A/N: Rewritten with a different ending after some suggestions. Platonic Kel/Wyldon, post LK.
Opinions Can Change…
Kel rode Hoshi down the well tended driveway, past the neat trimmed hazel hedges and the paddocks of fine they horses they enclosed. In truth, they were the reason she was here, and it saddened her to the depths of her heart.
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She was travelling to Fief Cavall to obtain a new warhorse. Peachblossom, that most contrary and difficult of animals, the horse that made her feel like an army of one, had been seriously injured in a final skirmish of the Scanran war. The enemy, bottled up between the river and the Tortallans from New Hope, had fought desperately, and one foot soldier, a bear of a man with fur braided in his beard, had slashed, low, with his double headed axe. Kel shuddered in the warm spring day as she remembered Peachblossom's scream and the awful sensation in the pit of her stomach as her horse dropped beneath her. She had twisted clear, landed half on her feet and gutted the assailant as the battle ended about them, but she couldn't undo the harm he had caused.
"I've done all I can, Kel." Daine had said quietly, as the two women had stood in the stables. "He'll live, I've scoured out the infection and rejoined those tendons that were severed, but they'll never be so strong again. He'll be sound as a hack, maybe, after rest, but he'll never be fit to carry a knight and armour, certainly not in battle." She touched Kel's arm softly, grey-blue eyes over bright in the dim light. "I know what he means to you. But tendons heal so badly, there's a limit to what even I can do." She padded soundlessly out of the stables.
Kel stood silently, holding her face Yamani still as her heart raged in her chest, as tears burned her eyes as they fought for release. She held out a hand, and Peachblossom shuffled a half step forward through the deep straw bed to snuff her fingers gently. She had ridden her horse since she was ten, they had been through snows and deserts, battles and tournaments, always together. She had saved his life and he hers. To be with out him, her heart's closest friend, was almost incomprehensible. She leaned over to hug his neck, and the single tear that fled down her cheek was soaked up by his mane.
Kel had fought on horse back since then, on various borrowed mounts, but it was like going into battle missing a weapon, or without a limb. Raoul had offered advice, the last time she was at Steadfast.
"Go to Cavall when you are on leave, and buy one of my Lord's war horses. He breeds the best, and you have a that purse form the Crown for your war service to spend. Wyldon will make sure you have what you need."
"Yes, sir." Kel had said quietly. Raoul had looked at her with a frown.
"Promise me. You need to be equipped for battle, Kel. I know how you two worked together, but to be without a good warhorse would be like, well…" he smiled wanly. "It would be like you going into battle without your glaive."
Kel pursed her lips, keeping in her thoughts and emotions. He was right, but Peachblossom was more than teak and steel and an iron core.
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Hoshi broke into a trot and whinnied shrilly as a gang of yearlings galloped towards the hedge, bringing Kel out of her reverie. They propped and swung to gallop alongside, fleet and eager, a surging mass of flowing mane and lithe muscle. Kel reined in Hoshi as the herd flocked away. She smiled, just a little, at the beautiful picture they made. As the breeze made the light green leaves shiver, brought the scents of meadow grass and herbs to Kel's nose, she felt a glorious sense of potential. It brimmed in her, suddenly, as she felt it stem from the new peace throughout the kingdom, in the springtime growth of the land, in her newly proven, battle hardened confidence. She felt the care, the grief and the worry that had burdened her so long begin to lift.
It was therefore a carefree Kel that ambled into the courtyard at Cavall; efficient hands took Hoshi from her, unbuckled her packs, pointed her in the direction of the castle. She felt a little disconnected as she made her way to the solid stone building, to meet her old training master. In fact, Wyldon met her before she had scarcely left the stables.
"Lady Knight Keladry." He greeted her gravely, face serious as ever it had been, scar a little more obvious, lines a little more prominent after the hard Scanran war. It was still a handsome, clean cut face, Kel thought, maybe the more so for the marks it carried with pride.
"My Lord." Kel replied calmly. She met his gaze full on, this man who had done his best to prevent her from becoming a knight. She had confounded him, attained her goal, and eventually won him over. Maybe my greatest triumph, she thought dryly.
"Sir Raoul has had it brought to my attention that you need a new war horse, and that he recommended my stables to you. Would you like to look over the horses now, or do you wish to rest after your journey?" Wyldon asked. Kel looked at the older man, in his worn breeches and light summer shirt, with a light covering of horse hair and dust. She felt her own travel gear was not too scruffy, and had no urge to rest. She nodded, and together man and woman entered the cool dark of the stable block.
"This is Dancer. He's a gelding, a half-brother of Happy – Windtreader - that Jesslaw rode." They admired the big bay that hung over his half door to snuff at the humans. "A good bloodline."
"The horse or the squire?" Kel asked quietly. Wyldon may or may have not flushed at the comment, it was hard to see in the light. Owen was very keen on Margarry, his youngest daughter, Kel had heard. He continued down the line of stalls without looking at her, in any case.
"What are you looking for?" He asked, all business. "A small destrier, like your Peachblossom was, a full size war horse? You fight in plate and the glaive is a heavy weapon..." He paused at the stable of a towering brown horse, with a bold white blaze and a proudly curling moustache on his muzzle. "Tor is one of the biggest I've ever bred...do you think he'd be too..." he bit the sentence off, clapped the horse's neck hastily.
"Too much for me? Too big for me?" Kel asked, quietly. "You still can't quite see me impartially, can you? Yes, I'm a knight, but I'm still a girl. The Girl."
"It does not matter that you are female." Wlydon stated quietly. "Only a true knight of the realm could have done what you have achieved." He looked up, caught her eye, held it, some of his old power in the gaze. "How many times would you like me to say so?"
"No more, my Lord." she said quietly. Kel was only an inch of two shy of her training master's height, and she looked straight into his eyes. Her body thrilled in vicarious delight at what she was going to say. "You have accepted me as a Knight, but you could accept me as woman. It's possible to be both. I am both."
Wyldon wondered exactly what had happened to his ex-student to change her so, from the silent child of a decade ago to the decisive woman whose eyes demanded from him... an answer? But what was the question? "Keladry..." he said.
"My Lord." Their eye contact held for a moment more than was quite comfortable, their breathing the only noise in the stables. All the horses were watching the two humans. Wyldon smiled slightly, then, as if his mind was suddenly decided. "I should like you to try Tor, if that's agreeable with you."
Kel smiled, too, added nodded her head. "I'd like to, if you'd think he'd suit me."
"But of course. I'll get his tack."
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Owen of Jesslaw panted over to the stableblock a few minutes later; he had just stolen a few minutes with Margarry, and wondered what sort of punishment his Knight Master might give him for his lateness. Lord Wyldon didn't seem to notice, however. He was standing, arms tightly folded, watching a rider canter a huge brown horse in the meadow.
"My Lord," Owen gasped, before pausing to gather his breath. He took a closer look at the horse and rider. "My Lord, is that Tor? And...and is that Kel?"
"I'm glad to see your observational skills are improving, Jesslaw." Wyldon said, drily.
"I thought Tor was your new mount, sir."
"He was." The knight and squire watched the horse and rider head off down the meadow in glorious, flat out gallop, before turning and heading back towards the stables, in a perfectly controlled trot. "He was. But the Lady Knight has won me over."