Leoffrith

Do you know what it’s like to be afraid of yourself? To be afraid of what you might do?

Everyone keeps reminding me you can't be a journeyman if'n you don't journey. That being, you got to work for different masters so you can learn the different work they do and the different ways they do it. Thing is, there's only so many masters in the stable-keeper's guild. The North ain't that big a place, really, leastwise the tolerably civilized part of it. Only reason it's big enough for a guild at all is on account of how Bree, being at the crossroads, is a place of trade, and trade means travel, and travel means horses.

Had another test today, leastwise I think that’s what it were, where Éogar asked me lots of questions rather than putting me to work, and I suppose now it’s clear I did poor again. He tells me I shouldn’t be discouraged though, but it’s hard to think what I’m going for to do next.

I come to learn Éogar's tale of how he became a stable-master in the Northlands, on account of how I didn't much care for a day with no work to do. I'd got up early as usual, had breakfast, and went out to the stables to meet him for more learning on how to breed horses. There weren't much teaching to start, just him asking me questions. I did the best I could, but I didn't know the answer to many of them.

The breeding of horses is awful complicated and there's so much to learn. I don't mean it's tricky to get horses to breed, or to birth the foal, or to care for it. Those are things as I already learned, some back in the Mark in tending the animals on my family's farm. Breeding goats or sheep ain't that different from breeding horses when it come to it. More I learned in Hookworth as an apprentice.

Everything's changed again, but really, nothing has. I'm still keeping to myself, still working hard, still doing the same thing every day, still hardly ever seeing anyone. Only now I'm doing it up at Hengstacer Farms, as a journeyman.

I rise before the sun.

My work clothes and toiletries are already laid out by the bed. I peek out into the main room; if Adri is busy there, I wait until she's done, but she ain't usually. I go out and have a drink of water. In the kitchen, there's food I buy every week or so from the Turtle, things as will keep. I have some stale bread and a few pickled eggs. I ain't hungry, I never really get hungry, but I know I got to eat.

I been making myself feel all right about the fact that I can't go back and live in the Mark no more, by thinking of how I'm in a life I chose, and a life where everything goes right on account it's what I chose. It's like I'm the hero of a minstrel's tale; once I chose it, it's like it's fate, so everything got to keep going right with it. But this ain't no minstrel's tale, and I ain't no hero, and things go wrong, very wrong. Sometimes when something's too good to be true, it's too good to be true.

Hardly feels like any time passed since we left the Mark, but it's been a long journey, with many settings of the sun.