Sir Balduin is buried under a pile of anonymous stones in Mousillon, without a priest and without honors. But his name still rides. Or rather, his armor rides.
Today, Geneviève no longer exists. In her place is "Gilles the Mute," a solitary Knight Errant who wanders along the northern borders of the kingdom, where the forests are thick and the King's law is only a distant whisper. It is not the romantic life of the minstrels. It is a life of constant paranoia, penetrating cold, and brutal violence.
For Geneviève, the armor is not just protection; it is her skin. She wears a miscellany of salvaged pieces, readapted with the skill of a blacksmith's daughter. Balduin's cuirass has been tightened at the hips with new leather straps; the pauldrons have been beaten back into shape to fit her narrower but muscular shoulders. She has painted over Balduin's heraldic crest with a black, tarry varnish, leaving the shield blank. To the peasants, she says she has taken a "Vow of Anonymity" until she has achieved a great deed. In reality, the shield is black because she has no right to any color.
The most ironclad rule of her existence is simple: the helm never comes off. She eats turning her back to others, lifting the visor only enough to slip in dry bread and salted meat. She drinks from streams when no one is looking. She sleeps sitting up, back against a tree and sword on her knees, with the helm still strapped on, suffocating in her own breath for fear that someone might see her face in her sleep. Beneath the steel, her shaved head itches constantly. The bandages binding her breasts have become a second skin, stiff and painful, leaving red marks and sores that she treats in secret with herbal ointments.
While the true Knights of the Realm seek glory in tournaments or hunt great monsters to have trophies to hang in castles, Gilles fights the wars that no one sees. Geneviève remembers what it means to be a defenseless peasant while the nobles look elsewhere. Therefore, she intervenes where others do not. If a herd of Beastmen raids a charcoal burners' village in the forest, Gilles appears from the fog, a silent iron statue slaughtering monsters with ruthless efficiency. If a tax collector beats a widow too hard, he finds himself with a heavy sword resting against his throat and a gaze of ice promising death through the slit of the visor.
She asks for no gold. She accepts oats for the horse, repairs for equipment, and silence. The peasants have started calling her "The Rust Knight" or "The Ghost of the Forest." They revere her not because she is noble, but because she bleeds for them.
The most terrifying part of her life is not the battle, but the power she feels flowing in her veins. Geneviève knows she is a thief. She stole a name, a horse, and a title. According to the laws of Bretonnia and the Lady, she should be a heretic. And yet, when she lays her hands on a child dying of fever, her calloused hands grow warm. The fever breaks. When she strikes a Ghoul or an Orc, her sword cuts steel as if it were paper.
This is her inner torment: she lives in terror that one day she will meet a true Grail Damsel, one of those sacred witches who see the souls of men. Will the Damsel see the woman beneath the armor? Will she denounce her as an impostor and have her burn at the stake? Or... and this is the mad hope that keeps her alive... will the Damsel see that Geneviève is more faithful to the spirit of chivalry than any vain duke?
For now, Geneviève rides. She has no home. She has no family. She has no gender. She is only a sword in the dark. She walks with the heavy gait she learned to mimic, she speaks with the rasping voice she built by swallowing vinegar, and she looks at the world through a two-centimeter slit in the steel. She is ready to climb into legend, knowing that every step could be the last, and that her only reward will likely be an anonymous grave in the mud.
But as long as she has breath, no other child will see their father die while a knight worries about not dirtying his cloak. This is her oath. This is Gilles.