Page 148 of Winter's Echo
I turned back to Baxley, who was now in front of me. Wordlessly, I handed him my pack, and he handed it to Nicco, who quickly secured it on the horse's saddle.
“I’m keeping my staff,” I told the air and ignored the grunt I got from above.
“With your permission?” Baxley asked, and then I was picked up before I could answer and handed to Nicco.
I yelped as my ass hit the hard leather of the saddle. Warm hands guided my legs over to straddle the animal beneath me. My staff was somehow taken from me, and then Nicco’s arm wrapped around my waist, pulling me closer to his body.
“Hold the pommel.”
Thankfully, I knew what that was.
“Get comfortable,” he ordered. I tried to move forward so I wasn’t leaning on him, but he pulled me back against his chest. “No. Lean against me. You don’t yet know how to move with the animal. Learn from me.”
My cheeks were aflame, and I was sure this was wildly inappropriate. Neither Larana nor Baxley looked upset or alarmed by my closeness to him, and I had no choice but to lean back.
“You’re too stiff,” he admonished as the horse moved forward, and I clung onto the pommel as if it were a lifeline.
“It’s high,” I told him through gritted teeth.
“Heights scare you?” he asked, and his breath was very close to my ear. It was causing strange sensations in my body.
“I can’t normally fall from them.”
He laughed. His body vibrated, and I wished he hadn’t done that.
“Put your hood up if you’re cold.”
I didn’t say a word and pulled my hood up, and avoided looking at either of the others in case they could see that it wasn’t Crystallese winter that was causing me to shiver.
Nicco rode at the front. Of course he did.
The horses made the difference. Days that would have taken a week on foot collapsed into something manageable. We stopped when the light failed, camped where the terrain allowed, and moved again when the dark lifted. The rhythm was almost ordinary, almost comfortable.
I didn't trust comfortable. Comfortable was what happened just before something changed.
The first day after riding, my legs and ass had never known such pain. Larana had laughed when I fell in a heap in the snow, and Baxley had explained that I’d used muscles to hold the horse that I hadn’t used before.
All I knew was that the aches were getting better and that I still preferred my own feet to horses' hooves, no matter how much time they saved.
“You're quiet,” Nicco said from behind me on the fourth day.
I hadn’t been paying attention, which was either a testament to how distracted I was or how comfortable I was with him now on horseback.
“I'm always quiet,” I said.
“You're differently quiet.” I could feel the frown he was probably sending my way. “I know the difference.”
I didn't know what to do with that, or how to answer.
“I'm thinking,” I said.
“About?”
I looked at the trail ahead. The way it curved south around a rock formation, I didn’t recognize. Even just these few leagues south, I wasn’t as familiar with the terrain as I was to the north.
It felt strange. Not wrong. Just strange. Like reading something backward and finding that it made a different kind of sense.
“The column showed me things,” I said. I hadn't said this out loud before. Not to anyone.
