Every single day, Draka was reminded why he named her Vigora when he found her as a pony in the desert. White as a light cloud, dished faced, and high tailed, she was always getting into something. Especially the feed bag. How she kept as sleek as she did, he’ll never know. And the number of farmers and wineries that had chased them off because of her snacking on their long journey from the east was innumerable. Though watching a horse drunk from eating fermented grapes because of a neglectful winemaker’s son was something that nearly made him break his vow of silence ten moons early from laughing. She stumbled from one side of the road to the other in between bursts of gallops for more than half a kilometer before he finally coaxed her into sleeping it off.

  It was only natural that the first day on his new farm, she would have already tried to tear into the feed bag before he even woke. But he was ahead of her on that. He had wrapped it with strips of studded leather, blunted so it didn’t hurt her teeth of course, and made certain that the twine was doubly thick. It was her incessant gallops back and forth that had woken him. The moment he stepped out through the curtain he had hung to fill where the door should have been, he found her tossing and shaking the bag to get into it. She stopped mid-gallop and raised her head at him with her ears turned back and her white tail swishing.

  Cool air brushed his bare chest and through the unbuttoned front of his trousers. Thin mud squished irritatingly between his eight toes. That was when he noticed that his water barrel had been tipped over. He had spent nearly two hours pushing it closer to the house just so she wouldn’t knock it over. She never knocks over her water barrels. His yard looked like it had rained the entire night. He should have tied her up.

  He put his hands on his hips. She stomped her hooves. Then tossed the bag to his feet from where she stood with self-entitlement bolstered by the mud splashing him. He sighed and walked it halfway to her, undoing the twine as he went. A hand out in exclamation, he waited, displaying his own annoyance. She stomped at him again. He tilted his head at her with raised brows. She shook her head, blowing butterflies, and turned herself around until she faced him to stomp again.

  Draka shook his head and the opened bag at her. Vigora huffed emphatically and lowered her head, giving in. She came to him and shoved her nose in the bag. He grinned. Almighty God, he loved her. He rubbed her along the ridge between her eyes as she munched away. A slight tap on her forehead and she lifted her nose from the bag. Her ears were upright and her tail resting as she turned from him and returned to the flat ground where she had been tossing the bag, content.

  Eyeing her, he wrapped the twine with a victorious and knowing grin on his face. How lonely and unhappy he would be without his angelic companion. This time, he brought the bag with him back into the shack of a house he had just moved into, dropping it beside the hearthplace on his way in.

  The house was larger than he expected. Especially with the Abbey ruins being included. All for the cloth wrapped relic of Saint John, he saved from the fall of Jerusalem. Heblem, he and his fellow crusaders call it. The thought of the loss brought a long sigh as Draka began to fix his bedding from whatever nightmares he had during the night.

  Even with the vow of silence as penance for losing the finger on his six-year-long trek from the fateful siege, it still seemed odd he would be given something of such value. Lands. And an Abbey that had been abandoned nearly a century to boot. God rarely gives you what you expect…or want. What he wanted was to continue his pilgrimage, continue his search, and fulfill his oath. God decided he needed a farm whose taxes are paid with the harvest.

  The house was a shadow of what it once must have been. Stone walls, sure. The thatching and wood beams were still hanging but worn and rotted. The inside had no walls except the outer ones but was a single room that was much larger than the hut he had left behind decades ago. The mattress had long rotted and smelled sour, but the planks beneath were still good, perhaps a little too bowed in the middle. Still better than the boulders and trees he would lean against to sleep every night. There was a table by the hearth meant for a family rather than just a middle-aged man who would likely eat from the same pot of stew for a month at a time. And the hearth was bigger than any he had ever seen.

  Although common among the Utrecht and Rhineland houses, he was still adjusting to the idea of it being on an outer wall rather than at the center of the room. But it was a welcomed difference. He saw the potential for what to fill the open space with. A grinding wheel there, shelf for his tomes and scriptures there, and a rack for his armor and weapons here.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  The thought warmed him as he pulled his cotton shirt over his head and tightened the laced string on the front. He tucked the shirt into his trousers and buttoned them. In the corner, tied stacks of folded bear and lion pelts awaited. Two stacks of six pelts, a small portion of what he had when he first left Sodiulakim the week before the last full moon. Nearly a month. But it had paid for his journey with ease. And filled coffers he intended to build as soon as he finished surveying his land. For now, he had buried the forty platinum and two thousand gold pieces under the floor. He had been robbed by raiding bandits before he was constantly pickpocketed by dirty children in crowded markets. This was his new home, he intended to retain what was his here.

