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A cool mist hung in the air over the stableyards, thickening the clay beneath Jack’s feet—one real, one fashioned from steel—into a sludge that clung to his boots in sticky clumps.
The heavy-footed stot at his side whickered softly in his ear; Jack gave him a fond scratch behind the bridle and waited as three figures materialised behind the splintering wood of the troughs. When the central figure neared, Jack caught a pair of dark eyes from beneath her hood and nodded in greeting.
The lady looked to be common, dressed in simple riding leathers with a worn, dark roughspun cloak. She was slight of frame—Jack eyed her slim waist and figured he could reach around it easily with half an arm to spare besides—and looked to be young still, just shy of thirty. The only hint to her status was her posture: when she reached up to caress her palfrey’s flank with long, dark fingers, she moved with a highborn grace that he’d spot a mile away.
“A day’s ride due South till you hit the fork,” said the Maester nonchalantly, “then across the river into the Stormlands. The journey should be pleasant enough. You will pass Storm's End in a sennight or less, if the Seven will it.”
He helped her into the saddle, but his efforts weren’t needed; the lady swung up like she’d been born to it. And mayhaps she was, Jack thought, eyeing her casual seat, the way she maneuvered the palfrey with ease. They did things differently in Dorne, he knew.
“And Ser Abbot alone will accompany me,” the lady said, in a monotone that suggested exactly what she thought about that. Her voice had a strain to it, and her forehead creased with doubt. “Maester Shen, I—“
“Better a knight than a sellsword, my lady,” said the Maester, “and a full party would only raise unwanted questions. Ser Abbot is sworn to His Grace; he will do his duty as required.”
The Maester raised his brows at Jack, prompting him. Jack found the lady’s gaze and held it. She looked back defiantly.
“On my honour as a knight,” Jack said, squaring his shoulders, “I will return you to your House in safety, m’lady.”
“I will hold you to it, Ser,” she replied, with a glint in her eye.
*
Fingers of light cut through the trees lining the well-trod kingsroad, the rising sun promising a hot, thirsty midday. By noon his stot’s neck was lathering, and the lady’s face shone with sweat. She kept adjusting her cloak with a look of discomfort, and Jack himself could feel his tunic grow uncomfortably damp against his hot skin.
He led them pause at a bubbling stream to refill their waterskins and let the horses nibble at the lush green grass. The lady sighed and stretched, likely cramped from hours in the saddle. Jack let his eyes linger on the curve of her hip just a moment before she turned suddenly, forcing him to busy himself with his waterskin lest he be caught out.
“I thank you for your companionship, Ser Abbot,” the lady said stiffly, “and your silence. You will be rewarded handsomely, I assure you.”
The suggestion that Jack was only doing this for coin felt like a slap to the face. Did she think him merely some petty sellsword?
“To avoid attention, I needs must call you by name, and the same goes for you, m’lady,” Jack told her, rather than voice this thought. The road stretched before them, no doubt bustling with travelling smallfolk and bannermen who would narrow their eyes at a knight with a Flea Bottom accent and a lady with Dornish colouring travelling through historically contested territory. Coin or no coin. “No use shedding your fine silks if we announce to all and sundry that I’m a sworn shield and you my noble lady.”
“Samira, then,” she said reluctantly.
Samira. Jack tensed his thighs and ran a hand through the water. The name rang familiar in his mind, and he turned it over thoughtfully, watching the shadows from the leaves overhead dance over her face.
“And does Ser have a name as well?” Samira asked, with an eyebrow raised. “Or is my knight who isn’t a knight to remain nameless?”
Her dark hair fell in glossy curls over her shoulder, and she gathered it up and off her neck, catching up a handful of water from the stream and wetting her skin. Jack clenched his jaw, willing the sudden heat under his own skin away.
“Jack.”
A scream from nearby cut through the tension between them. Instantly on his guard, Jack leapt to his feet but kept low, motioning for Samira to stay crouched where she was. It was a woman, dark-haired and stooped, who had screamed; two men stood over her, and as Jack watched, one of them kicked at her, sending her sprawling into the grass.
“Jack,” Samira said in an urgent whisper, and tugged at his tunic. “We have to do something.”
Jack shook his head. If he’d been alone, he wouldn’t have hesitated, but he was too aware of the danger he could put her in, and so early in their journey, it was an unnecessary risk—
The woman screamed again. Jack heard one of the men laugh at her, snarling “—Only one use for a Dornish whore like you.” The words unleashed a rage in Jack’s belly, and in Samira, too, it seemed: she pulled a dagger from a sheath hidden beneath her cloak and, before Jack could grab her, dashed quick as a hare from behind her rock.
