He nodded vigorously. "You s-s-see? We aren't even b-b-blocking the r-r-road! W-w-we can w-w-wait unt-t-til someone c-c-comes along who c-c-can give us a h-h-hand! And if anything is b-b-broken, w-we have the m-money to f-f-fix it! Th-th-that's m-m-more than I've ever been able to say b-b-before!" He lowered his eyelids suggestively. "Th-th-there's lots of w-w-ways to get w-w-warm."
Now she grinned right along with him, and tossed her head to get her wet hair out of her eyes. "True," she agreed. "But I would like to think I'd at least tried to get this thing out of the muck before we give up and go inside. The horses are ready any time you are." Her smile turned wistful. "I don't think either of us thought we'd be spending part of our , honeymoon trying to boost a wagon out of a pothole."
"A m-m-muddy p-p-pothole," he said, ruefully, looking at the state of his clothing. Impossible now to tell what color it had been, as mud-soaked as it was.
She shrugged, and put her shoulder to the other wheel. "Still, I'll keep telling myself that it is our wagon. We have options I never had before. A year ago I'd have been huddling under a rock overhang if I was lucky, or trying to stay warm under a fallen log if I was not."
He bent to his wheel and she whistled to the horses, who strained forward in their harnesses while the two of them pushed the wagon from behind.
Indeed. This was
their
beautiful, if mud-splashed, wagon. They were safely in Rayden again, and on their way out, after which dear Uncle would have no clue as to where they might have gone. And shoving away at his side was the loveliest—if muddiest—lady he had ever known in all his life. And she had picked
him.
All right, I'm prejudiced,
he admitted, as the wagon rocked a little in place, but otherwise refused to move.
But I'm also not blind, and I think I've seen enough lovely ladies to know true beauty when I spot it!
After several attempts, the wagon was not budging, the horses were straining, and the rain showed no signs of abating. Robin panted, bending over with her hands braced against her knees, her wet hair dangling down. Kestrel massaged his hands and again tried to see if anything was obviously wrong.
He was beginning to think that there might be something broken or jammed; this wagon had axles built into the body to protect them. A good idea, but it made it difficult to judge what might have gone wrong without the tedious business of taking off the bottom plate.
He sighed, and Robin turned her head and caught his eye.
"Are you s-s-sorry you d-d-didn't get the K-K-King of R-B-Birnam after all?" he asked, ruefully. "You w-w-wouldn't be standing in the m-m-mud if you had."
But Robin only grinned, her good nature restored by the exertion. "Powers forfend!" she replied. "The King of Birnam would be fair useless getting this blasted wheel out of the mud! Let's try that notion of yours, of heaving up and trying to shore up the wheel while it's up."
It had been a faint hope more than an idea, but if Robin wanted to try it he was game.
"You d-d-do the c-c-counting," he said, with a self-deprecating laugh. "If I d-d-do, we'll b-b-be here all d-d-day!"
Gwyna shoved little bits of wood under the wheel, using a larger piece to protect her hands in case the wagon slipped back.
Damn the rain. Always comes at the worst possible time.
A rain-soaked lock of hair fell down across her nose in a tangled curl again, and she didn't have the hand to spare to push it out of the way. It tickled, and it got in the way of her vision.
It was hard to stay cheerful when you were dripping wet, your hair was snarled and soaked, and there was mud everywhere the rain didn't wash it away. But there was Kestrel, laboring manfully beside her, for all his slight build, and
he
wasn't complaining. Poor thing, he wasn't much taller than she, nor much more muscled, though regular feeding had put a
little
more weight on him. He still inspired women to want to take him home and feed him pastries and milk.
And then feed him something else entirely, girl,
she told herself, and grinned, in spite of the cold rain dripping down her back and the certain knowledge that at the moment she looked more like a drowned kitten than a seductress. Well, he was
hers.
The others would simply have to look and wish.
