The knight knew what the princess meant, and merely chuckled at her remarks about someone else stumbling across them. "You're mistaken, princess," he said in response to her words. "None of the guards would be eager to kill this monster. I'm an Imperial knight though... not a simple palace guard." There was quite a bit of a distinction between the two. Palace guards, while trained to guard the palace, were nowhere near the level of warrior elite as an Imperial knight like himself. To him, it was a waste of his talent and abilities to be playing babysitter to a spoiled, rebellious princess like her... but to slay a beast that had already proven itself highly dangerous was much more in line with his abilities.
As he listened to the way the princess described their location and the direction they should travel, he pictured this in his head, glancing up to the stars to confirm her sense of direction. "Huh..." he said. "Looks like you're right about the direction we should head... and I'll just have to assume you're right about our current location, as I have no way of confirming it." Well, perhaps there were a few ways to confirm their location, but he'd save them for if they actually did get lost.
"Careful walking off into the forest blindly, though," he remarked. "You may think yourself to be walking in a straight line when you're actually walking in circles. Make sure to glance up to the sky from time to time to make sure we're headed the right way. Every hundred paces or so should be sufficient." As he watched the princess head off on foot, he chuckled and incanted in the Draconic language, "Jivi, arcanisstok." In response to his spell, the phantasmal form of a horse materialized, which the knight quickly mounted.
Riding up alongside the princess, he said, "Want a ride? You're already dressed for it, after all." He offered her a hand in order to help her up into the saddle with him. Amusing though it might have been to watch her stumble through the forest on foot, it was only polite to offer her a ride so that she wouldn't trip on a tree root or fallen log in the darkness and fall on her face. Walking through a forest at night was a skill in itself, after all.
Bookmarks