I looked from one road to the other. North: cold, lonely, dangerous. South: crowded, suspicious… but maybe easier. My stomach growled.
“This way,” I said, pointing south. “Better terrain, warmer, and besides, we aren’t villains. We’re nice people, just out for a ride, causing no trouble at all.”
I added, “And I’m starving, and I really want a comfortable bed.”
Torin said, “Aye, we must get the Princess a hearth and a board before nightfall.”
He turned our horses south.
8
LEXI
1558 - HEADED SOUTH
About twenty minutes in, I couldn’t bear it any longer. “At the risk of sounding like a child, how much longer?”
“I think we hae hours tae go.”
I shook my head. “I can’t! I can’t go that far, my thighs hurt so badly — Ican’t.I tried, you’ll have to just leave me here and go get help.”
He pulled our horse to a stop.
I pouted, facing forward. His voice sounded behind my head. “What dost ye mean, go get help?”
“Go get me a car. Bring a car around! Or get me a pair of silk pants. Or take me home by vessel, my skin is completely raw. The wet linen and wool and saddle are kicking my ass.”
I added, “Figuratively and literally.”
He fumbled in his sporran behind me and was quiet for a moment. Then he put the vessel in my hands. He held on to the reins, his forearms resting on my thighs, huddled against my back. “Twist it.”
“Right here?”
“Aye.”
I twisted it, but nothing happened. I didn’t expect it though, where it formerly had that gyroscope feel, as if something separate were inside of it, righting itself — it felt solid and dead.
I tried again. Then I put it back in his waiting palm.
I could feel him behind me, as he wordlessly put the vessel back in his sporran, then his hand came back around me. And in his palm was the horn jar of disgusting balm.
“This is for me?”
“Aye, and ye canna argue with me on it. Ye must apply it tae yer arse.”
“Fine.” I raised my skirt to my hips. “Hold me, don’t let me fall, also no peeking.” He put his hands on my waist, holding me steady. I got a dollop of balm on my fingers, raised my thigh, reached down and spread it on every bit of skin on the inside of my thigh from my crotch to my knee. “Ow ow owie ow!” I raised my knee as high as I could get it and hunched over trying to blow on it. “It stings!”
He chuckled.
“Very funny.”
Then I did it on the other side. Raising my knee, applying the balm, bitching and moaning, and trying to blow on it. “If I get an infection from this hell balm, I will be so mad.”
I stood on his boots for balance, lifted myself just enough off the saddle, and awkwardly smeared balm beneath the edge of my tiny panties.
“No peeking!” I warned.
Torin snorted. “Peek? Och, nae, Princess. I daena crave the sight of a red-raw backside glistening with arse balm. Twould scar me for life.”
