Fool’s Errand (Tawny Man Trilogy Book One) by Robin Hobb (21)

I awoke before dawn, with the terrible sensation of having forgotten something. I lay still for a time in the darkness, piecing together my uneasiness. Sleepily I tried to recall what had wakened me. Through the tattering veils of a headache, I forced my mind to function. Threads of a tangling nightmare came back to me slowly. They were unnerving; I had been a cat. It was like the worst of the old Wit-tales, in which the Witted one was gradually dominated by his beast until one day he awoke as a shape-changer, doomed to take on the form of his beast and forever prey to his beast’s worst impulses. In my dream, I had been the cat, but in a human body. Yet there had been a woman there also, sharing my awareness with the cat, mingled so thoroughly that I could not determine where one began and the other left off. Disturbing. The dream had caught at me, snagged me with its claws and held me under. Yet some part of me had heard … what? Whispers? The soft jingle of harness, the grit of boots and hooves on sand?

I sat up and glared around at the darkness. The fire was no more than a dark red smudge on the earth nearby. I could not see, but I was already certain that my prisoner was gone. Somehow he had wriggled loose, and now he had gone ahead to warn the others that we followed. I gave my head a shake to clear it. He had probably taken my damn horse as well. Myblack was the only one of the horses dumb enough to allow herself to be stolen without a sound.

I found my voice. ‘Lord Golden! Awake. Our prisoner has escaped.’

I heard him sit up in his blankets, no more than an arm’s length away. I heard him scrabble in the darkness, then a handful of wood bits was thrown on the fire. They glowed, and then a small flame of true fire leaped up. It only flared briefly, but what it showed was enough to confound me. Not only our prisoner was missing, but Laurel and Whitecap were gone.

‘She went after him,’ I guessed stupidly.

‘They went together.’ The Fool pointed out the more likely scenario. Alone with me, he completely abandoned Lord Golden’s voice and posture. In the fading flare of the fire, he sat up on his blanket, his knees tucked under his chin and his arms wrapped around his legs as he expostulated. He shook his head at his own stupidity. ‘When you fell asleep, she insisted she would take first watch. She promised to wake me when her duty was over. If I had not been so concerned over your behaviour, I might have seen how peculiar that offer was.’ His wounded look was almost an accusation. ‘She loosed him, and then they left deliberately and quietly. So quietly that not even Nighteyes heard them go.’

There was a question in his words if not his voice. ‘He isn’t feeling well,’ I said, and bit down on any other explanation. Had the wolf deliberately held me deep in sleep while he allowed them to leave? He still slept heavily by my side, the sodden sleep of exhaustion and sickness. ‘Why would she go with him?’

The silence lasted too long. Then, unwillingly the Fool guessed, ‘Perhaps she thought you would kill him, and she didn’t want it to come to that.’

‘I wouldn’t have killed him,’ I replied irritably.

‘Oh? Well, then, I suppose it is good that at least one of us is sure of that. Because frankly, the same fear had crossed my mind.’ He peered at me through the dimness, and then spoke with disarming directness. ‘You frightened me last night, Fitz. No. You terrified me. I almost wondered if I knew you at all.’

I didn’t want to discuss that. ‘Do you think he could have freed himself and then forced Laurel to go with him?’

He was quiet for a time, then accepted my change of subject. ‘That is possible, but only just. Laurel is … very resourceful. She would have found some way to make a noise. Nor can I imagine why he would do so.’ He frowned. ‘Did you think they looked at one another oddly? Almost as if they shared a secret?’

Had he seen something I had not? I tried to think that through, then gave it up as a hopeless task. Reluctantly, I pushed my blanket completely away. I spoke quietly, still not wishing to wake the wolf. ‘We have to go after them. Now.’ My wet, muddy clothes from the night before were clammy and stiff on my body. Well, at least I didn’t have to get dressed. I stood up. I refastened my swordbelt a notch closer to its old setting. Then I stopped, staring at the blanket.

‘I covered you,’ the Fool admitted quietly. He added, ‘Let Nighteyes sleep, at least until dawn. We will need some light to find their trail.’ He paused then asked, ‘You say we should follow them because you think … what? That he will go to wherever the Prince has gone? Do you think he would take Laurel there with him?’

I bit a torn corner off my thumbnail. ‘I don’t know what I think,’ I admitted.

