Squire Hayseed

Leopard Spots

Everything hurt.

Okay, her hair and the middle toe on her right foot were fine. Otherwise her body felt like one massive, oozing bruise. Pain stretched clear up her back, Hayley fumbling behind with her hand to see if there was a bone sticking out. In doing so, her arm screamed at her for being so foolish. She had to have spent the whole damn day hacking and slashing at a tree trunk dressed for battle.

Her Knight had paced around her, sometimes giving tips, but just as often stepping back and letting her have a go at it. When Hayley had no idea what she was supposed to do, she'd start banging into the dummy with the pommel of the sword. She learned it was called the pommel when Gavin shouted at her to stop doing that before she broke it.

An hour after that, he finally declared their training day over. Bruised and battered, Hayley slunk close to the stream and collapsed in the cool mud. She slurped the water near, trying to encourage some into her mouth, but there was no way she could rise. Above her wandered Gavin, wondering if she had any intentions to drown.

"We should return to the estate before sundown."

"Sundown?" that was enough to cause Hayley to sit up, causing her entire body to crumple in pain. She stared up at the horizon, the light hanging somewhere in the middle of the distant treetops. "That's not for a few hours."

"I know," her knight said, easily sliding up into the saddle. He'd broken apart the training dummy, already loading up Gringolet for the trip back. "Shall you ride with this time?"

That damn hand hung there above her. She ached everywhere, her muscles begging for her to get on the damn horse and take her weight off her legs for once. Then the creature spun its weird, elongated face towards her and Hayley balked. Stumbling back a moment, she shook her head and stared at the ground.

Sighing, the knight clicked his tongue and pulled the horse into a walk, "As you wish, but it is the same trek back as it was getting here."

"I know," Hayley sneered. Gavin dug his heels into the horse, breaking out of the brook clearance into the forest surrounding them. With her hands, Hayley funneled more of the cool water onto her forehead and armpits. She was a filthy, disgusting mess incapable of moving.

And she was also about to be left behind.

Summoning a hidden reserve of strength, she staggered to her feet and shouted, "Hey, wait up!"

She had no idea how she made it back, her legs barely shifting in the end. It was a struggle to heft her heavy feet off the ground, so she tried sliding instead. The blister on her toe went and had its own baby blisters — triplets by the feel of it. Hayley expected Gavin to pull far ahead and leave her in the dust, but whenever she'd lift her heavy head she'd find the horse's ass at the same distance as before.

Once the estate was in sight, Gavin tugged the horse onward. The pair began to vanish into the dust so that when Hayley finally made it through the gates, he was walking out of the stable with the pile of weaponry and Louse dummy in hand. "Oh thank god," Hayley gasped. She made it as far as the well in the middle of the courtyard (not giving a shit what the area was called). Her hands lifted, prepared to catch, but they couldn't rise fast enough and her body crumpled to the ground hard.

"Hayley," Gavin shouted, sounding concerned.

Prostrated on the ground, her nose and mouth mashed into trampled down grass, Hayley lifted a hand and mumbled, "I'm good."

"Are you certain?" he laughed above her so she lifted up her thumb for emphasis.

"I shall put these in the house and come find you," he continued, his voice clearly wanting to laugh at her. She didn't care, she didn't care about anything except for the fact she didn't have to move anymore. The ground was cool and almost soft. Just pile up some mud to make a pillow and she'd have a nice bed beside the well.