Even soaking wet and muddied to his ears, he was a handsome piece, though he hadn't a clue that he was, bless his heart. Long, dark hair, as dark as a Gypsy's, now plastered to his head, but luxuriant and wavy when it was dry, set off his thin, gentle face with its huge, innocent dark eyes and prominent cheekbones—definitely a face to set maidens' hearts a-flutter. And when you added in the promise in the sensual mouth and clever hands, well, it set the hearts of no-longer-maidens aflutter, too. And he looked fine, very fine, in the flamboyant colors and garments favored by the Gypsies. He did most of his "speaking," when he could, with eloquent gestures and with his eyes. Right now, they held a cheer that not even their dismal situation could quench. And relief that once again, she had affirmed that she would rather have Kestrel the Free Bard than all the Kings in the Twenty Kingdoms.
And what would I do with a King, if I had one? Thank you, no.
She was nothing if not practical.
A King has all of his duties, and little time for pleasure, if he is a good King. I should see him for perhaps an hour or two in the day. I have my Kestrel with me as much as I like.
The horses stamped restively; she went up to the front of the wagon to reassure them. Thank the Lady that King Rolend had the sense to fling gold at Gypsy Raven with which to outfit a wagon and buy horses for it, rather than trusting such a task to his own stablemen. Not that the King's stablemen were unfit to choose horses, but a pair of pampered highbloods would be ill-suited for tramping the roads in all weathers. No, these mares were as sturdy as they were lovely; two generations out of the wild horses of the Long Downs, and crossbred to Kelpan warmbloods for looks and stamina. Truly a wedding present fit for a Prince, for all that he was Prince no more. A Prince of the road, then.
Why would she ever trade a life bound to one place for her free life on the road, anyway? She'd had a dislike for being tied to one spot
before
her unfortunate encounter with the dark-mage Priest, an encounter that left her with a horror of cages and being caged; now she was positively phobic about the notion.
Kestrel did not know about that, beyond the bare bones, that a renegade Priest-mage had turned her into a bird and caged her. He did not know how she had refused the Priest's demand she be his mistress, and that he had not only turned her into a bird, he had turned her into a bird too heavy to fly! He'd put her in a cage just barely large enough to hold her, and had displayed her by day for all the Kingsford Faire to see as his possession, and by night to the guests at his dinners.
Only the intervention of Rune and Talaysen had freed her; only Talaysen's acquaintance with a decent mage-Priest had enabled them to break the spell making her a bird. It had then rebounded upon its caster, who was still, for all
she
knew, languishing in the same cage he had built for her, in the guise of the ugliest and biggest black bird she had ever seen.
But ever since, the thought of staying in one place for too long brought up images of bars and cages . . . .
No, thank you. No Kings for me! No matter how luxurious, a cage is still a cage.
The horses calmed, she went back to her task of shoving wood wedges under the wheel. Trying to, at any rate. It was awfully hard to tell if she was getting anywhere at all; the mud was only getting worse, not better, as the rain continued to pound them.
" 'Ware!" Kestrel warned her with a single word; he could usually manage single words without stuttering. She snatched her hands and board out of the way, called to the horses, and the wagon settled as Kestrel and the mares let it down.
He closed his eyes and sagged against the back of the wagon. She appraised him carefully, trying to measure with her eyes just how exhausted he was, how strained his muscles.
We can't manage too many more of these attempts,
she decided.
He hasn't got them in him, and neither do I.
She thanked her Lady that he was
not,
like so many men she knew, inclined to overextend himself in the hope of somehow impressing her. That sort of behavior didn't impress her and it inevitably led to the man in question hurting himself and
then
pretending he was not hurt!
Kestrel, on the other hand, was naive enough about women to take what she said at face value—and bright enough not to do something stupid just for the sake of impressing her.
And I am just contrary enough to say precisely what I mean, so all is well.
She had to shake her head at herself as she admitted that. I
would not have him change for the world and all that is in it. I am no easy creature to live with. He would not change me, either. So he says, and so I believe.
She leaned against the wagon, and tried to knot her wet hair at the nape of her neck, but little strands kept escaping and straggling into her eyes. She gave it up as a hopeless cause.