For a time we both pondered in silence and darkness. I drew a breath. ‘We must go after the Prince. Nothing must distract us from that. We should go back to where we left his trail yesterday and try to discover it again, if the rains have left anything for us to discover. That is the only path that we are absolutely certain will lead to Dutiful. If that fails us, then we will fall back on trying to follow Laurel and the Piebald and hope that that trail also leads to the Prince.’

‘Agreed,’ the Fool replied softly.

I felt oddly guilty because I felt relief. Not just that he had agreed with me, not just that the Piebald had been put out of my reach, but relief that with Laurel and the prisoner gone, we could drop pretences and just be ourselves. ‘I’ve missed you,’ I said quietly, knowing that he would know what I meant.

‘So have I.’ His voice came from a new direction. In the dark, he was up and moving silently and gracefully as a cat. That thought brought my dream back to me abruptly. I grasped at the tattering fragments of it. ‘I think the Prince might be in danger,’ I admitted.

‘You’re only now concluding that?’

‘A different type of danger to what I expected. I suspected the Witted ones of luring him away from Kettricken and the court, of bribing him with a cat to be his Wit-partner so that they could take him off and make him one of their own. But last night, I dreamed, and … it was an evil dream, Fool. Of the Prince displaced from himself, of the cat exerting so much influence over their bonding that he could scarcely recall who or what he was.’

‘That could happen?’

‘I wish I knew for certain. The whole thing was so peculiar. It was his cat, and yet it was not. There was a woman, but I never saw her. When I was the Prince, I loved her. And the cat, I loved the cat, too. I think the cat loved me, but it was hard to tell. The woman was almost … between us.’

‘When you were the Prince.’ I could tell that he could not even decide how to phrase the question.

The mouth of the cave was a lighter bit of darkness now. The wolf slumbered on. I fumbled through an explanation. ‘Sometimes, at night … it’s not exactly Skilling. Nor is it completely the Wit. I think that even in my magic, I am a bastard cross of two lines, Fool. Perhaps that is why Skilling sometimes hurts so much. Perhaps I never learned to do it properly at all. Maybe Galen was right about me, all the time –’

‘When you were the Prince,’ he reminded me firmly.

‘In the dreams, I become him. Sometimes I recall who I truly am. Sometimes I simply become him and know where he is and what he is doing. I share his thoughts, but he is not aware of me, nor can I speak to him. Or perhaps I can. I’ve never tried. In the dreams, it never occurs to me to try. I simply become him, and ride along.’

He made a small sound, like breathing out thoughtfully. Dawn came in the way it does at the change of the seasons, going from dark to pearly grey all in an instant. And in the moment, I smelled that summer was over, that the thunderstorm last night had drowned it and washed it away, and the days of autumn were undeniably upon us. There was a smell in the air of leaves soon to fall, and plants abandoning their greenery to sink back into their roots, and even of seeds on the wing seeking desperately for a place to settle and sink before the frosts of winter found them.

I turned away from the mouth of our cave and found the Fool, already dressed in clean clothes, putting the final touch on our packing … ‘There’s just a bit of bread, and an apple left,’ he told me. ‘And I don’t think Nighteyes would fancy the apple.’

He tossed me the bread for the wolf. As the light of day reached his face, Nighteyes stirred. He carefully thought nothing at all as he rose, cautiously stretched, and then went to lap water from the pool at the back of the cave. When he came back, he dropped down beside me and accepted the bread as I broke it into pieces.

So. How long have they been gone? I asked him.

You know I let them go. Why do you even ask me that?

I was silent for a time. I had changed my mind. Couldn’t you feel that? I had decided I wouldn’t even hurt him, let alone kill him.

Changer. Last night you bore us both too close to a very dangerous place. Neither one of us truly knew what you would do. I chose to let them go rather than find out. Did I choose wrong?

I didn’t know. That was the frightening part, that I didn’t know. I wouldn’t ask him to help me track Laurel and the archer. Instead I asked, Think we can pick up the Prince’s trail?

I promised you I would, didn’t I? Let us simply do what we must do and then go home.

I bowed my head. It sounded good to me.

