It was probably too soon to be some of their soldiers, so the only possible option was that someone had been following them. The two siblings exchanged a quick and silent glance, looking around for somewhere to hide, and Loras seemed to remember something.
There was a cave on their left not that far. He knew it well, even if he didn't want to remember that at the moment. He tugged Margaery in that direction, prompting her to accept his lead just for once. The cave was exactly where he recalled it was, so he pushed Margaery inside before someone could spot them on the trail. He wasn't so sure to deserve his sister's aid, but he couldn't allow anyone to touch her.
He would've died before seeing the Sparrows treating Margaery the same way he'd been treated.
He prepared the stick.
He would've protected his sister at all costs. That was the only thing the Sparrows hadn't taken from him: his love for his sister.
What Loras hadn't considered was that his sister had just unsheathed her dagger. As much as he was willing to die for her, so was she.
Margaery knew she wasn't a fighter, that anyone would've been able to overcome her, and yet she couldn't fight the instinct of drawing her blade; it was almost childish wielding a dagger like that, but she couldn't stand idly by while they were facing certain capture.
It simply wasn't for her.
And she would've died before allowing those scumbags to touch them again.
The horses were approaching, all they could do was be prepared, their last and only choice. Hooves were treading on dead leaves, closer and closer, so close the two siblings held each other fearing to be separated once again.
"Your Grace!" a voice called, "My Lord!"
Margaery and Loras looked at each other.
"My Lord!"
"Your Grace!"
"My Lord!"
"My Lord!"
"Your Grace!"
"My Lord!"
"Your Grace!"
"Your Grace!"
Several voices were calling them, in an undertone as not to be heard by unwanted listeners. No one was shouting them to yield, the voices didn't covey that impression.
Yet they couldn't be so sure.
"It's us."
"We know this is not the meeting point, but we hurried up to come and get you."
They had to take their chance. The soldiers had dismounted from the horses, but hadn't they found them in a couple of minutes they would've started searching somewhere else, abandoning them in the woods.
The two siblings nodded and ventured out of the cave.
Loras was leaning on Margaery in order to be able to hold up the stick to protect them both, and his sister was still clasping the bloodied dagger in her fingers.
That was how their soldiers found them: standing together, ready to fight.
They hurried in their direction, and before she could realise it those men were relieving her from Loras's weight and a strong arm was sustaining her by the waist.
"You did it, your Grace," a familiar voice said to her ear as she leant against the protection of that body, "You did it. You must be freezing now, though," a green cape was draped around her shoulders, and she realised she was still soaking wet.
She started laughing a little maniacally amidst the trees, sobs mixed with laughs. Panic, fear, rage, despair, they were all coming to the surface, crashing against the enormous sense of relief that was flooding her.
She covered her mouth, but she couldn't stop, not even when she tasted still fresh blood on her lips.
Willam held her a little tighter, recognising the first hints of shock in that behaviour; they couldn't cope with both the siblings not in their right state of mind, and the one allowed to lose his mind was Ser Loras.
"Why don't you put down that dagger, Your Grace?" Willam motioned to grab her wrist, but she was quick enough to subtract the weapon from his grasp; she did put it back in its sheath indeed, but no one would've separated her from that blade.
"We have to go," said one of the two soldiers who were supporting Loras, and Margaery nodded upon taking a look at her brother. His face was white but for the streak of blood leaking down the bridge of his nose. Someone had been so kind to drape a cape around his shoulders too.
"Yes. Of course," she shook her head, as if to scroll away the feelings that had overwhelmed her for a few seconds, "We must move," she hurried toward her brother to place a comforting hand on his cheek since she could see how uncomfortable he was being held up by those two strangers, then she nodded in the direction of the horses.
When they approached they were welcomed by a distressed whinnying. Margaery raised her eyes and saw it. Saw her.
A white mare, clodding to be reunited with her owner.
That mare.
