"Beggin' yer pardon, m'lord Vanyel," said one of the grooms, hesitantly, "But yer father - "
"I really could not care less what my father ordered,"
Vanyel interrupted, rudely and angrily. "He isn't going to have to ride halfway to the end of the world on that hobbyhorse. I am the one being sent on this little exile, and I am not going to ride that. I refuse to enter the capital on a beast that is going to make me look like a clown. Besides, Star is mine, not his. The Lady Treesa gave her to me, and I intend to take her with me. Saddle her."
The groom continued to hesitate.
"If you won't," Vanyel said, his eyes narrowing, his voice edged with the coldest steel, "I will. Either way you'll have trouble. And if I have to do it, and my lady mother finds out, you'll have trouble from her as well as my father."
The groom shrugged, and went after Star and her tack, leaving his fellow to strip the pony and turn it into the pasture.
Lovely. Put me on a mount only a tyro would have to ride, and make it look as if I was too much a coward to handle a real horse. Make me look a fool, riding into Haven on a pony. And deprive me of something I treasured. Not this time, Father.
In fact, Vanyel was already firmly in Star's saddle by the time Lord Withen made a somewhat belated appearance in the stableyard. The grooms were fastening the last of the packs on the backs of three mules, and the armsmen were waiting, also mounted, out in the yard.
Vanyel patted the proudly arched neck of his Star, a delicately-boned black palfrey with a perfect white star on her forehead, a star that had one long point that trailed down her nose. He ignored his father for a long moment, giving him a chance to absorb the sight of his son on his spirited little blood-mare instead of the homely old pony. Then he nudged Star toward the edge of the yard where Lord Withen stood; by his stunned expression, once again taken by surprise. She picked her way daintily across the gravel, making very little sound, like a remnant of night-shadow in the early morning light. Vanyel had had all her tack dyed the same black as his riding leathers, and was quite well aware of how striking they looked together.
So was she; she curved her neck and carried her tail like a banner as he directed her toward his father.
Lord Withen's expression changed as they approached; first discomfited, then resigned. Vanyel kept his the same as it had been all this morning; nonexistent. He kept his gaze fixed on a point slightly above his father's head.
Behind him, Vanyel could hear the mules being led out to have the lead rein of the first fastened to the cantle of one of the armsmen's saddles. He halted Star about then, a few paces from the edge of the yard. He looked down at his father, keeping his face completely still, completely closed.
They stared at each other for a long moment; Vanyel could see Withen groping for something appropriate to say. And each time he began to speak, the words died unspoken beneath Vanyel's cold and dispassionate gaze.
I'm not going to make this easy for you, Father. Not after what you 've done to me; not after what you tried to do to me just now. I'm going to follow my sire's example. I'm going to be just as nasty as you are - but I'm going to do it with more style.
The silence lengthened almost unbearably; even the armsmen began picking up the tension, and shifted uneasily in their saddles. Their cobs fidgeted and snorted restlessly.
Vanyel and Star could have been a statue of onyx and silver.
Finally Vanyel decided he had prolonged the agony enough. He nodded, once, almost imperceptibly. Then, without a word, he wheeled Star and nudged her lightly with his heels. She tossed her head and shot down the road to the village at a fast trot, leaving the armsmen cursing and kicking at their beasts behind him, trying to catch up.
He reined Star in once they were past the Forst Reach village, not wanting her to tire herself so early in the journey, and not wanting to give the armsmen an excuse to order him to ride between them.
Father's probably told them that they 're to watch for me trying to bolt, he thought cynically, as Star fought the rein for a moment, then settled into a more-or-less sedate walk. And indeed, that surmise was confirmed when he saw them exchange surreptitious glances and not-too-well concealed sighs of relief. Huh. Little do they know.
For once they got beyond the Forst Reach lands that lay under the plow, they entered the completely untamed woodlands that lay between Forst Reach and the nearest eastward holding of Prytheree Ford. This forest land had been left purposely wild; there weren't enough people to farm it at either Holding, and it supplied all of the wood products and a good half of the meat eaten in a year to the people of both Holdings.
It took skilled foresters to make their way about in a wood like this. And Vanyel knew very well that he had no more idea of how to survive in wilderland than he did of how to sprout fins and breathe water.
The road itself was hardly more than a rutted track of hard-packed dirt meandering through a tunnel of tree branches. The branches themselves were so thick overhead that they rode in a kind of green twilight. Although the sun was dispersing the mist outside the wood, there were still tendrils of it wisping between the trees and lying across the road. And only an occasional sunbeam was able to make its way down through the canopy of leaves to strike the roadway. To either side, the track was edged with thick bushes; a hint here and there of red among the green leaves told Vanyel that those bushes were blackberry hedges, probably planted to keep bears and other predators off the road itself. Even if he'd been thinking of escape, he was not fool enough to dare their brambly embrace. Even less did he wish to damage Star's tender hide with the unkind touch of their thorns.
Beyond the bushes, so far as he could see, the forest floor was a tangle of vegetation in which he would be lost in heartbeats.
No, he was not in the least tempted to bolt and run, but there were other reasons not to run besides the logical ones.
There were - or seemed to be - things tracking them under the shelter of the underbrush. Shadow-shapes that made no sound.
He didn't much like those shadows behind the bushes or ghosting along with the fog. He didn't at all care for the way they moved, sometimes following the riders on the track for furlongs before giving up and melting into deeper forest. Those shadows called to mind far too many stories and tales - and the Border, with all its uncanny creatures, wasn't all that far from here.
The forest itself was too quiet for Vanyel's taste, even had those shadows not been slinking beneath the trees. Only occasionally could he hear a bird call above the dull clopping of the horses' hooves, and that was faint and far off. No breeze stirred the leaves above them; no squirrels ran along the branches to scold them. Of course it was entirely possible that they were frightening all the nearby wildlife into silence simply with their presence; these woods were hunted regularly. That was the obvious explanation of the silence beneath the trees.