The Fool had been juggling the apple in one hand. Once Nighteyes had finished eating, he stopped, gripped the apple in both hands, and then gave it a sudden twist. It broke smoothly into two halves, and he tossed one to me. I caught it, and shook my head at him, grinning. ‘Every time I think I know all your tricks –’

‘You find out how wrong you are,’ he finished. He ate his half rapidly, saving the core for Malta, and I did the same with Myblack. The hungry horses were not enthusiastic about the day ahead. I smoothed their ragged coats a bit before I saddled them and fastened our saddle-packs to Myblack. Then we led them out and down the gravelly slope, now slippery with mud. The wolf limped along behind us.

As so often happens after a good thunderstorm, the sky was blue and clear. The scents of the day were strong as the rising sun warmed the wet earth. Birds sang. Overhead, a flock of ducks headed south in the morning light. At the bottom of the hill, we mounted. Can you keep up? I asked Nighteyes worriedly.

You’d better hope so. Because without me, you haven’t a chance of trailing the Prince.

A single set of horse-tracks led back the way we had come. Heavy imprints. They were riding double, as fast as Whitecap could carry them. Where were they going, and why? Then I put Laurel and the Piebald out of my head. It was the Prince we sought.

Whitecap’s hoof-prints returned to where we had been ambushed the day before. I noted, in passing, that the Piebald had retrieved his bow. Then they had ridden back towards the road. Whitecap’s tracks were still pushed deep in the damp soil. They had gone on together, then.

Theirs were not the only fresh tracks under the tree. Two other horses had come and gone there since the night’s rain. Their tracks overcut those of the heavily-burdened Whitecap. I frowned over that. These were not the tracks of the pursuers from the village. They had not come this far; at least not yet. I decided to hope that the deaths of their friends and the horrid weather had turned them back. These fresh tracks came from the northwest, then turned, and went back that way. I pondered for a time, then the obvious hammered me: ‘Of course. The archer had no horse. The Piebalds sent someone back for their sentry.’ I grinned ruefully. ‘At least they’ve left us a clear trail to follow.’

I glanced over but the Fool’s face was still. He did not share my elation.

‘What’s wrong?’

He gave a sickly smile. ‘I was imagining how we would feel now if you had killed that boy last night, beating their destination out of him.’

I did not want to follow that thought. I said nothing and concentrated on the tracks in the earth. Nighteyes and I led, and the Fool followed. The horses were hungry, and Myblack in particular fractious because of it. She snatched at yellow-veined willow leaves and clumps of dry grass whenever she could, and I felt too much sympathy to correct her. Had I been able to satisfy my belly that way, I would have snatched a handful of leaves myself.

As we pushed on, I saw signs of the rider’s haste as he raced back to warn his party that their sentry had been taken. The tracks followed the obvious routes now, the easiest way up a hill, the clearest path through a tongue of woods. The day was still young when we found the remnants of a camp under the spread of an oak grove.

‘They must have had a wet, wild night of it,’ the Fool guessed, and I nodded. The fire spot showed the remains of charred logs extinguished by the downpour and never rekindled. A woven blanket had left its imprint on the sodden ground; whoever had slept there had slept wet. The ground was churned with tracks. Had other Piebalds awaited them here? The departing tracks overcut one another. There was no point in wasting time trying to puzzle it out.

‘If we had pressed on yesterday after we encountered the archer, we would have caught them up here,’ I said remorsefully. ‘I should have guessed that. They put him in place, knowing that they would not go much further. He had no horse. It’s so obvious now. Damn, Fool, the Prince was within our grasp yesterday.’

‘Then likely he is today, also. This is better, Fitz. Fate has played into our hands. Today we go unencumbered, and we yet may hope to surprise them.’

I frowned as I studied the tracks. ‘There is no sign that Laurel and the ambusher came this way. So a man was sent back to pick up their sentry and returned alone, with the news that he’d been taken. What they will make of that is hard to say, but they definitely left in a hurry, without their archer. We should assume they’ll be on their guards now.’

I took a breath. ‘They will fight us when we try to take the Prince.’ I bit my lip, then added, ‘We’d best assume that the Prince will fight us, also. Even if he doesn’t, he’s going to be little help to us. He was so vague last night …’ I shook my head and discarded my concerns.

‘So our plan is?’

‘Surprise them if we can, hit them hard, take what we want, and get out fast. And ride for Buckkeep as swiftly as we can, because we won’t be safe until we are there.’

