Gaborn rolled his eyes, as if the answer were obvious. If he’d truly been a stablehand, he’d have known which mount would remain calmest, which horse would try to keep the idiot king from falling. As it was, he feared that all five horses might bolt at any second. His own horse, the stallion he’d ridden into town the day before, had been trained to recognize the Wolf Lord’s soldiers by their coat of arms, and to lash out against them with hoof and tooth. Surrounded by the Wolf Lord’s troops, his stallion tossed its head from side to side, shifting its weight uneasily. Unsure. His mood unnerved the other horses.

“Och, today, who knows?” Gaborn said. “I smell a likely storm. They’re all a wee skittish.”

He looked at the horses. In truth, two mounts seemed less concerned by the commotion.

“Prop the King on Uprising, and here’s to hopin’ he don’t fall!” Gaborn patted a roan mount, inventing the horse’s name on the spur of the moment. “The Princess, she sits on his sister ’ere, Retribution. Their Days can ride the skittish ’orses and plummet to their asses for all I care. Oh, and watch that girth strap on the King’s saddle. It wiggles loose. Oh, and Death Knell there, put her last in your line. She kicks.”

Gaborn handed the lines to the captain, giving him the reins to all four mounts, and turned to leave.

“Wait!” the captain said, as Gaborn suspected he would.

Gaborn craned his neck, sat with a bored expression.

“You geet King on horse! Everyone on horse. I want you personal to geet them down through gates.”

“I’m busy!” Gaborn objected. Sometimes the best way to secure a job was to pretend you did not want it. “I’m wanting to watch the soldiers leave.”

“Now!” the captain shouted.

Gaborn shrugged, urged the horses through the portcullis, into the bailey of the Dedicates’ Keep, near the huge wain.

No one had yet managed to bring the draft horses to pull the wain, so the wagon merely sat, its axletree lying on the ground.

Gaborn looked into the wagon, tried not to stare too hard at Iome. He wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of a sleeve, then got off his horse, helped Iome mount. He had no idea whether she could ride, felt relieved when she sat lightly atop her mare, took the reins confidently.

The drooling King was another matter. His eyes grew frightened and he hooted and grasped the horse’s neck with both hands as soon as Gaborn got him saddled, then tried to slide off. Though the King had once been a fine horseman, he gave no evidence of it now. Gaborn realized he would, quite literally, have to tie the man to the pommel.