#i laugh in the face of spider mites and ignore them for weeks

[pigsriot-blog]

Day 1: Fire

There he was, just past the tree line. He sat by his fire, slumped, like a man done a hard day's labor, though Hard Pthan knew the bastard hadn't moved an inch, save maybe them inches what the wind tumbled him over. It blew now, rattling the dead branches all around, cold and sharp sliding down the rise. The man's firelight danced across his helmet and hauberk and those heavy hands what hung limp o'er his knees. 

Hard Pthan took care to make a noise of his coming. Don't creep on the Road Man, They told him. That's the first rule. When he made the clearing, the man what was by the fire made no move, nor did he grunt nor shift nor make any notion that a stranger just imposed himself upon his camp. The flames just kept dancing. His helmet and hauberk and heavy hands still as stone but flickering all the same, ghostly and pale, robbed of all color save what burning logs deigned.

"Howdy," offered Hard Pthan. He stood at the edge of the light but out of the trees, feeling exposed in this finger of naked dark. "Finely night for a fire."

The Road Man kept his vigil in silence. His helmet was halfway to a cone, flat on top and slit across its beak so as to let a man see. But Hard Pthan saw no eyes twixt that metal. Hard Pthan wasn't exactly positive he saw no man, neither.

Won't work lest you sit with him. That was the second rule. But mind, They had said, weeks past now, voices raised by drink and by necessity, so as to be heard over the warm clamor of the tavern, once your ass hits wood, there's no getting up 'till it's done.

Hard Pthan saw the wood, a dry and dark log opposite the Road Man and his fire, inviting, so to speak, in such the way a spider's web might invite the fly. Hard Pthan was known to be hard, aye, and perhaps famously so, but in that moment he felt a mite worrisome.

But treasure is treasure, and rarities met are foolishly ignored. Hard Pthan compelled his legs to move and then his knees to bend and then, against maybe what would have been a smarter man's judgment, his ass hit the wood.

The Road Man's helmet peered up with a subtle click of metal. Framed as he was now by the fire betwixt them, he took on a sudden kind of attitude Hard Pthan failed to note upon his approach. He looked bigger, less so slumped and more burdened by his own impossible scale. Broad and thick and heavisome with armor and history and legend. Helmet and hauberk and, aye, them heavy hands, too, dancing fiercely from the glow, and for the first time Hard Pthan realized that what the light of the flames didn't touch of the Road Man weren’t just dark, it weren’t even there at all. Just empty air facing night. Just the trace of a man.

"THOU ART WELCOME TO MY LITTLE CAMP," came a voice like cracking logs. 

"Aye." Hard Pthan smiled despite the knots he suddenly felt in his heart. "Aye, so I've heard."

"THE NIGHT IS COLD," said the Road Man, "AND THE ROAD LONG. I PRAY THEE, REGALE ME WITH A STORY? TO WHILE THESE LONELY HOURS."

That's the third rule, They had said back in the tavern. And the most important.

"A story, y'say?" Hard Pthan said to the Road Man. He made a show of thinking about it, as if he were surprised, as if he'd thought of anything else these last weeks. "I think I might have one or two I can share."

The Road Man leaned in expectantly, and one of those heavy hands moved, slowly, like the bending of a tree to scant light, up that hauberk and along that belt and resting, gently, on the hilt of a sword.

Tell the Road Man a story, the words echoed in Hard Pthan's memory, mixed with rushing blood and doubt and regret, and if it's good then he'll tell you one of his own. So you both go, back and forth, all through the night, 'till daybreak. And if you make it that long then maybe you'll get a bit of gold, too. Maybe even a bit more than a bit.

And if it's bad? Hard Pthan had asked, breathless, entranced, hypnotized by the mention of gold.

The others had laughed wickedly. 'Twas Their only answer. Sitting here, now, by the Road Man's fire, pinned to the other side of that light by a gaze he couldn't see and mindful of that heavy hand what rest on that heavy hilt, Hard Pthan hardly needed to be told what would happen if his story was bad.

"A story then," he said, and swallowed. "Alright. Lessee..." And he raised his hands mindlessly, by instinct, like he was talking to his son back home. "Once upon a time," he started, "there was a knight..."