Scouting with Coban was one of Tyke's favorite duties. He didn't treat her like she was little and didn't know anything, the way some of the other men did, and if he did sometimes baby her, it was in a rough, good natured way, and he didn't mean anything by it. He was also young enough not to mind getting into scraps with her, although he usually had sense enough to get them out before anything went really wrong.

They were arguably the best, or the worst, scouts among Sir Rowland's contingent. The best, some said, because they moved quietly and fast, and could hide just about anywhere, whereas other scouting parties would sometimes be seen, or even attacked. The worst, other argued, because they tended to miss tactical things that might have been of use, and their reports tended to be somewhat muddled. Rowland said that it all evened out, and that they were average enough, as scouts went. It was a compromise everyone, even the old and experienced scouts, could live with.

"What did ye think of the Count?" Ban asked her as he lay on a large flat rock during the second day of their scouting. They had decided to take a break, and swim in a little lake they found. Tyke was patiently trying to lure the fish towards her so she could grab them, but Coban's question cut into her concentration, and the one she had been about to get darted away.

Tyke considered the question. "I don't think I like him very much," she admitted. "He seemed very full of himself."

"Most people would call that confident," he returned neutrally. What was he thinking, Tyke wondered. She'd know soon enough, but she wished he wouldn't play these games to make her guess his thoughts.

"Maybe. I just think he's a little arrogant." She waded out of the water. "I think arrogance is a bad thing, especially in a man who is supposed to rule the kingdom."

Coban sat up. "I think ye're right. But ye can't choose a king."

"The Count chose himself," Tyke pointed out.

Coban shrugged. "But it's more than that. Rowland and the other knights helped chose him. He wanted to be king, and they supported him."

"So they'll just have to choose better next time," the girl replied pragmatically.

Now her friend laughed. He sometimes forgot how young Tyke was, until she said something like this. "Ye don't choose the next king, ye goose. It'll be the Count's son."

"Why not his daughter? She'd probably make a better king."

"Girls don't become king."

"Well that's just silly," Tyke returned. Two years ago, Coban would have disagreed without a thought. Girls couldn't run countries: they just weren't smart enough, and they went all weak at the thought of blood and war, which a king had to be able to deal with. Then he'd joined Sir Rowland, and met Tyke. She hadn't looked like much, just a slip of a girl riding in the big knight's shadow. He had hardly ever seen her, even, and he'd decided she must by shy of the big new strangers that had just joined the company.

And then they'd been riding through the woods, and she'd suddenly pulled out that little bow of hers, and shot up into the trees. There had been a scream that made Coban, who had thought himself tough minded enough to deal with anything a soldier encountered, turn white, and a heavy shape had fallen out of a tree. Suddenly they were in the middle of an ambush, and Coban had lost sight of the child, who kept her pony close to Sir Rowland's wheeling war horse.

Afterwards they'd gone to look at the dead, to see if they were enemies of the Count or just foolhardy bandits. Among the dead were two men, one the enemy archer from the tree, who had been shot through the throat with what seemed miniature arrows. He had thought the weapons the girl carried to be toys, but with them she had killed more men than he had.

She found him when he was emptying his stomach in the bushes. He'd tried to do it quietly, knowing the older soldiers would laugh at the weakling boy who couldn't stomach seeing a man killed. He'd glared at her, knowing he must be a sight, with vomit dripping down his chin and in a puddle at his feet.

"I threw up the first time I skinned a rabbit," she offered. He had just looked at her, and she shrugged. "You just have to think of them as rabbits. Really big, mean rabbits," she added. He'd smiled, then, and as suddenly as the ambush had started, they were friends.

Now, sitting on his sun-warmed rock, Coban couldn't imagine being a soldier without his little friend around. He tried his best to take care of her, but often enough she seemed to think he was the one who needed help. He thought of how she'd looked when she'd faced the Count, who really had been too arrogant. Tyke hadn't looked like royalty, not by any stretched, but given a choice, he'd rather a monarch like her than the Count.

He grinned at the child before him. "Yes, it's silly. Come on, wee one, we've a fair bit more ground to cover before nightfall."