Disclaimer: The Prydain universe belongs to Lloyd Alexander, for whom I have the deepest respect. No money is being made from this hobby fanfiction, et cetera.

Virtue

Many afternoons in Dinas Rhydnant had been devoted to the practice of correct behaviour, and the importance of not damaging one's reputation through indiscreet chatter, over-familiarity with the guard, and other things that were never spelled out. They were expected to make good marriages, said Queen Teleria, whose eye would always alight upon Eilonwy with particular meaning.

In the castle, it would have been difficult not to follow these lessons. The gates closed and locked, the queen bustled her charges through the timetable, and the days had passed in long hours of stitching, music and deportment where all that might be heard was girlish whispering. Eilonwy's earlier time as a prisoner of Achren had been only a clouded memory upon which her friends had not wanted to elaborate. Secured within the walls, she had dressed her hair, sewed, and illuminated herbals. Teleria had commended what a learned and good young lady she was becoming, and sent her in to supper on the arm of Prince Rhun.

Eilonwy could hear the queen's voice in her ear as she followed the wolves along the mountain trail. — A lady's hands reveal her station (Good Llyr, child, your nails!). Eilonwy's hands were scraped and reddened, with dirt ground into the skin. — A lady should always travel with an appropriate escort. Neither a war band nor a guard of animals were probably what she had intended. — A lady's virtue is her most precious possession, and without it (wagging a finger) she will never again be that which she was.

A fit of shivering seized her. She stopped until Brynach took her cloak between his teeth, and Gurgi touched his hand in hers, and they gently urged her forward.

Surely, she thought, the queen and her ladies had never been in a battle; or if they had, it had been so long ago that they had forgotten. Forgotten that young men find themselves sleeping in the cold and darkness under burial mounds before they can choose their eligible brides. Forgotten that there are not always gates, and guards, and companionship among a flock of maidens. Forgotten that maidens do not always have a choice.

She tried to calm her breathing, as much as that was possible while following the pace the wolves had set. None of what had happened was the fault of Queen Teleria, including the crawling need to wash her skin beneath its coating of trail dust. Indeed, as her teachers would have said, nothing truly had happened. She need not feel ashamed, need not feel ashamed now to be seeking for…

Briavael barked at the head of the column. The wolves stirred, some springing to guard positions above the path. Eilonwy felt the scents that had filled their heads: Man. Horse. Cat. She peered into the gathering twilight, able to make out little among the shadows of the rocks. Beyond the trail ahead there seemed to be nothing but a pool of inky blackness.

A lady's virtue is her most precious possession.

She had once been blithely sure of what was her most precious possession. Abruptly, she remembered one of her exploring expeditions as a girl: the golden light shining on a stretch of tunnel wall, the darkness retreating before her. Her bauble had been the first thing that Dorath had tried to take from her. She had received the bruises that now ached when she had fought him for it. Slipping her hands from the protection of the cloak, she made sure that the sphere was secure in the pocket of her jerkin.

Eilonwy fought off a wave of sickness that threatened to distract her, grateful at that moment for the icy air. The wolves loped from the trail on to a wider, pebbled slope that opened before their feet into a valley already filled with dusk and the motions of indistinct shapes. With one hand pressed over the Golden Pelydryn, she began to run.