The Last Knight by Hilari Bell Page A

time.”
    I decided to let this pass; that was Fisk’s past, and I meant to give him a chance for a different future. But…
    “I take your point, but I can’t see heroism as a weakness. Without aspirations men would still be dwelling in caves, killing with stones and clubs like the desert savages. And this last quest isn’t a matter of heroism, but of righting a wrong and redeeming our honor.”
    A chance to argue lightened Fisk’s mood.
    “It’s also about every bully and brigand who wants an easy target and knows an indebted man can’t go to the law. Not to mention your father cutting you off without a fract. Ah, speaking of which, Sir?”
    “Yes?” I spoke a bit curtly. Fisk’s last speech had some sting in it, though it wasn’t true.
    “When this is over…Well, an estate steward won’t need a squire.”
    “Not a squire, mayhap, but an estate steward could certainly use a trusty clerk to keep his ledgers.”
    When he isn’t lying, Fisk’s face is very candid. His downcast expression was almost comical, but there was something under the simple disappointment akin to pain, or even fear, that made me add, “Don’t worry. When the time is right, I’ll end your indebtedness. I swear it on my honor.”
    Fisk’s expression turned wry. “I knew a man once whose name was not Jack Bannister. He broke his oaths regularly, and got quite rich doing it.”
    I almost said, rather hotly, that I was not this Jack. But this time ’twas definitely pain I heard under Fisk’s sardonic tone. I saw that Jack Bannister (or whatever his name really was) had also broken his word to Fisk, and Fisk’s trust with it. The silence stretched. The growing light warmed my shoulders.
    “I suppose,” I said finally, “that a man’s word is as good as his own regard for it. This Jack of yours saw his oath as worthless, and his oaths were just that. For myself, an oath is as binding as an iron chain. No, more binding, for a chain may be sawed through, or twisted apart, or the lock picked. But from an oath, or any debt of honor, there’s no escape.”
     
     
    I decided that we would first confront Baron Bertram Mallory, the kinsman to whom my apology was owed—a thing I had intended to do anyway, though I knew how painful and embarrassing it would be. Being ordered to do something you have already resolved on doing is a frustrating and humiliating experience. Mayhap ’twas fortunate that the Mallorian Barony was a full day’s ride to the northwest. For the sake of Chant’s leg I planned to make a day and a half of it, which would give me time to recover from the blow Father had struck my pride. Injured pride is not conducive to apologies.
    We forded the river in midafternoon, and made camp a few hours later in a cave beside the road. The early stop gave me time to string my short bow and shoot a few partridges, stretching our supplies.
    I tramped back to camp with the birds dangling from my hands, heavy as feathered stone shot, for game is fat in the fall.
    The cave was not a hole in the earth, but a triangular wedge beneath a big stone bank, cut by the stream in flood years. Travelers’ fires had blackened the overhanging rock, and Fisk had gathered wood and started a fire while I was gone.
    This was a pleasant change, for when he first joined me, city-bred Fisk had no more notion of how to set up camp than…well, than a townsman. He grimaced when he saw the birds in my hand, for I had declared I would teach him to clean game the next time I shot something.
    I smashed an oatcake into crumbs and scattered them for the other birds, appeasing the Furred God by assisting life, since I had taken it.
    Fisk did fairly well, for he is deft with a knife, though a little squeamish. I cooked the partridges, however. My first taste of Fisk’s camp cooking had been more than enough.
    I’ve wondered a lot about Fisk, in the short time he’s been with me. He tries to act like the gutterling my father proclaimed him, but he knows full