The mare that had been a gift from Renly to Loras.
He looked at the horse too, an unbelieving stare at the animal he thought he would've never seen again.
"Your father thought it would've been a good idea," Willam explained in a whisper.
"Damn good idea," she whispered back, looking at Loras motioning toward the animal. The soldier who was keeping the mare by the reins had to let her go to her owner, and when she was finally reunited with him she whinnied quietly, pushing her nose against his shoulder.
It looked like she was welcoming him back, telling him to jump on her back and finally go home, but Loras wasn't petting her neck as he used to do; that was probably what made the horse realise something was wrong.
As Margaery approached the mare turned her head around a few times as if trying to understand what was happening, and when Margaery substituted one of the two soldiers who were holding Loras up she seemed to realise her help was needed too.
With no command whatsoever she fell on her front legs and crouched on the ground in front of her owner, whinnying quietly to invite him to saddle up.
The people witnessing looked at the scene bewildered, unable to believe real such behaviour from an animal toward its master, but here the horse was, showing them that that kind of connection was indeed possible.
"Come on, we need to go home," Margaery broke the spell prompting Loras to get on the horse, so the soldiers started hurrying around to get hers too and mounting on their own steeds. She was the one helping him, the one to take the stick from his hand so that he could have been able to stay balanced on the horse.
She didn't accept anyone's help when it was her turn to mount on her horse, and as soon as she was secured on her saddle she ordered them to move; there was no need for Loras to give a command to his mare, she simply followed the other animals, but that wasn't enough for Margaery, who'd ordered to tie a rope between their horses.
They would've been together, even if they still had to run in the middle of a wood.
Margaery spurred her horse, being the first of the column.
They had to go home.
She could see that an action that had been as simple to Loras as breathing was now torture to him, but she couldn't just wait for him to be ready to go home. She had to abandon the sisterly part of her, being a queen. A leader. That was what was needed in that moment. Not a loving sister, not a sweet young girl caring for her brother. They needed a queen who took decisions for them.
The soldiers would've probably stopped for them both, them being such a miserable show: Loras was hunched on the horse's neck, only one shoe on, and she definitely wasn't in a better shape. Her dress was ripped to up to mid-tight, she had scratches and bruises on her legs, her hair was full of leaves and still wet from their crossing of the river, and there was blood still smearing her face. She probably had bruises on her cheeks too.
Still, they had no time.
She would've felt safe once they were at Highgarden, and not before.
"Margaery…"
"Yes?" she turned her head to the right.
"Can we… stop for a moment?"
"No, honey, I'm sorry. We'll stop once we've reached the army."
Loras nodded painfully, knowing she was the one in charge, then he remained quiet on the horse. That was when Margaery started singing: she didn't really feel like it, but that was a song in Valyrian she and Loras used to sing when they were children, and if Loras could focus on that old tune maybe he could've been distracted from his pain.
The song wasn't really difficult, it simply consisted in a stanza repeated on and on until the music stopped, with a small variation in the middle; what had made them pick it up when they were children was the fact that it was a duet requiring both male and female voices to alternate the chorus.
"[1]Sola gjekk i ringen, sumaren sende/ Hanar galar rismål for alvar i enga," she intoned, startling everyone around. None of the soldiers thought her in the mood for singing, "Sola gjekk i ringen, sumaren sende/ Hanar galar rismål for alvar i enga."
Loras looked at her a little puzzled, trying to connect that familiar sound with something, anything, from his memories. The time spent in the cells seemed to have obliterated that spent as a free man.
"Sola gjekk i ringen, sumaren sende/ Hanar galar rismål for alvar i enga."
It dated back to a very long time ago, when they were still children being educated as princes. Making them learn High Valyrian had been their mother's whim, but since it was kind of cool knowing a language of their own that they could use to impress people around they had settled for learning it quietly enough.
"Sola gjekk i ringen, sumaren sende/ Hanar galar rismål for alvar i enga," Loras croaked, responding to the chorus intoned by his sister.
