LITMIR.BIZ

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Olivia had selected them for the task of protecting her was that they wouldn’t try to go against what she wanted, what she needed, to do.

      She had to find Genevieve; Olivia didn’t know why, but she had to.

      “Are you sure it’s safe to be so far away from your father’s forces, my lady?” Haam asked. Olivia knew he was just voicing the concerns the others had. She didn’t even blame him for it. This was a dangerous place for all of them.

      “I have you to protect me,” she said to them.

      That made them instantly sit up straighter with pride. These three weren’t knights, and the difference was obvious. Their armor was battered and probably pieced together from a dozen different sources, their horses more suited to pulling a plow than to war. Their weapons were plain, functional things, and it was obvious that they were nervous, looking around at every noise from the side of the road as they continued heading south.

      “How much further though?” William asked, as they reached a crossroads. They came to a halt, trying to work out which way to go.

      “We should think about turning back,” Haam said.

      Olivia sat atop her steed, absentmindedly fiddling with the ring Royce had given her on their engagement; her family’s ring, but the symbol of their love nonetheless. She stroked it, and as she did so, she thought of Genevieve. She thought of the way the other girl had looked at the castle, and about how much she had obviously meant to Royce.

      “We keep going, as far as we need to go until we find her,” Olivia said. “My guess is that she’s heading for the king’s encampment. We need to get to her before she reaches it.”

      “And if we can’t?” Wells asked.

      Olivia shrugged, but only because she knew she couldn’t say what she was thinking: that if necessary, she would tear down any wall, find a way through any army, to find Genevieve. Just the thought of her was like a hint of grit at the back of her mind that wouldn’t go away. Olivia knew she couldn’t be happy with Royce knowing that things were unsettled with Genevieve, with her out there still feeling that way about him. She needed to find her.

      “Genevieve will have gone to Altfor,” Olivia said, dodging the question. “Altfor is with King Carris, so we know where she will be going. That gives us a chance to catch up with her before she can get there.”

      “I hope so,” Wells said, “but we need to think about what point we turn back at. How far do we go before we need to return home?”

      “We go as far as we need to,” Olivia said, her determination absolute. Right then, she knew that she would follow Genevieve into the midst of a blazing fire if she had to. “And we’re wasting time sitting here when we could be riding. Every moment we sit still on our horses is a moment when she is getting further away from us.”

      Olivia set off in the direction that their information had said King Carris’s court was in, kicking her horse into a canter. She didn’t care if the others managed to keep up or not. Their horses hurried into place next to hers, and from a distance, they probably did look like a noblewoman riding along with her protector knights.

      Eventually, they rode through some stands of trees, and then up onto the brow of a hill. From up there, Olivia could see King Carris’s army spread out below, banner after banner raised as nobles had joined him to show their support. There were thousands of men there, ordinary soldiers and knights, archers and spearmen. The nobles and the knights had their tents separate from the others, each with their small entourages of servants and hangers-on.

      There was a keep at the heart of it all, solid and imposing. Instinctively, Olivia knew that was where Genevieve would be. Altfor would have gone in there to find the king, and Genevieve would have gone in there to find Altfor. She might have spent a little time out in the camp below, but Olivia guessed that it would have been only a little. She would have marched up in the direction of the doors, the way…

      …the way she had at Olivia’s home.

      Maybe that was part of what made her want to find Genevieve so badly. She knew that someone who would just come there like that, demanding to see Royce, wouldn’t stop at that. She would never just go away. She rubbed the ring she wore again…

      “I’m going down there,” Olivia declared, kicking her horse forward once more.

      Haam was there, grabbing for the horse’s reins.

      “My lady, you are not going down there,” he said.

      “You don’t get to tell me what I will and won’t do,” Olivia snapped back, surprised by how she sounded, even to herself. “I have to do this. I need to—”

      “We need to go home,” William cut in. “We’ve come too far. We’re right outside the enemy camp!”

      “You can go home if you want,” Olivia snapped. She dismounted, heading off in the direction of the keep. “I’ll find a way to do this.”

      “No,” Wells said. “It’s suicide.”

      He and William dismounted and grabbed hold of Olivia, holding her back. It took everything Olivia had not to fight to break free and just run down there. She had to find Genevieve… she had to.

      “My lady, this is not sensible!” Haam said. “We can’t just walk into the camp of the enemy, no matter the reason. Think, we have already achieved something to get this far. We have seen the forces that they have. If we get back now, we will be able to tell the others what we will be facing in the battle.”

      “We don’t even know that the woman you’re looking for is there,” Wells said.

      Olivia felt herself calming a little, and she was ashamed to admit that Wells’s point had a little more to do with it than Haam’s. If she had been able to see Genevieve there, Olivia suspected that she would have run down there, and that nothing would be able to stop her.

      As it was, she could at least seek out some kind of certainty.

      “You’re right,” she said. “But that just means that we can’t go back yet. We need proper sketches of what we’ve found, and we need to find out if there are any weaknesses to be seen. Come on.”

      Brushing them away, she started to lead the way around the encampment. It meant that Olivia could look down, trying to find the thing that she truly wanted: a safe way in. There had to be one; with an army that size, it was impossible that everyone would be accounted for. There would be coming and going, with people delivering food from the surrounding farms and messages from the world beyond.

      Olivia thought of the challenges that faced their army. They were gathering people every day, and that process was one that brought risks with it. Already, there had been plenty of chances for spies to slip in, and controlling the flow of people here looked as if it would be almost as bad. Perhaps if they could find some way to fit in with a group trying to join the king’s forces, she would be able to get into the keep, and from there, find her way to Genevieve…

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