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Hans is used to seeing the peasants going hither and thither throughout the town—toiling—as peasants are meant to do, and he is used to not really noticing anything beyond that. Maybe there’s more of them than usual some days, sometimes they are in festive outfits, and the increase in beggars since that Skalitz thing is hard to ignore, but mainly they are a feature of the town, like the stone buildings or the muddy streets.
They’ve got more in common with the streets than the buildings if he’s honest.
Henry is different somehow. He isn’t toiling as he scurries around the streets of Rattay, and something beyond his irregular schedules and footsteps unhampered by the drudgery of unchanging work draws the eye every time. Hans can’t quite put his finger on it, but Henry doesn’t really look like a normal peasant these days. He’s in Sir Radzig’s service, but he doesn’t really look like a guard, either. There’s something more about him.
He asked his uncle what kind of tasks Henry was being put to, and he just shrugged and said he was helping out the guard here and there.
The guard has been in Rattay as far as Hans can tell, and Henry has been anywhere but.
Adventuring. That’s what Henry’s doing, and that’s what he looks like, an adventurer, with mismatched armor and a hand-me-down bow and boots that are on the brink of falling apart.
He makes it look a bit less dashing in real life than it is in the stories. Maybe he’s not very good at it, and how could he be with boots like that? Poor Henry’s feet must ache. And he’s splattered with mud up to his knees, worse than the beggars who are kneeling in it. He could do with another trip to the baths, but it seems he doesn’t have time for that, because other than a quick hello to Hans, he rushes right by up the hill to the keep.
Shame. He’s is a bit bored today and could use a distraction or even just someone to have a drink with. And it seems wrong, somehow, that Henry is the one too busy with important things to spend time with Hans when it should be the other way around. The warm, inviting smile he’d carefully mustered just for Henry fades slowly as Henry gets lost in the crowd.
Hans knows that his own life contains entirely too much leisure, even if it’s through no choice of his own. He’s not allowed to rule, and there’s no one around to really give him any orders to do anything but this—chase his pleasures in Rattay and wait around for things to change. Idle hands, and all that.
Still, it doesn’t seem right that an orphaned, displaced peasant who by all rights should be loitering with the other refugees waiting for a change in circumstances is somehow too busy for a pint and a game of dice. He should be just as indolent as Hans, more so even, but Henry’s life is something grander than it was before. More interesting. Hans played his own part in that, he knows, if only by taking him hunting and giving him his first taste of being a hero, but Hans’s life went back to normal doldrums after that. Why should Henry be so different?
Henry rushes by once again, this time going the other direction, and he doesn’t even notice Hans’s hand stretched out in a wave, much less the rest of Hans, and that’s not right. That is frustrating. Hans is nobility in colorful clothes with shiny yellow hair and a noticeable, clean face. Henry is just—was just—another peasant among scores of peasants. It should be obvious to anyone which one gets overlooked and snubbed if overlooking and snubbing are to happen.
He rests his invisible face on his fist and watches Henry go, and he doesn’t even want his wine anymore. It’s the same wine he drinks every time at the same tavern and it will make him feel the same way it always does, and maybe he’ll get in a fight or flirt with some lowborn girl—and then get into a fight with whatever lowborn boy thinks he has a claim on her—but it was more entertaining when he was doing it with Henry for some reason.
The annoyance doesn’t last. It never really does for Hans, and by the time he next sees Henry rushing about town, his resentment is gone, too. He likes seeing how different Henry looks each time he comes to town. Henry might be the only thing that’s actually changing around here, even if that change is for him to look more and more like a brigand of some sort in well-worn gear in a mixture of styles. If Hans didn’t know him, he’d assume Henry spent his days shaking down travelers for coin.
That effect is somewhat mitigated when he finally sees Henry sitting down for once, and of all things, he has his nose in a book.
“Are you reading in a tavern?” Hans asks, sitting himself at the table and waving down the ale maid.
Henry lowers the book with a chagrined grin and reveals a beard that was not there his last time in town. “It’s worse than that, Sir Hans, I’m reading about drinking in a tavern at a tavern.”
He shows Hans the bawdy book, and they share a laugh as Hans flips through the dog-eared pages.
“I didn’t know you even knew how to read. But at least you’re putting it to good use. Who even though to write down such drivel?”
Henry looks very pleased with himself when he says, “I’ve been working on it here and there. It’s a good way to pass the time when I can’t sleep.”
