Jenny: Heart-Sickness

The Guttersnipe leaned round under the colt's belly to grab the far strap dangling just out of reach. Out in the upland pasture the wind was high, tearing at her braid and Gwenhywfar's skirts. It was the best of the colts, bronze-and-black, with a wheat-ear bloom of tawny amber between its eyes, a deep chest, sharply slanting shoulders, and a lengthy neck arched over a dancing set of springy legs.

"Do you think Vortigern will be angry at Master Lucius for sending this one off?" the Guttersnipe asked Gwenhywfar. "You know he has had his eye on this fellow."

Gwenhywfar stood down and clasped her hand to her billowing hair, sizing the colt up. "I don't know, but I am sure I can entertain his mind on other things while you're away. My greatest concern is that Master Lucius' own going will rouse suspicion. He is ever suspicious."

The Guttersnipe nodded. She did not mention it, but she could sense the tension in Gwenhywfar. The songs came less frequently, the lustre in the eyes seemed to recede into a dark meditation. Unbidden, her own heart began to thunder in a sort of panic and it was all she could do to calm herself before the colt, sensing her discomfort, took to shying. She hated that so much had to be planned beforehand and that she should lash herself to the colt's back and ride then and there. But Champion was right: she simply had to be patient, or everything would be overturned.

"Are you all right?" Gwenhywfar murmured.

She blinked and looked across the colt's back. "I am impatient," she admitted. "It seems like so long since I was home. And now that home is - " She glanced aside at Domitia and shook her head.

"You will get there," Gwenhywfar told her with a swift urgency. "You must. You must understand that - Lucius understands that. There is everything to lose and no room for failure. You must get there, therefore you will."

Letting out an uneasy breath, the Guttersnipe nodded. Another gust of wind tore across the pasture. Squinting into the face of it, letting it tear at her hair, she thought, Soon. Tomorrow. So soon, and yet so long away.