Quick as wind, his breath is taken from him. A woman fills his view, her face shriveled like packing meat and the colour of death. The maggots crawling across her teeth accost him. Out from her belly, a blade protrudes and coughs a load of blood upon his heaving, indigo breast. It sops his blouse and embraces his skin with chilling warmth. The woman coughs too, spilling only more vitals upon him. He tries to cough, but her hand snatches it in his throat and squeezes it until it is nothing at all. Something laps at him - a discomfort he cannot move his head to diagnose. Blood still spills from the overhead wound like water from a pail. It only glances now; from his logged self to the caravan chassis. The lapping raises to halfway up his body and he has put together now the cause. With terror, his swole irises droop to their corner to see a bath of red creeping up the wooden planked walls into the bruisy limits of his peripheral. A shudder of the corpse increases the flow out of it. He blinks, and his eyelids hold longer than he is comfortable with. When they release, blood is pooling on his chest elsewhere from where it originally lands. It climbs over his lips and down his throat, where it then sits idle. It wets his eyes. They blink open, and the world is tainted by the color pink. Then it's blotted black. Then something darker and-

Cassius sits up like a hoe that's been stepped on. He chokes out a gullet of fluid all the way to the far wall. Waves of clement bathwater scuttle away from the movement. Misshapen clumps of soap-bubbles stick to his hair and his stubble, some are sent throughout the washroom on the back of frantic gasps. Most are still in the bath. The bar of goblin lard which he thinks he remembers that he was using before he... crashed, apparently, bobs rides the ripples - each disturbance forming more and more foam. It's exuberant, but when the shock of the nightmare, and the stinging in his eyes and throat, cool, it also pampers. Bubbles the size of a cloud; as he imagines princes take them. The thought settles him and demands he find some peace in the happenstance luxury.

The water's gone ticklish, though. A kettle of sits at the foot of the barrel. Even that is only tepid. He pours it in anyway, though it only serves to raise the sea and send the bar of soap slipping over the rim of the bath on the crest of particularly vicious displacement. It slides across the floor further than he can reach. There it shall remain, he shrugs.

As he soaks in the tub, he soaks in silence. The little inn they have - well, stolen - it's one of those buildings meant to buoy with the noise of a crowd inside, but to sit mutely on its own. It's like living in a tree trunk. Entire trunks of darkwood line the walls and the floors are heavy; it does not creak like his childhood shanty or whistle like great stretching castles. The previous Elusian owners did good work furnishing it and he found it tragic when they were cast aside at point, with mere coin - cent on the shilling - as pittance. Relics of their rule remain; by-now-rummaged luggage of past patrons likewise evicted sit in each room, family heirlooms hung along the halls. A banner of winged-cat on backdrop blue decorates the wall over the trough. One of their pillock soldiers has pissed all over it. They're all outside now. Vere had come busting through the basement tavern doors with a grindstone and a gallon of polish - no doubt stolen as well, and everyone followed him out to the street to tend to their blades. That's why it's so quiet. After such an assault of noise out in those market streets, many might presume he'd fancy it, but nay. He's never been much for silence.

He sits motionless until the water stops sloshing to make sure nobody has snuck back to their lodgings as he tripped asleep. The hardwood does not creak to tell him so. So he sings; hardly a hum. His songs aren't as fun as they used to be, they aren't about other people, but his own experience. He doesn't think they are as good like that, he doesn't know. Pages of these new songs are bound in his bag - which he becomes tangibly aware is sitting out in the room Leo, Mum, and he have to share - but none he can bring himself to share. The others have been told he hasn't been able to write anything at all. They understand that. They would probably call him silly if he told them the truth.

A scene so tragic, a bard sat in silence

He thinks, won't someone sing a song for me?

So that I have something to

follow.

A golden note after all this muted violence.

The bum ba-dum of battle drums

that feel so

hollow.

There is a man whose song I've heard

but for so long he's been quiet.

Sing me reasons to join the herd

else let me go in the night.

He says 'Oh, Cay'.

If only it was okay.

A knock appears at the bathroom door. Gods! Purple flushes across his cheeks. How long has it been there? Did it hear him? Cassius coughs to gather himself. The door coughs too.

"Cay?" it asks. The voice (and one would gander the fist as well) is Mumford's. Some amalgamation of vowel-sounds is groaned out in response. "What are you doing in there? Are you decent?"