“Wine will help with that as well, and the best learning is done with practice.” He takes a quaff of his wine that was only just set down by the maid. It’s sour, and his face twists. No matter. Vinegar will only be the better to pickle himself with. He drinks again, draining the cup.
When he puts it down, he finds Henry watching him. Studying him almost. “Well, go on,” Hans says with a gesture at Henry’s cup. “Though… I suppose only reading about wine will make for an easier morning, if that’s what you’re after. The beard, though” –he wiggles his fingers at his own chin. It’s not a bad one. It makes him look older, a bit gruffer—“Does that also help you sleep at night?”
Henry looks down bashfully, his goofy expression completely at odds with his armor of a battle-hardened cutthroat.
“Easier to manage out there on the road,” he says after clearing his throat. “The girls at the bathhouse said it suited me.”
“Well,” says Hans, annoyed by that response for some reason. Henry with his peasant-beard getting peasant-flattery from peasant-girls. “They’re right,” he says tight-lipped.
It’s a danger, making drinking with Henry a habit. Sure, he’s Lord Radzig’s man which confers on him a certain amount of respect, but they aren’t exactly peers. Their bathhouse escapades were private, at least, but here in the open people will see them.
He orders another round for them both and decides the only thing for it is to make this night count. He can feel himself talking too loudly and smiling too hard, and he can’t stop. By the time Henry is onto his fourth story of the bizarre people he’s met on the road, Hans’s face is aching from all the laughter.
He doesn’t even get annoyed that it’s Henry, not Hans, who has the attention of everyone there. Hans has only the same three stories to tell about his knightly pursuits, and though he does end up telling him, he finds himself like everyone else hanging on Henry’s words, Henry’s next tale of not bravery so much as his own follies leading to surprise victories. The way he tells it, he stumbles and summersaults backwards into every success he has.
And maybe Henry is onto something with the whole “reading about drinking” thing, because he drinks Hans under the table—the one thing Hans thought he’d obviously still be better than Henry at, surely. Hans kicks himself for it later, because when he wakes up in the morning in his own bed courtesy of Henry’s broad shoulders and a stumbling, laughing journey back to his room, Henry is gone, off to his next adventure, and Hans is still here, to rot in Rattay.
It is unkind of Henry to make Hans feel so frustrated with his life. Nothing changes, least of all Hans, and yet… there is something changing in him—a growing dissatisfaction with his stagnation that can only be traced back to Henry.
At least Henry has given him something to look forward to—his irregular visits to his adopted home.
The next time Hans sees Henry early one morning on the path outside of Pirkstein, he blurts out, “Good god, man, are you alright?”
“Hm?” Henry looks down at the incredibly bloody mess that is his armor and curses. “Shit. I mean, yes, I mean, don’t worry. The blood’s not mine.”
This only begs more questions and more worries, even disregarding Henry’s appended, “Well, mostly.”
Henry blearily looks this way and that before finding a trough of water not three feet to his left, and he dunks his entire head in.
“Whose, then?” Hans asks when he reemerges, captivated as dark rivulets of blood and dirt—at least he hopes it’s just dirt—trail down Henry’s neck.
Henry’s washing of himself is lethargic, his eyes closed as he clumsily rubs his hand through his hair.
“Ugh, I’m so tired,” he says as if he didn’t hear Hans at all. “I didn’t even think about what a mess I must look, terrorizing the local folk like this. Just wanted to get to Bernard while they’re still fresh.”
“While what’s still fresh?” Hans asks, fascinated.
“Oh, uh…” Henry opens his eyes and glances at a small pack hanging off his belt that is suspiciously bloodier than the rest of him. “Never you mind about that. Just taking care of bandits for Sir Hanush and I’m reporting in to Commander Bernard.”
“Bandits? Outside of Rattay?”
Henry nods. “Well-equipped, too. And there are Cumans up north hiding in the woods. Been handling that for Talmberg. Fewer of them now, at least.” He sighs, slumping. “I should get going up that hill.”
“You still have blood on your—” Hans reaches out as if he’s going to wipe the blood off of Henry’s cheek with his handkerchief, then thinks better of it. It would hardly make a dent, really. Just ruin his kerchief. “Never mind.”
