Jenny: Northward Droving

"That was cruel of you."

She did not have to turn round to know who it was. The colt shuddered underneath her as her feelings wicked out along the reins to its mouth. "She has to ride to make the northward droving," she returned savagely. Her right shoulder was prickling irritatingly. "She rides like a sack on a mule at present."

There was an eerie quiet at her back; not a sound came, not a whisper on the grass. She glanced to her left to catch a shadow, but could not look far enough. It got under her skin, ate at her defenses. She pulled in a deep breath, motionless, and kept her eyes on Domitia and the dog that had joined her, steeling herself.

"She must feel lonely," the other went on idly. "You, Ambrosius' little girl, trying to teach her how to ride... She must feel so inadequate. You have had life handed to you by gods' hands: wealth, looks, freedom, skills. And what does she have? What...does she have...?"

The voice trailed off with dark musing, and she knew he was trying to make her angry. And suddenly she did not care. She was going in the morning, leaving this place, and she would not have to see his hateful face again. "She has me," she said, turning round to face Mordred, because she could do it now. "She has me, and that's all she needs until she finds her legs. So back off."

Mordred flicked an idle glance her way, set as she was above him against the sky. He was not perturbed. Nothing could perturb him, it seemed. "You might have made a good man," he told her, sounding so much older than his youth allowed. "Perhaps Calidus would not have hated you then."

"I am sure he should have," she replied. "For I would have been like my Lord Ambrosius, and there was little love between them."

"I know." He nodded, having returned to watching Domitia on her mount. "I've seen."

And that did not surprise her, either. But she wondered if he saw, as her Lord Ambrosius sometimes could see, beyond the next hill, and saw what was coming, and if he and not Vortigern was the one to worry about. But no answer could she read in his face. He stood thin and rigid, a dark blot on the sunny field, gazing with the sun in his eyes after the dog and rider. She felt a chill in her limbs and jerked her mind away from the northward droving - the droving that was never meant for the north...