THE WARRIOR QUEEN (The Guinevere Trilogy Book 1) by Lavinia Collins

was cold here, but it must have been, also, from prudishness. He slid his hand up the back, pulling at the lacing.
    I pushed him back, gently.
    “Any one of your knights could come riding along.”
    “Well, I don’t think it would bother Gawain; he’s a brute. And Kay has seen it before.”
    I laughed unwillingly and gave him a half-hearted shove back. He did not give ground. He kissed me again and pressed himself tight against me. I could feel against my leg that he was hard. The feel of the skin of his hand on my back, bare beneath the shirt, was stirring longing for the touch of more of his skin on mine. He was strong, and insistent, and already I was relenting, when the sound of horses’ hooves tore him away from me. He stood back, looking around, waiting for the man and the horse, but none came. The sound came closer and closer until it seemed too loud to be natural, and then began to recede.
    Arthur swung back up onto his horse and drew his sword in a second. He threw down his hunting horn to me.
    “Stay here. If anyone you don’t know comes, blow twice.”
    Then he was gone. I slung the horn around my neck and swung back up into the saddle. Arthur had pulled the straps of the jerkin loose and I could not reach to tie them up properly myself. It would have to do. I felt the tingling of frustrated anticipation all over me. I sighed deeply and looked up through the trees. The sun looked as though it was already dipping. Surely we had not been in the forest so long? We had left before midday. I waited for Arthur a while longer, and when it looked as though it was beginning to get dark, I blew the horn twice, but the forest swallowed up the sound. My only choice was to ride.
    I took my horse slowly through the woods, looking out for light, or for men on horseback. I did not want to blow the horn again and risk scaring my horse, who was already beginning to seem wary and restive beneath me. I shushed her soothingly and patted her mane. She quietened a little. I tried calling out, for Arthur, Ector and Kay, but I only heard my voice echoing back. Eventually I came to a little clearing where I could see a figure lying by a little pool, asleep. I did not know the man, so I notched an arrow into my bow. I called out. There was no answer. I called again. I felt uneasy. The clearing gave me an awful feeling and in my panic I loosed the bow from the arrow. It hit the man – though I could not yet be sure he was a man since his face lay turned away from me, and he was curled in a lump – who howled with pain so loud I thought the trees shook. I jammed my hands over my ears, but I had to let them go to take the reins of my horse who was rearing and whinnying loud with distress. A harsh, sudden wind blew through the clearing, throwing debris from the ground up into my eyes. When the wind fell away and I opened them, the man was gone, and it was bright and before the pool stood, glorious, white and shining, the hart. It seemed to glow in sunlight that was suddenly bright as noon and it looked at me with an even stare. I was not going to kill the hart; I knew that as I saw it. Its presence seemed to calm my horse and I rode up to it. It let me stroke its soft, velvety muzzle for a moment, and then walked off. I watched it go, and wondered where the others were, if I had seemed to be caught in the dark because of the storm, or if the Otherworld was close to the surface in this wood and reaching out, gently, to warn me and reassure me all at once.
    “My lady, you are lost.” I turned my horse to see who had spoken behind me, and saw standing there Nimue.
    “Who was the man?” I asked.
    Nimue shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. He was your future. The hart is your future. I am your future.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “And you,” she continued, as though she had not heard me, “Guinevere… the White Enchantress. What a name for a creature like you. The White Goddess of love and death. A destroyer of men. A bringer of