It occurs to him that the exhausted man in front of him miserably eyeing the uphill path he has to take has killed people now. Henry’s gauntleted hands are literally bloody. It’s expected of a man doing the kind of work Henry is doing, of any of the guards of Rattay, really, though some may go through life never seeing a real skirmish. But Henry… he looks so…
When he’d first met Henry, he’d thought… well, he’d thought he was just like every peasant that can be found after hours in a tavern and easily goaded into a fight. Uneducated. Punchable. Irrelevant. More likely than not to spend the rest of his life being a guy who loses at dice and gets punched in taverns and not much else, even if he did manage to get a hit or two in on Hans.
Certainly, when they’d been forced to train together, Henry wasn’t anything special. He’d beaten Hans in the archery, but only just, and that only meant he was probably a poacher, and Hans was hungover anyway, and then he’d acted like he’d never seen a sword in his life, which meant he probably wasn’t much of a blacksmith, either. Hans had beaten him handily at swordplay as expected. There was no great talent there. He was exactly what he looked like—a peasant out of his depth, more suited for a pitchfork.
But… could Hans still beat him with the sword? The way the pauldrons sit comfortably on Henry’s shoulders, he thinks… maybe not. It might just be the new armor, armor purchased in town now, not picked off dead bandits, armor as good as anyone’s got around here save Hanush, but Henry looks bigger now. More imposing. Even dead on his feet, he could probably take someone out by falling on them just right.
Could someone really change that quickly?
It’s annoying, and Hans doesn’t really know why. Just that he’s annoyed, and he wishes… he wishes Henry would stop rushing about Rattay and leaving again. He should just stop and stay put and be normal. Then Hans could stop thinking about him and wondering what he’s up to out there and studying the ways his arms have changed and how the way he carries himself has changed and how he looks more like a knight than Hans does at this moment.
He gets the first bit of that wish almost instantly. Henry, who is still looking at the uphill path ahead of him with a faint expression of dismay, wavers on his feet, tipping so far to one side, Hans thinks he’ll collapse under the weight of his own armor. He reaches out to brace him.
Henry blinks at his hand, not offended but surprised, like he didn’t know he was leaning like a rotted, old tree after storm and one small gust of wind would finish him off, so Hans slips Henry’s arm over his shoulder and leads him toward Pirkstein.
He was right—Henry is heavy and solid in a way that he thinks he wasn’t before. He certainly wasn’t this heavy when Hans was thrashing him with a wooden sword.
“Sleep first,” Hans commands, “Then a meal, then Bernard.”
“As you say, Sir Hans,” Henry replies deferentially.
Hans changes course at the last moment, dragging Henry up the stairs to his room instead of dropping him in the barracks.
Henry actually falls asleep sitting up whilst unbuckling his own pauldrons—something Hans stuck around to watch because he thought it might happen—his head bobbing forward lower and lower until finally, this time, he doesn’t jerk back up and resume undressing with a sigh, but settles, hunched over so far he looks like he might tumble off the bed he’s sitting on, so Hans gives him a hand.
Well, he tries to give him a hand, but he’s not a page and he’s never put armor on someone much less taken it off of him, and Henry is useless, so he calls for help and hovers as a guard strips Henry and a couple maids take it all away to be laundered as thoroughly as possible.
Henry was right, though; there were very few wounds on his body to account for all that blood.
He looks younger like this, even with the beard, his face all slack. Hans does end up using his kerchief to wipe the blood off his cheek, and Henry doesn’t stir at all.
Is this how he sleeps out there, completely dead to the world? What if someone were to attack him and steal that valuable armor of his? Hans picks up one of his hands while watching his face, fingering the calluses on his palm, then drops it, and still Henry doesn’t react.
He decides to deliver the bloody package to Bernard himself, and he’s more than a little disgusted to find out what’s inside and what Bernard and Hanush have had Henry doing. But then, when Bernard happily says, “We could use a dozen more men in the guard like that,” while happily counting the ears cut off bandits, Hans automatically flushes with pride as if he’d plucked Henry out from the unwashed masses himself. As if he’d sent him off to deal with the bandit problem. As if he’d even known how serious the problem was to begin with.
He's not wrong to be proud of Henry. He truly has made something out of himself despite everything about him. He’s remarkable.
It’s just that that… has nothing to do with Hans, probably, and when Hans is next to Henry, it reminds him that he doesn’t truly have much to be proud of. Not yet, anyway, and maybe not ever if things continue as they do.
By all rights, he should be doing more than Henry for Rattay. So why isn’t he?