He followed the thought further than I had been willing to. ‘Myblack is swift and strong. You may have to leave Malta and me behind once you have the Prince. Don’t hesitate.’

And me.

The Fool glanced at Nighteyes as if he had heard him.

‘I don’t think I can do that,’ I said carefully.

Don’t fear. I’ll protect him for you.

I felt a terrible sinking in my heart. I kept severely to myself the worry, but who will protect you? I would not let it come to that, I promised myself. I would not leave either of them. ‘I’m hungry,’ the Fool noted. It was not a complaint, merely an observation, but I wished he had not said it. Some things are easier to ignore than acknowledge.

We rode on, the trail much plainer now in the rain-damped earth. They had cut their losses and pushed on without the archer, just as they had left one of their own behind to die when they had fled the village. Such cold determination spoke loudly to me of how valuable the Prince was to them. They would be willing to fight to the death. They might even kill the Prince rather than let us take him. The fact that we knew so little of their motives would force me to be totally ruthless. I discarded the idea of attempting to talk to them first. I suspected their answer would be the same greeting that their archer had had for us yesterday.

I thought longingly of a time when I would have sent Nighteyes ahead to spy out the way for us. Now, with the trail so clear, the panting wolf was holding us back. I knew the moment when he realized it, for he abruptly sat down beside the trail. I pulled in Myblack, and the Fool halted also.

My brother?

Go on without me. The hunt belongs to the swift and keen.

Shall I go on without my eyes and nose, then?

And without your brain, too, alas. Be on your way, little brother, and save your flattery for someone who might believe it. A cat, perhaps. He came to his feet, and despite his weariness, in a few steps he had melted into the surrounding bush in his deceptively effortless way. The Fool looked askance at me.

‘We go on without him,’ I said quietly. I glanced away from the troubled look in his eyes. I nudged Myblack and we went on, but faster now. We pushed our horses and the tracks before us grew fresher. At a stream, we stopped to let the horses water and to refill our skins. There were late blackberries there, sour and hard, the ones that had turned colour but in the shade, without the direct heat of the sun to sweeten them. We ate handfuls of them anyway, glad of anything we could chew and swallow. Reluctantly, we left fruit on the bushes, mounting as soon as the horses had fairly slaked their thirsts. We pushed on.

‘I make out six of them,’ the Fool observed as we rode.

I nodded. ‘At least. There were cat-tracks near the water. Two different sizes.’

‘We know one rode a warhorse. Should we expect at least one large warrior?’

I shrugged reluctantly. ‘I think we should expect anything. Including more than six opposing us. They ride towards safety of some kind, Fool. Perhaps an Old Blood settlement, or a Piebald stronghold. And perhaps we are watched even now as we follow.’ I glanced up. I had not noticed any birds paying us undue attention, but that did not mean there weren’t any. With the folk we pursued now, a bird in the air or a fox in a bush could be a spy. We could take nothing for granted.

‘How long has it been happening to you?’ the Fool asked as we rode.

‘The shared dreams with the Prince?’ I had not the energy to try to dissemble with him. ‘Oh, for some time.’

‘Even before that night you dreamed he was at Galekeep?’

I answered reluctantly. ‘I’d had a few odd dreams before then. I didn’t realize they were the Prince’s.’

‘You hadn’t told me of them, only that you’d dreamed of Molly and Burrich and Nettle.’ He cleared his throat and added, ‘But Chade had mentioned some of his suspicions to me.’

‘Did he?’ I was not pleased to hear that. I did not like to think of Chade and the Fool discussing me behind my back.

‘Was it always the Prince, or only the Prince? Or are there other dreams?’ The Fool tried to conceal the depth of his interest, but I had known him too long.

‘Besides the dreams you already know about?’ I deferred. I debated swiftly, not whether to lie to him, but how much of the truth I wished to share. Lying to the Fool was wasted effort. He had always known when I lied to him, and managed to deduce the truth from it. Limiting his knowledge was the better tactic. And I felt no scruples about it, for it was the device he most often employed against me. ‘You know that I dreamed of you. And, as I told you, once I dreamed clearly of Burrich, clear enough that I nearly went to him. Those, I would say, are the same types of dreams as those I have had about the Prince.’

‘You do not, then, dream of dragons?’

