“They were my son’s,” she said in a whisper, “Rakhal’s men came through the village and one of them killed him, cut him down like a dog, when they seized our plow-beast and slaughtered it for their supper, and he asked them for some payment. Carolin’s men have done nothing like this.”
Romilly slipped the boots on her feet. They were hillmen’s boots, fur-lined, soft to her toes. The woman gave her half of a cut loaf of bread. “If you can wait, mestra, you shall have hot food, but I have nothing cooked….”
Romilly shook her head. “This is enough,” she said. “I cannot wait.” In a flash she was on the horse’s back, even while the man cried, “No lady can ride that horse – he is my fiercest-”
“I am no lady but a Swordswoman,” she said, and suddenly a new facet of her laran made itself clear to her; she reached out, as she had done to the mountain cat, and he backed away before her, staring, submissive.
The woman cried, “Do you not want saddle-bridle – let me bind up your wounds, Swordswoman.”
“I have no time for that,” Romilly said, “Set me on the road to Hali.”
The woman stammered out directions, while the man stood silent, goggling at her. She dug her heels into the horse’s back. She had ridden like this, with neither saddle nor bridle, when she was a child at Falconsward, just learning her laran, guiding the horse with her will alone. She felt a brief, poignant regret; Sunstar! Sunstar, and the nameless unknown horse she had ridden away from the battle and turned loose to wander in the wild. She had surely been mad.
The horse moved swiftly and steady, his long legs eating up the road. She gnawed at the hard bread; it seemed that no fine meal had ever been quite so delicious. She needed fresh clothes, and a bath, and a comb for her hair, but nightmare urgency drove her on. Orain, in the hands of Lyondri! Once she stopped to let the horse graze a little and rest, and wondered, What do I think I can do about it?
The Lake at Hali was long and dim, with a Tower rising on the shore, and pale waves lapping like stormclouds at the verge; at the far end Carolin’s army encamped before a city whose walls were grey and grim. And now she was sure enough of her laran to reach out and feel for the presence of the man she had known as Dom Carlo, and to know that he was her friend, king or no. He was still the man who had welcomed her, protected her among his men even when he knew she was a woman, kept her secret even from his dearest friend and foster-brother.
She made her way through the staring army, hearing one of the Swordswomen call her name in amazement. She knew how she must look to them, worn and gaunt, her tunic and breeches filthy, her hair a ragged and uncombed mop, the cat-claw marks still bloody across her face, riding a countryman’s horse with neither saddle nor bridle. Was this any way to present herself to a king?
But even as she slid from her horse, Jandria had her in a tight embrace.
“Romilly, Romy, we thought you were dead! Where did you go?”
She shook her head, suddenly too exhausted to speak.
“Anywhere. Everywhere. Nowhere. Does it matter? I came as swiftly as I could. How long since the battle? What is this about Orain being held hostage for Lyondri?”
Alderic and Ruyven came to stare, to clasp her in their arms. “I tried to reach you, with Lady Maura,” Alderic said, “but we could not-” and Jandria cried out, “What happened to your face – your earring-?”
“Later,” she said, with an exhausted shake of her head, and then Carolin himself was before her; he held out both his hands.
“Child-” he said, and hugged her as her own father might have done. “Orain loved you, too – I thought I had lost both of you, who followed me not as a king, but as an outlaw and fugitive! Come in,” he said, and led the way into his tent. He gestured, and Jandria poured her a cup of wine, but Romilly shook her head.