The Complete Tawny Man Trilogy Omnibus (54 page)

Or your kill
. He came up on me as quietly as a shadow, his thought light as the wind against my skin. Nighteyes dropped a rabbit, a bit the worse for wear, on the ground beside me. He had already eaten the guts. Casually, he lifted the smoked fish from my hands, gulped it down, and then lay down beside me with a heavy sigh. He dropped his head onto his forepaws.
That rabbit started up right under me. Easiest kill I’ve ever made
.

The Prince’s eyes opened so wide I could see white all around them. His gaze darted from the wolf to me and back again. I don’t think he had overheard our shared thought, but he knew all the same. He leapt to his feet with an angry cry. ‘You should understand! How can you tear me from not just my bond-beast but the woman who shares that
Old Blood kinship with me? How can you betray one of your own?’

I had more important questions of my own.
How did you cover that much ground so quickly?

The same way his cat will, and for much the same reason. A wolf can go straight where a horse must go round. Are you ready for them to find you?
With my hand resting on his back, I could feel the weariness thrumming through him. He shuddered away my concern as if it were flies on his coat.
I’m not that decrepit. I brought you meat
, he pointed out.

You should have eaten it all yourself
.

A trace of humour.
I did. The first one. You don’t think I’d be foolish enough to follow you all this way on an empty belly? That one is for you and the Scentless One. And this cub, if you so will it
.

I doubt he will eat it raw.

I doubt there is sense to avoiding a fire. Come they will, and they need no light to guide them. The boy calls to her; it is like breath sighing in and out of him. He yowls it like a mating call.

I am not aware of it.

Your nose is not the only sense that you have that is not as keen as mine.

I stood up, then nudged the eviscerated rabbit with my foot. ‘I’ll make a fire and cook this.’ The Prince was staring at me silently. He was well aware I’d been having a conversation that excluded him.

‘What about drawing pursuit to us?’ Lord Golden asked. Despite his question, I knew he was hoping for the comfort of a fire and hot meat.

‘He’s already doing that.’ I gestured at the Prince with my chin. ‘Having a fire long enough to have some hot food will not make it any worse.’

‘How can you betray your own kind?’ Dutiful demanded again.

I had already puzzled out the answer to that the night before.
‘There are levels of loyalty here, my prince. And my highest loyalty is to the Farseers. As yours should be.’ He was more my own kind than I had the heart to tell him, and I ached for him. Yet my actions did not feel like a betrayal to me. Rather I imposed safe boundaries on him. As Burrich had once done for me, I thought ruefully.

‘What gives you the right to tell me where my loyalty should be?’ he demanded. The anger in his voice let me know that I had touched that very question within him.

‘You’re correct. It’s not my right, Prince Dutiful. It’s my duty. To remind you of what you seem to have forgotten. I’ll find some firewood. You might ponder what will become of the Farseer throne if you simply refuse your duty and vanish.’

Despite his weariness, the wolf heaved himself to his feet and followed me. We went back to the stream’s edge, to look for dead wood carried by higher waters and left to dry all summer. We drank first, and then I dabbed my chest with water where the Prince’s blade had scored me. Another day, another scar. Or perhaps not. It had not even bled very much. I turned from that to looking for dry wood. Nighteyes’ keener night vision helped my lesser senses, and I soon had an armload.
He’s very like you
, the wolf observed as we made our way back.

Family resemblance. He’s Verity’s heir.

Only because you refused to be. He’s our blood, little brother. Yours and mine.

That struck me into silence for a time. Then I pointed out,
You are much more aware of human concerns than you used to be. Time was when you took no notice of such things
.

True. And Black Rolf warned us both that we have twined too deeply, and that I am more man than a wolf should be, and you more wolf. We’ll pay for it, little brother. Not that we could have helped it, but that does not change it. We will suffer for how deeply our natures have meshed.

What are you trying to tell me?

You already know.

And I did. Like myself, the Prince had been brought up amongst folk who did not use the Wit. And as I had, unguided, he seemed to have not only fallen into his magic, but to be wallowing in it. Untaught, I had bonded far too deeply. In my case, I had first bonded to a dog when we were both young, and far too immature to consider the implications of such a joining. Burrich had forcibly separated us. At the time, I had hated him for it, a hate that lasted years. Now I looked at the Prince, in the full throes of his obsession with the cat, and counted myself lucky that when I had bonded, there had only been the puppy involved. Somehow, his attachment to his cat had grown to include a young woman of Old Blood. When I took him back to Buckkeep, he would lose not only his companion, but also a woman he believed he loved.

What woman?

He speaks of a woman, one of Old Blood. Probably one of those women who rode with him.

He speaks of a woman, but he does not smell of a woman. Does not that strike you odd?

I pondered that on my way back to camp. I dropped the wood in a small tumble. As I set my fuel and then shaved a dry stick for tinder, I watched the boy. He had tidied away the linen napkin but left out the bottle of wine. Now he sat morosely on a blanket, his knees drawn up to his chin, staring out at the deepening night.

I dropped all my guards and quested towards him. The wolf was right. He keened for his Wit-partner, but I was not sure if he was even aware of doing it. It was a sad little seeking he sent forth, like a lost pup whimpering for its mother. It grated on my nerves, once I was aware of it. It was not just that he would call his friends down on us; it was the whining aspect of it that appalled me. It made me want to cuff him. Instead, as I worked with my tinder and flint, I asked callously, ‘Thinking of your girl?’

