537: The Mercenary Life, Year One

Sir Amadis here...

I received a letter from Gilet while on the battlefield outside Vasconia, from a young man wearing bits and pieces of armor and riding a very tired cart horse. I went to the king's chirurgen to get the letter read, but he was still busy tending the wounded and sent me to the chapel tent to have it read.

The friar-clerk said the letter was from the priest in Gilet, who had the words from Desdemona, my wife: she thanked me for the spoils I had sent, and that she had invested them wisely. She and the baby were fine, though now he was old enough that old Barro was teaching him to ride the pony, and had made him toy spears with which he terrorized the chickens in the yard. That made me smile, thinking of how my father used to thrash my older brother for doing the same...but later that night I wept thinking of my wife and my son, who I have not yet laid eyes on.

There have been no more messages from Queen Valerie, and no word from King Edar. I am alone in a sea of fighting men, floating on a raft of boisterous cousin-knights.