Raisa’s new pony was a shaggy dappled gray mare with a white mane and tail. Raisa promptly renamed her Switcher, as had become her custom. She’d changed horses too many times in the past six months, and this way it was easier to remember.

That night, Raisa slept alone in a lumpy bed in a room rented to all eleven of them at the outrageous price of a crown a head. Her guard sprawled on the floor all around her like a litter of overgrown puppies. They were older than she, but not by much.

Some lay fast asleep, snoring and mumbling in their dreams. She envied their ability to drop off as soon as they stopped moving. Others played at cards or read by candles purchased for another crown apiece. If Raisa even went to the privy, Captain Byrne sent an escort along. She was never sure if this was to protect her or to prevent her running off. When she asked him, he replied, “To protect you, Your Highness. Of course.”

They left long before dawn the next morning, while stars still pricked the sky. Byrne hoped to make it through the pass by nightfall. In summer, that would be a challenging and arduous journey. In winter or spring, unlikely. Possibly foolhardy.

Above Delphi, the paved road became wheel-rutted dirt, and finally little more than a game trail, hedged on both sides by great granite boulders, the way so narrow, only one rider could pass between. Before long, patches of snow appeared in the shaded areas to either side of the trail. By midday, the ground was covered, and they traveled over packed snow and ice. By afternoon, the trail was drifted over in places where the wind swirled through.

Snow sifted down on them from junipers that overhung the trail, perfuming the air with their sharp, sweet scent. The forest would break the wind, at least, until they climbed above the tree line.

A storm the night before had glazed each twig and branch with ice, and they glittered in the sunlight as the breeze stirred them. The tracks of snowshoe hares and other small game crisscrossed the trail. Raisa flexed her fingers in her gloves, wondering if she should string the bow Byrne had given her, which she carried in her saddle boot.

They’d probably prefer she be unarmed, given that she was angry enough to shoot someone.

She had missed riding the mountain trails of the Fells more than she’d realized. In Oden’s Ford, she’d been consumed by work, with little time for pleasure riding. Her equestrian classes reflected the flatland style of warfare. Flatland cadets rode across a broad, featureless landscape in precise formation, wheeling their horses like so many deadly court dancers, bristling with weapons.