Escort Duty
The mare's plodding canter slowed and then stilled on the hard, dry earth below us, hooves echoing in the silence as she drew her legs to a standstill. Nevalle, mounted behind me with his hand pressed to my midsection to steady me, had fallen into that almost supernatural state of alertness that spoke of his years as a member of the Neverwinter Nine. I knew that he took his duty very seriously, whether escorting his King or merely a maiden under Nasher's protection, as was the case in this instance. His body had gone rigid behind me, every muscle tensed, the firm hand that lay innocently but firmly above my navel gripping me protectively.
He looked down the road as far as he could. Something was wrong- I could sense it from the way the mare twisted her head and began to snort warily. As a woman who had been raised with knowledge of horses and their temperaments, I knew that it would have been folly to ignore the warnings that such signs gave. Nevalle motioned to the riders in step behind us with his free hand. He gave a peculiar set of whistles that sent the mounted horsemen into the wooded areas on either side of us.
"They're beside us," he whispered against the back of my ear. "Do not move, Lady." All propriety had been lost in the necessity for caution and silence. Any other day it would have been considered unseemly for him to hold me so closely against him or to press his lips to the back of my head with its ornate golden braids in this fashion. When danger loomed, I knew, his duty to my safety came first. It would have been foolish to speak aloud with enemies nearby- and so he whispered. I bit back the rising fear in my throat and concentrated on the calming feel of his hand there on my lower belly. He had a body chiseled by many a battle, many an afternoon of intense training. In the intensity of the moment, I tried to focus my eyes on the fine golden hairs on the arm that held me. Despite my fear at what could possibly be a dangerous ambush, despite my discomfort after hours of hard riding, I felt his presence acutely. Nevalle's confident, masculine leadership and concern for my safety had begun to chip away at my initial distaste for him and had become something else entirely.
I was well aware of my worth. After the highly publicized news of Sydney Natale's betrayal of the Knight Captain of Crossroad Keep, I was being sent off to marriage to one of Neverwinter's politicians as part of an act of contrition involving large tracts of land and other benefits. It was my duty to comply silently. I counseled myself not to think of these things in this hour of danger as I heard the ringing scrape of Nevalle's sword leaving its scabbard. Still, I wondered whether I had been assigned Nevalle as a guardian by Nasher the King who didn't see his guardsman's beauty or Nasher the man who trusted a lady's sense of honor. Either way, Nevalle was too tempting. My earlier irritation at his eager acceptance of another opportunity to impress Nasher had melted away in the face of my appreciation for him. I knew that he would protect me with his life if the need arose.
"Help them," I said, hearing the clamor of swords from the east. A man's agonized cry cut the air, followed by the shrill whine of a horse in pain.
"No. We will take cover." His words carried the tone of finality. He was right, of course. Having spent many a day in my father's libraries studying the arts of war, I knew that to leave me on horseback in the middle of the road and go charging into the brush alone would have been more than a little reckless of an escort. I tried to lead the horse to the side of the road, where we would at least have the benefit of some cover. But she had been spooked by the sounds of the other horse in pain and would not budge.
"We dismount together." Nevalle eased himself off of the mare with a short sword still unsheathed. He held me close to him so that my body was sandwiched between his own protective embrace and the flank of the horse.
"We can't leave her," I argued, pressing my hands to the horse I had come to call Sunrise.
His lips tightened. "Her life or yours. My Lady." My title was an afterthought. It dawned on me that once again, Nevalle was right. "On my word, we go to the trees." An arrow cut the air with a whipping sound. There it was- the proof that I had been waiting for. This was a real ambush, and that meant that I could die. It was a chilling thought.
"Now," Nevalle said. Two more arrows zagged across our field of vision, one of them becoming lodged in his sleeve. I saw the blood welling up around the graze it left. Then, without warning, I had been thrown to the dirt, flat on my back- and Nevalle was upon me. His finger went to his lips to shush my protests. There wouldn't be any. The wind had been knocked out of my chest. I felt the panic to breathe burning up through my ribcage with the certain awareness that his assault of me had saved me from an arrow through my neck. The weight of him holding me down with his body made it all the more difficult to recover my breath while even more arrows flew above us where we lay in the brush.
"Breathe," he said in a low voice. "Calm yourself and draw a breath. I'm going to get you out of here, Lady, but you have to trust me."
I nodded mutely. Air was once again filling my lungs. "Go," I told him. "I'll follow you."
I looked ahead, seeing where he meant for us to go. There was not much more than a narrow passage between some pine shrubs that grew wild and thick here all the way to the bottom. It was madness, surely, this idea of scurrying away like a couple of rats when the other men fought desperately just to hold ground. If only they could keep the bandits from away from my escort and I, even at the cost of their own lives, they would do so and proudly. But Nevalle knew what he meant to do. I had come to respond to his orders without thinking in the time since we had begun the journey. He fell flat on his belly, slowly inching forward with the skill of one who has known reconnaissance with all of its dangers.
"Wait. If you hear anything from behind, kick with all of your might, as if your life depended on it. Because it does."
"Thank you for the reminder," I muttered to myself. I watched him tear off the hem of his shirt so as to bind the arm that now bled freely. Once this was accomplished, he dislodged some of the brush around us to cover the red stains his wound had left on the ground. At first I considered his caution a waste of time, that commodity of which we had precious little. But then I realized that it would not do to leave a trail if we meant to get through the ambush unseen. I heard a sharp whinny from out on the road that told me that my horse had been wounded. It may have been sentimental, but tears sprang to my eyes, swiftly blending with the mud and grime on my cheeks I'd already accumulated from Nevalle's assault.
