One day she would gallop along and shoot her arrows without fear. But that was not this day. Instead she practiced every time they slowed the horses to a walk.
Beside her, Maddek observed, “Soon your shoulders will feel as your ass did the first day in the saddle.”
She knew they would. Just as her shoulders and arms had ached in the days following Ran Ashev’s first lessons. And those lessons had culminated in the death of her oldest brother. Now she dreamed these practices would culminate in an arrow through her father’s neck—a dream that had seemed impossible until this very morning, when Maddek had given her this bow, as if her missing fingers had changed nothing at all.
Grinning happily, Yvenne replied, “I have not a care.”
She knew not when Maddek’s grin had become more handsome than his scowl, yet she could hardly look away from him. But with effort, she did, focusing on the road ahead.
Maddek brought her attention back round by asking, “What occupies your thoughts this morn?”
Because she had been nearly as silent as yesterday, when he’d believed she punished him. “Staying in the saddle,” said she, for they had pushed harder upon the road and she was not yet confident enough to focus on anything but riding when they struck a faster pace. But it was only a partial truth. “And thinking that as much as my mother described to me of the world outside our tower room, I cannot truly understand many things until I have experienced or seen them for myself.”
“Such as?”
Such as longing and desire. Or the stairs. Yet all of those answers made her heart constrict, so instead she gestured to the southwest, where a herd of humpbacked reptiles with long necks were walking north in single file. “I thought a whiptail would be larger than a mammoth.”
“They are. It is only the distance that makes them appear smaller,” Maddek said, and pointed to a nearby cluster of palms. “As we ride closer, you will see they stand taller than those trees.”
She looked again in amazement. Since she had left her tower, Yvenne’s eager eyes had taken in everything that had only been described to her before. She had looked and looked and looked, desperate to see it all for herself. Yet until Maddek rode beside her, she hadn’t realized how much she’d been blind to or how often she’d misunderstood what lay before her, because she didn’t know how to see.
Yesterday he’d begun teaching her to see as a hunter saw. She had not believed then that he truly meant to make a warrior-queen of her, but it had been another lesson she’d been glad to learn.
And now it was not a joke, but truth. Remembrance sent a thrill of pleasure coursing through her. “If I had an arrow, what could I shoot today for our supper?”
As the other warriors did. They often loosed arrows from their saddles and rode over to sweep up their kill without dismounting.
“A pheasant,” he replied. “Or a marmot.”
“A marmot?” She looked to him in surprise. Except for the millipede the previous eve, always the other warriors took small game. “Something so big?”
“You are thinking of the hooded marmot from the Ephorn forest. These are the size of a dally bird.”
“You’ve seen sign of them today?”
He nodded. “I’ll show you if we pass it again. They’re easiest found near streams.”
And they had passed many streams. Though still surrounded by tall grasses, the ground was softer here, the soil wetter. Over the constant hum of insects came the frequent chirps and trills from birds and lizards. She focused on a nearby rustling and aimed her arrowless bow before drawing the string. The muscles in her shoulders and arms burned fiercely and her fingertips were raw from a morning of practice, yet she ignored the pain. This she would do again and again until it no longer hurt.
Maddek never warned her when he threw the rock to flush out a target. Now the stone crashed through the grass, followed by a squawk and flap of wings. A pheasant burst out of the grasses and Yvenne loosed her string. There was not yet a satisfying pting when she released her imagined arrow, yet she grinned happily again, for she was certain her aim had been true and the bird would have been an evening stew.
“When I have quicker eyes and a stronger arm, I’ll kill suppers for us all,” she told Maddek. “I will be the greatest hunter with bow and arrow you have ever seen.”
His grin matched hers. “It will serve Toric and Danoh well to have new competition.”
Because those two warriors were the best archers among the Dragon. Yvenne could never hope to be as strong as they, but their skill was not all in strength. “I shall ask them for lessons, too.”
“You learn faster than your current tutor did,” said Ardyl dryly as she came up beside Yvenne’s mount at a trot. “You are only a day into your lessons, but you already boast as mightily as Maddek did when he reached his bearded age and claimed he would be the greatest hunter the Burning Plains had ever seen.”
She was being teased, Yvenne realized with a rush of dizzying pleasure. Teased as the warriors often teased Maddek. Though Ardyl had not spared him in this, either.
Yvenne hoped Ardyl might ride alongside her and continue that teasing, but she joined the two warriors ahead. Banek and Kelir had ridden in front of Maddek and Yvenne all morning. Now Ardyl didn’t seem intent on talking to either but simply riding with them. And they all seemed bunched into a smaller party, without as much distance between their horses.
She glanced back and saw that Fassad and Toric were nearly on her mount’s hindquarters, with Danoh not far behind.
Immediately Maddek asked, “Do you sense foul magics again?”
“I only noticed that we ride closer together now.” And Yvenne had learned that the warriors did nothing without reason. “For what purpose? Do you expect that it still follows us?”
Whatever it had been. That uneasy, watchful touch at the back of her neck. But if the threat was behind, Yvenne realized, then Ardyl would not have moved to the front.
“I know not if it does,” Maddek said. “This is another danger.”
Tension gripped the back of her neck. “Are there bandits ahead?”
“Linen thieves.” Which sounded to Yvenne like bandits, until he added, “You might call them uzzads.”
A flightless predatory bird. Fascinated, Yvenne searched for them and spotted the head of one sticking up over the tall grasses—and saw why the Parsatheans had named them linen thieves. The red wattle around its beak and neck appeared as if a warrior’s red linens hung from its mouth.
“I had not thought them so big.” If the grasses ahead grew as high as they did here, it meant the animal stood even taller than Maddek upon his horse. “I only see one. Are there more?”