She hoped it would work.
It was all Cheshire’s planning.
Dinah rode Morte out front, alone. She didn’t have much use for company lately. Silently, she watched as Wardley raised his arm and the brigade came to a sudden halt. The sound of the men’s obvious relief reached Dinah’s ears. I must remember that no matter how tired I am, I am not as weary as my men. Wardley brought Corning up beside her, with Bah-kan following grumpily at his heels.
“Why did we stop?” Bah-kan bellowed. “We are almost to the villages of Wonderland proper.”
Dinah cleared her throat and looked away from Wardley. The sight of his face made her heart twist so painfully that she almost lost her breath. “Please communicate to the army that we are camping here for the night.”
Wardley’s eyes lingered pitifully on her face before he spurred Corning off to aid the Spades with setting up camp.
Bah-kan growled in Dinah’s direction. “The Yurkei won’t be happy about this.”
“Thank you for telling me,” replied Dinah coldly. “I will keep that in mind.”
He was right, of course. The Yurkei were a thousand times more physically fit than the Spades, but more important, they rode horses that never seemed to tire. The Yurkei’s wild herds were miraculous beasts, and the Spades appeared quite taken with them. The warriors from Hu-Yuhar had mistakenly assumed they would be marching straight to Wonderland with very little time to stop and camp. The vast majority of the Spades were walking, and so they rightly required more breaks. This had led to an ever-growing discontent that only inflamed the two groups’ hatred for each other. In addition to this, the long march to Wonderland Palace had taken a deep physical toll on the men. While they had expected the march to take upward of two weeks, Dinah was surprised at just how difficult it was to move her small army.
Getting the Yurkei south had been easy compared to this. Returning the Spades back to where they’d just come from was an endless litany of negotiations, disappointment, and hunger. Most of them were not completely at ease with a woman leading them and directed their questions and complaints to Starey Belft, Cheshire, or Wardley.
While she at times quietly doubted her own ability to lead, she didn’t want her men doing it. Because of this, Dinah begrudgingly made it a point to interact with the men as much as possible. She joined them for dinner, watched their sparring bouts, and attempted to engage them in casual conversation. She made sure to personally thank each one for his loyalty. Yet despite all this effort, they still looked to Cheshire for answers. Around Dinah they acted shy but respectful. There was a lot of staring.
Dinah apparently wasn’t the only one being stared at. Yur-Jee, her fierce Yurkei guard, was staring with seething hatred at a Spade soldier who was attempting to feed one of the Yurkei steeds a piece of bread. Yur-Jee’s hand clutched his bow as he gestured frantically to the Spade.
“Lu-yusa! Ilu-fre!” He stumbled for broken Wonderlander, finally finding the word. “No!”
The Spade, a husky man with a giant black beard and red-rimmed eyes, stepped back.
“What the hell is he going on about now?” he grumbled.
Yur-Jee was climbing off his horse, tight, lean muscles tensing as his feet hit the ground. The Spade reached for his ax.
“Stop! Ja-Hohy!”
Both men wisely paused at the voice of their future queen. Dinah carefully dismounted Morte, sliding down half his body as her calloused hands clutched his red leather rein.
“Idiots!” she quietly whispered to herself as she closed the space between them. When she reached the men, she calmly took the bread out of the Spade’s hand and tossed it on the ground before meeting the Spade’s eyes. She heard a familiar nicker behind her from Cyndy, Sir Gorrann’s mare. She was reassured by his quiet presence.
Altercations like this seemed to happen every other hour, and she was learning to deal with them one by one. Ruling, it turned out, was terribly tedious and made up of a dozen small decisions every day that seemed to always upset someone. She smiled kindly at the Spade, who stared at her unnervingly.
“The Yurkei only let their horses eat wild grasses, did you know that? This special diet is what we believe gives them their endurance.”
The Spade snorted. “Fancy diet, yeh say? For their horses? That’s a load of shit if I’ve ever heard it.”
He spit on the ground at Dinah’s feet. Behind her, Sir Gorrann cleared his throat to reprimand the man, but Dinah raised her hand, silencing him. She leveled the soldier with a glare.
“Should you disrespect me again, you’ll find yourself in shackles at the end of the line, trying your best to keep up with their steeds. If you choose differently—say, to make your way back to your post and take it upon yourself to educate others that they are not to feed the Yurkei steeds—then you may end this journey without raw wrists and bleeding feet.” She tilted her head, ignoring the urge to strike this man repeatedly.
The man dropped his eyes and bent to his knee. Dinah smiled. “It’s just, we’re tired, miss. The savage—” Dinah’s hand went to her sword at the word, but the man backed up. “Sorry. It’s just that the Yurkei all have horses, and we have none. I lost one toe on the march already, and I thought if I gave one some food, then maybe . . .”
“It would let you ride it? That the Yurkei warrior would walk?”
Dinah knew this would never happen—the Yurkei were deeply connected to their steeds—and yet she understood the inequality of being forced to walk all day most days when others rode. It wasn’t just about the horses; this was a bitterness that predated her reign by several decades.
Dinah had imagined herself leading an army of brave men with herself at the helm, arriving in glory and with great fanfare. Instead, she spent most of her time trying to make peace between the two factions that fought for her. She motioned for Yur-Jee to return to his horse and lead on. He nodded, and briefly Dinah recognized the obedience she’d fought so hard to gain. Her black eyes simmering, she bent over the Spade. Her newly short black hair brushed her chin.
“I hear your cries, but disrespecting the Yurkei will get you nowhere. I will offer you this: take care of the Yurkei steeds on the march. When we camp for the night, brush them, feed them—wild grasses only—and make sure they are checked for injuries. If you do this and do it well, once I am queen I will remove you from the Spades and put you in charge of incorporating the Yurkei’s understanding of animal husbandry into our new, united kingdom. We have much to learn from them.”
The Spade was sputtering now, tears forming in his eyes. What she had offered was unthinkable for a man who had never been allowed property, rights, or titles in any way.
“Yes, my queen.” He began kissing her hand repeatedly, his scratchy beard tickling her wrist.