I thought I knew what he meant. ‘Of Verity-as-Dragon? No.’ I looked away from his keen yellow glance. I mourned my king still. ‘Even when I touched the stone that had held him, I felt no trace of him. Only that distant Wit-humming, like a beehive far under the earth. No. Even in my dreams, I do not reach him.’

‘Then you have no dragon-dreams?’ he pressed me.

I sighed. ‘Probably no more than you do. Or anyone who lived through that summer and watched them fly through the skies over the Six Duchies. What man could have seen that sight, and never dream of it again?’ And what Skill-addicted bastard could have watched Verity carve his dragon and enter into it, and not himself have dreamed of ending that way himself? Flowing into the stone, and taking it on as flesh, and rising into the sky to soar over the world. Of course, I dreamed sometimes of being a dragon. I suspected, nay, I knew, that when old age found me, I would make a futile trek into the Mountains and back to that quarry. But like Verity, I would have no coterie to assist me in the carving of my dragon. Somehow it did not matter that I knew I could not succeed. I could imagine no other death than one devoted to the attempt to carve a dragon.

I rode on, distracted, and tried to ignore the odd looks the Fool cast my way from time to time. I did not deserve the next bolt of luck that struck me, but I was glad of it all the same. As we came to the lip of a small valley, a trick of the terrain provided me with a single glimpse of those we pursued. The narrow valley was forested, but divided by a noisy watercourse swollen by last night’s storm. Those we followed were in the midst of fording it. They would have had to turn in their saddles and look up to see us. I reined in, motioning the Fool to do likewise and silently watched the party below. Seven horses, one riderless. There were two women and three men, one on an immense horse. There were three cats, not two, though in fairness to my tracking skills, two were similar in size. All three cats rode behind their owners’ saddles. The smallest cat rode behind a boy, dark haired in a voluminous cloak of Buckkeep blue. The Prince. Dutiful.

His cat’s distaste for the water they crossed was evident in her tense posture and the set of her claws. I saw them for but an instant, and felt an odd giddiness at the sight. Then tree branches cloaked them. As I watched, the final rider and her mount lurched from the rocky stream bed and up the slick clay bank beyond it. As she vanished into the forest, I wondered if she was the Prince’s lady-love.

‘That was a big man on the big horse,’ the Fool observed reluctantly.

‘Yes. And they will fight as one. They were bonded, those two.’

‘How could you tell?’ he demanded curiously.

‘I don’t know,’ I replied honestly. ‘It is the same as seeing an old married couple in the market. No one has to tell you. You can just see it, in how they move together and how they speak to one another.’

‘A horse. Well, that may present some challenges I hadn’t expected.’ It was my turn to give him a puzzled look, but he glanced away from it.

We followed, but more cautiously. We wanted to catch glimpses of them without being seen ourselves. As we did not know where they were going, we could not race ahead to intercept them, even if the rough and wild terrain had offered us that possibility. ‘Our best option may be to wait until they’ve settled for the night, and then go in after the Prince,’ the Fool suggested.

‘Two flaws,’ I replied. ‘By nightfall, we may reach wherever it is they’re going. If we do, we may find them in a fortified location, or with many more companions. The second is that if they camp again, they will post sentries, just as they did before. We’d have to get past them first.’

‘So your plan is?’

‘Wait until they camp tonight,’ I admitted gloomily. ‘Unless we see a better opportunity before then.’

My premonition of disaster grew as the afternoon passed. The trail we followed showed signs of use by more than deer and rabbits. Other people used this path; it led to somewhere, a town or village, or at the least, a meeting place. I dared not wait for nightfall and their camp.

We ghosted closer than we had before. The unevenness of the terrain we crossed favoured us, for as soon as they began a descent of a ridge, we could venture closer. Several times we had to leave the trodden path to keep hidden below the ridgeline, but those we followed seemed confident that they were now in safer territory. They did not often look back. I studied their marching order as trees hid and then revealed them. The man on the big horse led the way, followed by the two women. The second woman led the riderless horse. Our prince came fifth, with his cat behind him on the saddle. Following him were the two other men and their cats. They rode like folk determined to cover ground before nightfall.

‘He looks like you did as a boy,’ the Fool observed as we once more watched them wend out of sight.

