Gods be praised. I don’t think I’ll get to pull that off a second time. They weren’t expecting Need—now they’ll be doubly careful. And damned if I know what it was she did to my arrow. She’s never done anything like that before.

Then again, we’ve never fought in service of a female monarch against a male enemy before, an enemy who wants the monarch’s hide for a rug, and that’s just for a beginning.

The Herald gave her a peculiar look when she took Hellsbane in beside him, but he didn’t say anything. She wondered how much of the exchange with the mage he had seen, then decided that it really didn’t matter. “I don’t see any reason to alter the plan yet,” she told him. “Tell Selenay to bring up her light cavalry behind us—I don’t think we’ll be seeing any more action today, but I didn’t think they’d follow us over that first ridge, either. We need a rear guard, at least for the moment.”

He nodded, and went off into his little trance, and his Companion gave her one of those blue-eyed stares that Eldan’s Companion Ratha had sometimes fixed her with. She nudged the mare with her heel, and moved Hellsbane ahead of them, suddenly uneasy with the penetrating intelligence behind those eyes. She had the feeling that even if the Herald had missed the mage’s attack and defeat, his Companion hadn’t.

He doesn’t know what to make of me, either. He’s giving me one of those looks, like he had thought I was just a grunt-fighter, and now he’s not so sure.

It was a most unnerving feeling, and she began to have an idea how Quenten and the others had felt, before they’d quit Valdemar and headed home.

It felt as if she was being weighed and tested against some unknown standard. And what was more, she didn’t like it.

Finally she couldn’t take any more of it. She dropped Hellsbane back, and deliberately made eye contact with the Companion. His Herald was still off in the clouds somewhere, communing with his brethren, which left the field safe for what she intended to do—

Which was to drop shields, and think directly at the creature, Look, I don’t tell you how to do your job. I’m doing what I pledged Selenay I’d do, and what’s more, I’m doing a damned good piece of work so far. You keep your prejudices to yourself and stay the hell out of my way and my head so I can keep doing it!: