“Yes, my lady. In the forest.”
She is silent for a while.
“Then let’s get to it.”
I take a side path further into the woods where I have spotted some fallen logs which can double as a makeshift shelter for us, whilst keeping our presence from prying eyes. As we reach them, I shift back to my human form and catch my sweet lady in my arms.
I would very much like to groom her mouth with my mouth again. Especially given the way she stares up at me, part questioning, part tiredness.
“I can make camp if you wish to rest, my lady,” I say quietly.
“I’ll help.” She sighs and wriggles in my arms to get down.
At least on this occasion, my todger is safely contained in my trousers, given the way it has been behaving.
I allow her down to the ground and throw my saddle bags down next to the fallen trees, opening one and taking out a small axe.
“If you gather firewood, I will make us a shelter,” I explain.
She takes the axe from me and hitches up her skirts again. I try not to look. My groin is causing me too much trouble around Lady Ryle, mouth grooming or no. I have to get a grip on myself. There is no way the Yeavering would send me a mate, not given my present immortality.
I keep one ear out for the lady, listening as she picks her way through the forest, using the axe occasionally as she drags out larger branches. I use the oilcloths I have tucked away to rig up a makeshift tent to keep the worst of the damp out and one for the ground upon which she can lie.
“Will this do?” Lady Ryle asks as I put the finishing touches to the shelter.
I turn to find the most enormous pile of wood.
“How?”
“We all have our secrets, Warden,” she says with a smile, thumping the axe into one of the fallen trees where its blade is buried.
I swiftly build a hearth and get a blaze going, digging again into my saddle bags for the remaining apples.
“I recognise these,” Lady Ryle says, as she settles in the entrance of the tent and I hand her one. “I had a bushel of them, very similar.”
“Your little witch gave them to me,” I rasp. “When you wished to throw me out on the road.”
“Yeah, I’m not as soft-hearted as I might seem.”
I drop down next to her as the fire burns merrily.
“And why would that be, Lady Ryle? You are a successful tavern owner in the Night Lands. You have no magic, yet you have survived. I presume you have a heart.”
She bites into her apple. My todger nearly breaks in two with the desire to escape the confines of my pants. For a while, she chews and stares into the fire. Her hand caresses the hilt of her sword, and I wish beyond belief it was me she was touching.
“I have a heart. I care for my staff. I care to do a good job as the landlady of the Dark Gibbet,” she says. “I care not for magic.”
“Which I think was a good thing, given what it did.”
“You think magic opened the portal.”
I nod, finishing off my apple in a couple of bites and doing my very best not to think about the others in my saddlebags which we may need later.
“I think my Duegar may have awoken whatever drew us to this place.”
“Peggy said it was a portal.”
“The Laidly Wyrm doesn’t know everything,” I respond. “But it may have been one which was activated by an act of magic within your tavern and which was not related to any of your patrons.”
