Роберт Асприн - Forever After

“What if the Prince sees me leaving?” Lemml asked. “He must wonder that my body has not been found.”

“A good point,” Rissa agreed. “I shall give him a plausible story to cover for the absence of your body — the palace has been fraught with magical phenomena lately — and you shall leave the palace dressed in a gown belonging to a member of Rango’s late family. You can change into your own robes when you are safely away.”

Lemml began to protest at this slight to his dignity, but his words died unspoken. The Princess was right and her expression brooked no argument. This was a lady who knew her own mind, not a palace-bred royal pet.

For a moment, he almost pitied the Prince, but only for a moment.

Domino stretched to her full height, her fingertips brushing the tent’s canvas roof, the last soreness easing from her muscles with the motion. Outside, she could hear the early risers in her Company stirring awake in response to the pink glow to the east.

Damn, but it was good to be out on the road again! It was even worth sleeping on the ground. Of course, as General, she was entitled to a cot, but a cot was rather crowded for two. She smiled, her gaze resting fondly on Jord, still asleep in the crumpled heap of blankets and pillows. His dark blond hair tousled around his heart-shaped face made him look more like an angel than ever. For a weak moment, she considered leaving Rafe to rouse the Company while she tended to Jord, but she shook off the impulse with quick effort.

She’d been worried about Jord’s safety when he insisted on coming along, not her reputation with the men she commanded. Only after she’d given in to her poet’s request had she wondered about the men’s response. Fortunately, most of them were still in shock from learning that their Colonel Dominik was a Domino. In this state of affairs, they weren’t inclined to quibble any more than if any other commander had picked up a camp follower. Only if she gave Jord any more attention than he was due would there be trouble.

Still, she wondered as she left her sleeping poet to his dreams, how would Jord feel if he knew that the men regarded him largely as the General’s floozy?

“Morning, Seth,” she greeted the boy tending the fire just downhill from her tent. “All quiet?”

Seth flipped a lock of straw-colored hair out of his eyes in a half salute, his main attention on the potatoes he was easing from the fire coals. In the year since she had found him as a starveling waif in the ruins of a village destroyed by Kalaran’s forces he had grown amazingly, but he was still scrawny for a nine-year-old. Scrawny or not, he was ferociously loyal to her and thus an ideal personal servant, especially in the days of her masquerade. Unlike a “properly trained” orderly, he had never insisted on dressing or arming her and she suspected that even had he learned her secret he would have carried that knowledge to the grave.

Of course, there was no need for that anymore, but she kept him on. Seth was trustworthy, loyal, kind, obedient, and all the rest. And besides, Spite tolerated him, which was something right there.

“All’s quiet, sir,” Seth said, blowing on his fingertips to cool them. “Colonel Rafe sends word that we can move within the hour.”

Domino nodded absently. “Very good. Break down my gear at your convenience, Seth.”

Taking a potato in one hand and a tin mug of hot, bitter tea in the other, she went to review her troops.

The Company was rather small, a mere two dozen soldiers, a few orderlies, pot scrubbers, grooms, wagon drivers, forty horses, assorted dogs, and Spite. In all, about eighty souls, if dogs and horses had souls (which she was sure they did), and Spite. Most of them were in motion now, an almost festive swirling of the green-and-black uniforms, the dark brown of leather armor, and the occasional flash of metal as a sword was polished or sharpened.

The wave of conversation muted as she passed through, a path appeared as if by magic, but she hardly noticed. This was the way things had been for her from the start, first in the shadow of her illustrious father, Kerman Blaid, and then more and more for her own merits. She paused by each fire, accepting a freshener for her tea, a hunk of bread or a haunch of roasted rabbit. By the time she had reached the camp bottom, she’d greeted just about everyone and finished breakfast.

“Sun-cursed, marsh-mouthed, horse-assed son of a sea hag!” came a familiar bellow from where the Company’s mounts were pastured.

“Right on schedule,” sniggered Rafe, Domino’s rusty-haired second-in-command.

Domino grinned at her friend. “Seems so.”

A wiry saddle veteran so windburnt that even his freckles had worn away, Rafe could have claimed his own command. In fact, he’d been promoted to Colonel when Domino had made General. But when he’d caught wind of her going into the field, he’d requested a chance to accompany her “rather than wear out my welcome on some parade ground.”

Prince Rango had agreed readily and Domino was glad for Rafe’s experience and companionship. Of all her command, he alone had taken her sex change as a matter of course, as if the wonders and weirds of Kalaran’s defeat had needed this as their final garnish. She could trust him to run the Company when Rango’s business pulled her away.

Together they laughed as the staccato curses of the senior groom, farrier, and horse doctor, Yor Chase, drifted up.

“He’ll never learn, will he?” Domino asked.

“The day Chase admits there’s a horse he can’t befriend will be the day water runs uphill,” Rafe agreed. “Doesn’t help that Seth can lead Spite around like a lamb on a ribbon — I think the horse does it to spite Yor.”

“Maybe.” Domino rose. “I’ll go save Chase in spite of himself and we can move out within the half hour.”

Yor Chase was a big, solid Northman of the same people as Jancy Gaine. Like his countrywoman, he was loyal and dependable — and solidly determined once he made up his mind. The heavy-framed blond had long boasted that there wasn’t a horse he couldn’t get to like him — and that boast, rather than the more conventional “couldn’t ride” had singled him out as someone special. He’d kept his boast, too, until Domino had acquired Spite and though Chase insisted that Spite wasn’t a horse, this didn’t keep him from trying various ploys to befriend it.

These all ended the same way, with Chase bitten, kicked, or tossed on his ass in the mud. Still, looking just beyond where Chase sat in a watering trough, Domino thought that she could understand why the groom kept trying.

Although as large a horse as any in the Company, grace flowed from Spite like water over polished granite. The stallion’s coat was pale green; his long mane and tail were sea-foam white. As if this was not startling enough, his hooves were translucent green, like heavy glass somehow devoid of bubbles. His eyes were the same glinting green, without pupil or iris, though Domino had noted that their inner light seemed to increase with the maliciousness of the horse’s mood.

Right now they positively sparkled as the stallion pranced over to Domino, kneeling like a camel so that she could mount. She took the hint, swinging herself on bareback and twisting a handhold in the frothy mane— even for her, Spite would tolerate no tack.

“Good morning, sir,” Chase said, awkwardly rising.

“Good morning, Sergeant,” she acknowledged, most of her attention for Spite, who was dancing with his shadow. “Are Nightsky and Dove ready?”

“Yes, sir! Of course, sir!” Chase whistled and two horses trotted up, fully equipped. “You’ll be taking them with you?”