Decisions

She was just one woman. One woman, in an old suit of armor, which was clearly made more for decoration than for protection. One woman, wielding a sword in a gold encrusted scabbard, refusing to pull it free from its sheath. One woman, who elected to discard her helmet for the choice of a red cloak instead. She should not have been any trouble at all to eliminate.

Yet she stood over a field of bodies, which she had cut down without effort, looking quite impressive with her blood red cloak fluttering in the wind, if Gerald had anything to say about it.

He stared up at the female knight, his eyes wide. He had served as her page for more than a year, and yet the feats that she could accomplish were still far beyond what he could comprehend. He would watch her fight, try to understand what she was doing and how - but all that he could see was a blur from her sword hand, a wave of gold flashing through the air, before her opponent was cut down, falling dead to the ground, blood spurting through the air.

He dreamed of learning to fight the way she did. Of being able to cut down his opponents in an instant, making it as though they never came to attack him in the first place. He wanted to be as strong, as fast, as enigmatic as Lady Eline. She was everything he could ever dream that a knight would be, and he couldn't have asked for a better knight to be a page for. His only qualm was that he couldn't figure out as much as he wanted of how she managed to do it.

She turned to look at him, and on cue, he rushed up to her, ready to start cleaning her sword. She waved him off though, her hand firmly grasped around the base of the sheathed blade. He looked up at her, surprised, wordlessly asking what was going on. She pointed down the hill that they had perched atop and waited for the attacking forces to climb and attack from. Looking down, Gerald saw a figure in the distance, lumbering towards them. It was slow moving, but it was much larger than any man he had ever seen.

"What is it?" he asked.

"The stuff of legends," Eline replied matter of factly. "A giant. Not sure how they got it on their side. Perhaps they led it over here, and it can smell all the spilled blood. But we can't leave our position now. We'll have no choice but to fight it."

"Have you ever fought a giant before?"

"No." The certainty of her voice surprised Gerald. It was unlike her not to be confident in her victory. "I have not. And so I doubt I will be able to defeat it quite so easily as I normally do."

"So what will you do?"

"That is the wrong question."

Gerald was taken aback by that. He didn't understand what she meant. He racked his brain, trying to think of what other question there was to ask, but he couldn't think of one. Eline waited patiently, staring down at the giant as it made its approach.

"I don't understand," he finally, humbly admitted.

"The correct question is what are we going to do."

Gerald sputtered. "B-but I don't know how to fight," he spit. "I-I'd only slow you down."

"Yes," she agreed, "and sometimes that is exactly what needs to happen." She slipped her sword out of its sheath, the bright polish that Gerald had so meticulously shined onto the blade ever present in the sunlight, and offered it to him. "So what will it be? Are you going to remain a page, or is today the day you become a squire?"