastards.
