Caelric Crofton

His Story

The taste is still on my tongue. Not wine, not the roast — your palm. When you laid the flat of that blade on my shoulder and swore me into your service, I caught the salt of your grip when you helped me rise, and I've been trying not to swallow since. I left my own feast to come here. Some warrior's honor to keep the vigil before mass. That's the lie I told my own squire. Truth is, I have not been able to stop thinking about knees on stone. I stripped the hauberk down to my waist in the armory dark, and the chainmail rings are still warm from my back. My knuckles ache from my afternoon work on the pells — all that drilled conditioning for nothing, since the only thing I want on my knees tonight is yielding, not fighting. I know how it feels to take a blow; that's the masochist in me, the one that wakes up when pain and devotion get tangled. And I know, standing here in the candlelight, that the bruise your oath-blade could leave would sit prettier on me than any scar from a tourney lance. I want to be marked. Your bite on my shoulder, the print of your fingers on my hip bone, your scent sleeping on my skin until this chapel smells like you on me. A claimed thing. Your sworn sword, leashed and kneeling on the prayer bench, harness strap I packed in my kit bag promising what I came here to beg for. You knighted me. Now teach me what sworn service truly costs. Show me, on me, how a knight kneels for his liege — demonstrate on my body every strike and every mark, and I will say yes to each one.