Read Online The Queen of the Tearling by Erika Johansen - Free Book Online Page A

skeletal branches of trees above their heads.
    â€œWhere do I go?” she asked.
    â€œThrough that treebreak to your left.” Mace helped her mount Pen’s horse, a deep brown stallion a good hand taller than her mare. Even with Mace’s help, Kelsea groaned at the effort to haul both her body and Pen’s armor into the saddle. “You’ll ride north for only a few hundred feet, Lady, and then circle back east until you ride due south. You won’t see me, but I’ll be near at hand.”
    Feeling the great size of the horse beneath her, Kelsea admitted, “I don’t ride very well, Lazarus. And I’ve never really ridden fast at all.”
    â€œI’ve noticed, Lady. But Rake is one of our gentlest stallions. Ride him with a slack rein and he won’t attempt to throw you, though you’re unfamiliar to him.” Mace’s head whipped up sharply, his gaze fixed above Kelsea. “Go now, Lady. They’re coming.”
    Kelsea hesitated.
    â€œChrist!” Mace slapped the horse’s rump and Rake leaped forward, the reins nearly jerked from Kelsea’s hands. Behind her, she heard him call out, “Dolls and dresses, Lady! You’ll need to be tougher than this!”
    Then she was off into the woods.
    Â 
    I t was a terrible ride. She took the stallion in the wide circle Mace had described, her whole body itching for the moment when she could go straight and pick up speed. When she judged the circle wide enough, she checked the moss on the rocks and began to ride south, Pen’s grey cloak flying behind her. For a few minutes the armor weighed heavily, seeming to rattle her whole body each time Rake landed on his front hooves. But after a bit she found that she could no longer feel the weight of the metal at all. There was nothing but speed, a pure, clean speed that she had never achieved with Barty’s aging stallion. The forest flew by her, trees sometimes far off and sometimes so close that the tips of branches whipped against her mailed body. A freezing wind screamed in her ears, and she tasted the bitterness of adrenaline in the back of her throat.
    There was no sign of Mace, but she knew he was there, and his last comment recurred to her every few minutes while she rode, making her face flush with warmth even beneath the numbness imparted by the wind. She had thought that she’d been very strong and very brave during this journey; she had let herself believe that she had impressed them. Carlin had always told Kelsea that her face was an open book; what if they had all seen her pride? Would she ever be able to face them again?
    Stop that nonsense right now!
    Carlin’s voice thundered inside her head, stronger than any humiliation, stronger than doubt. Kelsea clamped her thighs more tightly against Rake’s sides and urged him to go faster, and when her cheeks threatened to turn warm again, she reached up and slapped herself across the face.
    After perhaps an hour of hard riding, the woods cleared for good and Kelsea was suddenly down into pure farmland, the Almont Plain. Carefully tilled rows of green stretched out as far as she could see, and she mourned inside at the very flatness of the land, its sameness. There were a few trees, but they were only thin leafless trunks that twisted upward toward the sky, none of them sturdy enough to provide any cover. Kelsea rode on, finding lanes between the rows of crops, cutting across fields only when there was no other way through. The farming acres were dotted with low homesteads made of wood and hay-thatched roofs, most of them little more than huts. In the distance Kelsea could also see several taller, stronger wooden dwellings, probably the houses of overseers, if not nobles.
    She saw many farmers; some of them straightened to get a look at her, or waved as she flew by. But most, more concerned with their crops, simply ignored her. The Tear economy ran on farming; farmers worked the fields in