“Seven hells,” Jack swore, and sprinted after her.
The brigands wore no House colours, Jack saw with relief, but the sight of Samira brandishing a blade at two filthy, hard-bitten men thick with muscle and twice her size was still enough to turn his beard fully grey.
“Stop!” she shouted. Her voice shook with anger.
“Well, well,” said the larger of the two, releasing his grip on the wailing woman’s dark hair. He leered at Samira, openly looking her up and down. “And what have we here? Another snake slithered from its nest.”
“Leave her be,” Samira said fiercely, “or you won’t live to regret it.”
The younger, filthier man spat at her feet. “Trot on, girl, if you know what’s good for you. I’ve half a mind to bend you over, next.”
“I’d slice your cock off before you could pull it out.”
The brigand’s sword was halfway out of its sheath before Jack’s blade found its home against the apple of his throat. Sunlight glinted off the castle-forged steel; the man’s eyes widened, the whites gleaming with sudden fear.
“She would,” Jack said pleasantly. “I’d listen to her, friend.” He twisted the sword a fraction, pressing its sharp blade just enough into muddied skin for a drop of blood to appear, red as a sun-ripened cherry. “Can’t say as I’d mind watching.”
Either Jack’s words or the look in Samira’s eye seemed to convince them. With a few muttered curses they fled, and the woman too, though not before tearily giving them her thanks.
Samira was quiet for a long time. When she spoke again, the sun was westering and the horses were growing weary beneath them, and Jack’s belly was complaining with hunger.
“I’d have slit their throats if they’d tried anything more,” she told him. “That woman‘s only crime was the colour of her skin.”
Her slender fingers curled around the hilt of her dagger, safely back in its brassy sheath. Jack swallowed around a lump in his throat at the thought of her wielding it. There had been no fear in her at all, only the promise of blood and revenge. Jack recalled the way her whole body had shook with anger. Aye, he’d no doubt she would’ve.
“A red smile from a noble lady would’ve been more than men like them deserved,” Jack smiled at her without humour.
She mirrored him, and then cocked her head like she had before, examining him.
“I see now why His Grace chose you, Jack.”
“Aye, s’pose he knew the lordlings and the handsome younger knights wouldn’t have been able to keep up with the likes of you.”
Samira smirked at him. “And what of the handsome older knights, Jack?”
Her eyes were honey-sweet, but there was a dangerous undertone to her voice. That contrast was what did it, he’d recall later: now, with alarm, Jack felt his cock begin to harden in his breeches, the hunger in his belly turning into a different sort altogether.
Jack willed himself to get a grip on his senses. That taste of a fight was all he’d needed to get his blood up, he told himself. It was nothing to do with the beautiful lady and her expert seat on the prancing grey palfrey, keeping time with his horse's canter as casually as though she were floating on air. No, it wasn’t the taste of her sweat on the air neither, nor the sly twitch of her lips as she caught him staring. Jack licked his lips.
“Mutton stew and hot pie for supper,” he said instead, desperate for a distraction. An inn was visible in the distance, its windows warm with inviting candlelight. A few coppers would buy them full bellies and a soapy bath, enough to tide them over for the weeks ahead, gods be good.
“And a bed, if we’re lucky,” Samira added, with another look at Jack that almost drew from him a groan. She kicked her heels into the palfrey’s flanks and off she flew down the road towards the inn, kicking dust up into Jack’s face.
Jack sighed. Only a day with Samira and he already felt as though he’d been deep in his cups for half a sennight, so intoxicated he was by her. This mission would be the death of him.
A flame lit from its earlier spark. Samira. Such a familiar name. Dornish, certainly. The dagger had been a fine-forged weapon, even for a noble lady, and recognisably Southern from its hilt and the distinct curve of its blade. But what Dornish noble lady knew how to expertly sit a horse, who’d needed to be smuggled from King’s Landing to Sunspear by land rather than sea, and who freely threatened and cursed like a man but still with the grace and majesty of a—
Jack closed his eyes and groaned.
—a princess.
“Princess Samira of House Mohan,” Jack said aloud to the trees and their watchful crows, furious, his lust dimming as the realisation dawned. “A fucking—gods, I won’t survive this.”
The crows seemed to agree, judging by the strength of their caws.
art by the inimitable @frecklednose