“Go,” Samuel barked at the uncertain men staring anxiously their way.
Only a few men hesitated. Most of the warriors simply leapt into saddles, and fled. Those that had lost their horses, or had none, simply ran. Even those few hesitant men turned and ran at the end. None looked back.
“I know you’re hurting, lad,” Samuel came up beside him now, nodding at him when Koa simply ignored him. Staring only at Lia.
He sighed again.
“I have to take him home. The commander always wished to be buried….in his native mountains.”
“He’d like that,” Lia murmured.
“Did you get the cowardly commander,” Samuel finally asked when Lia simply hugged him, and leaned against him, obviously relieved he had not resisted. Or kept slaughtering.
“Aye. He was the first to fall. He, at least, had courage.”
“Yet you kept….killing,” Lia mourned.
“They attacked me,” he spat, sounding angry now. “I told them I came only for that master of assassins, and they still tried to stop me. They have none to blame but themselves for this slaughter,” he spat.
Samuel, knowing how easily Koa could sometimes lose control of his own temper when fighting, said nothing.
“If a man draws steel, lady,” Samuel told Lia. “He must expect to occasionally be cut. ’Tis a fact of life.”
“I…. I know. But… Koa, you could have more to life than just battle. Much more. Eric wishes to speak to you. He has a plan….”
“I know his plan. Go home. I will take the commander’s body north.”
“And then,” she asked quietly.
He sighed again, his body already turning a soft gray as he began to fade away.
“I will know when I do it,” he said, sounding much like that distant, melancholy man she had first seen on the wall back in Galdyn.
“Koa,” she cried out, but he had already vanished.
“Sir Winters,” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he told her. “The lad has never truly fit in with anyone save the commander. I confess I don’t have the slightest notion what he might be thinking now if the commander is gone.”
“If you see him…. Please, tell him to remember what his….brother said. That he is a man now. He is a good man,” she said with a quiet sniff as she turned for her horse.
Samuel said nothing, heading for his own weary horse. They had ridden hard to get here, and been just short of too late. Only the fates could say what the Galdynian lord would make of this attack. If he was wise, though, he would stay behind his borders, and never even look their way again.
Because he had seen that look in Koa’s eyes before Lia reached him.
He really had been ready to start wiping Galdyn off the map. Whatever else he had said, Samuel knew that lad well enough to know that when he started, he rarely stopped until not one enemy was left alive on his field.
Galdyn had but a respite just now.
What they did next could well determine what would occur in the days to come.
He forced Lia to walk her horse, as he did his, knowing they couldn’t take another hard ride. Like it or not, they had to take their time. Both of them knowing that Koa was likely going to be gone anyway by the time they got there.
After all, how did you keep up with someone that could cross miles in minutes, or walk between worlds?
X
“Lady,” Squire Samuel Winters, landed for his service to the Valdoran king nodded as the young redhead rode up to him as he stepped out of his modest manor house. “What brings you back to Kanlys in this late season?”
She smiled as she dropped from her horse, ignoring her escort’s sour looks as the men rode up behind her, along with a carriage she obviously didn’t care to use.
Samuel didn’t even bat an eye at the short, but likely lethal sword she wore at her side.
In truth, he understood completely.
In the two years since the war was won, and Galdyn slinked off to hide behind walls that grew daily from the gossip he overheard, times had not been easy for anyone. Princess Lia had fought off her own assassins, ignored the rumors she was ‘tainted’ by darkness by petty men she spurned, and ruled in her own right as the new overlord of Kanlys after she all but demanded her brother treat her like a comrade. Not a bauble.
Gossip also claimed the siblings had come to blows on occasion over some of their…disagreements.
The lady, as Koa had claimed all along, had spirit.
“I heard a rather interesting rumor, Sir Winters,” the woman smiled as she embraced him as if he were a true peer. “Tell me, have you heard of a somewhat mysterious homesteader who set up his estate just south of the borderlands?”
“In truth, I have. Still, many freemen have dared the Franks of late as your brother’s taxes grew too heavy for them to bear.”
“Never mind Eric’s folly. Tell me if you know if ’tis him?”
“Koa? Lady, I can honestly say none have seen the lad since he took Sir Jengus’ body home.”
“I’m riding south, to investigate this rumor, Samuel,” she called him easily. “Mayhap you’d like to ride along?”
He chuckled at the expressions on her escort’s faces.
“I take it your lads are less than eager to test Frankish hospitality?”
“They don’t like my errand, or my independence. You know how some men are, Samuel. They feel all woman little better than slaves they think should be chained to their beds. Or stoves. All depending upon their needs.”
Samuel chortled.
“I pity the man that thinks to chain you anywhere, my lady,” he nodded. “Still, aye. If there is a chance Koa is about, I’d not mind seeing him again.”
“Do you see any of your own companions any longer?”
“Hardly. Most sailed off to the Western Isles to fight in the civil war there. I could have told them, mercenaries make poor sailors. And whatever your side, the sea is a harsh place for any man when she’s angry.”
“And the rest,” she asked kindly.
“Many of the older freemen took their wages and plunder, and rode back north. They considered the Wolf’s fall as an omen.”
“Aye, you northmen are all superstitious babes,” one of the warriors with the escort sneered.
“Little man,” Samuel drawled. “Did you see just half of what this old babe has seen, you’d likely wet yourself,” he declared.
Lia chortled.
