An otherwise unremarkable, but slender and tall woman with shaggy hair the color of beechnuts steps forward confidently next, almost bumping the poor Lillian out of her way. It was no time for cravens or tender-hearts!
This woman was carrying a helmet in her off-hand-like her armor, painted pure white inlaid with jade green, this helm is topped with a pair of fierce looking ornamental horns. An affectation deserved by the woman who calls herself the Knight of the White Hind, for that is also the image on the shield that adorns her back. Whispers say the woman herself bears the token not as a heraldic emblem, but as a curse of some sort...there are many whispers about this woman. That she was a wandering knight who fell in with the Queen during her grand march. That she has a strange affinity with beasts, but is tactless and blunt towards most men and women. That she has queer combination of skills in both arcane and martial arts. Some also say she is cursed by God, or perhaps the Devil, and that a terrible doom hangs over her head.
Since she speaks little of herself, and boasts rarely, the rumors grow for lack of anything else.
...
Alfrida stepped forward and sank to one knee, partially on account of a shoulder injury she had suffered during the fight. It was something she had done not all that long ago, on the eve of the final battle-which in retrospect, was really the first battle...
"...If the Queen requires my service, I gladly offer it, once again. Your token I will bear, to whatever end of the Kingdom I am bid to wander...for as long a life as I have granted to me." Alfrieda said, he own voice a mixture of up-country burr, and the clear elucidation of an educated speaker, yes lacking warmth or softness.
She had been referring to the gift her Queen had made to her...and the other thing. She had, of course, confided the truth to the Queen already.
...
In his madness, the Tyrant Iorwerth had destroyed as much as he could get his hands on. His final and most despicable act had not been the last. As he raved, he had ordered Castle Camlann's royal library burned to ash and warm cinder, for reasons only a madman could comprehend. Many hundreds, perhaps even thousands of years of old lore, knowledge, and learning had been lost with the single toss of a careless torch.
From that wrack and ruin, little had been recovered-though it was rumored that much of the library had been covertly secreted away in the years before to various points in the Kingdom by brave Monks-the Queens gift to Alfrieda had been no more than a beautiful pen and an old leather book with a scorched cover, but it had meant everything to her. It had been a promise, at least to Alfrieda, that they would recover and treasure the knowledge that had been lost.