Graceling

by Kristin Cashore

  They would go then, because they must. But they would backtrack just a bit, on the chance that he was near. Katsa glanced quickly around the rock camp to be sure they'd left no sign of their presence. "Well then, Princess," she said, "we'd better be going." She avoided Bitterblue's eyes and lifted her into the saddle. She untied the horse's reins and handed them to the child. And that's when she heard the pebbles bouncing along the cliff path.

  She raced back to the path. The horse was coming across the ledge along the top of the cliff, stumbling across, its head hanging. Too close, just a little too close to the drop. And Po lying on the horse's back, unmoving; and an arrow, an arrow in his shoulder. His shirt soaked with blood. And how many arrows in the horse's neck and side she didn't try to count, for suddenly pebbles were spraying over the cliff edge. The horse was slipping, and the whole path was sliding under its panicked hooves. She screamed Po's name inside her mind, and ran. He raised his head, and his eyes flashed into hers. The horse shrieked and struggled madly for ground to stand on, but she couldn't reach him in time. Over the edge the horse tumbled, over the edge, and she screamed again, aloud this time; and he was gone below her, falling through the yellow light.

  The horse twisted and turned in the air. Po smashed face-first into the water and the horse crashed in after him, and stones flew up helter-skelter from Katsa's feet as she tore down the trail to the gully, feeling nothing as her shins bashed against rocks and branches whipped across her face. She knew only that Po was in that water and that she must get him out.

  There was the barest ripple on the surface of the water to direct her dive. She threw her boots into the rushes and plunged. In the shock of the lake's icy water, she saw the place where mud and bubbles rose and where a great brown form sank and another, smaller form struggled. He struggled, which meant he was alive. She kicked closer and saw what he struggled with. His boot was caught in a stirrup. The stirrup buckled to the saddle, and the horse sinking fast. His struggles were clumsy, and the water around his shoulder and his head flowed red with his blood. Katsa grabbed his belt and felt around until she found a knife. She whipped the blade out and sawed at the stirrup. The leather broke, and the stirrup sank with the horse. Katsa wrapped her arm around Po and kicked fiercely upward. They burst to the surface.

  She lugged his dead weight to shore, for now he was unconscious; but as she pushed him into the rushes at the edge of the lake he became suddenly, violently conscious. He gasped and coughed and vomited lake water, over and over again. He wasn't going to drown, then; but that didn't mean he wouldn't bleed to death. "The other horse," Katsa shouted to Bitterblue, who hovered anxiously nearby. "The horse has the medicines," she shouted, and the girl slipped and scrambled back up to the camp.

  Katsa dragged Po up to dry ground and sat him there. The cold and the wet—that could also kill him. He must stop bleeding, and he must be warm and dry. Oh, how she wished for Raffin at this moment. "Po," she said. "Po, what happened?" No response. Po. Po. His eyes flashed open, but they were vague, unfocused. He didn't see her. He vomited.

  "All right. You sit still. This is going to hurt," she said, but when she pulled the arrow from his shoulder he didn't even seem to notice. His arms flopped lifelessly as she peeled his shirts from his back, and he vomited again.

  Bitterblue came clattering down the trail with the horse. "I need your help," Katsa said, and for a good while Bitterblue was Katsa's assistant, tearing open bags to find clothing that could be used to dry him or stanch his bleeding, rifling through the medicines for the ointment that cleaned wounds, soaking bloody cloths in the lake.

  "Can you hear me, Po?" Katsa asked as she tore a shirt to make a bandage. "Can you hear me? What happened with the king?" He looked up at her dimly as she bandaged his shoulder. "Po," she said, over and over. "The king. You must tell me if the king is alive." But he was useless, and senseless—no better than unconscious. She peeled off his boots and his trousers and dried him as best she could. She dressed him in new trousers and rubbed his arms and legs to warm them. She took his coat back from Bitterblue, pulled it over his head, and pushed his rubbery arms through the sleeves. He vomited again.

