Arathorne rushed out of the palace into the courtyard where the nobles had been rallied by the Knights that he had led to the mainland. It was spacious, easily capable of holding all the noble's modes of transport, as well as the nine horses that they had personally ridden to the parley, or rather, the Slayer war declaration. Arathorne's boots clinked across the ruined stone stairs as he ran to the assembling mass that were all getting ready to ride. The welcome sight of his uninjured knights greeted him as he reached the bottom of the stairs.<br/><br/>"Anton!" Arathorne beckoned, and his squire clad in leather padding and a white tabard over chainmail rushed to greet him. Anton was also his nephew, barely eighteen summers old, but well versed in the ways of the sword. The only thing that would need more polishing was his instruction in the way of the lance, and that problem would rectify itself in the months to come. "If he'd live to see the day," he mused. "My lance!" he demanded then, and his squire unwrapped a bundle of oiled cloth that contained all three sections of his lance, and screwed them tightly together as Arathorne mounted his horse.<br/><br/>The great black destrier was a fierce one bred in the northlands of Britannia, and the nation's horses were reknowned for being stronger and more built than those of other nations, due in fact to the nation's master breeders and fertile grass. It was twenty hands tall at the shoulder, and it proved itself more than capable of carrying the heavy chain barding that protected it as well as Arathorne's traveling supplies. A brown saddle was mounted neatly down its back, and Arathorne mounted easily.<br/><br/>He took his lance from the hands of his waiting servant as he passed Anton, and tightened his grip around the reins of his horse, and turned to see that the Kyndran politician had mounted herself. Satisfied with the fact that he had saved as many diplomats as he could, Arathorne turned to his knights and raised his lance high, urging shouts of approval, before turning and kicking his steed into a gallop, into the setting sun.<br/><br/>For Kynder.