Chapter 2 Hal
HAL
Hal’s body throbbed with victory and pain as he ducked into his tent.
Sweat had dried crusty beneath his armour, and every joint fought against him after the day’s work.
He’d felt it when his opponent fell—the shock running through his lance, up his arm, straight into his shoulder.
That same shoulder now burned like fire.
But pain was nothing next to winning. Pain was just what you paid for glory, and today, he’d earned his share and more.
“Perrin,” he grunted. “Get this fucking metal off me.”
“Yes, sir.”
Perrin’s hands were sure and swift, so Hal closed his eyes and let the young man work.
The familiarity of it was soothing to him.
The breastplate came away first, the dull gleam of the old metal further dimmed by the dust on the field.
When he was freed from all that weight, he opened his eyes to watch his squire work.
Perrin had the spatial awareness of a sheep safe in its herd, so Hal got to stare to his heart’s content.
He traced the lines of Perrin’s face with his eyes—the soft curve of his jaw, the dark sweep of his lashes—framed by curls damp with sweat, his brow faintly furrowed in concentration.
His skin, a deeper olive in the tent’s shadows, bore a flush from exertion.
The boy looked sweet as he bit his lower lip.
Ah, not a boy. Hal chided himself; he shouldn’t think of Perrin that way.
He was only two years younger than Hal, after all, a man at twenty-three.
Technically too old to be a squire, but Perrin was too good to pass on.
It was only that Perrin was short and soft around the middle, and couldn’t grow any hair along his jaw, that Hal saw him as younger.
There was softness in Perrin, elsewhere, too—in his eyes, most especially when those eyes lifted to meet Hal’s own.
Hal felt a strange tightness in his chest as Perrin looked up at him, those large, expressive eyes holding something like admiration.
It made Hal stand taller, made him want to puff out his chest and preen like some foolish cockerel.
Perrin’s gaze flicked away, and a red flush crept up the young man’s neck, spreading to his cheeks.
The sight of it sent a peculiar heat through Hal’s own body.
And instead of saying anything he meant to, Hal blurted, “What’s wrong with you, boy?”
Perrin’s hands fumbled with the next buckle. “Nothing, ser,” he murmured. Shit. He’d made his squire all sad again. Hal had a special way of doing that, it seemed. “Just thinking about the bout tomorrow.”
Hal grunted, allowing Perrin to turn his attention back to the armour.
When he was done, Perrin got to polishing, and Hal collapsed on the edge of his cot.
His muscles were crying out to him, all of them making loud complaints about how many hours that week he’d been on the horse, how long he’d been in his armour, how long he’d had his damn arm outstretched holding the lance.
Pain was good, he tried to tell himself, but pain was also loud, and harder to ignore at night.
He decided he hated this part—after victory, after all the cheers—when his body reminded him it was just meat and bone.
Even his skin betrayed him; he’d burned most of his neck out there.
How he’d managed to be born with the pale skin of a sheltered noble, he couldn’t guess, but it was surely the Gods’ cruel joke.
Hal sat there with his eyes closed, listening to Perrin scrub away.
He tilted his head this way and that, stretching out the tightness in his neck.
But in the silence, his victory cooled into stiffness, leaving him stranded.
It was a triumph that meant little in the long run, and a pain he couldn’t ignore for much longer.
This was a limbo only Perrin knew how to navigate.
“My shoulders,” he said, watching Perrin rub his cuirass like his life depended on it. “They’re fucking killing me.”
Perrin’s hands stilled on the breastplate he’d been cleaning.
He set it down without a word—Hal never really had to say what he wanted, the squire could always guess—wiped his palms against his thighs and reached for the small clay pot of salve his lady patron had offered him at the last tournament.
For the smell, she’d said; she’d wrinkled her nose at him when he tried to give her a favour from the lists.
And she didn’t want him sullying his surcoat, neither, since she’d paid a pretty penny for it.
Try to avoid the dust. But that Hal couldn’t do much about, not if he wanted to focus on a win.
He hadn’t been using the salve—the perfume?—the way Lady Isolde Kerran had intended, but he was getting his use out of it. The clean, bright smell hit Hal the instant Perrin opened the jar. Pine and something sharper beneath, mint maybe. Perrin’s fingers tested the consistency, warming it.
“You’re taking too long,” Hal said, though Perrin hadn’t been slow at all. He just enjoyed the way Perrin’s whole body reacted to a light scolding; Perrin leapt to attention and sped over.
