The Silver Moon Princess

The Drovers Path

“How far out?” Corwin was already pushing upright against the supply crate, ignoring

Ysbeth’s sharp look, wound or no wound.

“A day. Maybe less, if they push hard.” Ysbeth’s voice had gone clipped with the particular

calm of a woman fighting down panic through sheer discipline. “They’re not searching this

time. They know roughly where we are, and they’re bringing enough soldiers to make sure

whatever they find, they can take by force.”

“Then we don’t stay to find out what they bring,” Kael said. “Elara — the Convocation.

Eleven days was already tight. If we’re forced to move now, in the direction of danger

instead of waiting for it to find us—”

“You want to go to Moonspire now,” I said, understanding the shape of his thought before he

finished it. “Not in eleven days. Now, while they think we’re still hiding in these hills.”

“It’s reckless,” Corwin said, immediately.

“Everything about tonight is reckless,” Ysbeth countered. “Staying here is reckless. The only

question is which reckless choice gives you better odds.”

We left within the hour, stripped down to what could be carried on foot and on the two

horses Ysbeth insisted on parting with despite Corwin’s protests, moving west toward the old

drover’s paths Kael had described — tracks abandoned by the pack councils years ago,

narrow and overgrown and exactly the kind of forgotten ground that might, with enough luck,

carry us past a company of soldiers expecting to find us moving east, toward safety, instead

of directly toward the danger they’d come from.

The path climbed hard through country that punished every mile, Corwin gritting through

pain he wouldn’t admit to, Kael leading with the quiet confidence of a man walking ground

he’d known as a boy, before either of us had understood what any of it would eventually cost.

It was on the second day, cresting a ridge that Kael promised would drop us within sight of

the old checkpoint road, that we found the soldiers instead of avoiding them.

Not the full company. A forward patrol, six riders in Lord Protector colors, stopped at a

narrow crossing where the drover’s path met the checkpoint road proper, clearly expecting

exactly the kind of travelers we’d become.

“Ravenswood colors,” one of them said, low, as Kael stepped instinctively in front of me,

some old habit of protection neither of us had discussed but both of us understood. “That’s

the disowned heir. Word said he might be running with her.”

“Then word was right,” Kael said, and something in his voice had gone harder than I’d ever

heard it, harder than the crossroads inn, harder than the night he’d ridden into our camp

alone. “You have two choices. Let us pass, or explain to whoever sent you why you chose to

engage a silver wolf and lost.”

The patrol’s leader studied us a long moment — Corwin’s blade already drawn despite his

wound, Kael’s stance immovable, me standing just behind them both with power humming

under my skin that I understood now, finally, how to direct instead of merely survive.

“Six against three,” the leader said, though something uncertain had crept into his voice.

“Six against three, one of whom is the wolf your Lord Protector put a bounty on specifically

because his own soldiers can’t handle her cleanly,” Corwin said. “Ask yourself how confident

you actually feel about those odds.”

The silence stretched taut enough to hurt.

Then the leader’s horse shifted, uneasy, and something in his expression cracked — not into

retreat, not yet, but into the particular hesitation of a man doing arithmetic he didn’t like the

answer to.

“We report your position,” he said, finally. “That’s all. We’re not paid enough to test a silver

wolf’s temper over a forward patrol’s pride.”

“Report it, then,” Kael said. “By the time reinforcements arrive, we’ll be considerably further

down this road than you’d like.”

They wheeled and rode east, back toward the company we’d nearly walked into, and I let out

a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding since the crest of the ridge.

“That won’t hold them long,” Corwin said, already moving again, urgency overriding

whatever relief the standoff had bought us. “We need distance, now, before that report

reaches anyone with the authority to send real numbers after us.”

We pushed hard through what remained of the day, the checkpoint road giving way to

country I didn’t recognize, until exhaustion finally forced a stop as the light failed entirely.

It was Kael who found me again at the edge of the small camp we’d made, the adrenaline of

the standoff still humming under my skin in a way that made stillness feel impossible.

“You were steady back there,” he said, quiet. “Six riders, and you didn’t flinch.”

“I wasn’t steady. I was terrified.”

“Terrified and steady aren’t opposites, Elara. I’ve watched enough soldiers in my life to know

the difference between someone who isn’t afraid and someone who’s afraid and moves

forward anyway.” Something in his expression had gone soft despite the day’s danger still

clinging to both of us. “The second one is considerably rarer, and considerably more

frightening to stand against, which I imagine is exactly why that patrol chose to ride away

instead of finding out for certain.”

“I keep thinking about what happens when it isn’t six riders anymore,” I said. “When it’s the

whole Convocation, and Malachi himself, and every allied house that’s spent twenty years

deciding not to ask difficult questions.”

“Then you’ll be terrified and steady in that room too,” Kael said. “And I’ll be standing beside

you when you are.”

He reached for my hand in the dark, and this time neither of us hesitated before closing the

distance entirely — his mouth finding mine, careful at first and then considerably less so,

weeks of circling and danger and half-said truths finally collapsing into something neither of

us seemed inclined to pull back from.

It was the sudden, sharp scream of a horse from the edge of camp that tore us apart, and I

turned in time to see fire arc across the treeline — not soldiers this time, not a patrol looking

for a report to carry home, but something considerably more organized, closing in on our

camp from three directions at once.