Elminster's Daughter - Ed Greenwood [66]
She smashed the nearest door open and strode out into the forest, striding hard. Her scabbard whirled back in her wake, almost slapping handsome young Lord Malask Huntinghorn across the face. He blinked, came out of his doorguard's stance, and started after the Crown Princess.
Ducking around wildly waving branches and swaying saplings, he reached a dense thicket in time to see Alusair hiss out a stream of curses he was glad he couldn't quite catch and reduce a defenseless sapling to kindling with a few furious slashes of her sword.
Throwing back her head to shake the hair out of her eyes, she strode purposefully to the next sapling. Malask Huntinghorn swallowed, drew in a deep breath, and performed the bravest act of his young life, thus far… perhaps his last brave act ever.
"Princess," he said firmly, striding forward to catch at her swor-darm, "that tree deserves to live, just as you or I do. The living green heart of the realm, as Lord Alaphondar often reminds us, is its trees. I don't think you should-"
Princess Alusair spun around far more swiftly than she'd ever done when making love to him-faster than any battle-knight of the realm he'd ever seen-and pounced on the scion of House Huntinghorn, flinging her blade away to punch, kick, and claw.
Malask found himself on his back, winded and with a fierce pain in his shoulder where he'd fetched up against a tree-root-and even sharper pains erupting in his gut and ribs as the Regent of Cormyr slammed her fists home, snarling and shouting in fury.
He was suddenly very glad indeed that he'd donned full forest-leathers, codpiece in particular, to take his turn at guard-as knees and knife-edged hands thrust home, slaps made his ears ring and his face burn, and the woman he was sworn to defend thrust her nose almost into his eye and shouted, "Defend yourself, you great rothe, damn you! Fight, Malask!"
"M-my Queen, I-"
"I'm not your damn queen or anyone's queen, Lord Lummox! I'm a warrior who feels great need of a sparring partner, right now! Hit me, you great lump of cowering man-flesh!"
Malask swallowed, closed his eyes against a punch that almost closed one of them for him, and reluctantly thrust one arm up and out. She swatted it aside, bruisingly, and belted him across the nose.
"Aaargh!" he roared, eyes streaming as the pain stung him into trying to twist and roll out from under her. "Gods, you've probably broken it, Luse! I'll look like some sort of country straw-butt lout for the rest of my life!" He shielded his dripping nose with one hand, wincing and blinded by tears.
"Well, why not? You are a country straw-butt lout!"
With a roar, Malask Huntinghorn forgot all about duty, princesses, treason, royal persons, and how soft and ardent this particular royal person had felt on occasion-and lashed out with a roundhouse swing that had all of his pain and anger behind it.
There was a grunt, a sudden loss of weight atop his hip, and silence.
He blinked, swallowed, and knuckled his eyes feverishly to clear them. "Luse? Luse? "
"That'smore like it," she snarled into his ear, as both of her fists struck home, low in his ribs, driving the wind right out of him. Groaning and flailing out, he punched, clawed, and punched again-and somehow found himself staggering to his feet, under a welter of blows, tearing a fluffy nightrobe clean off the Crown Princess of the realm as he spun her off-balance so as to plant a solid blow to her breast that sent her over backward to the ground, doubled up and spitting curses.
Glowering, he strode toward her, fists balled. She launched herself up and into his gut, headfirst, hurling him backward.
He greeted the ground with a crash, a snapping of ferns and dry dead branches, and a Crown Princess of the realm on his pelvis, punching at him. Malask got in an uppercut that snapped Alusair's jaw up and back, and she collapsed onto him with a groan,