‘Is it safe to stop?’ he asked me.
I shrugged my shoulders. ‘Safe or not, I think we must. The horses are nearly spent, and it’s getting dark. I think we’ve gained a good lead. That warhorse is strong, but not swift nor nimble. The terrain we’ve covered will daunt him. And the Piebalds must either abandon their wounded, splitting their party, or come after us more slowly. We have a little breathing space.’
I looked back at the Prince before I dismounted. He sat, shoulders slumped, but the anger in his eyes proclaimed him far from defeated. I waited until he swung his dark eyes to meet mine, and then spoke to him. ‘It’s up to you. We can treat you well and simply return you to Buckkeep. Or you can behave like a wilful child and try to run away back to your Witted friends. In which case I will hunt you down, and take you back to Buckkeep with your hands bound behind you. Choose now.’
He stared at me, a flat, challenging stare, the rudest thing one animal can do to another. He didn’t speak. It offended me on so many levels that I could scarcely keep my temper.
‘Answer me!’ I commanded.
He narrowed his eyes. ‘And who are you?’ His tone made the repeated question an insult.
In all the years I’d had the care and raising of Hap, he had never provoked me to the level of temper that this youth had instantly roused in me. I wheeled Myblack. I was taller than the lad to begin with and the differences in our mounts made me tower over him. I crowded both him and his horse, leaning over him to look down on him like a wolf asserting authority over a cub. ‘I’m the man who’s taking you back to Buckkeep. One way or another. Accept it.’
‘Badgerlo––’ Lord Golden began warningly, but it was too late. Dutiful made a move, a tiny flexing of muscle that warned me. Without considering anything, I launched at him from Myblack’s back. My spring carried us both off our horses and onto the ground. We landed in deep grass, luckily for Dutiful, for I fell atop him, pinning him as neatly as if I had intended it. Both our horses snorted and shied away, but they were too weary to run. Myblack trotted a few paces, knees high, snorted a second rebuke at me, and then dropped her head to the grass. The Prince’s horse, having followed her so far today, copied her example.
I sat up, straddling the Prince’s chest while pinning both his arms down. I heard the sound of Lord Golden dismounting, but did not even turn my head. I stared down at Dutiful silently. I knew by the labouring of his chest that I had knocked the wind out of him, but he refused to make a sound. Nor would he meet my eyes, not even when I took his knife from him and flung it disdainfully into the forest. He looked past me at the sky until I seized his chin and forced him to look me in the face.
‘Choose,’ I told him again.
He met my eyes, looked away, then met them again. When he looked away a second time, I felt some of the fight go out of him. Then his face twisted with misery as he stared past me. ‘But I have to go back to her,’ he gasped out. He drew breath raggedly, and tried to explain. ‘I don’t expect you to understand. You’re nothing but a hound sent to track me down and drag me back. Doing your duty is all you know. But I have to go after her. She is my life, the breath in my body … she completes me. We have to be together.’
Well. You won’t be. I came a knife’s edge away from saying those words, but I did not. Factually, I told him, ‘I do understand. But that doesn’t change what I have to do. It doesn’t even change what you have to do.’
I got off him as Lord Golden approached. ‘Badgerlock, that is Prince Dutiful, heir to the Farseer Throne,’ he reminded me sharply.
I decided to play the role he’d left open for me. ‘And that’s why he’s still got all his teeth. My lord. Most boys who draw knives on me are lucky to keep any.’ I tried to sound both surly and truculent. Let the lad think Lord Golden had me on a short leash. Let him worry that I wasn’t completely under the lord’s control. It would give me an edge of mastery over him.
‘I’ll tend the horses,’ I announced, and stalked away from them into the darkness. I kept one eye and one ear on the shapes of the Fool and the Prince as I dragged off saddles, slipped bits, and wiped the horses down with handfuls of grass. Dutiful got slowly to his feet, disdaining Lord Golden’s offered hand. He brushed himself off, and when Golden asked if he had taken any harm, replied with stiff courtesy that he was as well as could be expected. Lord Golden retreated a short way, to consider the night and allow the lad to collect his shattered dignity. In a short time, Myblack and Malta were grazing as greedily as if they had never seen grass before. I had put the saddles in a row. I removed bedding from Myblack’s saddle-packs and began to make it into pallets near them. If possible, I’d steal an hour of sleep. The Prince watched me. After a moment he asked, ‘Aren’t you going to build a fire?’
‘And make it easier for your friends to find us? No.’
‘But –’
‘It’s not that cold. And there’s no food to cook anyway.’ I shook out the last blanket, then asked him, ‘Do you have any bedding in your saddle-pack?’
‘No,’ he admitted unhappily. I divided the blankets to make three pallets instead of two. I saw him pondering something. Then he added, ‘I do have food. And wine.’ He took a breath, then asked, ‘It seems a fair trade for a blanket.’ I kept a wary eye on him as he approached and began to open his saddle-packs.
‘My prince, you misjudge us. We would not think of making you sleep on the bare earth,’ Lord Golden protested in horror.
‘You might not, Lord Golden. But he would.’ He cast me a baleful glance and added, ‘He does not even accord me the courtesy one man gives to another, let alone the respect a servant should have for his sovereign.’
‘He is a rough man, my prince, but a good servant all the same.’ Lord Golden gave me a warning look.
I made a show of lowering my eyes, but muttered, ‘Respect a sovereign? Perhaps. But not a runaway boy fleeing his duty.’
Dutiful took a breath as if he would reply in fury. Then he let it out as a hiss, but leashed his anger. ‘You know nothing of what you speak about,’ he said coldly. ‘I did not run away.’