  It was the force of his head hitting the water. This Katsa knew: that a man vomited if struck hard enough in the head, that he became forgetful and confused. His head would clear, in time. But they didn't have time, not if the king was alive. And so she knelt before him and grasped his chin. She ignored his wincing, pained eyes. She thought into his mind. Po. I need to know if the king is alive. I am not going to stop bothering you until you tell me if the king is alive.

  He looked at her then, rubbed his eyes, and squinted at her, hard. "The king," he said thickly. "The king. My arrow. The king is alive."

  Katsa's heart sank. For now they must flee, all three of them, with Po in this state and with only one horse. In the dark and the cold, with little food, and without Po's Grace to warn them of their pursuers.

  Her Grace would have to serve.

  She handed Po her flask. "Drink this," she said, "all of it. Bitterblue," she said, "help me pull these wet things together. It's a good thing you slept today, for I need you to be strong tonight."

  Po seemed to understand when it was time for him to mount the horse. He didn't contribute to the effort, but he didn't fight it, either. Both Katsa and Bitterblue pushed him up into the saddle with all their might, and though he almost pitched headlong over the animal and fell to the ground on the other side, some unfocused understanding caused him to grasp Katsa's arm and steady himself. "You behind him," Katsa said to Bitterblue, "so that you can see him. Pinch him if he starts to fall off, and call me if you need help. The horse will be moving quickly, as quickly as I can run."

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  IN THE DARK on the side of a mountain, no one can move quickly who doesn't have some particular Grace to do so. They moved, and Katsa did not break her ankles stepping blindly before the horse, as others would have, but they didn't move quickly. Katsa barely breathed, so hard was she listening behind them. Their pursuers would be on horseback, and there would be many of them, and they would carry torches. If Leck had sent a party in the right direction, then there would be little to stop them from succeeding in their search.

  Katsa was doubtful that even on flat land they could have moved much faster, so unwell was Po. He clung to the horse's mane, eyes closed, concentrating fiercely on not falling off. He winced at every movement. And he was still bleeding.

  "Let me tie you to the horse," Katsa said to him once when she'd stopped at a stream to fill the flasks. "Then you'd be able to rest."

  He took a moment to process her words. He hunched forward and sighed into the horse's mane. "I don't want to rest," he said. "I want to be able to tell you if he's coming."

  So they weren't completely without his Grace; but he was completely without his reason, to make such a comment while Bitterblue sat directly behind him, quiet, intent, and missing nothing of what was said. Careful, she thought to him. Bitterblue.

  "I'll tie you both to the horse," she said aloud, "and then each of you can choose whether or not to rest."

  Rest, she thought to him, as she wound a rope around his legs. You're no good to us if you bleed to death.

  "I'll not bleed to death," he said aloud, and Katsa avoided Bitterblue's eyes, determining not to talk to Po inside her mind again until his reason had returned.

  THEY CONTINUED south slowly. Katsa tripped and stumbled over rocks, and over the roots of stubborn mountain trees that clung to cracks in the earth. As the night wore on, her stumbling increased, and it occurred to her that she was tired. She sent her mind back along the past few nights, and counted. It was her second night without sleep, and the night before that they'd slept only a few hours. She would have to sleep, then, sometime soon; but for now she wouldn't think of it. There was no use considering the impossible.

  Several hours before dawn she began to think of the fish she had caught earlier, the fish scaled and gutted, and w
rapped and bound with the bags to the horse. Once light came they wouldn't be able to risk even the smallest fire. They'd eaten very little that day, and they had very little food for the next. If they stopped now for just a few minutes, she could cook the fish. She wouldn't have to think of food again, until the next nightfall.

  But even this was risky, for the light of a fire could attract attention in this darkness.

  Po whispered her name then, and she stopped the horse and walked back to him.

  "There's a cave," he whispered, "a few steps to the southeast." His hand swayed in the air and then rested on her shoulder. "Stay here beside me. I'll lead us there."

