Chapter 254: Cowards
"Milo," Ollie said gently after several moments of uncomfortable silence. For a moment, he wished Ashlynn was here with them. She always seemed to know the words to say and the right way to say them too. She was noble, educated, and incredibly thoughtful.
Ollie was none of those things, but he was the person who had brought Milo to this place and he wasn’t going to run away from his responsibility to care for his new friend.
"Would you like to visit Old Nan’s home together?" Ollie said, placing a hand on the archer’s shoulder. "You don’t have to do this alone. I may not be part of your clan, but if it helps, you can lean on me whenever you need to."
"Please," Milo said, his voice cracked and hoarse. His tail quaked with shame and his whiskers hung low but no matter how hard he tried to move, his feet remained firmly rooted to the ground, as though the mud had turned into cement around his boots that wouldn’t let him take one step closer to the ruins of the village. "You must think me a coward, but I can’t..."
"It’s fine," Ollie said with a soft smile. Everyone, he supposed, had things they were afraid to face. Seeing that the powerful archer who had stood with just a handful of men against five columns of Owain’s soldiers and just as many knights reveal a timid side to himself suddenly made it much easier to relate to the other man.
"I’m a coward too," Ollie said ruefully, thinking back on the shameful sight he must have presented during his escape from the Summer Villa with Ashlynn. " Just ask Harrod."
"Sir Ollie," the horned soldier protested. Ollie’s comment took him by surprise and he had no idea how he was supposed to respond to it. "I’ve never once said you’re a coward. You weren’t trained to fight but look how much progress you’ve made since Lady Ashlynn brought you to the Vale. You’ll be a proper warrior in no time, I’m certain of it."
"See?" Ollie said, trying to sound light-hearted to dispel a bit of the gloom that had settled over the group. "He’s being so polite about it, he isn’t even mentioning the way I fell to the ground on my backside and cowered behind him when Sir Broll caught us escaping the Summer Villa. Actually, I think I fell to my behind and cowered behind Lady Ashlynn when I first met Harrod too," he added sheepishly.
"It’s okay to be afraid of what you might find," he said when he realized his comments seemed to have shaken Milo free of his paralysis even if he still looked haunted by the sight before them. Giving the shorter man a slight push, Ollie matched his pace to Milo’s and led him toward what remained of Old Nan’s home. "But if we’re cowards together, at least it’s not so bad."
Behind them, Harrod shook his head before waving for the other soldiers to split up and start searching for anything that might have survived the fires. Ollie was, perhaps, the strangest man he’d ever met in a position of command. A soldier would have denied that Milo was a coward, reminding the Heartwood archer of his acts of valor fighting the Lothians and the terrifying Inquisitors.
But Ollie was different. He accepted Milo’s assertion that he was a coward and then claimed to be a coward as well. To a soldier, it should have been humiliating and shameful, but when Ollie said it, somehow, it made it easier for the refugee to face the ruins of his village. He might be afraid of what he would find, but at least he had company.