The boy fell face-first in the snow, and it took me a moment to realise what had happened: Kest had thrown him.
‘You’re still weak from the fever you suffered,’ he said dis-passionately. ‘Your reflexes are slow, and even if you were in perfect health, you wouldn’t be one-tenth the fighter Morn is. He’d kill you without bothering to dismount.’
Gwyn rose to his feet, his sling already spinning in his hand. I caught a sudden motion out of the corner of my eye and watched the sling fall unceremoniously to the ground. Kest had knocked it from the young man’s hand with a snowball.
‘Enough,’ I told Kest. ‘Stop humiliating the boy. You’ve made your point.’
‘Good, then you and the others go on ahead. When Morn and his soldiers come, I’ll keep them busy and buy you a little more time.’
‘Forget it. I’m not leaving you here.’
‘Falcio, it’s the only way—’
The tinkling sound of Trin’s deeply annoying laughter caught me off-guard. ‘My, my, this is just like watching one of those lovely military plays about honour and duty.’
‘If we’re all going to die anyway,’ Brasti began, ‘does anyone mind if I kill Trin first?’
She put a hand on Filian’s chest to stop him from once again declaring his willingness to protect her no matter the cost, then went to Kest and standing up on her tiptoes, kissed him on the cheek. ‘It’s kind of you to offer, dear Kest, but it won’t work either, and you know it.’
‘What?’ Brasti said. ‘Why not?’
‘Because they don’t want Kest – they’ll either overrun him with sheer weight of numbers, or more likely, they’ll ignore him and keep right on after us. We need to give them a more tempting target to pursue.’
‘Which is?’
She took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. I think it was the first time I’d ever seen real sorrow in her eyes. ‘Me.’
‘No!’ Filian said, rushing to her. ‘No, you cannot—!’
Trin was right: Morn wasn’t worried about us – our escape would annoy him, that’s all – and he didn’t know who Filian was. But Trin? She commanded immense loyalty in Hervor and Orison . . . he couldn’t afford to lose her.
‘I’ll stay behind,’ she continued. ‘As soon as they’re within sight of me, I’ll ride as fast as I can – I’ll head for the hard ground to the north of here.’
‘They’ll catch you,’ I said.
‘Of course they will. But all I need to do is draw their pursuit long enough for the rest of you to escape.’
I found myself peering into her eyes, searching for the trick, the deceit. ‘This is suicide,’ I said at last.
‘Why, Falcio, I didn’t realise you cared.’
‘We’re wasting time,’ Kest said. ‘Whatever we’re going to do, we need to do it now.’
‘I’m not leaving her!’ Filian shouted.
‘Here, my darling,’ Trin said, and reached out to hug him. She caught my eyes and nodded faintly and I knew exactly what she wanted me to do. I took the sword I’d stolen and struck the back of Filian’s head with the pommel.
The boy fell like a sack of wheat into my arms. I handed him to Kest who lifted him back onto his horse. He took out a length of rope to start strapping him in place.
‘Take care of Filian,’ Trin said. ‘He really is a sweet boy.’
As soon as he was fast in the saddle, Kest made Gwyn mount up behind him, and he and Brasti started riding down the road. I climbed up onto Arsehole’s saddle, but found I couldn’t leave; I needed to try and understand what was driving Trin. ‘You’re going to die,’ I said. ‘The Magdan won’t risk losing you a second time.’
‘Perhaps,’ she said, ‘but I’m a survivor.’
Again I found myself looking into her eyes, convinced that I would see signs of trickery there, but I found nothing but fear mixed with determination. ‘Why?’ I asked at last.
‘I’ll never sit the throne of Tristia, Falcio: you know that. So what is left for a woman born and raised to rule yet denied all power, except to make that one last decision of consequence left to her?’ One corner of her mouth lifted. ‘I may still surprise you, Falcio. I’m not without my own tricks, and these barbarians are fools.’ She came over and reached up a hand to caress my cheek. ‘Go, my lovely tatter-cloak. Tell Filian . . . Well, I’m sure you’ll think of something suitably poetic.’
I pulled away from her and nudged Arsehole into motion. We pounded down the road that would lead us to Tristia and to Aramor. I was confused beyond all measure.
My world had stopped making sense.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
The Boy and His Dog
We stopped sooner than we should have, Filian being too tired and too heartbroken to continue. A better man than I would have been sympathetic to his plight. A more practical one would have killed him.
‘You don’t like me, do you.’ He didn’t bother making it a question.
I stared at him, willing his mouth to tighten into a sneer or his chin to inch up into a haughty scowl, giving me the excuse to slap him across the face, but he was too smart – or too innocent – to provide me with the necessary provocation.
‘I don’t know you,’ I said at last.
‘And you don’t want to.’
I kicked at a mound, stubbing my toe on the broken branch concealed by the snow, then knelt to pick it up. ‘Find more of these,’ I said. ‘We need wood if we’re to have a fire.’
He did as he was told, staying close and often looking back to make sure I hadn’t left him alone in this wilderness. His entirely natural and sensible fear bothered me; no one raised by Patriana, Duchess of Hervor, had any business exhibiting normal human emotions.
More troubling was that I found myself making dark calculations: at fifteen paces away from me, with his attention focused on the ground in front of him, it would take me four seconds to bridge the distance between us. Even with my hands firmly at my sides, the urge to draw my rapier, to let that swift, fluid motion extend into a killing lunge, gnawed at me. The tip of the sword would slide so easily through the boy’s back, just to the left of his spine, and come out the other side with his heart’s blood dripping along the length of the blade.
I tried to shake the image away, but that made the bracer of throwing knives inside my coat rub against my chest, reminding me that I needn’t even get close to the boy to do the job; he’d stuck to the little path and there was a clear line between us, no trees or branches to shield him. My first throw would embed a knife between his shoulder blades – enough to incapacitate, not kill – but the second and third would finish the job. Aline would be crowned. The country would be safe. And Filian wasn’t facing me, so I wouldn’t even have to see his eyes when the light left them.
The vividness of my visions unsettled me and I didn’t know if it was the traditional Tristian aversion to shedding royal blood, or because despite all the violence in my life, I had never before contemplated the murder of an innocent.