He was backing out of the jagged hole that he'd managed to hack through the bottoms of the evergreens, turning to look at me where I crouched with a dagger in my hands. I must have looked truly pathetic, for his lips twisted in a half-smile of sympathy. "I wish that we had the time to allow for tears, Lady. But I mean to see you to safety. Now come." I heard his voice take on the unmistakable lift of authority, and I clung to that as to a branch while drowning. I took his offered hand. He wore gloves that made his grip firm and strong. As quietly as possible I crawled up toward his position and then close up against his body as I began to shiver in the cool of the approaching evening. "Stay close," he told me. "We need to preserve the heat of our bodies if we're going to make it through the night." I nodded, cherished that heat, took in the healing sensation as he slipped off his gloves to rub warmth back into my hands.
I know that my cheeks must have burned red with the cold and with my exertions. Inch by inch we worked our way through that unrelenting thicket of needles side by side. Often we would pause to listen for the sounds of approaching men. As it happened, the mare had either run off in fear after a single wound or simply fallen under a barrage of arrowfire. Either way, the rest of our escape continued unimpeded. After a time flinty merciless points of light in that vast darkness rose above us, forcing Nevalle to change our direction slightly by his schooled recognition of the stars.
We may have crawled for hours. All that I knew were the pains that began to shoot through legs that had not known this level of strain and the chill that had sent me into waves of shivering throughout our progress.
"We will not be able to risk a fire," Nevalle told me. "I don't see that we can go much further without knowing where we're going. We'd be better off trying to get comfortable for the night and then setting out at first light."
First light seemed indeed very far away when we stopped the constant lull of walking. I didn't know it was possible to survive the feelings of desperation my body was sending out with each uncontrollable shiver wracking the surface of my exposed arms. Had there been snow on the ground, I fear I may have lay down on that welcoming carpet without fear of the consequences. I was so hungry, so exhausted, covered with scrapes and cuts, and yet I knew only certain death lay behind us.
They would track us, should they find our trail, and then I would know in truth what agonies face a noblewoman caught in the hands of highwaymen. Nevalle fell to his knees in the dirt. I didn't know what he meant to do until I saw the glint of his blade gouging holes in the ground in front of us. He stopped periodically to rub his hands together for warmth. I may have been a lady, and it may not have been what some would consider a lady's proper place, but I took the other sword on his belt so that I could join him in his efforts. There was something in the fact that he had not asked me that made me want to assist him all the more. Another hour passed while we continued to dig silently side by side. It was easier to ignore the shivers that came and went when my arms and hands were busy with the task at hand, though the deeper breaths I had to draw in my exertion burned with cold in the depths of my chest. Finally, he looked down into the pit that we'd managed to dig with strength and a bit of soil softening on my part- there was a hint of magic in my family tree, I'll admit. It would suit for a night's shelter.
He hacked free some pine branches with which to fill our makeshift dwelling for the evening. At last we sank into that cold, all encompassing darkness, breathless, aching, and terribly tired. He drew a large set of needled branches across the top of the pit and then sat back in that darkness with his chest heaving. "I think we'll be safe here until morning. I am sorry that this is all that I can offer you, Lady." He coughed twice, beating his chest with his fist. Only the glow of a half moon made it possible for me to see so much as his profile though we could not have been closer.
"It's fine, Sir Nevalle. I'm very grateful for everything that you've done." I started to brush caked dirt off of my hands, a silent part of me asserting that it most definitely was not fine that we'd ended up in such a predicament. But the both of us were alive, and for that I had this capable man beside me to thank. Perhaps it was better after all that neither of us could see each other in such a state.
"Lady Arniman, forgive my cough," he said, and then coughed again.
"Gods, Nevalle, after everything that's happened today, could you bring yourself to just call me Tera? Just for now?" When he didn't say anything, I sighed deeply and sank back into the darkness.
Then I heard his light masculine chuckle beside me. "I don't remember ever being this cold. My Lady... Tera... would you think it improper if we huddled closer together?"
"I thought you would never ask, Nevalle." I leaned over in his direction fumblingly where I pawed at nothing for a few seconds.
"Here," I heard his voice saying. Then, again. "Here." He wrapped my arms around his midsection, his own going around me in a close embrace. I couldn't move, but didn't particularly want to do so, feeling his lips tousling the top of my hair. The fit of our bodies was so perfect, so intended, I closed my eyes and allowed myself to relish it. My feminine heart thrilled at this first touch of a man's arms so close about me.
It was necessity that brought us this close- yes, necessity, I told myself over and over. But, hells, it wasn't necessity that made me pull my head back from his chest long enough to pause before where I saw the outline of his face above me. It wasn't duty that made him lean those few inches down to meet my mouth as it sought his. Nevalle had wanted to know the touch of my lips, and I had wanted to know the touch of his. Suddenly I understood so many things wrapped here in Nevalle's firm embrace.
"Nevalle..." I sighed, half smiling, wanting him to do so much more than kiss me.
Perhaps he knew better than I what it was that I wanted from him, and though he went on rousing my body's urges with the softness of that one kiss, I did not know where I wanted it to go. Soon I would be wed to an emotionless man whose old bones creaked with every step. A lonely bed awaited me. In no way did I want to go to that fate without having tasted the fruit which I now sampled. And so I yielded to this man on this one night, and allowed him to take me quietly into his arms as he obviously desired. I would let him know me as no man had; I would offer to him the gift of my youth that after this day would be sold to the cold halls of political alliances. I took Nevalle's duty and gave him back pleasure, and we two clung to each other in that darkness as only the desperate can.
I lost my heart that day.