The Escort

The Windrider Commander looked up from his horse as the sisters approached. His dark eyes met Loren's without expression.

“Lady Loren, Lady Mariselle.” He inclined his head to each of them in turn. “I am Duke Alix of Windrider, Commander of the Cavalry and cousin to His Highness the Prince.”

The words landed like successive blows. Duke. Commander. Cousin. 

This horrible man, this insufferable, owl-terrorising lunatic, was the Prince’s cousin.

It was an unfortunate beginning.

“My men and I will escort you to Windrider,” the Duke continued. “The journey requires two days of hard riding. Lady Loren will ride with me. Lady Mariselle will ride with my Lieutenant.”

It was not a request. It was an order delivered in the clipped cadence of a man unaccustomed to hearing the word no. Unfortunately for the Duke, Loren had been raised almost exclusively on the word yes.

“No thank you,” she replied pleasantly. “I prefer to ride myself.”

He leaned forward in the saddle, forearms crossing over the reins with visible impatience.

“We don’t have horses to spare. You ride with me.”

Loren folded her arms. “Then I suggest you find another horse.”

“M’lady, you are accustomed to riding on wolfback through forest trails, not across the open steppe. There are brigands on the eastern road.”

Her eyes narrowed. “I am perfectly capable of managing a horse.”

“You cannot manage an owl, let alone a horse.”

A ripple of sound moved down the escort: not quite laughter, not quite a cough. Loren felt the tips of her ears heat.

“You cannot simply order me about.”

“I can,” he said calmly. “And I will.”

Her jaw dropped at the sheer audacity of the man.

“You ride with me,” he continued, “or you remain here while I inform the Prince that the Princess of Greenborne has withdrawn support for the alliance.”

One black eyebrow arched pointedly, as if to signify that further argument was pointless and mildly insulting to everyone involved.

Loren stared at him.

Of all the men in the four realms who could have been tasked with her safe delivery, it had to be this one.

She had never loathed anyone more.

The Duke gathered the reins and extended his left hand toward her. The gesture was perfectly proper, the standard courtesy offered to a lady mounting behind a rider. Under normal circumstances, Loren would have accepted without hesitation.

These were not normal circumstances.

She looked at the offered hand for precisely two heartbeats, then ignored it completely. She was perfectly capable of mounting a horse without assistance.

Gathering her skirts with determination, Loren approached the black stallion from the side. The horse turned its head to look at her, its dark eyes holding a gravity common to large animals witnessing poor decisions.

The difficulty, as it turned out, was two-fold.

Firstly, her dress had been designed by someone with strong opinions about decorative embroidery and no consideration for physical endeavour. Secondly, the horse kept shifting every time she attempted to place her foot in the stirrup.

Loren’s first two attempts failed immediately. She recovered with impressive speed and pretended this had been intentional. Attempt three proved more successful. Her foot found the stirrup but her skirts caught, leaving her clutching the saddle with the elegance of a cat attempting to scale a curtain.

Somehow, through a combination of stubbornness and desperation, Loren managed to scramble into the saddle. It was not graceful. It was not ladylike. It was, however, completed without requiring rescue from what would have been a deeply embarrassing predicament.

Breathing heavily, she settled herself behind the Duke with what she hoped appeared to be effortless competence.

He said nothing.

The escort party formed around them with military precision, four riders ahead, four behind, the Duke and his unwilling passenger positioned in the centre. The lieutenant, a younger man with the same Windrider colouring, guided his horse alongside theirs. Mariselle was seated behind him, looking very pleased with the situation.

A sharp whistle cut through the courtyard.

The falcon launched from a nearby rooftop with a powerful sweep of wings, circling once above the great hall before banking east toward the open road.

The Duke touched his heels to the horse’s sides. Hooves struck stone. Leather creaked. Windrider banners snapped sharply in the wind. The gates opened before them. Ahead stretched the eastern road.

Loren twisted in the saddle to watch King Arion’s Hall recede behind them. With every stride of the horse, the life she had known slipped a little further from her grasp.

Behind her, Mariselle was already deep in conversation with the Lieutenant who wore the strained expression of a man trapped in one of Mariselle’s conversational avalanches.

“The steppe takes some getting used to,” the Lieutenant said politely. “All that open sky can unsettle forest folk.”

Her own companion rode in silence. Every few minutes his gaze lifted toward the skies before returning to the road, as though he expected something to descend from the clouds at any moment.

After the second hour, the eastern steppe announced itself. The wind hit them, tugging at Loren’s hair and sending her travelling cloak streaming behind her like a sail.

The grassland stretched ahead of them, a sea of straw yellow and pale green shifting in waves. There were no trees on the horizon, no villages or towns. Just grass. And more grass. And, apparently, even more grass after that.

Loren stared at it.

It seemed, on balance, like an excessive commitment to grass.

Loren found herself leaning closer to the Duke's back, seeking an anchor against the vastness. Which was ridiculous. The man was hardly comforting. He did, however, smell faintly of pine soap.

The steady rhythm of the horse and the monotonous landscape blurred together as the miles passed. Without quite meaning to, Loren dozed, her cheek resting against his back as the world continued to move beneath them.

***

She was woken by a change in his posture. Something that made his shoulders tense.

The falcon cried sharply overhead.

“What is it?” Loren asked, her voice barely carrying over the wind.

“We’re being watched,” the Duke said at last, his hand dropping to his sword hilt.

Ahead of them, hidden in the long grass that bordered the road, something moved.