This naiveté of his was something to be cherished—if that was precisely the right thing to call it. Perhaps it was simply that he had no one to teach him that women were anything other than
persons.
Truly, he had no one to teach him that women were
anything]
After all, his childhood was spent with that old Master of his, and not even a female servant about—and the rest of his time was spent trying to earn enough to keep fed and running to save his life.
For whatever reason, he was one of the few men she knew, Free Bards and Gypsies included, who simply
assumed
that she was his partner—his equal in most things, his superior in some, his inferior in others. She had met a few men who were
willing to accept
her as a partner, but Kestrel was only one of three who simply
assumed
the status, and the other two were Raven and Peregrine. There was a difference, subtle, but very real to her, between that
acceptance
and
assumption.
It was a distinction that made a world of difference to her.
He never asked her to prove anything; he simply assumed that if she claimed she could do something, it was true. When she said she could not, he worked with her to find a way around the problem. When he knew how to do something, he asked her opinion before he simply
did
it—and she gave him the same courtesy.
Like this situation that they found themselves in now; neither of them knew a great deal about wagons, at least of this type, and neither of them were large and muscular. Without any arguing, they had each tried the other's suggestions, and when things didn't work, they simply went on to try something else.
Oh, they had arguments; everyone did. But when it counted, they were partners. Arguments were for times of leisure!
In a peculiar way, even standing in the pouring rain, wet and miserable, cold and besmeared with muck, was a wonderful and rare experience. It proved something to her that she had hoped for all along; that she was his friend, companion, the person he trusted, as well as his lover. She could count the number of couples who could say that on one hand, and have fingers left over.
"Ready?" she asked, when it looked as if he had recovered as much as he was going to. He nodded tiredly.
"C-c-can't d-d-do this m-m-much l-longer," he said, simply. "I'm ab-b-bout gone."
"So am I," she admitted. "And so are the mares. But let's give it what we have, yes?"
He nodded. She counted.
On four,
she shouted to the horses, and they all strained to the limit.
Nothing happened. Just as nothing had really happened all the times before, no matter what they had tried.
" 'Ware!" she shouted, and they both let go as the horses slacked the harness. The wagon did not even move a great deal as it settled back.
Her good temper finally broke under the strain. She clenched fists and jaw, and glared at the wagon, the pothole, the mud that now reached halfway to the wheel-hub. "Damn," she swore under her breath, as she backed off and stared at the cursed thing. "Stupid, stubborn, blasted, demon-possessed pile of
junk!
"
It was pretty obvious that there was nothing they were able to o alone that was going to free the wheels. They were
not going
to get it out, and everything they did now that it
was
obvious was a wasted effort.
She muttered a few Gypsy curses at the wheels under her breath for good measure. Kestrel just pulled the hair out of his eyes and leaned back so that the rain washed the mud from his face. After a few moments with his mouth open, drinking the fresh rain, he lowered his head and looked at her apologetically, as if he thought that
he
was somehow responsible for the situation.
"It's really s-s-stuck, isn't it?"
She nodded and, in a burst of fading annoyance, kicked the wheel.
As she had
known
it would, this accomplished nothing except to hurt her toe a little.
"Damn," she swore again, but with no real vehemence; she was too tired. Then she sighed. "It's really, really stuck. Or else something is broken. Let's get the horses under whatever cover we can, and try and dry off before we catch something."
As if to underscore the triumph of nature over the hand of man, the skies
truly
opened up, sluicing them with rain that seemed somehow
much
colder than the downpour that had already drenched them.
***
The horses cooperated, but their harness didn't; stiff leather, soaked with water and heavy, met cold stiff fingers. It took so long to unharness the mares that Robin's temper was well on the way to boiling by the time they had the two sodden beasts hobbled under the scant shelter of a low tree, wrapped in woolen horse-blankets.
They did
not
tether the team under an oak. And they did spread a canopy of canvas over the branches above, giving each beast a nose bag of grain to make up for their sad excuse for stabling.