Page 53 of Enamored
He wobbled slightly and braced himself on the door frame.
Maxim was busy donning his cloak and appeared oblivious to the guard. But he was never oblivious. He saw every nuanced detail as if it was painted across a bright sky in dark ink.
“Are you nineteen years, Lis?” Maxim asked casually.
“You’re correct.”
“Your mother was quite a bit older than you, a few months shy of forty years difference?”
“Yes, good guess.”
I wanted to tell Lis that Maxim never guessed, that his observations were empirically grounded. I didn’t know how he’d surmised Lis’s mother’s age, but apparently he’d had enough clues to do so.
“Your farm is quite secluded.” Maxim eyed Lis’s father, who was poking at the embers. “You likely have very few visitors.”
“An occasional neighbor,” Lis answered before her father could.
Before she or Maxim could make further conversation, the guard at the door grabbed the frame and tried to steady himself. But his knees buckled, and he slid down. An instant later, he was sprawled out in front of the doorway.
The thuds of the other guards hitting the ground came a moment later.
Maxim sprang toward the door, and I raced after him. I needed no instructions to understand this was the moment we’d been waiting for. We stepped over the guard to find that Halvard was already leading our mounts out of the stable.
“Secure the soldiers onto the backs of their horses,” Maxim called over his shoulder to Lis and her father, who had followed us out, “and lead them away as far as you can go for one hour to the south.”
“Then you think ’twill be safe for us to stay here?” Lis’s question chased us.
Maxim didn’t slow his stride. “They’ll have a challenging time locating your farm without the aid of the hawk. But to be certain, head up into the Snowden Mountains and remain there for three days.”
Before I could formulate an apology for disrupting their lives, Halvard was beside me, waiting to assist me into my saddle. “We must go, Your Highness.”
From the urgency in his tone and expression, I knew we couldn’t waste a single second in our escape.
Once in my saddle, I had no time but to issue a brief nod and thank you before kicking my horse after Maxim, who was already riding away. As we charged into the outfields surrounding the tunet, I offered a plea that Providence would show his favor upon the farmer and daughter for their aid, and I prayed I would soon be able to return and reward them myself.
Maxim pushed through the forestland with a speed and confidence that left me breathless. It was no wonder he’d been able to catch up with me. He seemed to know exactly where to go, as if he’d ridden the route a dozen times. More likely, he’d spread an invisible map out in his mind and was navigating the shortest and most direct route. At least, I hoped he was, instead of leading me into a trap.
While I wanted to believe the sincerity of the words he’d spoken in the lofthouse, I guessed the battle between good and evil still raged in his heart. He might care about me as he’d claimed, but was his loyalty to me enough to outweigh the influence Rasmus held over him?
We galloped at full speed, and the morn passed in a blur. The closer we drew to the Valley of Red Dragons, the higher the mountain peaks rose on the horizon until at last they loomed above us, topped with white caps of snow that had already fallen—or had perhaps never melted from the previous winter.
The land grew more rugged, slowing our pace, until at last Maxim reined in.
I urged my horse up the rest of the incline and halted next to him to find that we were on the edge of an expansive hillside that dropped away into craggy cliffs below. A waterfall fell over a rock outcropping, cascading a hundred or more feet into a pristine river, one of the many tributaries that poured into the Atlas River.
The sight would have been enthralling had not the urgency inside my chest been pounding harder with each passing hour.
“The Valley of Red Dragons.” Maxim’s narrowed gaze swept over the low, open land below connecting Norvegia to Swaine. The rest of the border between the two countries was lined with the Snowden Mountain Range, running from the Tundra Sea in the north all the way to the White Sea in the south. The high, rugged mountains functioned as a natural wall, separating the two nations.
I’d visited the area once several years ago, but the route by ship was shorter and smoother than traveling by land, and we’d sailed from Vordinberg through the Bay of Fire and up the Atlas River. This vista, looking down on the valley spreading out for miles from east to west, was one I’d never seen.
The bright crimson, yellow, and orange of the changing leaves of the hardwoods in the valley contrasted with the evergreens that populated the mountains. Across the wide expanse, another waterfall gushed from a rocky wall amidst the greenery.
Maxim pointed to the east. “There.”
Halvard had reined in beside me and now released a whistle. As my gaze came to rest upon the open eastern valley, I understood his reaction. A brutal battle was underway, knights upon horses as well as foot soldiers clashing swords and pikes. Norvegia’s royal-red flags with intricate dragon heads upon them, the same heads that graced the four corners of the Stavekirche, filled the Norvegian half of the field. Slithering white serpents wound through the black flags of Swaine on the opposite part of the field.
It appeared that the black flags were making an inroad into the red. Bodies on both sides lay unmoving on the ground. Although we were too far away to identify anyone, my heart shot into my throat at the prospect of King Ulrik even now deep within the battlefield and vulnerable.
