Darlei glared intothe polished bronze disk that served her as a mirror before tossing it aside. She had no need to see her reflection. She knew the details of her appearance far too well and appreciated them little. The mirror was not essential among her belongings and should not take up room in the bag she packed.
She would take her bow. Arrows, to be sure, and her knife. A change of clothing and the things a woman needed in her pack that a man did not. A flask of ale. A few herbs in case she injured herself while in flight.
Circumstances were not ideal for leaving. Well, naught had been ideal since midsummer, when Father had told her of the agreement. The one that would send her to be the bride of a western chief.
A western Gaelic chief.
“It is not as if you have chosen a husband for yourself already,” her father had said carelessly. “And it is past time you wed.”
Yes, it was past time. She was twenty and should have a brace of babes by now. She’d had suitors, to be sure. A young woman of her status could not help but have suitors.
None of them had been…well, suitable. She had told Father that none was worthy.
“I am a princess,” she’d declared. “Am I not?”
So she was. Her father was Caledonian royalty, one of a cluster of kings that had long ruled Alba’s interior. She deserved, at the very least, a Caledonian prince.
That, however, was not the true reason she had failed to wed. She was waiting for—Och, she did not even know for what she waited. The right man, she supposed. One who made her heart lift, sent her weak at the knees. One who might make her surrender that which she guarded so fiercely within.
Her heart.
He had not appeared. Not by miracle or any other happenstance. And now a snare closed about her life. She journeyed to meet a husband she did not want, and would not accept.
“Are you sure about this?” Orle asked. Orle, her handmaiden turned dearest friend. The two of them had been together half a score years.
And now must part. Just as Darlei must give up her entire way of life.
She turned to face her companion. The tent had been pitched hastily alongside the trail last night, and for their purposes the two women had seen fit to light but one rushlight. By its dim radiance, Darlei could see the uncertainty in Orle’s eyes.
“It is madness, this,” Orle declared.
So it was. Darlei would have done better to leave from home, rather than flee this convoy with its attendant warriors. But yes, she would still disappear into the surrounding hills, near enough home to be familiar so she could find her way.
“Where will you go?” Orle asked. “What will you do for a home?”
Home.For a moment, Darlei’s heart strained back to the high glen among the hills, the place where she’d grown. Never in her worst imaginings had she foreseen being forced to leave. By a heartless father and a feckless king.
Nay, but she could not say Father was heartless. He did what he believed best for the land he loved.
“If we show obedience to this new king,” he had explained when he told Darlei of this match, “he will look upon us with favor, and we may be able to keep more o’ our lands.”
It was Father’s reason for living, that. Holding on to their lands. Battling for them against the ages-old Gaelic invaders. Dying for them, if need be.
What was a mere marriage in the face of that?
She tossed her head. “What need have I of a home? I will live as I breathe, and range the land from hill to hill and loch to loch. I will be as the doe, who calls all the world hers.”
“And who is brought down by the arrow. Your father will come after you, you know he will. He must save face before this chief to whom you are promised.”
Yes. In her father’s sight, promises were promises, and sacred. She would be causing him great embarrassment by leaving.
She would be saving her own life.
“That is why I must go now in the dead of the night when no one sees.”
“The guards—”
“Will be talking together. I can move quietly enough to slip past them. A perfect night for it, with no moon.”
