I had a bit of an enforced vacation for a few days last week- first I was sick, then we brought the cat inside while it was so cold, and I’m allergic to cats. Breathing was an interesting exercise for those few days.

Suffice to say, I haven’t gotten much work done. But I’m on the upswing, so it’s prompt time, and Gavril the mercenary is here to tell his tale and hang a lampshade on some fantasy tropes.

Today’s prompt is: Write the story of a soldier who must escort a rescued royal back to her family.

Ooh, that’s got potential. It came out of the ‘romance’ section of the prompt book, but I’m inclined to send it off in another direction; Gavril’s a little too pragmatic for romance.

***

My name is Gavril, and I’m a mercenary. I do odd jobs, mostly. Sometimes, very odd jobs.

Rescuing Princess Amalia turned out to be rather odder than I expected.

I’ve dealt with plenty of whiny young lads whose mothers should have strangled them at birth. But hardship makes boys into men, and most of them- the ones who live through their first campaign, anyway- turned out well enough in the end. I’ve always assumed that, likewise, hardship makes girls into women.

Such rules often come with exceptions, and Princess Amalia… well, you shall judge, whether she was a woman or a girl by the end of her adventure.

Rescuing the princess was easy. She’d been carried off by an ogre; I went to the ogre’s cave and got her back. Simple. Boring, even. I didn’t even have to fight for her; the creature had gone off to pillage another village or some such thing.

Even the princess was a bog-standard princess, about sixteen years old, blonde hair, blue eyes, tall and slender. I’ve never been able to figure out why princesses all look like that. Well, I can understand why they might be tall- royal children get enough to eat when they’re young; peasant children have to take what they can get. But the rest is odd. Our local royal and noble families aren’t that closely related- mostly because there’s too many of them- and the princes vary in appearance; why not their sisters and daughters?

I’d learn the answer when someone paid me a large sum of money to find it out. Since I was only being paid to rescue the princess, I did that.

That includes bringing her home, by the way. Kings like to dress up their commands with flowery exhortations to, ‘save my daughter, whatever it takes!’ but they get annoyed when a mercenary rescues the girl and leaves her by the side of the road while he goes off to his next job.

We started back down the mountain toward the valley where I’d left my horse, and I began to wonder if this might be the easiest payday I’d ever seen.

That feeling lasted about five minutes, then Princess Amalia got over her fright and hit me with a barrage of questions, which I didn’t mind- much- and complaints, which I did mind- a lot.

She began with, “Who are you?”

That was reasonable enough. “I am Gavril of Grimsby, my lady.”

“A mercenary.”

“Of course.” I bore the gray cloak and plain shield of my profession.

“Did my father hire you to rescue me?”

“Yes.”

“Where are we going?”

“We’re going to fetch my horse, then I’ll take you home.”

She had the grace to thank me. I prefer money as a medium of thanks, but words are better than nothing, and I could hardly expect her to traipse around the mountains with a pocket full of coins, for no other purpose than handing them to any stranger who did her a favor.

My moment of sympathy toward the princess began to fade when her next words were, “Must we take this path? Is there no road?”

To be fair, the path was rocky, and her shoes were thin. “No, my lady. This is it.”

“How horrid. Something should be done about it.”

“Like what, my lady?” I said, perhaps more sharply than I should have. “The only one who comes up here is the ogre who kidnapped you. And me, to rescue you.”

She gave a great sigh and subsided for a moment, only to break the silence with, “How much further? We’ve been walking for ever.”

“Another half a mile to my horse, then we can rest.”

I spoke flatly, hoping that my tone would encourage her to shut up and concentrate on getting safely down the mountain. To no avail. She was hungry; she was thirsty; her feet hurt; she was tired; why hadn’t I brought a proper escort to rescue her; how much further did we have to go? And on, and on, until I was ready to strangle her.

She’d been kidnapped and held captive for three months; surely that would toughen her up a bit? Given her a bit of perspective on how good a life she’d had before that, and how bad it could get? The ogre hadn’t injured her, as far as I could tell- I could have some sympathy for an ill-treated prisoner. On the other hand, perhaps a bit of ill-treatment was exactly what she needed.

It was a tempting thought, but I had rescued the girl; I could hardly give her back to the ogre now.

Finally, the mountainside melted into a green and forested valley, and I found my way back to the clearing where I’d left my horse.

I’d tied Tiny to a small tree with a long rope, so he could fight if anything came to trouble him, and had a chance of getting free if I met with an accident and never returned. He was nibbling on the sparse grass surrounding the tree, and didn’t bother to interrupt his snack as we approached.

Princess Amalia sighed at the sight of Tiny. “Oh, at last,” she said, and her relief was real. “I though I was going to have to walk all the way back to the castle.”

