Fool's Errand (54 page)

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 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 lead horse had just begun the descent. The three horses remaining carried cats as well as riders. The last one wheeled to meet my charge with a shout, while the second-to-last chivied 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 forward, 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 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 rock face 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 confined 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 forward 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 toward 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 barely 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 meager apron of earth that led to the narrow path across the hill face, 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 he might normally pursue. I took advantage of that hesitation, kicking Myblack forward. 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 forward.

On the slender 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 toward 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, stumbled 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 it room to get past her. In her 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 her fur to full extension and now confronted me with an angry snarl. There was something wrong with her, 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 or 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 toward 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 his onslaught, and caught the creature in mid-flight with the back of my elbow and arm. I yelled in revulsion as he struck me. Before he could lock onto me, I twisted violently, throwing him in the face of the cat-rider 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 leapt 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 brow 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.

chapter
XXII

CHOICES

The legends of the Catalyst and the White Prophet are not Six Duchies’ legends. Although the writings and lore of that tradition are known to some scholars in the Six Duchies, it has its roots in the lands far to the south, beyond even the reaches of Jamaillia and the Spice Islands. It is not properly a religion, but is more a concept both of history and philosophy. According to those who believe such things, all of time is a great wheel that turns in a track of predetermined events. Left to itself, time turns endlessly, and all the world is doomed to repeat the cycle of events that lead us all ever deeper into darkness and degradation. Those who follow the White Prophet believe that to each age is born one who has the vision to redirect time and history into a better path. This one is known by his white skin and colorless eyes. It is said that the blood of the ancient lines of the Whites finds voice again in the White Prophet. To each White Prophet there is a Catalyst. Only the White Prophet of that particular age can divine who the Catalyst is. The Catalyst is one who is born in a unique position to alter, however slightly, predetermined events, which in turn cascade time into other paths with possibilities that diverge ever wider. In partnership with this Catalyst, the White Prophet labors to divert the turning of time into a better path.

— CATERHILL
’
S
“
PHILOSOPHIES
”

We could not keep up the pace forever, of course. Long before I felt safe, the condition of the horses forced us to breathe them. The sounds of pursuit had faded behind us; a warhorse is not a courser. As the evening approached true dark around us, we walked the horses down a winding streambed. The Prince’s horse could barely hold her head up. As soon as the heat was walked off her, we would have to stop for a time. I rode crouched in my saddle to avoid the sweeping branches of the willows that lined the stream. The others followed. When we had first slowed the horses, I had feared that the Prince would try a leaping escape. But he had not. Instead he sat his horse in sullen silence as I led her on.

“Mind this branch,” I warned Dutiful and Lord Golden as a low limb snagged on me when Myblack pushed her way under it. I tried not to let it snap back in the Prince’s face.

“Who are you?” the Prince suddenly demanded in a low voice.

“You do not recognize me, my lord?” Lord Golden asked him anxiously. I recognized his effort to distract the Prince’s attention from me.

“Not you.
Him.
Who is he? And why have you assaulted me and my friends in this way?” There was an amazing depth of accusation in his voice. Abruptly he sat up straighter in his saddle as if he were just discovering his anger.

“Duck,” I warned him as I released another branch. He did.

Lord Golden spoke. “That is my servant, Tom Badgerlock. We’ve come to take you home to Buckkeep, Prince Dutiful. The Queen, your mother, has been most worried about you.”

“I do not wish to go.” With every sentence, the young man was recovering himself. There was dignity in his voice as he spoke these words. I waited for Lord Golden to reply, but the splashing thuds of the horses’ hooves in the stream and the swish and crackle of the branches we passed through were the only sounds. To our right, a meadow suddenly opened out. A few blackened, snaggly stumps in it were reminders of a forest fire in this area years ago. Tall grasses of browned seedheads vied against fireweed with sprung and fluffy seedpods. I turned the horses out of the stream and onto the grass. When I looked up at the sky, it was dark enough to show a pricking of early stars. The dwindling moon would not show herself until night was deep. Even now, the gathering darkness was leaching color from the day, making the surrounding forest an impenetrable tangle of blackness.

