Malaroth's sigh joined the road dust that hovered about him in the wake of the cart's passing. He had met the same cart every second day of the week since he had taken to staying at Stonebrook. A hand raised in greeting, pale and slender, found only a dour countenance from the cart-driver this afternoon. A cart, usually carrying an assortment of food stuffs, seemed somewhat hungry for cargo.
The nobleman settled onto an aged stump beside an empty trough and squinted in the noonday sun that fell upon his wispy blond hair and set it alight with a brilliant, golden fire streaked with silver. It blasted his countenance with the lie of true color that masked his own ashen complexion if only for a while.
While scowling thoughtfully, he recalled his brief audience with the king. It had been a bit of a journey, something he was growing used to lately, but the monarch had spared him a few moment's time. More, Malaroth was convinced, by the king's passing familiarity with Zachea than with the man's own credentials.
His Majesty, for whatever it was worth, had given him permission and nothing else. Malaroth's knighthood would come, he had promised, once the nobleman had arranged for a headquarters, established a group of adherants, and relieved the people of some foul magic.
The iron-shod quarterstaff rolled from one hand to the other. He watched as, wreathed in the dust from the road, the cart rolled quietly along. The creak of the wagon wheels drew the attention of townsfolk who were used to purchsaing produce from the grocer. Malaroth watched one townsman in particular, saw the hard lines on his face, the loose fit of his shirt, and how he longed for what the grocer normally sold at a fair price.
This was not the first time that the grocer, Malaroth considered, had gone by empty. From windows, from alleys, from the side of the road several haunted gazes followed the grocer as he left behind the dust that had, evidently, just begun to settle into the bellys of the citizenry.
They were hungry, the thought struck him, not for freedom from tyrranical sorcery or some madman's fist - but from a simple need that ate at them from the inside. They were hungry. They needed food, plain and simple. A wry smirk crossed chapped lips as he considered that the people of Myrken had an endless supply of problems evidently, not an endless supply of food. And with that thought came a stinging rejoinder fromt he memory of his instructor.
Namely, that a knight does not choose what battles to fight. Rather he chooses to become a knight in order to fight all battles that need be fought. Whether they are fought with sword and spell or toil and sweat.
He climbed to his feet and proceeded towards one of the men who stared with frustration and sorrow warring for control over his weathered countenance. A few words and a pair of coins later, from the purse the king had freely granted, Malaroth was on his way.
To buy a small sheep farm and to found an order. He risked a glance behind him, peering at his own tiny river of disturbed dust that never seemed to quite settle back to the earth. What hope he wore upon his lips trembled at the sight.
The past, he considered, never remained settled.