Their maester had taught them the song, in the hope of making them love the language a little more. The song was so simple indeed that even with no knowledge of the language whatsoever they'd been able to learn it by heart and to sing it when they were playing in the gardens. The trick had worked though, since now they could both speak effortlessly an almost perfect Valirian.
"Sola gjekk i ringen, sumaren sende/ Hanar galar rismål for alvar i enga," Margaery voice came out stronger this time, encouraged by her brother's participation; he wasn't singing as he used to, but she thought he wouldn't have even opened his mouth, so that was all like a gift to her.
"Sola gjekk i ringen, sumaren sende/ Hanar galar rismål for alvar i enga," Loras answered again as his sister vocalised in the background.
They kept on singing for a long while, crossing the wood and finally reconnecting with the main road; when they reached the open ground they fell silent, not wanting to draw attention on them even further.
"How long now?" Margaery asked Willam, who was riding by her side.
"Not much, You Grace. The army shouldn't have progressed much without you, I don't think your father was very eager to leave you behind."
She nodded, looking at Loras who was doing his best not to fall from the horse. She was trying to figure out how they would've been able to reach Highgarden with Loras in such a state, but she was too tired to come up with a good idea. She could only focus on catching up with the army, from then on they would've been relatively safe, safe enough to allow her to rest for a bit and start again with a sharp mind for the task.
Yet she couldn't voice her thoughts.
She was their queen now, she was supposed to lead them and to know what was best for them all; giving the impression of being such had been one of the reasons that had managed to convince them to follow her in that almost suicidal mission.
She was good at pretending, she could do it a little longer.
There wasn't much to do for them but keeping themselves on the horses. The soldiers were looking around, Willam – still on the horse he had stolen in King's Landing and had permitted him to be there with them – had sent out two of them as sentinels and another one back on the street to make sure no one was following them. He had it all sorted, so Margaery was free to look at her brother, even though she tried not to consider how he was really feeling.
She wasn't strong enough for that, not now.
She knew how those cells were, suffocating, scaring, cold, dark holes where they left you to starve for days, and with what she'd gathered… she couldn't think about that, not now.
Had she been dwelling on the thought she would've started screaming, and she couldn't lose it, not yet.
When she had heard, still in the Sept, she had lost her mind and killed a man.
No, not a man.
A worm.
That creature was nothing but a worm.
What she found strange was that she could think about that pretty quietly. She could still hear the Sparrow's agonising gasps in her head, she knew she still had his blood on her face, under her nails, but that wasn't upsetting her at all.
She could replay the scene in her mind feeling nothing, as if the matter concerned a third person.
And yet she realised she had killed that bastard.
Not that she regretted it, but the thought, not the memory, stirred something in her. It was something new for her, something she didn't even believe could reside inside her.
She'd had a taste of it the previous day, when she had taken for the first time in months the dagger in her hand, but what she had felt using it to stab the Sparrow to death…
It was like having fire running through your veins. It was a kind of pleasure she had never experienced before.
It wasn't the killing itself to have felt so pleasing, it was revenge.
Revenge at its finest.
Revenge in its primal form.
Not something subtle, served cold after years of planning. Brutal, primeval revenge served promptly in the form of warm spilling blood.
When she had intuited what Loras had been through killing had been her reaction.
She had kept quiet for too long, played mind games in the background; in that moment it was like someone had pulled a trigger, and she had realised that when you're pushed, killing is as easy as breathing.
She had let it go once and for all and now, as they were trying to go back home battered and bruised, she knew there was no way of going back.
Joffrey had been right in judging her. She'd thought it was just a facade what she had put up for him, but she could see now that she could understand him better than she believed; it wasn't simply a gilded sentence spoke to please him, severity was indeed the price to pay for greatness.
No more kind smiles, no more playing the naive girl.