  He directed her footsteps over stones and around boulders. If she'd been less tired, Katsa would have taken a moment to appreciate the clarity with which his Grace showed him the landscape. But now they were at the entrance to Po's cave, and there was too much else to consume her mind. She must wake Bitterblue, untie her, and help her down. She must get Po from the horse and onto the ground. She must find wood to build a fire, then get the fish cooking. She must dress Po's shoulder again, because it still bled freely no matter how tightly she bound it.

  "Sleep while the fish cooks," he said, as she wound clean strips of cloth around his arm and chest to stanch the flow of blood. "Katsa. Get some sleep. I'll wake you if we need you."

  "You're the one who needs sleep," she said.

  He caught her arm then as she knelt before him. "Katsa. Sleep for a quarter of an hour. No one is near. You won't get another chance to sleep tonight."

  She sat on her heels and looked at him. Shirtless, colorless, squinting from pain. Bruises darkening his face. He dropped her arm and sighed. "I'm dizzy," he said. "I'm sure I look like death, Katsa, but I'm not going to bleed to death and I'm not going to die of dizziness. Sleep, for a few minutes."

  Bitterblue came forward. "He's right," she said. "You should sleep. I'll take care of him." She picked up his coat and helped him into it, moving his bandaged shoulder gently, carefully. Surely, Katsa thought, they could manage without her, for a few minutes. Surely they would all do better if she got some small sleep.

  So she lay down before the fire and instructed herself to sleep for only a quarter of an hour. When she woke, Po and Bitterblue had barely moved. She felt better.

  They ate quietly and fast. Po leaned back against the cave wall, eyes closed. He claimed to have little appetite, but Katsa had no sympathy. She sat before him and fed him pieces of fish until she was satisfied that he'd eaten enough.

  Katsa was suffocating the fire with her boots, and Bitterblue was binding together the remaining fish, when he spoke.

  "It's good you weren't there, Katsa," he said. "For today I listened to Leck prattle on for hours about his love for his kidnapped daughter. About how his heart would be broken until he found her."

  Katsa went to sit before him. Bitterblue shuffled closer so that she could hear his whispered words.

  "I got through the outer guard easily," Po said. "I came within sight of him, finally, in the early afternoon. His inner guard surrounded him so closely that I couldn't get a shot at him. I waited forever. I followed them. They never once heard me; but they never once moved away from the king."

  "He was expecting you," Katsa said. "They were there for you."

  He nodded, then winced.

  "Tell us later, Po," Katsa said. "Rest for now."

  "It's a short story," he said. "I finally decided my only option was to take out one of his guards. So I shot one. But the instant he fell, of course, the king jumped for cover. I shot again, and my arrow grazed Leck's neck, but only barely. It was a job meant for you, Katsa. You'd have hit him squarely. I couldn't do it."

  "Well," Katsa said. I would never have found him in the first place. And even if I had, I would never have killed him. You know that. It was a job meant for neither of us.

  "After that, of course, his inner guard was after me," Po said, "and then his outer guard, and his soldiers, too, once they'd heard the alarm. It—it was a bloodbath. I must have killed a dozen men. It was all I could do to get away, and then I rode north, to throw them off the track." He stopped for a moment and closed his eyes, then opened them again. He squinted at Katsa. "Leck has a bowman who's nearly as good as you, Katsa. You saw what he did to the horse."

  And he would have done the same to you, she thought to him. If it weren't for your newfound ability to sense arrows as they fly toward you.

  He smiled, ever so slightly. Then he squinted at Bitterblue. "You've begun to trust me," he said.

  "You tried to kill the king," Bitterblue said, simply.

  "All right," Katsa said, "enough talking."

  She returned to the fire, and smothered it. They pushed Po up into the saddle again, and again she tied her charges to the horse. And in her mind, over and over, she warned Po, implored Po, to stop announcing aloud every little thing his Grace revealed to him.

  IN THE LIGHT of day they moved faster, but the movement was hard on Po. He didn't complain once about the bouncing of the horse. But his breath was short and his eyes flashed with a kind of wildness, and Katsa could recognize pain as easily as she recognized fear. She saw the pain in his face, and in the tightness of the muscles of his arms and his neck whenever she dressed his shoulder.

