The Exiled King's Guard

Chapter 2: Caught?

We had been on the road for some time now. Rushing forward at full speed. Thunder was getting tired, I knew that, but I was conflicted, sure that there were people looking for us outside the border. So I decided to address the man sitting behind me, “Your Majesty, we need a break. Thunder is getting tired” I said, looking over my shoulder.

“Your Majesty?” he questioned, quirking one eyebrow. His usual velvety voice sounded tired, but I appreciated his attempt at humour. We both needed it.

“Trust you to pick up the most inane details and fixate on them”, I shot back, sighing.

“Fine then, we are heading to the river nearby.”

“The river? I don’t know any river near here”

He sighed. “You would if you stopped poring over your documents and came out with me and the boys sometimes.”

I was about to respond with something about military strategy vs brute strength when he suddenly inched closer and put his hands over mine, effectively taking the reins over Thunder. Words caught in my throat, my heart starting to beat wildly. We had never been this close before, and there was a reason for that.

He started guiding thunder off the path and into the woods, the pace slowing down. Thanks to the uneven ground, both of us were bumping into each other repeatedly and my mind was starting to freeze up.

No. I have to stay on track, I scolded myself, locking these emotions away with everything else I had been feeling the past few hours. Emotions were a luxury for a warrior and a unit commander. If I didn’t appear stern and hard, I would have a difficult time among my men. Something that made me ruthless in battle and strategy, I had kept my head in so many stressful situations that the king had handpicked me for this very day. After having an extensive discussion about my loyalty of course.

Getting back to reality, I saw a river up front, about 20 feet wide. My eyes widened in surprise, “Why isn’t this documented?” I asked before I could stop myself.

“It is. It just doesn’t enter the kingdom, comes from the north and turns west a few miles from our last farmlands. You would know if you stopped obsessing over the inside of the kingdom.”

“Hey!! At least I know everything that goes on in the kingdom!” I said, a little annoyed at his constant jabs.

“So do I, because I go out and see the things you only read about in reports.”

I huffed in irritation. Remembering now why I avoided him and his boys. They were ten times worse when combined. As we neared the river, I maneuvered myself to jump down, not wanting to be this close to him. But in my effort to not kick him or hurt Thunder while dismounting, my right leg tangled with the stirrups and I fell, hitting my left leg at an awkward angle trying to break the fall and felt a jolt of pain radiate through my shin.

I yelped and cursed loudly. Zach was immediately by my side, concern colouring his previously smirking face. “Are you alright?” he asked, trying to look at the leg I was holding, inspecting it for wounds.

“I think I broke something, the pain is real bad.”

“Arrghh, I stay fine on the battleground, but break my leg dismounting, what kind of joke is this?” I groan in frustration and pain.

Zach looks at me, barely holding back his smile, and with one murderous look from me, he completely breaks down, laughing hard. I keep trying to glare at him, but the sombre mood is broken, and I manage to smile, focusing on his laughter instead of the pain. We stay like that for a few minutes until he calms down.

“Okay, what are we gonna do about this? We are still in mortal peril, this will only slow us down more.” I ask.

Without answering me, he starts moving about, looking for something, suddenly serious. He comes back with a few pieces of wood, measuring them up against my shin. “Can you give me your jacket?” he asks suddenly.

“What are you trying to do Your Majesty?” I emphasize the last two words, hoping that would get him to give me an answer, as I take off my jacket and give it to him.

“We are making a makeshift cast for you My lady.” He retorts, while proceeding to remove my boot.

“I am not a noble Zach. Plus I would rather be..Oww!!” I screamed, and slapped him on the arm.

“What are you… what was that??!” I hissed through the pain, my eyes welling up with tears.

He still moved about calmly as he set the pieces of wood and bound them together with a piece of fabric from my now torn-up jacket.

“We needed to set your bone right, dummy. Or would you rather walk like a witch with backwards feet?” he says after he is done. Sitting back and looking at his handiwork.

“Well, I could have used a warning. I haven’t dealt with broken bones as much as you. You know spies only fight when the situation is dire. Or need I remind the great Prince Know-it-all that some of us work off the field too”, I gritted through my teeth.

“ Come on” he said, hauling me up on my feet. “We need to get across the river, lose our scent to the hunting dogs.”

I hesitated, not confident about walking into the river when I could barely walk. “Take thunder across first. I will cover up our footprints this side.”

“I would rather all of us go and find a hiding place then come back later for that, Ashley.”

“No Zach. They are possibly on our tail. We can't lose any more time. Let me finish this. You go find a hiding place and then come back for me”

He nodded reluctantly before leaving with thunder. I set about my tasks. First things first, a walking stick. I was rummaging around for one when he called me, halfway into the water.

“Ashley, if they find you, you do NOT engage, you hide. That’s an order, okay?”

I nodded my head in agreement, knowing that would be the sensible thing to do.

Resuming my job of looking for a stick, I looked around a bit, while ensuring that I made a mess of all the existing footprints. Looking at the damp mud near the riverbank, an idea struck my head. As quickly as I could in my current state, I removed my boots and proceeded to shove my feet in them in the wrong direction. Then I started to hobble back and forth on the riverbank, making a fresh set of footprints. I was almost done, moving towards the river for the last time, essentially making it look like someone had walked away from the river because of the way I was wearing the boots.

That’s when I heard it. The sound of hoofs and horses. And I froze, my mind racing. It sounded like they were still a few minutes away. Given the amount of time it had taken them to catch up to us, it was clear they didn’t know for sure if we were headed in this direction. My guess was they sent soldiers in all possible directions we could be. Which meant there was a fifty-fifty chance that they would look at this particular spot near the river. And this also gave me probably only a minute to find my hiding spot. Because on thing that was starkly clear in the whole situation was that I needed to hide.

I looked around frantically for something. All the bushes were too small to hide me, I couldn’t climb any trees with a broken leg and there were no big boulders on this side of the river. The sounds were getting closer. Hoping that they would just pass by, I started making my way into the river and towards my last desperate hiding place, below the water.

Prepared to duck below at any moment, I continued to half wade, half limp through the water. Up ahead I saw Zach walking through from behind some trees. He looked up and was about to say something but I immediately held up a finger to my lips, motioning behind me with my other hand. His face immediately morphed into something unreadable, focusing now on the soldiers just beyond the trees. I had seen this look so many times before, during training, when dealing with state matters. I knew what it meant, his brain was whirring at full speed, calmly calculating, gathering information, formulating a dozen different plans.

Suddenly, there was a lot of pain in my broken ankle, and I lost my balance, giving an unexpected scream.

“Splash!!” I fell face forward into the water with a loud noise. Cursing inwardly, I realized the riverbed here was very uneven and I had lost footing on my good leg, putting all the pressure on the broken one. I quickly resurfaced my head and realized that everything had gone quiet. I quickly looked around at Zach, his face was full of concern and something else, something I had only seen before on his enemies’ faces before he killed them, fear. He motioned me to duck below and moved to go back to the trees where he had appeared from. Why was he scared? It didn’t make any sense. He never feared a good fight, which is the worst-case scenario here. Then what would bring out such a reaction?

I was jolted out of my thoughts by the sounds of incoming horses and men shouting to each other to investigate up and down the side of the riverbank I had just come from. Cursing myself for my stupidity, I took a deep breath and ducked under the water, hoping my fake footprints would take them away from here soon.