‘He looks like Verity to me,’ I disagreed. It was true. The boy did look like Verity, but he looked even more like my father’s portrait. I could not say if he looked like me at that age. I had had little to do with looking-glasses then. He had dark, thick hair, as unruly as Verity’s and mine. I wondered, briefly, if my father had ever struggled to get a comb through his. His portrait was my only image of him, and in that he was faultlessly groomed. Like my father, the young prince was long of limb, rangier than stocky Verity, but he might fill out as he got older. He sat his horse well. And just as I had noted with the man on the large horse, I could see his bond with the cat that rode behind him. Dutiful held his head tipped back, as if to be aware always of the cat behind him. The cat was smallest of the three, yet larger than I had expected her to be. She was long-legged and tawny, with a rippling pattern of pale and darker stripes. Sitting on her saddle cushion, her claws well dug in, the top of her head came to the nape of the Prince’s neck. Her head turned from side to side as they rode, taking in all that they passed. Her posture said that she was weary of riding, that she would have preferred to cross this ground on her own.

Getting rid of her might be the trickiest part of the whole ‘rescue’. Yet not for an instant did I consider taking her back to Buckkeep with the Prince. For his own good, he would have to be separated from his bond-beast, just as Burrich had once forced Nosey and I to part.

‘It just isn’t a sound bond. It feels not so much that he has bonded as that he has been captured. Or captivated, I suppose. The cat dominates him. Yet … it is not the cat. One of those women is involved in this, perhaps a Wit-mentor as Black Rolf was to me, encouraging him to plunge into his Wit-bond with an unnatural intensity. And the Prince is so infatuated that he has suspended all his own judgement. That is what worries me.’

I looked at the Fool. I had spoken the thought aloud, with no preamble, but as often seemed with us, his mind had followed the same track. ‘So. Will it be easier to unseat the cat and take both prince and horse, or snatch the Prince and hold him on Myblack with you?’

I shook my head. ‘I’ll let you know after we’ve done it.’

It was agonizing to shadow after them, hoping for an opportunity that might not come. I was tired and hungry, and my headache from the night before had never completely abated. I hoped that Nighteyes had managed to catch some food for himself and was resting. I longed to reach out to him, but dared not, lest I make the Piebalds aware of me.

Our route had taken us up into the rugged foothills. The gentle river plain of the Buck River was far behind us now. As the late afternoon stole the strength of the sun from the day, I saw what might be our only chance. The Piebald party rode silhouetted against a ridgeline. Their trail led to a precipitous path that slashed steeply down and across the face of a sheer and rocky hill. Standing in my stirrups and staring through the thickening light, I decided the horses would have to go in single-file. I pointed this out to the Fool.

‘We need to catch them up before the Prince begins the descent,’ I told him. It would be close. We had let them get almost too far ahead of us in an effort to remain hidden from them. Now I put my heels to Myblack, and she sprang forwards, with little Malta right on our heels.

Some horses are fleet only on a level, straight stretch. Myblack proved herself as able on broken terrain. The Piebalds had taken the easiest route, following the ridgelines. A steep-sided gorge, thick with brush and trees, sliced between them and us. We could cut off a huge loop of trail by plunging down the steep slope to reach the next ascending jog in the trail. I kneed Myblack and she crashed down through the brushy slope, splashed through the creek at the bottom and then fought her way up the other side through mossy turf that gave way under her hooves. I did not look back to see how Malta and the Fool were faring. Instead, I rode low to her back, avoiding the branches that would have swept me from the saddle.

They heard us coming. Doubtless we sounded more like a herd of elk or a whole troop of guardsmen than a single horseman bent on catching up with them. In response to the sound of our pursuit, they fled. We caught them at the last possible moment. Three of their party had already ventured out onto the steep narrow trail across the hill-face. The led horse had just begun the descent. The three horses remaining all carried cats as well as riders. The last one wheeled to meet my charge with a shout, while the second to last chivvied the Prince along as if to hurry him out onto the escarpment.

I crashed into the one who had turned to confront us, more by accident than by any battle plan. The footing on the mountainous path was treacherous with small rolling stones. As Myblack slammed shoulder to shoulder with the smaller horse, the cat leapt from its cushion yowling a threat, landed downhill from us, and slid and scrabbled away from the plunging hooves of the struggling horses.

