Jory Lanfear's Arc

Chapter 8 of 7

The night before the battle, Jory walked his lines one last time. His men slept among the small tents of the vanguard camp, spears stacked, fires low. He held the valley road now. Mordaunt would come for him first. He ducked into his war tent and sat on his straw pallet, too tired to pull off his boots. A servant slipped past the flap. Worn brown dress, belt tied plain, hood low. She carried no tray. Jory reached for his knife. "You always were slow to trust," she said, and pushed back the hood. Eleanor. The king's daughter, in a servant's rags, in a war camp fifty miles from the castle. Jory stood so fast the pallet scraped the ground. "You can't be here." He pulled the flap shut behind her. "If your father learns of this, he ends my suit tonight." "I heard you lead the vanguard." Her voice shook. "I heard you stand alone at the front. I couldn't wait in that castle and count days until someone brought your name back dead." "So you rode here. In those." He touched the rough sleeve. He meant to be angry. He was not angry. "Send me away, then," she said. He did not. He drew her to the pallet instead. They sat close in the low light, and for the first time since the war council he felt his shoulders drop. She asked him about the road, the ground, his men. He told her the truth, the way he only told her. She stayed. She stayed the whole night. Gray light came too soon. Outside, men stirred and horses stamped. Eleanor pressed a square of folded cloth into his palm. Blue, soft, hers. "For luck," she said. "Carry it where you'll feel it." Jory tucked it against his chest. Then he knelt on the dirt floor and opened his hand. A ring sat in it, platinum worked into Celtic knots, crowned with an amethyst ringed by small diamonds. The purple stone matched his eyes. "I meant to win you by victory," he said. "I don't want to wait on a battle to ask. Marry me, Eleanor. Not for the crown. For you." She was crying before he finished. She gave him her hand. He slid the ring on. Then a horn sounded across the camp. The parting was fast and ugly, the way true partings are. He kissed her once. He walked out into the cold and did not look back, because he could not. Eleanor pulled her hood up again. She could not ride home now, not through a battle. She found the medical tent at the camp's rear, rolled her torn sleeves, and set out clean linen for the wounds that would come. She was betrothed to a lord who might die within the hour, and she had no leave from her father to be here at all.