  He knew how to hunt enough to clothe and feed himself and a family, but a farm? That was not something his own people did. They were hunters and tanners. Nomads until they took wives. The leather trousers and cotton shirt he wore, the boots he pulled up to buckle over his ankles and shins, were not what he had grown up wearing. Furs and leatherwork shoes tied by strips of fur, that was their way. He liked this way better, though the robes of the desert people often seemed smarter when the days had grown hot there. The desert nomads were not his kind, but he felt closer to home when he was among them. The people here weren’t either, but he would make them his.

  He hefted one of the stacks and carried it out to where Vigora was prancing in circles through the mud. She had rolled in it, the beast. Her white coat, like a perfect cloud or fresh milk, was splashed with the black mud of the road. He looked to the sky, begging for patience. There was a barrel of water she hadn’t kicked over not far from where she was, set beside a shack coup that was barely standing. There was a bucket already filled with water beside it.

  A click of his teeth and she pranced towards him with glee. Then she saw the stack and slid to a halt, her ears turned back. He pointed at the ground for her to come to him. She faced him and turned her head away.

  With a nod, he acquiesced and went to her, then set the stack on a clear patch of grass so the pelts didn’t get muddy. And with a quickness that shot her onto her hind legs, he emptied the buck of water over her with a splash. Flicking his eyebrows at his success, she swished her tail and sidestepped him. He dipped the bucket into the barrel of water.

  She huffed at him. Her ears pointed forward, she was ready to fight over this. So was he. Those pelts would keep him from revealing his wealth to the villagers before he was ready. He should get at least two hundred gold for the lion pelt alone. Another fifty for the two bear pelts. But if mud got on them, the trip into the village would be for nothing.

  He lifted the bucket to toss the water. She leapt to the side. He followed, she went the other way. He made like he was following but tossed the bucket just right to catch her in the face as she leapt back. She whinnied as he pointed a finger at her and laughed. He kept laughing as he dried and saddled her. She stood still, whimpering sadly. He knew it was crocodile tears, but still pressed his cheek to hers once he had finished.

  It took some effort to lift the stack onto his shoulder. The moment he was ready to put it on her back and tie it to the saddle, she took two steps to the side. He barely kept on his feet from the weight of the stack falling until his arms were stretched. His fingers ached to keep from dropping it into the mud.

  He huffed.

  She showed her teeth like she was laughing at him.

  Another step to the side as he lifted the stack back onto his shoulders. He stomped his feet at her with gritted teeth. She lowered her head and tail and stepped over to him. He affectionately stroked her nose and put the stack on her back. With a leap, he was in the saddle, turning her toward the village.

  Vigora giddily leapt into a gallop. He patted her neck as he leaned and held on. He smiled brightly. The morning air brushed across his unshaven cheeks and puffed his shirt, cooling his chest. She leaned to the side as she veered off the road. She began to take high leaps over logs and then even higher to return to the dirt road. Each time, he slid his hand down the reins to pat approval on her long neck. Trees and grass, and long fields being tilled for sowing, fell behind them in blurs of greens and yellows and browns. Ditches had been dug on either side of the road which Vigora leapt over with glee in a zig zag across it.

  It was only when the first house came into view, a stone one with a slated roof surrounded by a partially tilled wheat field, that Draka slowed her down by loosening his knees on her sides. She begrudgingly slowed to a trot as they passed the house. Two women stopped their chores to watch him from the porch. His only thought as he passed them with a polite grin and nod was that they were a vision of night and day: one dark haired and one light. The light one got wide-eyed and slapped at the other’s arm, who raised a brow at him.

  He would have to think about how to introduce himself to them properly soon. It was still a long time before his vow of silence ended, which would make it difficult but not impossible. They were his neighbors after all.