“I don’t doubt you. Shall we go then, my friend,” he was called by the princess.
“In truth. I have been getting bored of late,” he grinned, and called for his horse.
X
“Greetings, Lady,” the lean, dark-haired man bowed as she rode right up to him as he stood over a plow hitched to a small mule in the middle of a recently cleared field.
“You’ve a familiar look, sir,” she told him, searching his face. “Are we acquainted?”
“Us? Lady, my kind rarely mix with yours,” the young man smiled in a self-deprecating manner.
“Tell me your name,” she asked, dropping from her saddle as her escort only then appeared on the horizon.
“You risk much riding so far ahead of your protectors.”
“I do not need a protector,” she huffed, putting a hand on her sword. “I do need a friend.”
“Then may you ever find all you need,” he half-bowed to her.
“Koa?”
“Nay, Lady. I am Adam. Adam Snow.”
“A curious name.”
“’Tis quite common in the northlands,” he told her, his dark eyes lit with mirth.
“You are far from the north.”
“Aye, but I found it dreadfully cold, and dull there. Thus, I chose to seek my fate in the south. Where you can feel the warmth of the sun, and not fret over mountain wolves, or bears creeping up on you as you slowly freeze to death.”
She chuckled, and said, “I think you would likely be the one creeping up on them.”
He only smiled.
“I know you,” she finally said.
“Does anyone ever truly know another,” he asked.
“Eric would have made you a lord.”
“I would argue that one cannot be made anything. But they can earn their way, if they are willing to work.”
“I cannot argue your point. I’ve been using it myself of late in my….discussions with my brother.”
The escort was getting closer now, but she did not look back.
“I have waited for you to return to me.”
“I am not Koa. Nor am I of noble blood.”
“Nor was my grandfather, who stole a crown with a sword, and two legions of followers.”
He smirked now.
“I don’t care about titles. Or aught else. You opened my eyes, and showed me my own worth. Call yourself anything you wish, but I’ll still know you. And I’ll still want you at my side.”
“Truly,” he murmured, turning from the plow only then.
“In my chains,” she told him quietly. “I oft lay in the darkness and dreamed of a friend. A champion. Someone that would come to me, tear off my bonds, and lead me into the light. Someone that would not overpower me, but would stand beside me. Someone who would….cherish me for who I am. Not what I am.”
“Any man that cannot see your worth, Lady,” he smiled at her, “Is truly a fool.”
“And are you?”
“I will not be a lord. Nor a weapon,” he finally said, making only that small admission before the men rode up behind them.
“He’s not the shadow,” one of the king’s men huffed. “You led us on yet another fool’s errand, Princess. When will you…”
“Here now,” Samuel cut in. “I wager King Eric would not like knowing his dogs speak so boldly to his sister.”
“He’s only angry that I beat him at dice last night,” Lia drawled, making Adam laugh.
“And what did he lose,” the apparent farmsteader asked.
“His wages for the next month,” the officer in the lead grinned.
“Then he only has himself to blame. A man should only wager what he can afford to lose,” he quipped.
Samuel stared hard at him.
That was one of Jengus’ favorite adages.
“So, if you’re not our missing friend,” Samuel asked. “Who are you, man,” he asked, noting there was something familiar about him, but not in his visage. He looked a Northman born, and not anything of the young Kanlysan lad his friend had raised from a mere boy.
“Adam Snow,” he said, and Samuel’s eyes rounded.
“A potent name,” he murmured, knowing from Jengus’ stories that Adam Snow was the First. The first Shadow ever drawn into the world of men by mages first learning magics.
He was said to have been a power beyond reckoning. That he only left the world when he grew bored with men. Because none of them could resist him, or command him.
It was, he knew, a name right out of legend.
“I take it you are on friendly terms with the Franks, then,” he finally asked.
“We get along,” Adam smiled at Sam, nodding up at the older man.
“So, Adam,” Lia finally asked him, looking right at him. “Do you move to Kanlys, or must I move my capital here?”
Only Samuel burst into laughter.
Her men were only staring.
Adam, his voice just loud enough for only her to hear, said, “Whatever you wish, my lady,” with the faintest of smiles.
Lia shocked all her men when she abruptly threw herself into his arms, and embraced him.
“I should be angry you did not return at once.”
“I’ve been here waiting for you to find me,” he restored quietly.
“What if I had not found you,” she complained.
“Yet, you did.”
“I see you’re going to be as thick as Eric, aren’t you,” she huffed, but did not let him go.
“Who do you think sent you the rumors to my presence,” she was chided.
Now she laughed, and hugged him all the more.
“At least Eric will finally stop complaining over my marital state. I think I’ll need to explain why I intend to wed a Xantian farmsteader, though.”
“Or, we could not say anything, and live in peace until he shows up. If he shows.”
“I like that notion,” she beamed, and lay her head on his chest. “He can be obnoxious.”
“Most kings are,” he agreed easily.
Samuel, saying nothing of his own suspicions, merely asked, “Does this mean you are giving up your quest to find our missing Shadow, princess?”
“I have found something better,” she grinned up at him. “A man that meets my standards.”
Not one of her men commented as Adam invited them to stay and rest for the night.
As scandalous as most considered her, none of her former admirers could quite believe the news a few weeks later when it was revealed the princess of Valdor had wed a mere farmsteader. To their astonishment, she was said to be a very contented, and happy bride.
End
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Steel and Shadow: An Epic Fantasy Page 10