"I'm washing myself," Cay says.

For a beat, there is nothing. Even when it comes back, the voice has a certain design to it such that through a layer of lumber it still makes his ears sting. "Oh," it starts. Cassius imagines he's biting on his lip back there, like he does before talking to lordlings. When he's nervous and it would be unbecoming to fill his word-fishing ruminations with effusive praise as he does toward their king. "We can talk another time then."

Since when did they have to talk about talking? "No. No worries, come on in. I am wearing a layer of suds thicker than any jerkin," he says with a meek laugh. Enough to signify it as a wee joke, but not so much as to give the impression that he was joking. He's pleased to see the door reveal a crack of golden light. Mum is likely to have jammed a dubious eye up to it to check that he's not baring it - in what? Some perverse bonhomie? Then again, that's probably not it at all, but he fancies thinking Mumford thinks of things other than scabbards and boar hunts and knighthood politics. He enters now, and he smells of whetting grease. His smock looks like it's been fashioned from the fur of the splotched mutt those bristly soldiers have likely hunted for din. Cassius surveys him and sees the stains are not limited to his kit. "You look like you could use a dip in with me," he jests. "No worries! As I was saying, there's plenty of bubbles for the both of us."

"No kidding!" he almost shouts, quite excited to be able to divert the topic with such fluency. "Lords, that's excessive. How much of the bar did you use?"

Regret tweaks the corner of Cay's mouth. Hearing about his dreams would only make Mum more nervous. "I may have gone a bit overboard, aye," he says, admiring his mess. "What's left of it has fled back to the corner," he points. "Mind handing it over?"

Mum reaches down to grab it, but places it on on the tidying counter instead. "This should have lasted all of us the week."

"Oh push! They aren't quite the washing type, are they?"

"Who exactly are 'they'? Me? And Leo?" Mumford asks with a sneer as he takes a seat on the plain floor.

The tub froths from Cay's shiver, his protestant gesticulations. "Naw, you know it's not like that. Leo, though," he thinks of a clever way to put it. "Bathes around in a dusty patch of thistles, maybe. Grabs around for a bar of soap and picks a porcupine instead and she looks it up and down and says 'Oh, all the better'." They're the only jokes about her Mum will listen to anymore; those on her improperness. This one keeps the 'Well, no matter what you think, we are as much soldiers as anyone else on those fields' at bay. He's heard it plenty of times now.

"She's the reason I wanted to talk with you, actually," Mumford chuffs. "She's sitting uneasy after what she's done last night. War is war and all, and perhaps you could come to expect that a good bit more, but I talked with her too, and she knows it was misguided. Everybody has different ways to cope, y'know, and she... she gets into it." Cassius scoffs. Since the conversation has gotten serious, he has become enthralled in the grain of the wall. "I don't know. That's not the right wording, she just... has to turn her conscious off to live with it. You can't turn it off, and that's your problem. Maybe she's too good at it sometimes."

"What are you talking about?" Which of the many they killed that day should he be most offended by? To be clear, Cay knows precisely what Mum is on. The coins, the coins, as he stammers now. Those coins were a gift and a thoughtful gesture. He cried then because he had learned a nice man had just been slain. Imagine thinking it was over cheap wit...

The grain seems to be moving. It snakes up and down the planks of siding, and spirals into the knots. He bites down under his lips and folds his hand into a fist which crushes an entire marketplace of bubbles. Knights. They can't keep expecting him to follow them on good nature and the beat of his own music. If they don't return the favour and give him a song, a reason, a man to follow, he simply won't. Someday...

"That's fine," he says. "It's not that."

"Honest? It's not like she's listening in or any-"

Cay whips back into the conversation, eyes glistening with mischievousness. "Whatever compelled you to clarify that? She is, isn't she? You snake!" he says between snickers, speaking over Mum's protests. "Go on and open the door then." He says he won't because there should be trust between them or some other excuse. "Fine," he starts to sit up in the tub, "I'll get out and check for myself." This instigates a childish panic as Mumford covers his eyes with he fingers and giving him unintelligible orders. "She'll have buggered off by now anyway," Cay says to explain why he's slumped back under the suds. Things go quiet, which encourages Mum to look through his fingers, and after everything is decent, peel them away. Cheekily, Cay grabs at the barrel rim again and forces his friend to relapse. Laughter has him feeling so high he's forgotten about gravity.

