Red Heir - Lisa Henry Page 0,3

He wanted to put a few hundred miles between him and the guards before he stopped looking over his shoulder.

In the meantime, he plastered a vaguely regal expression on his face and followed his rescuers toward freedom.

The dwarf led the way outside to a courtyard where an elf was waiting with some horses. He was tall and willowy with dark, lustrous locks. He was startlingly beautiful, as all elves were, and he was also wearing a scowl. Again, par for the course with elven folk.

“Was he there? You took forever,” the elf grizzled, “I’ve been standing here so long that I smell like a horse.” There was a petulance to his tone that had Loth looking closer. At a guess, he’d say the elf was a couple of hundred years old at most—a teenager in elf years, then.

Loth resisted the urge to roll his eyes—never look a gift rescuer in the mouth. Instead he said, “Apologies for the delay. There was a case of mistaken identity. My cellmate thought it would be amusing to claim he was the prince. Of course, one only has to look at him to see that he’s lying.”

“Cellmate?” the elf asked, grudgingly interested now. “There wasn’t meant to be a cellmate.”

“He only arrived last night. This,” he said with a nod, “is Grub. He likes to have sex with horses, so I’d keep him away from yours. Although...” Loth made a show of looking around. “He doesn’t appear to have brought his fuckery stool, so you may be safe.”

“I don’t... do that with horses,” Grub ground out, hands clenched into fists.

“Not without your stool, you don’t,” Loth agreed airily, and patted him on the shoulder. “Now then, shall we put some distance between ourselves and this place, before the guards actually come and investigate the commotion?”

“Yes, my prince,” the human with the beard said, stars in his eyes as he gazed at Loth.

“He’s not my prince,” the elf grumbled.

“Isn’t he?” the orc asked.

“Elves don’t have princes,” the elf said and rolled his eyes. “We’re collectivist anarchists.”

“Is he my prince?” the orc asked curiously.

The elf rolled his eyes again. “No, Dave! He’s a human! Orcs hate humans!”

“Oh, yeah,” Dave agreed, nodding. His tooth-tusks gleamed. “I forgot.”

As distracting as this was, Loth had always found it was much easier to talk people into doing what you wanted if you knew something about them, so he interrupted to say, “Who exactly are you people?”

The human drew himself up tall as if he’d been waiting for this moment. “We’re your rescue party, m’lord! Come to save you from the clutches of tyranny!”

“And I’m exceedingly grateful. But I meant what are your names? I can’t keep calling you Orc and Elf and Dwarf and Human. It makes this whole enterprise sound particularly dubious. Which I’m sure it’s not,” he hastened to add at the human’s offended look.

“You’re dubious,” Grub muttered under his breath.

“Shh, my little farmyard fornicator, the adults are talking,” Loth told him, despite probably being five years older than the mouthy urchin at best.

“Shall we talk while we ride, Prince?” the dwarf asked, hands on hips. Loth wondered if the emphasis on his fake title was because she knew he was lying through his teeth, or because she really didn’t want to hang around here and get arrested. Loth couldn’t blame her.

“Let’s do that,” he agreed. Really, it was nice to know at least one of them had a brain.

The rescue party, having only expected to rescue one redheaded prisoner from the nominated cell, had only brought one spare horse, which left Loth sharing with Grub. Grub rode pillion, much to his grumbling disgust. Loth wasn’t sure what he was complaining about. A fellow should count himself lucky to sit rubbing up against Loth’s arse like this, with his arms around his waist. Thousands would pay for the privilege! More than one had.

As they worked their way out of the streets of Delacourt, casting back occasional glances to be certain they weren’t being pursued, Loth learned the names of his rescuers.

The human was called Scott. He called himself a humble former farmhand, but Loth wasn’t sure he knew what ‘humble’ meant, since he appeared convinced he was only a peasant by accident of birth, and that he was supposed to be a nobleman instead. He spent quite a bit of time speculating about just how many bards would sing about his heroic deeds in the near future, and just how many hearts, and titles, his exploits would win