The rushing water toppled Hoxley end over end, beating her body on smooth boulders as she flailed to keep from drowning. Twice, three times her head broke through the surface to gasp for air. Frantic glances saw the boy doing the same just ahead, and the stone bridge vanishing behind a bend far behind. The powerful currents rolled and tossed her with few places to touch the bottom. As she became less disoriented, she managed to raise her hooves ahead of her to glance off of rocks that might have battered her even more.

  “Hey!” The boy called to her, “Hey! Over here!” He shouted as he bobbed in the water. Through it all, Hoxley never let go of her pugil. The speed of the river didn’t ease. When the initial fright wore off, she used the long staff like a marker to gauge the depth of the flow and steer herself away from rocks. She began to gallop beneath the surface to speed up and reach the boy who managed to keep above water but wasn’t making any progress toward reaching the edge. Powerful legs pushed and pedaled until she was close enough that the end of her pugil was within his reach. He splashed and struggled to grasp it, but once he had, she yanked him close and seated him behind her. His arms clutched tight around her too tightly.

  “Ouch, you’re hurting me,” she said. “Grab my pugil sheath. He let go and latched on with both hands to the strong strap running diagonally across her back. Now that she could move more freely, she began to make the push for shore. The current remained swift and the river was far wider here. Her strides and broad strokes made steady progress. A few minutes later, she’d fought hard enough for her hooves to find the bottom of the bank.

  Exhausted, she helped her passenger do lay down on some flat stones before doing so herself. She looked back at the water, up and down, but saw neither hide nor hair of the soldier she’d bludgeoned or her precious bag. The boy coughed and heaved on his hands and knees, spitting up water. He didn’t look injured, just waterlogged. Her white and gold shirt that spanned from her neck to her waist was soaked through, and the white fur that covered her back half was just the same.

  Handfuls of woolen hair were squeezed from the curved horns atop her head to the braided length hanging over her right shoulder. Water gushed and “plapped” on the stone below. When she got her wind back, Hoxley shook herself from head to tail, sending water everywhere.

  “Hey, stop it!” He protested as she sprayed in every direction. Whatever amount of water he’d just squeezed from his hooded cloak was instantly put back in.

  “You do not get to be offended. We could have drowned.” Hoxley scowled at him. “What have you gotten me into?”

  “My name is Rydon Damron, I’m the prince of the eastern kingdom, my father is the king.”

  “That seems highly unlikely. Princes have no need to run through thickets and steal from the king’s guards. Theft is a serious crime there, and its consequences are severe.”

  “I know the laws, my family wrote them.” he said. Hoxley didn’t seem convinced and crossed her arms in judgment.

  “Oh? If you’re really the prince, then what are you doing this far away from your palace, your highness? Where are your escorts? Surely a real prince wouldn’t be travelling alone without guards to keep him safe. A real prince would know that if a group of rogues caught him in the wild, he’d likely be “prince-napped” and held for ransom. I don’t know what the punishment is for impersonating royalty, but I wouldn’t want to find out.”

  “I am the prince.” He said again. “You have my crown of my father in your bag.” Hoxley’s eyes shot wide with shock.

  “My saddlebags!” She suddenly remembered, she turned about, eyes scanning both the near and far shore of the river for signs of them. “My bags are gone! This is your fault!” She pointed a long finger and a mean stare from behind freckled cheeks. “I’ve just cost me my livelihood! I had letters to deliver! When word gets out that I’ve lost my deliveries, my reputation will be ruined! Who hires a messenger who loses her messages? Everything was fine until you came running out of those bushes! What am I going to do?”

  “I would worry more about those men at the bridge. They need that crown as much as I do, and they won’t stop until they have it.”

  “Why do those men want your father’s crown and why isn’t it sitting atop his head, where a crown should be?”

  “Actually, it’s mine to wear now. My father is dead.”

  “I’m sorry….I was not aware your father had fallen ill. I was at the kingdom ten days ago, and if the king was sick someone would have mentioned it at one of my stops.”

  “Not ill, assassinated.” He corrected her.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  “Assassinated?” Hoxley gasped. “By whom?”

