Days of Blood and Fire - Katharine Kerr [68]
Her plan worked. Dressed like a dirty page, with her hair hidden by an elven leather hat, she seemed to have turned invisible. Her own gelding, Gwerlas, a buckskin Western Hunter, turned out to be stabled right at the end of a line of stalls. She had him out and saddled without a soul noticing. Getting out of the dun through the guarded gates was, of course, a different matter altogether. She led Gwer up by a roundabout way, then waited in the partial shelter of a stack of firewood until the two guards started talking with a gaggle of servant girls. Carra mounted and trotted out, looking straight ahead as if she had every right to do so. Neither guard hailed her, and she turned down into the streets of Cengarn.
After a few hundred yards she dismounted again, because in that twisting maze, cluttered with townsfolk hurrying about their business, leading a horse was much easier than riding one. By traveling as straight downhill as the streets would let her she eventually found the South Gate, and there luck tossed her a fine roll of dice. Some twenty feet inside the gate a wagon had overturned with a spew of turnips. Teamster, townsfolk, and guards alike were clustering round, yelling at one another about the best way to get it righted. Carra mounted, urged Gwer to a trot, and was out and gone before anyone noticed the lad on the buckskin horse.
As soon as she was well clear, she kicked Gwer to a canter, turning off the road and heading to the west, riding randomly, and singing as she rode in the warm summer sun. Because of the sun, and because Gwer hadn’t been getting the exercise he needed, she soon slowed him to a walk. They ambled through the meadows round Cengarn, ending up due west of the town, resting there to let Gwer cool down and Carra look up at the cliffs and the impressive dun above, then rode on to the trees that lined the little stream. She dismounted to let Gwer drink, stood beside him while he did, and simply watched the water flow in the dappled shade. For a few moments she was no longer a married woman and a princess, and that was all, truly, that she’d wanted—a few moments respite.
“I don’t want to go back just yet,” she remarked to Gwerlas. “This really is silly of me, but oh, it feels so wonderful to not be anything for a while, just me again. And besides, it’s a good jest, slipping out on everyone like that.”
He snorted, tossing drops from his muzzle.
“We should have brought Lightning, too. He’d have liked this, getting free of the dun. Oh!”
All at once her heart sank. As soon as they noticed she was gone, they’d be right on her trail to fetch her back, because Lightning would lead them straight to her. She’d forgotten about that when she’d carelessly left him behind. Unless—she could remember what the heroes always did in the bard songs, when their beloved’s husband or some other enemy was hunting them down. She knelt, tested the water, and found it cold but not dangerously so to a horse’s legs.
“It might work. Look, Gwer, the stream’s really shallow, and it’s nice and sandy on the bottom, so you won’t slip or suchlike.”
She mounted, urged him into the ford, and after a brief moment’s argument got him to start picking his way upstream, heading roughly north. They were hidden, too, by the corridor of trees hugging the banks, so that none of the cowherds from the nearby farm even saw her as she rode past without leaving a scent that a dog could follow.
Rhodry was sitting in the great hall, drinking with Yraen over on the riders’ side, when Prince Daralanteriel came racing in from the ward. In a towering panic he rushed