The Knight's Dog

Part IV.

DERN LEFT KYLER—the man he’d called father—unburied for the wolves to eat, along with the knight’s horse. The knight’s sword and shield he took with him, sure now that some other thief like Kyler would happen by the cairn and steal them. He wrapped them in the saddle blanket and lashed them to his pack. It did not hide them as well as he liked, but it would at least conceal them from the casual observer. The dog followed him as he made his way towards Brookford, though at a safe distance away along the side of the road. “Don’t worry,” Dern assured him, “I’m not stealing your master’s things. We’re just taking them to show Garamund. He’ll know what to do with them.”

They moved at a quick pace, as Dern wanted to be as far away from Kyler’s body as possible before nightfall. He felt like he should be sad about Kyler being dead, but he wasn’t. “I’m not mad at you for killing him,” he told the dog. The dog paid him no heed, but rather stopped to piss on a bush. “Even if he was my father, he never acted like much of one,” Dern went on. “I’ve learned a lot more from old Skote, and Garamund, and Three-Fingered Jon than I ever learned from him. All he ever did was make me sneak into places and steal jewelry and coins from merchants and such. And he’s the one that made me crawl through a privy shaft into the Duke of Labat’s keep in Wheaton. I was nearly caught. Not to mention covered in shite.”

The dog glanced up at him, then disappeared into the bushes, leaving Dern to keep his thoughts to himself.