"But honestly, you've been acting... more isolated than you even have been. If it's not that, then what?" Ah, there it is again! Mum is such a good reminder.

"Oh, you know, it's nothing really. You're right, I'm not myself here. Maybe not since I was knighted. Sometimes I think I never will be again unless that dreaded title is revoked from me. Can you even have that done?"

"Aye... high crimes," Mum murmurs. "But no matter how heavy the honor sits on you, it still does. You are indeed Sir Dandylock, and you have his responsibilities, and no amount of disaffection will allow you to shirk it."

Cassius laughs loud enough at his own name to drown out the point being made. "Pah! I am no knight. Save if you find yourself addressing infant boys wielding sticks as sir, do not waste such an honour on me. You saw me yesterday; meandering about our march like a frivolous stink. And even as I sit back and chastise my belligerence - against belligerence of all things! - only in my most fanciful projections do I see myself faced with the same situation and responding any better." He stops for a breath, pattering the surface of his bath to prevent Mumford from interjecting. The boy nearly does anyway, but Cay continues just ahead of any interruption. "I do not think this suits me. Take me back to slaying dragons or fiends, rather than my fellow man, and you will receive me as I was. This is simply too... conflicting. Even my lyrics have gone to cods', Mum," he whines.

"They always have been." He has a lovely smile. "You do know some would consider talk like that treasonous? You are a knight, after all, and you are sworn to knightly duties."

"A sniveling pedant might."

"No, no - jest or not, no. I wan't to make sure you understand exactly what you are telling me," they speak over each other.

Cassius grabs the back of his head in frustration and pulls it down so he is speaking through the layer of foam. "Yes, I know. That's why I made you promise Leo was not listening in." He resurfaces, enlightened, and with a flowing philosopher's beard to match. "She isn't, is she?"

"No, do you thi-"

"As you said, Mumford, this matter is paramount. Do not chastise my mistrustfulness for this, but admire my tact. Among other things," he winks.

"Lords, I will do it myself if you distrust me so." But Cay protests and pulls his body up to the rim before Mum can blind himself. Not only his body, but his waterlogged kit as well. It covers him like a blanket and leaks pails of water onto the floor. The look that Mum's face takes up sends him falling back into the tub with a cacophony of laughter and displaced bubbles. He howls mouthful after mouthful of scuzzy water as he drowns. If nothing were to ever change, he thinks, it wouldn't be so bad. Philosophy is not instinct, though, and he turns on his back to take a deep howl of sweet stale air. Mumford has already composed himself. "What are you doing?" he asks.

Cassius tries three times to start a sentence. "It washes me and my tunic all at once. Saves loads of water - we're in the middle of a drought, I'm sure you're aware. While you reflect on that, I really should be checking the door." He pulls himself and his wardrobe once again from beneath the bubbles and over the lip, and he drips across the room. Just as he is about to pull the door back, Leonor flings it open from the other end and bodies him.

The bathroom echoes with shouts and screams, not only from the inside. Mumford jumps to his feet and alternates between pleading with Cay and demanding that Leo explains what in the King's name she's doing here. Cassius is on the floor in his own puddle, and Leo is sprawled on top of him and yelling of enemies on the ridge. "Enemies are coming over the ridge," is her exact wording when it finally registers. "Why are your clothes all wet?" she asks with a frown and a quick dismount. Cay sits up and starts mumbling. "Don't answer that, move!"

They do. Cassius skips to his room to get his satchel and his lute, the other's weapons are downstairs - which is where they are headed now. It's happened so fast that he cannot think on all the feeling he has just said. Mumford keeps turning back to look at him, and he hardly knows why.

The base level is for all intents a tavern - usually packed with drunkards and weary travelers, but now, well, the same actually. Vere is there, both of the above, but also commanding, and apparently in no rush. "Ah, boys! Your courage is on the bar," he points to three mugs sitting prim and in a row. The rest are empty and thrown aside. "The strongest stuff they had! Careful, champagne boy," he claps a heavy hand on Cassius' shoulder, "it bites like a dog." When he lifts his hand again, he upturns his moist palm and frowns at it. "Weapons outside. Even you, Prancer." He keeps barking orders, but they fade away.

The company arranges themselves in a half-circle around the drinks and take one each with both hands. Cassius raises his own to his lips with a trembling ascent, but drinks the sword-polish liquid without pause.

It bites like a dog.