“I hate riding on your shoulder,” Boreas muttered for the fifth time in the past hour. “It’s always up, down, thud, thump and turbulence. How can you stand it?”
“If you hate it so much,” Emmaline murmured, “why are you still perched there?”
Silence for a few moments. “I hate logic, too,” Boreas said sullenly.
She smiled. They’d been riding for the best part of the day, and Boreas had quickly come to realize that he hated sitting on Emmaline’s shoulder as they rode. No matter how much he vocalized that distaste, however, he did nothing to alter the situation.
Emmaline was riding at the back of the group, about three or four meters behind Lucian and Alandriel. Dom rode still further ahead, keeping an eye on the road for hazards. Every now and then, he waited at the side of the path for the other three, and regaled them with loud tales of his various journeys as a hunter.
They rode on in silence for a few minutes, and Emmaline distracted herself by looking at the landscape around her.
Since leaving Herondale, it had been largely the same. On the northern edge of the wide valley, a strip of forest wound its way down the length of the pass. On the southern side, mile after mile of empty fields filled her vision. Everything was coated lightly in snow from the first falls of the winter to come. The odd field still held some animals grazing, but for the most part they were vacant. The farmers and their livestock had retreated to Herondale, where they could live in relative warmth and safety through the winter. That was the primary purpose of the town, after all – a refuge for the farming folk that lived in Trader’s Pass. Emmaline wrinkled her nose at the memory of Lowgarden during the winter, when the livestock would be penned in to the massive stock houses, the scent of their excrement drifting throughout the town.
Ahead of them, Emmaline noted, the farms had finally given way to the tree line. The wide, winding road had been narrowing for the last hour, turning from a well-beaten road into patchy dirt that, for the most part, was barely a road at all.
Dom, Emmaline saw, had pulled his horse to a standstill. He turned to face them. “Right, my dutiful customers. I know this ‘ere road-“ he jerked his thumb vaguely behind him-“is a sodding mess, but there’re things we gotta deal with and the thing is right now, no-one in Herondale has been arsed coming out this far and clearing the road.” Dom scowled. “We got a few hours of daylight left yet. Pull finger and we’ll be sleeping cozy under Kinsman’s Point tonight. Diddle and fiddle, well, Dom ain’t afraid of no spooky lil shadows, but you lot are paying me. No mucking around from here, got that?”
“He has a rather… rustic way of speaking, doesn’t he?” Boreas noted.
Emmaline coughed to hide a laugh. Lucian looked at her querulously, his eyes flicking from the bird on her shoulder to her face as she tried to hide a grin. He hesitated a moment, as though he were going to say something but thought better of it.
“Got it,” Alandriel said to Dom. Dom nodded and stared intently at Lucian.
Lucian sighed. “I have no intention of dying this night, Dom. I don’t know that I even could.”
Dom appeared slightly confused at the comment, but accepted what Lucian. Only Emmaline was left. Dom stared at her for a few moments.
Emmaline stared right back. Dom furrowed his brow. Emmaline twitched hers upwards, and Dom burst out laughing. “All right then, lass. We’re all set, now let’s get moving.”
Dom spurred his horse back into motion. Alandriel followed quickly. Lucian held back a little, waiting behind so he could ride on Emmaline’s left.
YOU ARE READING
A Storm of Shadows (Shatterborn Book One)
FantasyThe world has been reborn. Enter Veritas, a world of magic and myth. Emmaline Longshadow has lived her life in hiding. She and her adoptive father were chased for much of her early years, before seeking sanctuary in an ancient monastery known only...
