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“I shouldn’t even be here,” moaned Penny’s mother. “My head won’t stop pounding. Penny, dear, can you fetch me another hot towel?”
Penny did, though it wasn’t likely to help her mother any more than the last towel had. In her mind, Penny composed an essay entitled, “How I Spent My Summer Holiday,” and it began, “I watched my father destroy the cultural heart of our nation, and I humored my mother’s hypochondria.”
“I wouldn’t be here at all,” the duchess continued, “if it weren’t for the fact that your father brought that whore along with him. When your father rides in triumph through the gates of the Bocburg, Penny, I don’t want Molly Coburn to be the woman riding beside him.”
That was fair enough, as far as Penny was concerned. For her part, though, she would rather have stayed in Formacaster. The only thing that had interested her even slightly about this march was the fact that they would be passing the Erstenwell Abbey. Penny had a great many questions for Sister Morwen—things that were too embarrassing to put in a letter—and she had been looking forward to stopping in and having a good, long talk with the kindhearted nun. At long, long last, Penny felt as if she had gained the upper hand over her feelings for Edwin Sigor, and now she wanted some objective advice about what she should do for the rest of her life.
Unfortunately, it looked as if they weren’t going to get to Erstenwell, after all. The Keneburgian army was holding the ridge with the abbey, so the Gramirens were apparently sitting at the other side of the valley. So close, but yet so far.
Penny’s mother had a map of the area on her bedside table, and Penny spent some time studying it, looking at the little intersecting lines of roads. It wouldn’t be that hard to ride around the end of her father’s army and cross the valley to the abbey. There were woods and swamps, and all sorts of little farm lanes cut through the countryside. The Sigors couldn’t possibly be watching them all, could they?
As always, it took Penny very little time to go from a vague idea to a fully-formed plan. Her mother called her “impulsive,” but Penny preferred to think of it as using her imagination in the most efficient possible manner. She waited until her mother had dozed off, and then wrote a very carefully worded letter. There was nothing in it that was actually a lie. That was important to her; Penny was a stickler for the truth.
Dear Mother,
I am nervous about the battle tomorrow and about my future. I have gone to seek some spiritual guidance. Don’t worry about me. I will be back soon.
Your loving daughter,
Penny
She left the letter on her bed, slipped down to the stables, and took her horse. First she went south, looking for the end of the Gramiren lines. As darkness fell, she was challenged by a sentry. When she gave her name, he tried to dissuade her from riding any farther, but she assured him she knew exactly where she was going, and he let her go.
Fog descended and filled the valley, and soon Penny couldn’t see more than a few yards in front of her horse. She could still hear the army off in the mist—and sometimes she could see watch fires. When she thought she had gone far enough, she took a left turn, heading east, and rode downhill. She had a fairly good idea where she was, until the road turned north again. She didn’t remember seeing a road that did that on the map. Should she try to cut across a field, perhaps? A minute later, and the road twisted again before coming to an intersection. She didn’t remember that on the map, either.
For the first time, she was truly scared, as it occurred to her that she was lost and alone between two armies. “This is incredibly stupid,” she thought. No advice from Sister Morwen could possibly be worth this. She turned her horse in the direction she thought was west and started heading back.
A voice cried out of the fog, telling her to stop and dismount. She did so, and a moment later, she saw two riders approach, one of them with an arrow nocked to his bowstring.
“P-perhaps you gentlemen can help me,” she said. “I’m a bit lost, and I’m trying to get back to my inn.”
They didn’t look very convinced. “Which inn?” one of them asked.
“The, er...White Hart, I think.”
“That’s five miles from here,” the one with the bow said. “And on the other side of the Gramiren lines.” The way he said the name, “Gramiren” sent a cold shudder down Penny’s back. These men were Sigors.
They arrested her on the spot for spying, and said that they were going to have to take her to their commander.
“Please, I’m really not a spy,” she said. “I’m Penelope Ostensen, and if you send me back to my father’s lines, I’m sure he’ll be very grateful.”
They laughed at her, which made her feel truly miserable. Although, in fairness, she had to admit that her claim sounded rather improbable. Mostly because her idea of riding around the armies was so incredibly, insanely idiotic.
“Take me to the convent,” she pleaded. “Sister Morwen Byrne knows me. She can tell you who I am.”
The Sigor scouts, however, insisted that she needed to come to their headquarters. It turned out to be a tent a few yards from the convent gate. As they escorted her to the tent flap, she could see the dark shape of the abbey church towers rising in the fog. There it was—the place she’d been trying to reach. Sister Morwen was just yards away, but there was no way to get to her.
In the tent, two men in mail were looking over a map with their backs to her. “Pardon me, my lords,” said the scout. “We caught this woman by the stone bridge. We think she’s a spy, but she claims to be Duke Lukas’s daughter.”
At those words, both men turned around to look at her, and she knew them both instantly. One was Andras Byrne. And the other was Edwin Sigor.
“Penny!” said Edwin, his eyes wide with shock.
“What were you doing taking a ride there?” asked Andras. He sounded more curious than angry.
Penny took a deep breath and tried not to look too closely at Edwin while she explained to Andras how she had been trying to go see his sister, Morwen, at the convent. The way they looked at her made her want to go crawl under a rock somewhere. Clearly, they both thought she was mad, and she couldn’t honestly blame them.
