I gave one final glance around before descending from the barrow. As I did so, my eye caught something, not a shape, but a movement beyond a cluster of trees. I crouched low and stared at it, trying to resolve what I had seen. In a few moments, the animal emerged. A horse. Black and tall. Myblack. She stared towards me. Slowly I stood again. She was too far off to go chasing after her. She must have fled when the Piebalds captured Nighteyes and the Fool. I wondered what had become of Malta. I watched her for a moment longer, but she only stood and stared back at me. I turned my back on her and descended to the Prince.
He was no more coherent, but at least had reacted to the chill rain by drawing into a ball and shivering. My apprehension for him was mixed with a guilty hope. Perhaps in his present condition, he could not use his Wit to let the Piebalds know where we were. I set my hand to his shoulder and tried to make my voice gentle as I told him, ‘Let’s get you up and walking. It will warm both of us.’
I don’t know if my words made sense to him. He stared ahead blankly as I pulled him to his feet. Once up, he hunched over his crossed arms. The shivering did not abate. ‘Let’s walk,’ I suggested, but he did not move until I put an arm around him and told him, ‘Walk with me. Now.’ Then he did, but it was a stumbling, staggering gait. At a snail’s pace, we fled across the wet hillside.
Very gradually, I became aware of the thud of hooves behind us. A glance back showed Myblack following us, but when I stopped, she stopped also. When I let go of the Prince, he sagged towards the earth and the horse immediately became suspicious. I dragged the Prince back to his feet. As we plodded on again, I could hear her uneven hoof beats behind us again.
I ignored Myblack until she had nearly caught up with us. Then I sat down and let Dutiful lean against me until her curiosity overcame her native wariness. I paid no attention to her until her breath was actually warm on the back of my neck. Even then I did not turn to her, but snaked a hand stealthily around to catch hold of the dangling reins.
I think she was almost glad to be caught. I stood slowly and stroked her neck. Her coat was streaked with dried lather, and all her tack was damp. She had been grazing around her bit. Mud was crusted into one side of the saddle where she had tried to roll. I led her in a slow circle and confirmed what I feared. She was lamed. Something, perhaps the Wit-hounds, had tried to run her down, but her fleetness had saved her. I was amazed that she had even stayed in the area, let alone come back to me when she saw me. Yet there would be no wild gallop to safety for any of us. The best we would do was a halting walk.
I spent some little time trying to cajole the Prince into standing and mounting the horse. It was only when I lost my patience and ordered him to get to his feet and get on the damned horse that he obeyed me. Dutiful did not respond to conversation, but he obeyed simple orders from me. Then I appreciated how deep that jolt of Skill-command had gone, and how firmly linked we remained. ‘Don’t fight me,’ I had charged him, and some part of him interpreted that as ‘don’t disobey me.’ Even with his cooperation, the mount was an awkward manoeuvre. As I heaved him up into the saddle, I feared he would topple off the other side. I didn’t try to ride behind him. I doubted that Myblack would have tolerated it. Instead I led her. The Prince swayed with Myblack’s hitching gait but did not fall. He looked terrible. All the maturity had been stripped from his features, leaving him a sick child, his dark-circled eyes wide, his mouth drooping. He looked as if he could die. The full impact of that possibility seized my heart in a cold grip. The Prince dead. The end of the Farseer line and the shattering of the Six Duchies. A messy and painful death for Nettle. I could not let it happen that way. We entered a strip of open woods, startling a crow who rose, cawing like a prophet of doom. It seemed an ill omen.
I found myself talking to both prince and horse as we walked. I spoke in Burrich’s soothing cadence, using his reassuring words, in a calming ritual remembered from my childhood. ‘Come along now, we’re all going to be fine, there, there, the worst part is over, that’s right, that’s right.’
From that I progressed to humming, and again it was some tune that Burrich had often hummed when he worked on injured horses or labouring mares. I think the familiar song calmed and settled me more than it did the horse or the Prince. After a time, I found myself talking aloud, as much to myself as to them. ‘Well, it looks as if Chade was right. You’re going to Skill whether you’re taught to or not. And I’m afraid the same holds true for the Wit. It’s in your blood, lad, and unlike some, I don’t think it can be beaten out of you. I don’t think it should be. But it shouldn’t be indulged the way you’ve indulged it either. It’s not that different from the Skill, really. A man has to set limits on his magic and on himself. Setting limits is part of being a man. So if we come out of this alive and intact, I’ll teach you. I guess I’ll teach myself as well. It’s probably time for me to look into all those old Skill-scrolls and find out what’s really in them. It scares me, though. In the last two years, the Skill has come back on me like some sort of spreading ulcer. I don’t know where it’s taking me. And I fear what I don’t know. That’s the wolf in me, I guess. And Eda’s breath, let him be safe right now, and my Fool. Don’t let them be in pain or dying simply because they knew me. If anything happens to either of them … it’s strange, isn’t it, how you don’t know how big a part of you someone is until they’re threatened? And then you think that you can’t possibly go on if something happens to them, but the most frightening part is that actually, you will go on, you’ll have to go on, with them or without them. There’s just no telling what you’ll become. What will I be, if Nighteyes is gone? Look at Small Ferret, all those years ago. He went on and on, even though the only thing left in his little mind was to kill –’
‘What about my cat?’
His voice was soft. Relief washed through me that he had enough mind left to speak. At the same time, I hastily reviewed my thoughtless rambling and hoped he had not been paying too much attention.
‘How do you feel, my prince?’
‘I can’t feel my cat.’
A long silence followed. I finally said, ‘I can’t feel my wolf, either. Sometimes he needs to be separate from me.’
He was silent for so long that I feared he wasn’t going to reply. Then he said, ‘It doesn’t feel like that. She’s holding us apart. It feels as if I am being punished.’
‘Punished for what?’ I kept my voice even and light, as if we discussed the weather.
‘For not killing you. For not even trying to kill you. She can’t understand why I don’t. I can’t explain why I don’t. But it makes her angry with me.’ There was a simplicity to his heart-spoken words, as if I conversed with the person behind all the manners and artifice of society. I sensed that our journey through the Skill-pillar had stripped away many layers of protection from him. He was vulnerable right now. He spoke and reasoned as soldiers do when they are in great pain, or when ill men try to speak through a fever. All his guards were dropped. It seemed as if he trusted me, that he spoke of such things. I counselled myself not to hope for that, nor believe it. It was only the hardships he had been through that opened him to me like this. Only that. I chose my words carefully.