She was a queen now, a queen who had to take care of those around her.
Starting from her brother.
She would've had to help him, not just to get home in what could still be considered one piece, but with the aftermath of the imprisonment. They both needed help on that front.
Margaery didn't want to admit it, didn't have the time actually, but her staying in the cells had spooked her beyond reasoning. She had been starved, beaten, humiliated and insulted. Everything important to her had been taunted and slandered, overthrown in front of her.
She would've never thought she would've ended up like that. She knew she would've married Renly, the winds of war had been there for years, and she was fine with that; maybe she wasn't finding the passionate love described in the tales she used to read as a child, but she was marring a friend. It was a different kind of love, but love still. She had heard of far worse matches, being the wife of your brother's lover wouldn't have been that bad.
And she would've been the queen.
Besides, Renly would've never allowed them to end up in a cell.
He wasn't a violent man, but he would've done anything for the Tyrell siblings, both of them.
Her latest husband had loved her, right, but he had been nothing but a puppet whose strings anyone could pull.
In that cell she had had time to think, when she wasn't wondering whether Loras was still alive or not, time to think about how easily everything could fall apart.
The worst part of their imprisonment was that they wouldn't have imagined such an outcome in a thousand years.
Loras had grown up with the idea of being the lord of Highgarden and the Protector of the South, Margaery of being the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms; there was no way of picturing a future in a filthy cell covered in rags.
At her darkest moment, starved and sleep-deprived, she had been about to give up, to surrender to their wishes just to get out of there, just to escape the beatings and the shouting. She was crouched in the corner of her cell, legs drawn up to her body to keep her warm, when the Septa assigned to the task of reading to her a chapter of the Seven Pointed Star had started preaching about how people like her brother would've burnt in the deepest hells for eternity.
Something in her had clicked in that moment.
She had realized that letting them win would've meant getting out of there, but being forced to look behind her back for her whole life; she would've eliminated just the symptoms, not the disease.
The only way of getting out was letting them win, yes, but there was one thing she was good at.
Manipulating.
She had twisted around her little finger many men, it wouldn't have been impossible to do it with another one.
She was conscious of the fact her techniques would've had to be different in the High Sparrow's case, but not that much: it was all about pleasing him, the only part she would've had to change was the way in which she planned of doing so.
It had been hard to come up with her plan still in her cell, to focus when her head seemed about to split open for the lack of sleep and her body refused to move for the food deprivation, but it had been her only hope.
Her plan, or going mad.
She now realized that one didn't automatically exclude the other.
That was the part she preferred to focus on; how she had managed to get out, not what she had felt before. She couldn't face the feel of betrayal, disappointment and utter fear, not yet. Most certainly not while she was still out in the middle of nowhere with a handful of soldiers and her most loyal guardian hunched on the neck of his horse.
There was no way of contemplating that now. She had to swallow the wave that was coming through her, to find something to focus on. The best thing she could come up with was keeping an eye on Loras.
He was struggling to stay on the horse, trying not to fall for every step that was clearly causing him pain; Margaery had tried to avoid the hardest spots of the road, but that wasn't necessary. The mare was already doing it.
It looked like the animal understood how serious the situation was, so she had been avoiding anything that could've been a problem to her knight; there wasn't a hole in the trail she hadn't circumnavigated, a fallen branch she hadn't dodged.
Even now, in the main road, the mare looked almost concerned. She knew there was something wrong, she could feel that her master wasn't his old self. Margaery had seen the way the mare used to go around: even when they were just on a stroll there was something in the beast that led people to anticipate the moment Loras would've launched her at full gallop, it was like a constantly skipping pace, like the animal was just restraining itself. Now that was all gone. The mare was cautious in every step, softening every movement and at the same time ready for what could've happened.
All the horses were nervous, indeed, feeling the trepidation in the humans around them. Both horses and soldiers were ready to start running at the first sign of something wrong.
There was no need for that though.