I led them out to the center of the meadow, well away from the forest edge, before I reined in. Any attackers would have to cross open ground before they reached us. “Best we rest until moonrise,” I observed to Lord Golden. “It will be difficult enough to make our way then.”

“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 or 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 willful 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 laboring 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. Matter-of-factly, 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, the horses 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 said, “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.”

Lord Golden’s tone was much gentler than mine had been. “Forgive me, my lord, but that is how it must appear to us. The Queen feared at first that you had been kidnapped. But no notes of ransom arrived. She did not wish to alarm her nobles, or to offend the Outislander delegation soon to arrive for your betrothal agreement. Surely you have not forgotten that in nine more nights, the new moon brings your betrothal? For you to be absent at such a time goes beyond mere discourtesy to insult. She doubted that was your intent. Even so, she did not turn out the guards after you, as she might have done. Preferring to be subtle, she asked me to locate you and bring you safely home. And that is our only aim.”

“I did not run away,” he repeated adamantly, and I saw that the accusation had stung him more sharply than I had suspected. Nonetheless, he stubbornly added, “But I have no intention of returning to Buckkeep.” He had taken a bottle of wine from his pack. Now he pulled out food. Smoked fish wrapped in linen, several slabs of hard-crusted honey cake, and two apples; hardly traveling rations, but the toothsome repast that loyal companions would supply for a prince’s enjoyment. He unfolded the linen on the grass, and began to divide the food into three portions. Dainty as a cat, he arranged the food. I thought it was well done, a show of a gracious nature by a boy in an uncomfortable situation. He uncorked the wine and set it in the middle. With a gesture he invited us, and we were not slow to respond. Little as there was, it was very welcome. The honey cake was heavy, suety, and thick with raisins. I filled my mouth with half my slab and tried to chew it slowly. I was fiercely hungry. Yet even as we attacked the food, the Prince, less hungry, spoke seriously.

“If you try to force me to return with you, you will only get hurt. My friends will come for me, you know. She will not surrender me so easily, nor I her. And I have no desire to see you get hurt. Not even you,” he added, meeting my stare. I had thought he intended his words as a threat. Instead, he seemed sincere as he explained, “I must go with her. I am not a boy running away from his duty, nor even a man fleeing an arranged marriage. I do not run away from unpleasantness. Instead, I join myself where I most belong . . . where I was born to belong.” His careful unfolding of words put me in mind of Verity. His eyes traveled slowly from me to Lord Golden and back again. He seemed to be seeking an ally, or at least a sympathetic ear. He licked his lips as if taking a risk. Very quietly, he asked, “Have you ever heard the tale of the Piebald Prince?”

We were both silent. I swallowed food gone tasteless. Was Dutiful mad? Then Lord Golden nodded, once, slowly.

“I am of that line. As sometimes happens in the Farseer line, I was born with the Wit.”

I did not know whether to admire his honesty, or be horrified at his naïve assumption that he had not just condemned himself to death. I kept my features motionless and did not let my eyes betray my thoughts. Desperately I wondered if he had admitted this to others at Buckkeep.

I think our lack of reaction unnerved him more than anything else we could have done. We both sat quietly, watching him. He took a gambler’s breath. “So you see now why it would be best for everyone if you let me go. The Six Duchies will not follow a Witted king, nor can I forsake what my blood makes me. I will not deny what I am. That would be cowardice, and false to my friends. If I returned, it would only be a matter of time before all knew of my Wit. If you drag me back, it can only lead to strife and division amongst the nobles. You should let me go, and tell my mother you could not find me. That way is best for all.”

I looked down at the last of my portion of fish. Quietly I asked, “What if we decided it was best for all if we killed you? Hung you and cut you in quarters and burned the parts near running water? And then told the Queen we had not found you?” I looked away from the wild fear in his eyes, shamed by what I had done and yet knowing he must be taught caution. After a space: “Know men before you share your deepest secrets with them,” I counseled him.