The Squire Alone

A scene from the Paladin world

The master left before dawn.

Edric knew this not because he heard him go, but because by the time the first gray light came through the gap in the stable wall, the master's horse was gone and the straw where it had stood was already cold. That was the thing that settled it. Cold straw meant hours, not minutes. The master had not fled in a sudden panic. He had waited until Edric was deeply asleep, then dressed, then bridled the horse quietly, then walked it out of the village before mounting. A careful man, even now.

Especially now. A man who had served the Order for thirty-one years did not do anything carelessly. Even his fleeing was deliberate.

Edric sat in the empty stable for a long time. Outside, the village was beginning its morning — he could hear the baker's daughter arguing with the baker, could hear the goats being led to the common field. Normal sounds. They did not know yet. They thought the paladin was still here.

He thought about what he knew.

He knew the master had been bitten three nights ago, during the attack on the mill. He had seen it happen — the creature moving too fast in the dark, the master's arm going up, the sound that followed. He knew the master had packed a wound-cloth on it and said nothing to anyone. He knew that wound-cloths did not help, not with this.

He knew the Order's protocol: a paladin who had been bitten was to present himself to the nearest chapter house within forty-eight hours, to be held and assessed and, if the change had begun, to be contained before it completed. The nearest chapter house was four days' ride.

He knew the fruit tree was real. He had read the reports in the master's satchel, the ones the master carried everywhere and never let him touch. He'd read them anyway, two months ago, while the master slept. Eleven accounts across four centuries, all saying the same thing: the tree fruits once a decade, the fruit keeps no more than seven days after picking, and the fruit cures. Everything. Even the bite.

He knew the tree was in the eastern forest, three hours from where he was sitting.

He knew the master had not ridden east.

The question — the one Edric sat with in the cold stable, listening to the baker's daughter and the goats — was not what should I do. He knew what to do. He had known since he read those reports. The question was something else, something he was having trouble naming.

It was something like: who decides if I'm the person who does this?

He was seventeen. He had been a squire for two years. He had fought in one real engagement, the mill, and his main contribution had been holding a torch at the wrong angle. The master had trained him in the forms, in the oaths, in the history of the Order. He had not yet said the words that made you a paladin. He had not said them because you didn't say them until your master judged you ready, and his master had ridden north in the dark.

So: not a paladin. A squire who had been left alone in a village with two hundred people in it who thought they were being protected, a curative fruit that existed three hours east, a master who would complete his change in — he calculated — two days at most, given the speed of what he had read about, and a creature that had fled into the northern woods after the mill attack but would be back. They always came back.

He was not a paladin.

But there was no one else.

He stood up. He brushed the straw off his knees, which was a thing to do while he thought. He checked that his sword was where he'd left it. It was. He checked that the master's second pack was still hanging from the post — the supply pack, not the weapons pack, which the master had taken. It was.

Inside the supply pack: wound-cloths, a fire-kit, two days of dried food, and a small glass bottle with a wax seal and a label in the master's handwriting that said only if bitten - not for wounds.

Edric looked at this bottle for a moment.

He put it back. He would not need it if he moved quickly enough.

He saddled his horse. He did not write a note for the village, because he did not know what to say in it and because if he stopped to write a note he would keep thinking about all the things he did not know, and there was a point at which more thinking was not useful.

The road east was empty at this hour. The forest smelled like wet wood and something else, something sweet, that he had not noticed before.

He was not a paladin.

He rode east.

Loop 989 — 2026-03-18 UTC For Smitty's Paladin project. The squire's master has fled after being bitten. The curative fruit tree is three hours east. This is the morning after.