  “My uncle, my father’s younger brother. He’s staged a coup in the middle of the night, storming the palace, heading straight to where my mother and father slept. They’re dead, I’m certain of it. My father’s servant, Idris, warned me in time, gave me my father’s crown, and helped me to sneak out of the castle via a secret passage. It was there I started running.”

  “How do you know they’re dead?” she asked

  “As I was running away, I heard the bells high above the church. It played the tolling of their passing.”

  “That’s monstrous. And just where is your man?” Hoxley asked suspiciously. “If he was supposed to keep you safe, where is he? If he’s an adult, shouldn’t he be guiding you and protecting you instead of me?”

  “He led me to immediate safety and said he had to make last-minute preparations, but that it was too dangerous for me to linger a moment longer. He told me to keep to the shadows and the wild, to avoid settlements as much as possible. He gave me his word that he would catch up. So far, I haven’t seen him, but I still hold hope. I still believe that-” Just as the prince was talking, Hoxley’s large pale ears, like those of a lamb, perked at the sound of something in the distance. Her fingers instinctively wrapped tightly around her pugil. Somewhere on the far shore, something moving in the underbrush. She stepped closer to him, reached down, and pulled him to his feet by the back of his vest.

  “Get up. We have to go. Now.” she said

  “Go? Go where? What’s happening?”

  “Keep your voice down. It’s not safe here. We have to leave the river’s edge. Follow me, only step on the rocks until we’re far from the bank.”

  “Why the rocks?”

  “Don’t ask questions. Come.” Hoxley led him away from the water, her hooves clopping from one large rock to the next. When they got higher on the bank, the more she meticulously kept each hoof on a separate rock as she stepped a path into the tree line. When they approached a small dusty path at the crest, she leapt over it. Prince Damron did the same.

  “What are we doing?” He asked in a low voice. “Why not run as fast as we can down this trail and put some distance between us and them?”

  “My hooves would make for easy clues to follow us in the sifted dirt and mud around the river. This way we don’t leave tracks. If any of those men has any tracking skill it might not be enough to fool them. The same for a dusty trail. My hoofprints are too small for a labor horse and too big for a deer. Anyone with a little hunting expertise will be able to identify my steps. C’mon, we’re high enough now. Follow me, hurry.”

  The two scrambled up the incline and into the woods. So dense was the canopy that even with the sun still midway high in the air, their surroundings seemed cool and shady. At one point, Hoxley sheathed her pugil, bent down, and plucked a fallen branch from the ground and held it upright and in front of her as she walked.

  “Why are you holding that stick like that?” he asked.

  “Spiderwebs, it keeps me from walking through them.”

  “That’s a good idea,” he said. With that, the prince used his sword to hack at a low-hanging limb to imitate her. When she heard the sound, she stopped to spin around to glare at him.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m doing what you’re doing. Spiderwebs, right?”

  “Why do you need a stick for spiderwebs if you’re following behind me?”

  “I can’t have a stick?”

  “If you need a stick, you pick one from the ground.”

  “What’s wrong with this one?”

  “You just used a sword to hack it off a tree, which leaves a broken limb.” She pointed to the frayed end of the limb, still pointing down at them from the tree. “That’s the kind of thing the people trying to track us will be looking for. Are you trying to give them clues about where we’re going?”

  “No,” he said. Throwing it to the ground.

  “What are you doing?”

  “You told me to get rid of the stick.”

  “No, I told you not to cut them down. Now that you’ve taken it, you might as well keep it.”

  “Are you playing games with me?”

  “I most certainly am not.” She said, flustered. “Just… pick up the stick and let’s keep going. The more distance we put between ourselves and the river the better.”

  “What about your bag?”

  “We’ll circle back once we’ve traveled further downstream. There’s a man-made dam in Sweetwater. If it was going to get caught on anything, I’d bet it’s there.”

  “Sweet Water?”

  “You’ve never been? It’s a small village not too far from here. The dam redirects the river's flow to a water wheel that turns the millstones. The place always smells of sweet rolls and fresh bread.” The prince’s expression perked up at the mention of food.“Bread sounds good. I haven’t eaten all day. I’m absolutely famished.”