by Robin Hobb
"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 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, dreamed sometimes of being a dragon. 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 streambed and up the slick clay bank beyond it. As she vanished into the forest, I wondered if she was the Prince's ladylove.
"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 mamed 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 uneven-ness of the terrain we crossed favored us, for as soon as they began their descent of the 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 fourth, 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 likemy father's portrait. I could not say if he looked like me atthat age. I had had little to do with looking glasses then. Hehad dark, thick hair, as unruly as Verity's and mine. I wondered, briefly, if my father had ever struggled to get a combthrough his. His portrait was my only image of him, and inthat he was faultlessly groomed. Like my father, the youngPrince was long of limb, rangier than stocky Verity, but hemight fill out as he got older. He sat his horse well. And justas I had noted with the man on the large horse, I could seehis bond with the cat that rode behind him. Dutiful heldhis head tipped back, as if to be aware always of the catbehind him. The cat was smallest of the three, yet largerthan I had expected her to be. She was long legged andtawny, with a rippling pattern of pale and darker stripes.
Sitting on her saddle cushion, her claws well dug in, the topof her head came to the nape of the Prince's neck. Her headturned from side to side as they rode, taking in all that theypassed. Her posture said that she was weary of riding, thatshe would have preferred to cross this ground on her own.
Getting rid of her might be the trickiest part of thewhole "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 Bur-rich 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 judgment. 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 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 forward, with little Malta right behind us.
Some horses are fleet only on a level, straight stretchMyblack proved herself as able on broken terrain. Th Piebalds had taken the easiest route, following the ridgelines. A steep-sided gorge, thick with brush and trees, slicecbetween them and us. We could cut off a huge loop of traiby plunging down the slope to reach the next ascending jogin the trail. I kneed Myblack and she crashed down thr
oughthe brushy slope, splashed through the creek at the bottom, and then fought her way up the other side through mossyturf that gave way under her hooves. I did not look back tosee how Malta and the Fool were faring. Instead, I rode lowto her back, avoiding the branches that would have sweptme 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 seemec 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 retreatec 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 ant 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 ii the sparse soil and cracked rock were snapped off as the horse crashed through them. The animal screamed horribl' as one sapling, stouter than the others, stabbed deep into i and arrested its fall briefly before its struggles tore it loose to slide again.
Behind me, there were other sounds. I gathered with out looking that the Fool had arrived, and that he ant 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' owner with my blade, but the spitting cat menacing My black 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 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. 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 esc
ape 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 leapfrom 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?"