"Your Grace," Willam slightly tugged at Margaery's cape, his own cape actually, "We did it,"
He was smiling.
"Over there," he pointed at something in the distance and when Margaery followed the direction of his finger she could see it too.
The army.
The Tyrell's army, waiting for them.
They had camped at the side of the road to control it, and they were just waiting for them to arrive.
She could see their colours, green and gold, flashing in the plain, and she couldn't hold back a smile.
"Loras!" she called him, "Look. Look over there. The army. We reached the army," she covered her mouth to hide the joyous laugh which was escaping her lips. She simply couldn't believe her eyes.
Nothing had ever been so beautiful.
Even Loras managed to raise his head and look in the right direction, and a little smile formed on his lips too.
"C'mon," Margaery spurred the horse, promptly followed by the white mare that was quickly released from the rope that had kept her close till that moment; Margaery wouldn't have allowed Loras to be seen as needy and excessively weak. He needed help, there was no questioning it, but their soldiers weren't to know how much.
The small group quickly approached the army, and they were welcomed by the blowing of a horn.
A movement started the whole army. They all turned around to see what was coming to them, whether friend or foe, and they marvelled at the sight of that skinny group coming forward.
There were two figures in the middle, surrounded by a dozen more disposed as a fan around them.
In a matter of seconds the soldiers knew who they were.
Their queen ad their lord were coming back to them.
The ones closest to the end of the camp, the ones with a better view, started cheering and applauding, blowing horns many and many times in welcoming them.
"Loras, sit straight," Margaery reached out to grab her brother's right hand, "We have to make a good entrance, that's how they'll remember us for a while."
He looked at her, almost asking her how she could think him capable of that now, but he settled for doing whatever she wanted, no matter how hard it was for him. Margaery was in charge now.
When they finally abandoned the road to start crossing the field that separated them from the camp, Margaery was beaming, at least on the outside; her men were in front of her, screaming their greeting, hitting their shields with their spears and clapping at their return.
When the crowd slit up in two wings to make them way Margaery raised her arm and Loras's in victory.
They did it.
They were safe.
They were out of that wicked city, surrounded by men who would've died to protect them.
The soldiers were all cheering, screaming welcoming phrases for them as they passed in the corridor created just for their arrival.
Just in front of them was standing their father. He was waiting for them on foot, his eyes bright with unshed tears. He couldn't almost believe his eyes.
"I told you I would've brought him back," Margaery's smile while dismounting from her horse was a little forced even if her words were trying to be joyous, and before she could rush to Loras their father was already there, helping him climb off the horse that had already lowered herself on her front legs to facilitate the task.
"My son," Mace was hugging his firstborn, "It's all over now."
"He must rest. Where…" she started looking around for a tent, and a couple of soldiers hurried up to show her the right direction.
"The maester. We need a maester now,"
"Of course, Your Grace," Willam was once again at her side, an arm around her waist once more to prevent her from falling on the ground; he'd been wise enough to use his cape to hide the gesture, "You must rest too, though,"
"Not that much. Help my brother," she ordered, and another couple of soldiers rushed to do as they were told.
Before she could give anymore orders they were in their father's tent, and Loras was being gently lowered on a pallet, where she joined him quickly. He was already asking for her.
"I'm here, I'm not going anywhere," she kissed the back of his hand, holding it between her own, "You've been good, very good. I had no idea we would've actually managed to get here today. What's important now is that you rest a little while we decide how to get home," she squeezed his hand and let it go. She was reluctant to abandon the pallet, but she knew she had orders to give before being able to personally tend to her brother, so she motioned for her father to follow her along with Vyrwel.
As she was leaving she passed the maester, so she stopped him, "The scar on his forehead. It must disappear."
"Of course, Your Grace," he bowed before hurrying to his patient.
Margaery walked enough to be out of earshot before addressing the two men following her.
"Call the banners."
