The Conqueror

He set the lantern on a small ledge. Light spread further into the dark stable. “What horse?”

“I had a horse.”

“What?”

“A horse, a horse. I came here on a horse.”

His looked at her suspiciously. “Where did you get a horse?”

She shrugged. “From the village.”

“They gave you a horse?” he said in flat disbelief. The purchase of a single plough horse would require the village’s annual intake, which was nigh on nil, for a few decades.

“They didn’t exactly give me the horse.”

“You took the horse.”

She gave him an evil look. “Yes. I took the horse. I didn’t kill a man, so you need not look at me like that. I planned to ensure Old Barney was returned, but now, well.” She stopped.

“Well, that’s that,” he muttered, stalking to Noir, whose seventeen-hand measurement at the withers made him stand taller than any other horse in the stables. He nickered at the sound of Griffyn’s voice.

“What’s what?” She hurried after him, tugging hair away from her face.

He led Noir out of his stall and grabbed the saddle. She came to the horse’s head and reached out to pet him.

“I wouldn’t,” Griffyn said grimly. He threw the saddle blanket over Noir’s sloping back, then placed the saddle atop, just at the horse’s withers. He slid the saddle and blanket back an inch, smoothing the fur. “He doesn’t like…people.”

“He seems to like you.”

“Yes, well, I’m not a person. To him.” He flipped the cinch off the saddle and let it drop. Reaching under Noir’s belly, he grabbed the buckle and pulled.

“Oh.”

They didn’t say anything else. Griffyn dourly finished his saddling, then bid her to the huge oaken stable door.

“I’ll open it, you hold it. Keep it from slamming.”

She nodded. He nudged it slightly ajar. The winds flung it wide and smashed it gleefully against the wall. She almost fell down trying to hold it back.

He glared at her.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered fiercely, wrestling with it. Griffyn reached over her shoulder and pushed it shut. “Think you I wish to be discovered any more than you?”

“I have no idea what you wish for.” He threw her up in front of the saddle and climbed up himself. “I would have thought a warm, dry place, but apparently not. You prefer storms and abduction. Sit close as you can, no, lean back against me, and here, I’ll wrap my cloak around us both. No one will come out to examine us too closely, and the winds should make a mockery of any clear shape or form. I came, now I’m leaving, and let us hope they will see it like that. But if they do come out,” he added more slowly, looking down into her wide, bright green eyes, “don’t scream when I kill them.”

She blinked. “Give me a blade. Truly,” she insisted when he just looked at her. “I am in earnest. You saw me with a rock. Imagine me with a blade.”

“I’m terrified,” he muttered, but unsheathed the blade wrapped at his thigh and slipped it to her, then pulled his hood up. “Now slide down as far as you can, sit as close as you can, and silence, if ever you can.”

“Pah,” she snorted from her dark, cloaked nest.

Griffyn lifted his head and, pressing his heels against Noir’s flanks, rode slowly through the bailey and under the inner gates, which were still raised, a good omen. This porter had not been alerted he was staying the night. Perhaps the outer guards were as ignorant.

No one even appeared to notice he was passing until he reached the guards at the outer bailey, and they waved him through with barely a glance.

He rode under the straining portcullis gate, the wicked wooden talons hanging half a foot above his head, and like that, they were outside in the king’s woods, he with a mission to accomplish and a heady woman huddled beneath his cape.

Chapter Eleven