When his squire’s hands finally pressed into the meat of his shoulders, Hal groaned, loud and shameless.
This kind of contact used to make him flinch, the sudden intrusion of another person’s heat against his skin.
But Perrin was, in many ways, an extension of himself now, so the squire’s touch felt expected.
Wanted, even. It helped, Hal supposed, that Perrin knew what he was doing—the man’s hands were probably the only strong thing about him.
The squire’s thumbs dug into the knots where tension gathered, and Hal’s breath hissed through his teeth.
“Too hard, sir?” Perrin asked, voice tight with concentration.
“Harder,” Hal commanded, flashing a grin over his shoulder. “I’m not some delicate lordling who’ll break. Put your back into it.”
He wanted it to hurt before it helped. Wanted the pain to peak and break like a fever so he could sleep tonight without his body reminding him of all he’d demanded from it.
Perrin’s touch altered, pressure increasing until Hal’s eyes watered. Perfect. He leaned into it, making a show of his satisfaction. Let the boy know his worth. Not that Hal would admit needing anyone, but if he did — well, those hands were worth their weight in tournament gold.
“Fuck, that’s good,” he muttered, not caring how it sounded. “Keep that up, and I might just let you have tomorrow off.”
Perrin suppressed a breathy laugh. “You don’t mean that, sir.”
“No,” Hal chuckled, “I don’t.”
Hal breathed through Perrin’s touch, focusing on the feeling of tissue yielding, the slow surrender of muscle that had been rigid all day. Eighteen months without defeat. Eighteen months of proving everyone wrong.
The thought swelled his chest with pride.
He remembered those first tournaments, how they’d laughed at his borrowed armour and common speech. But he’d shut them up, one by one, as lances splintered against shields and bodies tumbled into dust. The Upstart had a good first season, they’d conceded. The Upstart wouldn’t last.
The Upstart was just lucky.
Well, luck didn’t last eighteen fucking months. Skill did. Strength did. Hal did.
And now everyone said that title—which had been given to him as a mocking jab—with a little more respect. Ser Halden the Upstart was a knight worth remembering.
“Who’d I just beat?” Hal snorted, realising he’d already forgotten his last opponent’s name and heraldry. They’d begun to blur together, all those polished young men with their expensive training and their shock when they found themselves unseated. “Had the fancy gold trim on the saddle.”
“House Pidon. Third son.” Perrin’s fingers found another knot beneath Hal’s skin. “Lord Merrin’s nephew.”
“Nephew to a lord and still rides with his elbow out like a tavern drunk.” Hal laughed, the sound sharp with satisfaction. All that fancy training, and for what? “Like he’d never held a lance in his life. Practically asking to get knocked on his ass.”
Perrin hummed in agreement, his hands moving now to the tightness in Hal’s neck. “His balance was wrong from the start.”
Hal slumped forward at Perrin’s touch. Gods, this was bliss, even with all the angry muscle sending jabs of pain back into his skull. Almost too late, he realised Perrin had said something. . .well, smart. “You noticed his balance.”
It wasn’t a question, but Perrin answered anyway. “I notice everything.”
And he did. Maybe Perrin hadn’t known the first thing about jousting when he’d started, but for two years now, he’d watched the circuit with those quiet eyes of his, and listened, and put things together in a way Hal could only dream of.
His squire was bloody smart. He was the reason Hal had known which knights to challenge first in early tournaments with rolling lists, and which to avoid until he had more wins under his belt.
More recently, Perrin was the one coming to Hal with all the gossip from other squires, so Hal knew who was injured and where, and who was a little unfit for the season and might easily fall off his horse three days into the competition.
Perrin didn’t just maintain Hal’s equipment: he maintained his reputation, his strategy, his edge.
He was, in a way, the Upstart knight, too. But Hal would never tell him. Not on his life.
A sharp whistle at the tent’s entrance made Perrin’s hands jerk back from Hal’s skin.
“Keep going,” Hal ordered, catching Perrin’s wrist before he could retreat completely. “My shoulders are still fucked.”
Perrin hesitated—a sweet gasp of shock, a stiffening at Hal’s fingers around his wrist—then resumed his work as Hal called out, “Enter.”
The tent flap parted to reveal Lady Isolde Kerran, Hal’s sponsor, and his good mood suffered a bit.
Here we bloody go.