"What?" Mace had a look of disbelief in his eyes, "Whom are you going to wedge war against? The Faith? The Lannisters?"
"No one," she silenced him, "We don't have the necessary strength to face a war right now, I want them to guard the borders. We'll have soldiers waiting for us when we get home, and in case we need any kind of reinforcement they'll be ready to come to our aid."
"I don't know if this is the best…"
She shot him a withering look.
"Yes, Your Grace."
Mace Tyrell was forced to surrender to his own daughter. He had to face the fact that the woman standing in front of him was his queen, and that she would've started acting like one even with her family.
Never in his life he would've imagined to see Margaery like that, covered in mud, blood and ashes, loose hair still wet clinging to a soldier's cape, her ripped dress revealing too much of her scratched legs; and yet she'd never looked more majestic. Even at her coronation in King's Landing, that was nothing compared to the woman standing in front of him. Something in her had changed, something had been unleashed, and now everything in her spoke of royalty.
She wasn't his little girl anymore, a child he had to prepare the future to.
In that moment Mace realised that he was the old generation. He wasn't the main character anymore, the one whose actions were keenly followed, he was a secondary character, a back-story.
It was Margaery's turn.
"Order to break camp, we need to move."
"Now, Your Grace?" Capitan Vyrwel asked.
"I don't see how my words could've been mistaken."
"We can't move now, it'll be sunset in an hour or two, at best. We can't travel at night,"
"I'm not waiting in the middle of nowhere for that scum to come back and get us."
"There's no way to do otherwise, though. It'd be dangerous for both the men and the animals to move in the dark, and if the horses get injured we'll have to slow down the entire march."
"Use torches, then, I don't care. We won't wait here."
"Margaery," Mace put his hands on her shoulders, "You're safe here. They won't be able to get to you. There's an army surrounding Loras and you, they couldn't even get close."
Despite everything, that was still his daughter, and he could still read something of her. She didn't want to let it show, but all that strength, all that aggressiveness, were only masking her fear; she was so scared she wouldn't have stopped running for days, but she couldn't.
"We are not safe anywhere, but our best chance is Highgarden. We have to reach it," she kept staring at them both, trying to find support in one of the two, but they weren't going to agree with her.
"If we leave now, it'll only be worse later."
"You have to rest, Loras has to rest. Do you really want him to start a journey now? You've been with him for the last hours, I've only seen him for a couple minutes, and even I can see that such a thing could kill him. Allow him to take a break, to just sleep for a few hours. You should do the same," her father stroked her shoulders to reassure her, but Margaery was still reluctant.
She couldn't trust them, trust that foreign land to welcome her. She'd tried once to call a new place home, and they all knew how well it had gone.
"We need to go home…" she uttered, her voice on the verge of breaking; she couldn't do it anymore, she couldn't be the strong leader anymore. She was the one in need of a break, of some time to think about all the things that had happened to her in the last months. The impossibly of doing so, of simply stopping for a little while, was driving her mad. Everything she had had to face, to find out that day, was about to overwhelm her now that she was in her father's arms.
It was even worse than remembering her days at Storm's End.
She had been a passer-by, a visitor, back then, but her father's comforting presence reminded her of those almost forgotten days when the idea of the throne was something so foreign to her she couldn't almost recall them.
She was about to lose it when something diverted her from her thoughts.
It was a scream, wild, of pure pain, that startled them all.
It was a voice Margaery knew too well.
She pushed away her own need to scream in a heartbeat and rushed to her brother, followed by her father and Vyrwel.
When she reached the pallet what she saw made her stomach churn.
[1] The song is obviously not in Valyrian since I wouldn't be able to write one, all the credit goes to the amazing group Wardruna. If you have never heard of them I warmly suggest you do, they are amazing.
The song I chose is called Solringen, here's the link if you want to listen to the music too (for the first minute and something it's just instrumental, then you have the lyrics too): watch?v=KuwpQc6Diqs