The Conqueror

Noir barely made a sound on the soft dirt path. His hooves trod through the damp, flat leaves. Overhead, the moon slid back and forth behind ragged clouds and cast shadows between the branches. In the darkness of the forest, small rustlings disturbed the underbrush and in the distance a larger animal, to judge by the sound, exploded a few sticks under paw. Overhead an owl winged by, disturbed by their intrusion, his hooting a haunting sound in a darkened wood.

Walking at the horse’s head, Griffyn was trying to understand the astonishing turn his night had taken, from unexpected battle to the unexpected cargo now riding his horse.

He scowled at a low-lying tree limb and sidestepped the path into a puddle of mud that would have reached to his shins if he hadn’t leapt back in time.

Said cargo, he admitted grudgingly, was an amiable enough companion. More so. Much more so. She was nothing he could have expected. Fleeing one of the most bloodthirsty barons in Stephen’s England, she had not cowered. She’d not fainted. She had not screamed or pitched or whined. She had stood at his side, fearless as any warrior, and smiled.

Smiled, for God’s sake.

Which is why he was doing it, he supposed.

He scowled.

The longer he walked, the colder he got, the more he ruminated on how this night had come to such an unforeseen conclusion, the more convinced he became of one fact. He tugged Noir to a halt and turned to confront his more-than-amiable, maddening cargo.

“You had no intention of staying,” he announced grimly.

Her heart-shaped face crumpled in confusion. “Staying where?”

“They could have been monks chanting Paternosters and you would have left at the first chance.”

Her face cleared. “Trust in this, Pagan, the men you left me with were not monks—”

“You couldn’t stop talking, could you?”

“What?”

“What did you say to them?”

She blushed. “I barely said a word about anything, but when they saw the coin—”

“I knew it. But I don’t think you left because it was unsafe. I think you left because you didn’t want to be there. And you never do things you don’t wish to do.”

Her jaw dropped. “That is simply not true!”

“Tell me the last thing you did that you wished otherwise.”

“I—I—I, why right now!” she sputtered, flinging her arm out. “Behold, here I sit on your beast of a horse and let you hold the reins, guiding me ever deeper into the king’s chase, with never a notion of whither I go, nor whence I might return. Might I prefer to be safely ensconced in a bed? Mayhap to sleep? Pah. Think you I chose this night, Pagan, I shall learn you a different tale.”

He started walking again, grimly satisfied. “Of course you chose it.”

He could feel her glare penetrating through the back of his head. “Then so did you.”

He didn’t reply. She was silent, too, for perhaps a moment, then her voice chirped up again, light and airy in the deep, dark wood.

“At least give me the reins.”

He laughed. He didn’t mean to, or want to, but there it was.

“Truly, Pagan. I have a way with horses.”

He looked over his shoulder. “Aye. Losing them.”

She smiled wanly.

He lifted his eyebrows. “Are you planning on losing mine?”

“Are you planning on dropping me off at another den of iniquity?” she retorted pleasantly.