I had drawn my sword. I urged Myblack forwards, and she easily shouldered the smaller horse off the path. As I passed, I plunged my sword once into a man who was still attempting to draw a wicked toothed knife. He cried out, and the cat echoed his cry. He began a slow topple from his saddle. No time for regrets or second thoughts, for as we pressed past him, the second cat-rider turned to meet us. I could hear confused shouts from women, and overhead a crow circled, cawing wildly. The narrow passage had a sheer rockface above it, and a slippery scree-slope below it. The man on the big horse was shouting questions that no one was answering, interspersed with demands that the others back up and get out of his way so he could fight. The path was too narrow for him to wheel his horse. I had a glimpse of his warhorse trying to back along the cramped trail while the women on the smaller horses behind him were trying to ride forwards and escape the battle behind them. The riderless horse was between the women and the Prince. A woman screamed to Prince Dutiful to hurry up at the same moment that the man on the big horse demanded that they both back up and give him room. His horse obviously shared his opinion. His massive hindquarters were crowding the far smaller horse behind him. Someone would have to give way, and the likeliest direction was down.

‘Prince Dutiful!’ I bellowed as Myblack chested the rump of the next horse. As Dutiful turned towards me, the cat on the horse between us opened its mouth in a yowling snarl and struck out at Myblack’s head. Myblack, both insulted and alarmed, reared. I narrowly avoided her head as she threw it back. As we came down, she clattered her front hooves against the other horse’s hindquarters. It did little physical damage, but it unnerved the cat, who sprang from her cushion. The rider had turned to confront us, but could not reach me with his short-sword. The Prince’s horse, blocked in front, had halted half on the narrowing trail. The riderless horse in front of him was trying to back up, but the Prince had no room to yield to him. Dutiful’s cat was snarling angrily but had nowhere to vent her rage. I looked at her, and felt an odd doubling of vision. All the while, the man on the great horse was bellowing and cursing, demanding furiously that the others get out of his way. They could scarcely obey him.

The rider I had engaged managed to wheel his horse on the narrow apron of earth that led to the narrow path across the hillface, but he nearly trampled his cat in doing so. The beast hissed and made a wild swipe at Myblack, but she danced clear of the menacing claws. The cat seemed daunted; I was sure my horse and I were far larger than any game it might normally pursue. I took advantage of that hesitation, kicking Myblack forwards. The cat retreated right under the hooves of her partner’s horse. The horse, reluctant to trample the familiar creature, in turn backed up, crowding the Prince’s horse forwards.

On the narrow ledge of the path, a horse screamed in sudden panic, echoed by the owner’s cry as it went down in an effort to avoid being pushed off the ledge by the warhorse that was backing determinedly towards us. The young woman on the horse kicked free of the stirrups and scrambled to stand, her back pressed against the ledge as the panicky animal, in a frantic bid to regain its footing, wallowed to one side and then slid off the edge. The woman’s horse slid down the steep slope, slowly at first, its churning efforts to halt its fall only loosening more stone to cascade with it. Spindly saplings that had found a footing in the sparse soil and cracked rock were snapped off as the horse crashed through them. The animal screamed horribly as one sapling, stouter than the others, stabbed deep into it and arrested its fall briefly before its struggles tore it loose to slide again.

Behind me, there were other sounds. I gathered without looking that the Fool had arrived, and that he and Malta were busying the other cat. His partner, I trusted, would still be down. My sword-thrust had gone deep.

Ruthlessness soared in me. I could not reach the cat’s owner with my blade, but the spitting cat menacing Myblack was within range. Leaning down, I slashed at him. The creature leapt wildly aside, but I had scored a long, shallow gash across his flank. Cries of anger and pain from both him and his human partner were my reward. The man reeled with his cat’s pain, and I experienced an odd moment of knowing the Wit-curses they flung at me. I closed my mind to them, kicked Myblack and we slammed together, horse to horse. I stabbed at the rider and when he tried to evade my blade, he tumbled from his saddle. Riderless and panicky, his horse was only too glad to flee the moment Myblack gave him room to get past her. In its turn, the Prince’s horse backed away from the struggle before her and off the steep trail onto the small apron of land that approached it.