“Holy fucking Finster,” said Andras, shaking his head. “What was so blasted important that you couldn’t wait until after the battle?”
“Penny,” said Edwin again. He hadn’t moved. “Can I talk to you alone?”
He and Andras exchanged a long glance, and then Andras, rolling his eyes, led the scouts out of the command tent. And here Penny was at last; alone with Edwin for the first time since she’d slapped his face and run away from him more than a year ago. Her heart raced, and her stomach roiled, and her face burned. She felt like she was going to throw up.
“Penny, did you really go riding to see Morwen? Or were you...,” he was blushing now, too, “were you trying to see me?”
It was an astonishingly arrogant question, but the way he said it, in a tiny, heartbroken voice, made Penny want to give him a hug. So she did. And then she kissed him, too.
Half a second later, when he started to embrace her in return, she realized that she was making yet another colossal mistake. She had no idea why she was kissing him. It was the impulse of a moment, and it was such a terrible idea.
And then he stepped back and pushed her away. “Penny, I’m sorry. This isn’t the time for this. I’m not sure there’s ever going to be a time for this. I’m really sorry.”
It was such a relief to hear him say it. As soon as he did, she knew he was right—there was never going to be a time when their relationship would work. She had wanted him; she had needed him. But that had all been an illusion. In reality he was a scared little boy, and she was a scared little girl, and neither of them was ready for this. She had to let it go.
It hurt; it felt like having something torn out of her painfully and suddenly. But after a few seconds, she could breathe again. She felt better than she had in months.
He didn’t really want this any more than she did. She didn’t need his approval or his agreement, but it felt good to have it, anyway. This was the end between them, but she still liked him, and she was glad he agreed it should end.
“Yes, you’re right,” she said. “I don’t know why I did that. I don’t know why I’ve done any of this. I wish I could go back and tell myself not to spend a whole year trying to recover something that would never have worked.”
“I feel the same way,” he said with a crooked smile.
She took his hand. “We will be friends, though, won’t we?”
“Obviously.”
They hugged again, and she cried a little, not really out of sadness, but more from relief. Then Edwin asked if she’d like to stay in the convent until the battle was over. She nearly answered “yes.” She would have a chance to see Sister Morwen, and that had been her whole purpose in leaving the inn tonight. But the whole trip had gone wrong now. Or rather, it had gone right in a way she hadn’t expected.
She still wanted to speak to Morwen, but it didn’t feel so urgent. Instead, she wanted to go back and see her mother and governess. She wanted to fetch hot towels and cups of tea. She wanted to sit with her mother’s ladies and pray for all their husbands and sons. She wanted to be back home.
“Listen, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble, do you think you could send me back to my father’s lines?”
Edwin nodded. “I’ll get a herald. You can go under a flag of truce.”
Ten minutes later, she had said goodbye to the man of her most childish dreams and was headed back into the misty night with a Sigor herald. He rode ahead of her, with a bright white lantern and a truce flag. The lantern, rather than casting aside the gloom, just increased it, with a uniform gray glow all around them.
The herald sucked air through his teeth and looked nervously around as they approached the stone bridge. “I don’t mind telling you, my lady, that I’ll be very glad to see the back of you. No offense.”
“None taken,” she said quietly. His nervousness worried her a great deal, and she was starting to feel that she had made yet another terrible mistake. And this one might be the last one she ever made.
In the glow of the lantern, she saw a row of honeysuckles and briars, and under the clop of their horses’ hoofs and the beating of her own heart, she heard the rush of water somewhere nearby. The River Basing, obviously, which meant the bridge couldn’t be too far away.
“Hold there! Friend or foe!” someone shouted.
“A herald!” Penny’s companion shouted back. “Under flag of truce.” He raised both the lantern and the flag over his head to be sure.
“Here they come!” the voice cried from the haze, and an instant later, there was a low, nasty hiss through the air. And another. And two or three more. Penny turned her head in time to see an arrow flash past, inches from her face.
The herald shouted that this was contrary to the rules of war, but off in the gloom, someone screamed, “The Sigors are attacking!” And then right before Penny’s eyes, the herald was run through with three arrows, all at once. They stuck out of him at odd angles—through his throat, his chest, and his stomach. He wavered, eyes rolling. Then he fell out of his saddle, and the lantern came crashing to the ground, and everything was black.
Penny’s horse let out a wild squeal of fright, and when she reached down to pat its neck and reassure it, she felt the shaft of an arrow there, and a hot spurting fountain of blood. The horse reeled and knelt forward. She had just time to jump free before it rolled on its back and died.
She could hear the arrows raining down all around her now. Something whipped through her hair, brushing her scalp, and she crawled like mad for the safety of the trees. They were only dim shapes in the darkness, but she felt instinctively she would be safer there.
“It’s the Sigors,” the idiot across the river shouted again. “I can hear them in the trees there.”
Penny got to the riverbank and pressed herself against a tree trunk. It was barely wide enough to hide her, and she heard the arrows go whistling past her on the left and right.
“I’m an Ostensen, you fools!” she shouted. “I’m on your side!”
But now arrows shot back the other way. One stuck, quivering and humming, in the tree trunk above her head. Up the hillside, in the direction of the abbey, she could hear the tramp of marching feet, and some officer shouting about, “a fight down by the river.”
She crawled around the tree and rolled down the riverbank, taking shelter under a nearby fallen log. “Oh, Earstien,” she thought. “I think I just started the battle.”