Oh, blast. I knew I’d messed up somewhere along the way. I’ve been a mercenary for ten years; there’s not much I don’t know about the trade, and I’m usually well-prepared for my work. But I’m still human. I make mistakes, and at that moment, I began to wonder if I’d shot myself in the foot by not bringing along another horse for the princess to ride. Of course, that becomes logistically complicated, and it’s very easy to start out with a second horse, add a servant to take care of it plus his horse, more servants to tend the princess, horses for all of them to ride- before I knew it, I’d find myself at the head of an army. Better to do the job alone, and with as little fuss as possible.

Or so I’d thought. And I certainly wasn’t about to admit to my charge that I’d made a mistake. Perhaps when she was safe again in her father’s castle, but not while her rescue was still in-progress.

My experience might not have led me to bring along a spare horse for the princess, but I do have some tricks up my sleeve, and the dismay lurking in the back of my mind subsided for a moment when I untied a bundle from my saddle and handed it to her. She opened it, glancing back and forth between her prize and my face, and lit up when she saw what was inside.

“Clean stockings!” she exclaimed, pulling them out. “I never thought I’d be so happy to see that!” she commented, then her face fell ludicrously and she glared at me and turned her back.

I laughed. “Like I’ve never seen a woman’s stockings before.”

“You’ve never seen mine,” she pointed out, like it was a clinching argument.

“Not until now, and very pretty they are. Go on, there’s more in that bundle. Your mother packed it.”

The princess’s wrath subsided at that, only to turn to confusion when she unearthed a pair of sensible leather boots. “Oh. How ugly.”

“Good for walking,” I pointed out, glad that the queen had taken my advice seriously.

“Or riding,” she said, and dove back into the bundle. Out came a linen shift and a comb, and she disappeared behind some bushes to make herself presentable while I bridled Tiny and scanned the clearing for anything that might trouble us.

There was nothing, and I was growing bored by the time the princess emerged from her concealment, looking exactly the same as she had before, save for the boots that had replaced her thin slippers. At least she’d be able to walk, as I would do, back to the castle.

The princess had other ideas. She handed me the re-packed bundle, which I initially took as a sign of good sense; only a fool would approach an unfamiliar warhorse, and there was no sense in making her carry the bundle when Tiny could do it just as well.

I happened to be on Tiny’s right side when the princess handed over her burden, and by the time I’d tied it to the saddle, she’d walked around to my darling’s other side and I had to scramble to follow her.

“Help me up,” she said imperiously, and grasped the stirrup.

Tiny swung his head around, ears pinned, and I quickly stepped up to the princess’s side, blocking my darling from biting her. “No, my lady. Step back. He doesn’t like strangers.”

She paused but didn’t move away. “Perhaps if we were introduced? The horses of the kingsguard all liked me. I used to feed them apples,” she said, and smiled up at me.

I didn’t smile back. Tiny is, like all warhorses, dangerous at both ends and crafty in the middle, and having been thwarted in his quest to bite the princess, lifted his left hind hoof and lashed out.

I saw it coming and yanked Princess Amalia out of kicking range. She stumbled, and I held her upright with one hand and kept Tiny moving away from her with the other.

“He tried to kick me!” she exclaimed, her mouth dropping open in shock, then her face grew stormy and she balled up her fist to strike.

She was a small woman, and unarmed; she wouldn’t hurt Tiny. But she could make him angry, and an angry warhorse is not to be trifled with. I briefly considered letting her find that out for herself.

But King Hernando would hardly pay me if I delivered a corpse to him. I stepped forward again, and this time, seized her wrist, forcing her arm down and away so she stumbled and fell. “Do not touch my horse,” I said, very calmly.

“Don’t touch me!” she retorted. “I’m tired of walking! I want to ride! What good is a horse if no one can ride it?”

I should have rescued the ogre and left the princess; at least the ogre wouldn’t try to touch my horse. Eat him, perhaps, but Tiny was more than capable of defending himself against that, and no one would blame him for it. “Just because the saddle is empty, doesn’t mean you can fill it,” I snapped. “Not unless you want to find yourself lying on the road with a broken neck. Tiny is a trained warhorse. When he’s saddled and bridled, he’s working, and only I can handle him. Everyone else gets kicked, bitten, or trampled. Exactly as he’s trained to do. Don’t touch him. We will walk, together, and the sooner we begin, the sooner you’ll be home.”

I spun around and led Tiny back to the pathway, not bothering to wait for an answer. Tiny was looking mutinous again, and if I didn’t get a move on, one or both of us was going to lose patience with Princess Amalia. Again.

***

Definitely not the end, but it’s a good start. I’m not exactly sure what happens next, but I think Amalia tries to get near Tiny again, gets chomped, and realizes that maybe she should follow directions even when she doesn’t want to.

Of course I’d actually have to finish the story to publish it- I estimate that it’ll finish up at about 4000 words- and having skimmed through the snippet, I think it also needs some more description to ground the reader in this particular setting.

But it’s a good start for a coming-of-age-type answer to, ‘Write the story of a soldier who must escort a rescued royal back to her family.”

How would you answer the prompt? Would you take the romance angle? Action-adventure? Something else? Give us a hint below, and, happy writing!