• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

But it wasn’t all, and she knew it. From the first time she’d seen Lancelin, she had wished, without admitting it to anyone but herself and Bronwyn, that he would look at her not as a fellow warrior but as a woman. That he would give her the kind of glances that men gave Gynath and Cataruna. That he would touch her not with friendly indifference but with pent-up passion.

Which was about as likely to happen as for this horse to sprout wings and fly them to Celliwig. She was a warrior.

And she was Arthur’s.

Chapter Twenty-Three

As she was already well aware, riding pillion on the bare rump of a cantering horse was not a comfortable way to ride. Especially not a horse of her father’s breeding, which had wide hips and a muscular set of hindquarters.

And she hadn’t ridden in—well, a very long time. Months. She’d done her best to stay limber, but by the time Lancelin slowed his mount to a walk, her legs were definitely sore. The horse wasn’t any too pleased, either, and she didn’t blame him.

“I don’t suppose you have a place in mind to camp?” she asked as she tried to adjust her perch on Idris’ rump; she hoped she didn’t sound as if she were whining. This patch of forest was identical to the one they had been riding through, which still gave her no clue as to their location. “Where are we, anyway?”

“North of Celliwig,” he said. “If I hadn’t been following Gildas, I’d have come straight from there, and you would not likely have found me at all.” He shook his head. “Gildas would say one of his good spirits was watching over you. If you had kept going and no one had stopped you, eventually you might even have reached your own father’s lands.”

“Well, I am very glad I did find you.” She laughed. “It was a good thing for both of us. But now we are going south—”

“We are, and into lands I know. As for camping, yes, I do have a place in mind,” he continued. “I’ve used it before. It’s very well concealed. We’ll be riding until twilight to get there, though.”

“I would rather do that than take any chance of Medraut’s men catching us.” She said it, and she meant it, but she knew when she finally got off this horse, part of her would regret saying it.

But even as she thought that, he turned the horse’s head and sent him down into a ditch or ravine with a tiny thread of a stream running in the bottom of it, a ditch that quickly deepened until the sides were higher than their heads. There he dismounted. “Off,” he said. “All three of us need to stop for just a few moments.”

The horse proved the truth of this by plunging his nose into the bit of a stream and noisily slurping up water. And as soon as her legs stopped hurting, the running water reminded her that there was something else she needed desperately to do. With a rueful glance at each other, they parted company until the brushwood hid them. She was still not willing to stop long enough to change clothing completely, but since she was going to have to retie everything anyway, she did cut the gown off at the hips and pull on the breeches and the boots. Immediately—and not just because she also relieved herself—she felt better. More like herself.

And there was the added benefit that she had two large pieces of heavy fabric that were likely to come in very useful.

She folded the fabric into a pad she could use under herself and trotted back to the horse and Lancelin. A little stretching left her feeling a lot happier about getting back on that horse. The leg of rabbit Lancelin fished out of a saddlebag and handed to her made her feel happier in general. She made short work of it, as he did the same with another leg.

“I’m going to stop one more time so we can hunt,” he told her, as he swung himself up into the saddle, then offered her his hand and let her pull herself up behind him again. “We won’t have a chance before dark otherwise, and that was the last of my provisions.”

“I hope I can still remember how to use a bow,” she said dryly. He laughed and put heels to his mount.

True to