Henry doesn’t wake until midmorning the next day.
“That was some of the best sleep I’ve gotten in a while,” he says sheepishly. “I hope I didn’t cause you too much trouble.”
Only a storm of turmoil in his usually easygoing heart. “None at all,” Hans lies. “Though I don’t think the girls are back with your armor yet.”
“Damn,” Henry says mildly. “I’d like to get back out there.”
“Has it occurred to you that maybe you’re doing too much?”
He says it more sharply than he means to, but Henry only grins a little.
“Yeah. Feels good, though, to do something.”
Once again, the annoyance vexing Hans eases—the strangeness of Henry both the irritant and the balm. “Henry, is there ever a minute where you’re not doing something?”
Henry stretches, pulling his hands over his head, his shirt lifting and exposing of belly both pale-skinned and furry with dark hair. He grimaces. “You may have a point, Sir Hans. Still… It doesn’t feel right to be idle. I’ve got to keep moving, fixing things. There has to be a reason for…”
He cuts himself off and stares at the floor.
“For what?”
“Never you mind, Sir Hans.”
“I do mind, Henry. You’re running yourself ragged. You’ll get hurt or worse if you’re this exhausted.”
“I don’t mind the work,” Henry says with a shrug. “And I don’t usually let myself get so tired. It’s just… why should it be me doing it? I’m not saying I don’t want to do it, it’s just, I’ve found my friends who survived Skalitz, and the ones that were lucky enough to find work are doing simple things, and they’re all in debt like I was, and who knows if they’ll be kept on. There’s no reason I shouldn’t be like them. You were right when you objected to Sir Radzig taking me on. I’m just nobody.”
It's every thought Hans has had swirling in his head for weeks now, and for some reason, it makes him want to hit Henry right across his stupid, vacant face.
“I wasn’t right at all,” Hans snaps. “I mean, only just after I said that, you saved my life from those Cumans.”
Henry shrugs again, as if any man could have done that. “I have to keep moving. If I keep working, getting stronger, then maybe…”
He shrugs an infuriating third time, and his eyes find Hans’s window. Hans wonders what he’s seeing there, because it’s not the forest of Rattay reflected in Henry’s sad eyes.
“Then maybe you’ll… finally impress a woman for the first time in your life?” Hans suggests. Henry blinks whatever horrors he was seeing from his eyes and frowns at him. “Maybe you’ll… finally beat me in a boxing match? Don’t count on it. Or maybe you’ll finally get strong to walk through Rattay in all your heavy armor without needing me to prop you up?”
“Har, har, Sir Hans,” Henry replies sarcastically, but that faraway, miserable look has left his eyes entirely, and a moment later, he smiles a real smile.
It’s too sickly sweet, that smile on his face aimed directly at Hans. It feels like a direct attack in itself, a hit landed squarely on Hans’s nose, or maybe to his chest, the way it steals his breath for a minute. Henry should use it on his enemies.
Hans turns away. “Anyway, at least get a good meal and a bath before you head back out there. Oh, and your groschen from Bernard are on the table.”
He leaves his own room, utterly defeated by Henry the peasant, though he’s not sure he could explain defeated at what. At smiling? Ridiculous, Hans’s smile is far more charming, he’s sure.
The vexation descends upon him again the moment Henry leaves Pirkstein to go play hero. Vexation with himself, vexation with Henry, vexation with the whole of Rattay and every damn lord that can’t be bothered to simply declare Hans an adult and let him get on with things.
This time, however, Hans thinks that something must change, that something can change, and he thinks he knows what it will be.
He stands in the upper castle’s main hall and says, “Uncle, from now on I want to be involved in this counterfeiting business, wherever it leads. It sounds like the defense of Rattay is at stake, and, well, I should be involved in that, I think.”
“Only too true.” Far from agreeing with him, Hanush’s response is sarcastic. When Hans doesn’t back down or argue, Hanush studies him with a quirked eyebrow. Hans suffers this uncharacteristically silently, biting his tongue with his chin jutted out. It’s not only his right but his duty to protect his home and his people, whether or not he is the legal ruler. Hanush shrugs. “Very well, Hans, I’ll alert you when something needs your attention.”
“Thank you, uncle.”
Hans leaves the hall and heads straight to the practice yards. He’s let his skills stagnate for far too long. He sends for his armor, finds a wooden practice sword and a suitable partner, and he gets to work.