  "Which hurts more?" she asked him in the early morning. "Your shoulder or your head?"

  "My head."

  A person with an aching head shouldn't be riding an animal whose every step reverberated like an axe to his skull; but walking was out of the question. He had no balance. He was forever dizzy and nauseated. He was forever rubbing his eyes; they bothered him. At least the bleeding of his shoulder had slowed to a dribble. And talking no longer confused him; he seemed to remember, finally, to hide his Grace from his cousin.

  "We're not moving fast enough," he said several times that day. Katsa, too, chafed at their pace. But until his head improved, she wasn't going to run the horse over the rocky hills.

  Bitterblue was more of a help than Katsa could have hoped. She seemed to consider Po her special charge. Whenever they stopped, she helped him settle onto a rock. She brought him food and water. If Katsa stepped away for a minute to chase a rabbit, when she returned Bitterblue was cleaning Po's shoulder and wrapping it in clean bandages. Katsa became accustomed to the sight of Po swaying above his little cousin, his hand resting on her shoulder.

  By the time the sun began to set, Katsa felt the fatigue of the last few days and the last few sleepless nights. Po and Bitterblue were asleep on the horse's back. Perhaps if Po rested now, he would be able to stand some sort of watch later and give her some few hours' sleep. The horse, too, needed rest. They couldn't stop for the whole night, not when they traveled at this pace. But a few hours. A few hours' rest might be possible.

  When he woke again in the moon's pale light, he called her back to him. He helped her find a hollow in a ring of rocks that would hide the light of a fire. "We're not moving fast enough," he said again, and she shrugged, for there was little to be done about it. She woke Bitterblue, untied her, and slid her down from the horse. Po slid himself down, carefully.

  "Katsa," he said. "Come here, my Katsa."

  He reached for her, and she came to him. He wrapped his arms around her. His hurt shoulder slow and stiff, but his unhurt arm strong and warm. He held her tight, and she held him steady. She rested her face in the hollow of his neck, and a great sigh rose within her. She was so tired, and he was so unwell. They weren't moving fast enough. But at least they could stand with their arms around each other, and she could feel his warmth against her face.

  "There's something we need to do," he said, "and you're not going to like it."

  "What is it?" she murmured into his neck.

  "We—" He took a breath and stopped. "You need to leave me behind."

  "What?" She pulled away from him. He swayed, but grabbed at the horse to steady himself. She glared at him, and then stormed after Bitterblue, who was collecting branches
for the fire. Let him cope for himself. Let him make his own way to the campfire if he was going to make such absurd statements.

  But he didn't move. He just stood beside the horse, his arm clutching the animal's back, waiting for someone to help him; and tears rose to her eyes at the sight of Po's helplessness. She went back to him. Forgive me, Po. She gave him her shoulder and led him across the rocky ground to the place where they would make their fire. She sat him down and crouched before him. She felt his face; his forehead burned. She listened to his breath and heard pain in its shortness.

  "Katsa," he said. "Look at me. I can't even walk. The most important thing right now is speed, and I'm holding you back. I'm no more than a burden."

  "That's not true. We need your Grace."

  "I can tell you they're seeking you," he said, "and I can promise you they'll continue to seek you, as long as you're in Monsea. I can tell you they're likely to find your trail, and I can tell you that once they do, the king will be on your heels. You don't need me with you, to repeat that over and over."

  "I need you to keep my mind straight."

  "I can't keep your mind straight. The only way for you to keep your mind straight is to run from those who would confuse you. Running is the only hope for the child."

  Bitterblue came beside them then, with an armload of sticks and branches. "Thank you, Princess," Katsa said to her. "Here, bring the rabbit I caught. I'll build the fire." She would think about the fire, and she would pay Po no attention.

  "If you left me behind," Po said, "you could ride fast. Faster than an army of soldiers."

  Katsa ignored him. She piled twigs together and focused on the flame growing between her hands.