The Ballad of Sir Loyn de Béf

The Ballad of Sir Loyn de Béf

A glass of warm milk
A little nostalgia

One night some weeks past, as Sir Loyn de Béf dined with a few of his fine companions, he requested a glass of milk to go with his hearty fare. While this may have seemed strange to the layman’s eye, a brief glimpse into the knight’s background would provide enough context to understand the odd request.

While still a child in Brittany, his town was sacked near the culmination of the Hundred Years War by the house of Blois. Orphaned by the raid, the young child, just known as Loyn at that point, was taken in by a herd of wild goats. Too young to hunt for his own food, he survived off of the milk of the mother goats.

The milk made him strong.

Ten years later and rippling with the muscles of many fights with wild French boar, he, in a chance encounter with a local general, was pressed into the service of an elite company in the newly formed independent Duchy of Brittany. Drinking milk kept him strong and immortal in many campaigns spanning centuries.

In fact, he stopped drinking milk for just one day in 1918, that day just chanced to be the Battle of the Somme, the bloodiest of WW1, and Loyn took two bullets to the upper arm. Since that day, Sir Loyn has never stopped drinking milk.

He has an ugly scar on his upper right arm to remind him of the one fateful day he did.

Sincerely,
Rob S. Pier