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Unable to stand, I’d been taken by the victor’s men. So I can understand the helplessness Hilla feels now.
As if being summoned from sleep by the silent thought, Lady Hilla’s eyelids flutter and open. For a brief moment as she looks at me, I have the ridiculous notion to lean down and kiss her. Never have I seen lips that full on a woman before. She wets them, licking first the top and then the bottom, the pink of her tongue visible for the briefest of moments.
“Bastard,” she snaps, lifting her arms to me.
I unbind her silently.
“’Twas unnecessary. And quite uncomfortable,” she adds.
I disagree on the first. Though I’m sure she speaks truth to the second.
“You may care for your needs by the stream. We will eat on the road.”
“You will not—” she begins. But I’m quick to place my hand over her mouth. I’ve no time to listen to her arguments. She begins to wriggle underneath me.
“Relieve yourself, and do it quickly,” I order. “We are being pursued.”
She stands tall, listens, and hears nothing.
“Hurry,” I yell, “they may be from Craighcebor.”
That fact spurs her along. I turn my back as she flees to the nearest thicket. Moments later, when she re-emerges, I do not hesitate. Riding to her, I lift her up in front of me as her foot reaches the stirrup.
Finally, Lady Hilla hears what I did moments earlier. The distant sound of horses, at least ten or more. Riding away from them—and from the Meria-Edingham border, knowing I am at a disadvantage for having two riders on one horse, I navigate us through the thick woods to the main dirt road. If we are being pursued anyway, we can make better time there.
We stop at a fork in the road sometime later.
“Maybe they are gone?” she asks, hopeful.
“They are not.”
On the last ridge, I saw clearly ten, perhaps up to twelve or thirteen, riders. I saw no markings to identify them, though I told her they were from Craighcebor to get her moving more quickly. Perhaps the queen’s men? If I could be sure of it, I would stop now. My intent had been to not allow the lady to get away. Perhaps ascertain if she was, indeed, a threat to the queen. Not to travel deeper into Meria. But after an entire morning of doing just that, we are now a long way away from the border.
Lady Hilla is a captive I cannot afford to keep.
But without being certain as to who these riders are, and very much outnumbered, we’ve no choice.
Taking the road west, we continue as quickly as possible given the circumstances. Lady Hilla says nothing, the pace not conducive to conversation. By the time we stop, she is clearly both angry and uncomfortable.
“We will not stop for long,” I inform her. “We’re still being followed.”
I give her a piece of bread, the last of it. Taking it and eating silently, she watches as I lead my mount to the nearby stream. Both man and horse take advantage of the fresh, clear water. My waterskin refilled, I return to Lady Hilla.
“Why do you wear that hood when there is no one here to see it?”
Not the question I’d been expecting.
“Tis required. Come, we must not tarry.”
A hand on my arm stops me as I prepare to mount once again. The touch, so soft, so unlike any touch to which I am accustomed, is most unexpected.
“I would never harm my sister,” she says softly. “Everything I have done has been to protect her. I could have been divorced from Whitley after my father died. When Cettina became queen, she offered as much to me the very day she welcomed us back to court.”
She drops her hand, telling me information I know already.
“I stayed with Whitley, monster that he is, for the sole purpose of feeding Cettina the plans he and his traitorous friends concocted. The first attack at the border, at Saitford, the one that King Galfrid retaliated against . . . my husband was one of the men behind it.”
I know that fact to be true as well.
