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There had been a desperate edge to it: the way, occasionally, Ragnar’s whines would rise to a high pitch, and then Leif’s voice, the words indecipherable through the floor, would murmur something, low and soothing, and then, after a pause, the creaking of the bed would resume.
Sleep had come slowly, and reticently. She stifled a yawn, now, and then, frustrated with herself, used the reins to angle Alpha’s head up toward the sun, urging him higher. He climbed with a few hard flaps of his wings, tore through an ephemeral smear of cloud, and emerged above to give her a breathtaking view of the forest, spread out like a dark patchwork quilt, from horizon to horizon.
The road twisted like a narrow coil of golden thread, its curves glimpsed only at intervals, concealed by trees for long stretches. It wove its way past the boles of great, ancient trees; crossed streams at crumbling stone bridges, and wound its way north, toward the vast river that separated kingdoms. An army the size of King Erik’s would have kicked up a cloud of dust visible above the canopy, even in the places where she couldn’t lay eyes on the road itself. But the forest was still; all that lifted from the tree tops were birds: singular hawks, out hunting, and, spiraling like smoke, a murmuration of starlings, doubtless startled from their roosts.
Amelia shaded her eyes with a gloved hand, and held Alpha hovering a moment longer, waiting, staring, willing. Hoping to see three specks on the wind, the arch of distinctive dragon wings taking shape in the distance. But no. The only drakes for miles were her own, the girls swooping and skimming and chittering impatiently, sensing her – and by default Alpha’s – disquiet.
Finally, she turned Alpha’s head, and pointed him for the manor. Leaned forward as he plunged through the air, eager to be moving again.
It was time to march. She would have to catch up with her family somewhere down the road, in a future about which none of them could be certain.
26
“You’re not scrubbing hard enough.”
Tessa adjusted his position where she knelt at the edge of the streambed, the smooth, hard stones pressing uncomfortably into her kneecaps, and redoubled her efforts with the stiff, horsehair brush she was using to remove a green horse manure stain from the hem of her favorite riding skirt. Strangely, Oliver had insisted on riding a horse today, at Erik’s side, and letting Percy fly free. It had seemed a good idea to allow the other two drakes a respite as well, and so Tessa had taken to her mare, and, in the last leg of the day’s trip, as the sun began to set, had dismounted so she could walk and stretch her legs, Estrid leading her own mount alongside her, so they could talk, and kick at pebbles, and enjoy the chance to work muscles that hadn’t seen nearly enough walking as of late. A march was a messy business in all aspects, she’d learned, and she apparently hadn’t been careful enough dodging horse piles as the dark set its teeth into the sky.
“Try a bit of sand,” Estrid said, and demonstrated by the light of the lantern they’d brought to set between them, dipping the wet bristles of her own brush in the sand at the edge of the stream and then applying it to a stain on one of her shirts.
“All right.” Tessa did as told, and watched as the stain finally began to loosen its hold. “Ah. That works.”
“A soak would be better.” Estrid dunked her shirt and then whipped it out of the water with a snap that sent droplets flying; a smattering landed along Tessa’s arm, and the side of her face; she wiped them away with the back of her wrist. “But we don’t have time. We’ll be lucky if these are dry by morning.”
“We’ll hang them by the fire.”
“Obviously.”
Not for the first time, Tessa felt a swell of gratitude that Estrid had agreed to accompany her on this journey. Well – she’d more or less announced she was going, and left no room for refusal, but that was the way she did everything. Bossy and too-confident by half, but honest; Tessa had found that, after hours spent learning of magic, and all its sinuous, uncertain parameters, Estrid’s straightforward orders were not merely easy to follow, but welcome. She knew where she stood with Estrid – simply Tessa, and notprincess, and she didn’t have to worry about how she came across, if she was tired, or cranky, or didn’t feel much like company. Estrid was comfortable with silence or conversation, and read her easily; could pry at Tessa when she was being stubbornly quiet, or say something bawdy and hilarious when Tessa was at her most out-of-her-depth and homesick.
She’d never before had to wash her own clothes, or cook her own food, or soap her own saddle, and so she felt intensely self-conscious about asking for direction: wholly useless and irrelevant as a ribbon in a warhorse’s mane amidst this company of useful and necessary men and women, functional and unfussy and vital in a way that she, a gently-reared lady, had never been. But Estrid had stepped in without being asked, and instructed, and demonstrated, and though Tessa still had much to learn, and felt like her hands were all thumbs, at times, she was more competent than she had been.
“Let’s see.” Estrid leaned over to peer at her skirt. “Another rinse, and that’s as good as you’ll get for now.”
Tessa nodded, and dunked it under the chuckling surface of the stream. The daytime temperatures might be warming as spring took hold, but the water was cold, and her arms were prickly with gooseflesh.
“Now, snap it,” Estrid said.
Tessa stood, and did so – and doused herself with water.
“Haha!” Estrid didn’t try to stem her laughter – but offered a bit of toweling while Tessa was gasping and blinking frigid droplets from her lashes. “Bet you won’t do it like that again.”
Tessa scrubbed her face, and shook her head. “Decidedly not.”
Still laughing, Estrid took the towel, slung it over her shoulder, and led the way up the bank. Tessa gathered her wet things, nodded to their escort – two helmed and mailed guardsmen with spears on their shoulders – and followed, leaving one of the two of them to bring the lantern, what with both their hands full.
The lights of camp – cookfires, lanterns, and torches set on stakes along the perimeter – guided them through a crush of low ferns and crawling blackberry vines to the clearing in which Erik had halted them for the night. It was just off the road, still within sight of it, and judging by the old rings of stones on the ground, and the felled logs set up on hewn blocks for benches, been used as a camp for generations. A large clearing, but a larger army, and so their tents were set up closely, in long lines with barely enough room to walk between them.
Estrid was staying with the other unmarried young ladies who’d come with sword and shield: second or third daughters, or those without marriage prospects, wanting to test their mettle in battle before settling down to the business of mothering and household running. She walked now, though, with Tessa toward the end of the first lane of tents, where the king and his prince had tents beside one another, stakes driven in behind them as a makeshift fence between the royal family and the wild of the forest. They’d set up lines beside the fire before they went to the stream, and went to hang the clothes up straight away.
Rune was seated before the fire, where a brace of hairs smoked on a spit, sipping from a pewter cup with Magnus on one side of him and Lars on the other.
When he spotted her, Rune lowered his cup, and smiled – he smiled at her in a way that lit his entire face from the inside out, turned his eyes to the warm brown of strong tea, and which left her stomach fluttering with happy butterflies; she didn’t know if it was the sort of feeling that would fade with time, but she hoped it wasn’t.
By contrast, Magnus choked on his wine, spilled some down his tunic, and leaped to his feet, thrusting his cup toward Rune, who took it with a chuckle that went unregistered. “Your grace!” he exclaimed, eyes comically wide – it clearly wasn’t his first cup of wine – and moved toward her, hands outstretched. “You – you did laundry?!” He said it with the absolute horror of the sort that would have left her laughing, if his assumption that she was incapable of such a thing hadn’t been so hard to bear.
“Yes, I did.” She clutched the wet clothes tight to her chest so he couldn’t take them.
“Your grace.” He reached for them anyway. “Let me–”
