Alfrieda took in the two men who had joined them. She knew the scarred man was a True Knight, one of the Queens loyal followers, who had left the Kingdom to find her rather than serve a false and evil ruler-men and women spoke of him with respect.
The bearded one was more of a mystery. Can't learn everything from scullery girls and pot boys, after all.
"I-I'm from Steelstone. It's a decent sized mining town, out in the countryside. Lots of... well, iron 'n steel. I'm an herbalist though, not a miner. I... I can't just sit 'round and wait for the country ta get fixed, ya know? I've got ta do something about it if I can.
O-Oh, am I uh... jumpy? I think it's because of who's in the place, here. I-I'm just some country girl, and there's a bunch'a important people around. There's probably more power in this room than I ever saw back home, not even counting the Queen. M-Makes me a bit nervous is all." As Lillian talks, the accent slips back into her voice as she stops focusing on talking "normally".
The large man says, offering his thick and heavily calloused hand to the young woman to shake. "I know little of the magics that have sundered this place, but I suspect that our job to fix it will be vast, so I suppose we will likely be working together for quite some time. At any rate, I think you should not feel too much in the way of nervousness, as after all, no matter what your station was before, we are all members of this order together now."
Alfrieda shook the mans hand in turn, taking off her chain-metal glove to do so. Her hand, while much slimmer, bore callouses as well, though they thicker at the tips of her fingers, than her palms. A placement one usually associated with archers.
Noting the poor young woman was like to die of shock in the next few moments, she tried to soften her next words, though this generally meant she just tried to talk slower, rolling her 'R's more sonorously.
"Indeed. I was younger than you, Lilian, when I first set out in the world, wandering. And no more than a country girl myself, daughter of a hunter and a seamstress. I chose my station, and made myself the woman you see before you, clad in steel and old sorrows..."It had been quite a life, to be sure. All because of the chaos of the Tyrant. Without his madness, Alfrieda might never have become a Knight. It worried her, and often brought back an old memory.
Her father had sometimes remarked (on his rare binges of drink) that Life was a deep, dark pit filled with mud and shit. And at the bottom of it, was the vast majority of people who lived and died there. The Nobles were above your heads, and they had strong men clad in iron to kick you back down, if you tried to climb out...but occasionally a powerful storm blew in from the sky, sent by the Gods. The pit filled with water, and the people drowned, fighting one another for a breath of air. Sometimes the storm was so powerful it even swept the Nobles down, and their strong iron men as well. He said that in these times of chaos, that if one could but tread water for a little while, they might be able to climb out of the pit on the piled corpses underneath them.
She had only paused for a second, but finished promptly.
"You must decide who you wish to be. If you will bear the storm alongside us, or drown, or choose to climb."
"He's wrong."
The battered-looking knight stands up from where he'd been seated, near one edge of the hall, and walks toward the group.
"You should be nervous. If you're just a country girl, as you say, then you had damn well be worried about what might come your way. All manner of creatures could dwell in the mists, and if you're not prepared, you'll be naught more than a corpse before you have time to realize what happened."
"Aye, Good Sir Arvaine speaks the cold truth, if misplaced. There is much danger ahead...but we will face it together, lowborne and higborne and those born nowhere at all...our order is like a collection of loose threads. Some are like silk, quite tough and flexible, but vulnerable to rot-once ruined or stained, hard to repair. Others are like a fiber, comfortable to look at, dependable for the day to day, and able to be patched-but rips easy when damaged, and offers little protection. Others are like leather cord, strong, but inelegant and inflexible, and prone to wear and tear over time. And yet a coat formed of a mix of those, is stronger than any coat made of a single type of thread-each one covers the weaknesses of the others, to make a stronger whole.
...I mean to say, you need not be nervous in our presence." She finished, slightly embarrassed that she had slipped into extended metaphor, probably brought on by unconscious association at the mention of her mother.
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Topic: Order of the White Branch: Honourable Beginnings (IC Thread) (Read 13846 times)