The cat that rode behind the Prince had bristled its fur to full extension and now confronted me with an angry snarl. There was something wrong with it, something misshapen that appalled me. Even as I struggled to grasp what was awry, the Prince turned his horse and I came face to face with young Dutiful.

I have heard people describe instances when all time seemed to pause for them. Would that it had been so for me. I was confronted suddenly with a young man who, until this moment, had been to me little more than a name coupled with an idea.

He wore my face. He wore my face to the extent that I knew the spot under his chin where the hair grew in an odd direction and would be hard to shave, when he was old enough to shave. He had my jaw, and the nose I had had as a boy, before Regal had broken it. His teeth, like mine, were bared in a battle rictus. Verity’s soul had planted the seed in his young wife to conceive this boy, but his flesh had been shaped from my flesh. I looked into the face of the son I had never seen nor claimed, and a connection suddenly formed like the cold snap of a manacle.

If time had stood still for me, then I would have been ready for the great cut of his sword as he swung it towards me. But my son did not share my moment of stunned recognition. Dutiful attacked like seven kinds of demons, and his battle cry was a cat’s ululating cry. I all but fell out of my saddle leaning back to avoid his blade. Even so, it still sliced the fabric of my shirt and left a stinging thread of pain in its wake. As I sat up, his cat sprang at me, screaming like a woman. I turned to her onslaught, and caught the creature in midflight with the back of my elbow and arm. I yelled in revulsion as she struck me. Before she could lock onto me, I twisted violently, throwing her in the face of the cat-man I had just unseated. She yowled as they collided, and they fell together. She gave a sharp screech as he landed on top of her, then clawed her way out from under him, only to scrabble limpingly back from Myblack’s trampling hooves. The Prince’s gaze followed his cat, a look of horror on his face. It was all the opening I needed. I struck his sword from his unready grip.

Dutiful had expected me to fight him. He was not prepared for me to seize his reins and take control of his horse’s head. I kneed Myblack, and for a wonder she answered, wheeling. I kicked her and she sprang to a gallop. The Prince’s horse came eagerly. She was anxious to escape the noise and fighting, and following another horse suited her perfectly. I think I shouted to the Fool to flee. In some manner that I did not recognize, he seemed to be holding the clawed Piebald at bay. The man on the warhorse bellowed that we were stealing the Prince, but the cluster of struggling people, horses and cats could do nothing. My sword still in my hand, I fled. I could not afford to look back and see if the Fool followed. Myblack set a pace that kept the other horse’s neck stretched. The Prince’s horse could not keep up with Myblack’s best speed, but I forced her to go as fast as she possibly could. I reined Myblack from the trail and led Dutiful’s mount at breakneck speed down a steep hill and then cross-country. We rode through slapping brush, and clattered up steep rocky hills, and then down terrain where a sane man would have dismounted and led his horse. It would have been suicide for the Prince to leap from his horse. My sole plan was to put as much distance between Dutiful’s companions and us as I could.

The first time I spared a glance back at him, Dutiful was hanging on grimly, his mouth set in a snarling grimace and his eyes distant. Somewhere, I sensed, an angry cat followed us. As we came down one steep hillside in a series of leaps and slides, I heard a crashing in the brush behind and above us. I heard a shout of encouragement, and recognized the Fool’s voice as he urged Malta to greater speed. My heart leaped with relief that he still followed us. At the bottom of the hill, I pulled Myblack in for an instant. The Prince’s horse was already lathered, the white foam dripping from her bit. Behind her, the Fool reined Malta in.

‘You’re all in one piece?’ I asked hastily.

‘So it appears,’ he agreed. He tugged his shirt collar straight and fastened it at the throat. ‘And the Prince?’

We both looked at Dutiful. I expected anger and defiance. Instead, he reeled in his saddle, his eyes unfocused. His gaze swung from the Fool to me and back again. His eyes wandered over my face, and his brows furrowed as if he saw a puzzle there. ‘My prince?’ the Fool asked him worriedly, and for that instant, his tone was that of Lord Golden. ‘Are you well?’

For a moment, he just gazed at both of us. Then, life returned to his face and ‘I must go back!’ he suddenly shouted wildly. He started to pull his foot free of the stirrup. I kicked Myblack, and in that instant we were off again. I heard his cry of dismay, and looked back to see him clutching frantically at his saddle as he tried to regain his seat. With the Fool at our heels, we fled on.