His head swivelled towards me, startled. Lord Golden
flinched at the directness of my question. I bent deeper to puff gently at the tiny spark I had conjured up. It glowed, then became a pale, licking flame.

The Prince reached for a measure of dignity. ‘I am always thinking of her,’ he said softly.

I tented several skinny sticks over my tiny fire. ‘So. What’s she look like?’ I spoke with a soldier’s crude interest, the inflection learned from many a meal with the guardsmen at Buckkeep. ‘Is she …?’ I made the unmistakable, universal gesture, ‘any good?’

‘Shut up!’ He spat the words savagely.

I leered at Lord Golden knowingly. ‘Ah, we both know what that means. It means he don’t know. At least, not first hand. Or maybe it’s only his hand that knows.’ I leaned back and smirked at him challengingly.

‘Badgerlock!’ Lord Golden rebuked me. I think I had truly scandalized him.

I didn’t take the hint. ‘Well, that’s always how it is, isn’t it? He’s just a moony boy for her. Bet he’s never even kissed her, let alone …’ I repeated the gesture.

The taunting had the desired effect. As I added larger sticks to the flames, the Prince stood up indignantly. The firelight revealed that his colour was high and his nostrils pinched with anger. ‘It isn’t like that!’ he grated. ‘She isn’t some … Not that I expect you to understand anything other than whores! She’s a woman worth waiting for, and when we come together, it will be a higher and sweeter thing than you can imagine. Hers is a love to be earned, and I will prove myself worthy of her.’

Inside, I bled for him. They were a boy’s words, taken from minstrel tellings, a lad’s imaginings of something he had never experienced. The innocence of his passion blazed in him, and his idealistic expectations shone in his eyes. I tried to summon some withering crudity worthy of the role I had chosen, but could not force it past my lips. The Fool saved me.

‘Badgerlock!’ Lord Golden snapped. ‘Enough of this. Just cook the meat.’

‘My lord,’ I acknowledged gruffly. I gave Dutiful a sidelong sneer that he refused to see. As I picked up the stiff rabbit and the knife, Lord Golden spoke more gently to the Prince.

‘Does she have a name, this lady you so admire? Have I met her at court?’ Lord Golden was courteously curious. Somehow the warmth in his voice made it flattering that he would care to ask such a question. Dutiful was instantly charmed, not only despite his earlier irritation with me, but perhaps because of it. Here was a chance for him to prove himself a well-bred gentleman, to ignore my crass interest and reply as politely as if I did not exist.

He smiled as he looked down at his hands, the smile of a boy with a secret sweetheart. ‘Oh, you will not have met her at court, Lord Golden. Her kind is not to be found there. She is a lady of the wild woods, a huntress and a forester. She does not hem handkerchiefs in a garden on a summer’s day, nor huddle within walls by a hearth when the wind begins to blow. She is free to the open world, her hair blowing in the wind, her eyes full of the night’s mysteries.’

‘I see.’ Lord Golden’s voice was warm with a worldly man’s tolerance for a youth’s first romance. He came to sit on his saddle, next to the boy and yet slightly above him. ‘And does this paragon of the forest have a name? Or a family?’ he asked paternally.

Dutiful looked up at him and shook his head wearily. ‘There, you see what you ask? That is why I am so weary of the court. As if I cared whether she has family or fortune! It is she whom I love.’

‘But she must have a name,’ Lord Golden protested tolerantly as I slid my knife blade under the rabbit’s hide and loosened it. ‘Else what do you whisper to the stars at night when you dream of her?’ I peeled the hide from the rabbit as Lord Golden stripped the layers of secrets from the boy’s
romance. ‘Come. How did you meet her?’ Lord Golden picked up the wine bottle, drank delicately from it, and then handed it to the Prince.

The lad turned it in his hands thoughtfully, glanced up at Golden’s smile, and drank. Then he sat, the bottle held loosely in his hands, the neck of it pointed towards the small fire that limned his features against the night. ‘My cat took me to her,’ he confided at last. He took another sip of the wine. ‘I had slipped out one night to go hunting with her. Sometimes, I just have to get away on my own. You know what it is like at court. If I say I will ride at dawn, I arise and there are six gentlemen ready to accompany me, and a dozen ladies to bid us farewell. If I say I will walk in the gardens after dinner, I cannot turn a corner in the path without finding a lady writing poetry beneath a tree, or encountering some noble who wishes me to have a word with the Queen on his behalf. It’s stifling, Lord Golden. In truth, I do not know why so many choose to come to court when they do not have to. Had I the privilege of freedom, I would leave it.’ He drew himself up suddenly and looked all around at the night. ‘I have left it,’ he declared abruptly, almost as if it surprised him. ‘I’m here, away from all that pretence and manipulation. And I’m happy. Or I was happy, until you came to drag me back.’ And he glared at me, as if it were all my doing, and Lord Golden an innocent bystander.

‘So. You went out hunting with your cat one night, and this lady …?’ Lord Golden deftly picked up the threads that had interested him.

‘I went out hunting with my cat and –’

The cat’s name?
Nighteyes pressed with sudden urgency.

I grunted mockingly. ‘Sounds to me as if the cat and the lady got the same name. “Neverspeakit.”’ I skewered the rabbit on my sword. I didn’t like to cook on the end of my blade; it was bad for the tempering, but to get a green branch I would have had to leave the conversation and go to the forest’s edge and I wanted to hear what he had to say.

The Prince replied scathingly to my comment. ‘I would think that you, as a Piebald, would know that beasts have their own names, which they reveal to you at a time they think is proper. My cat has not shared her true name with me yet. When I am worthy of that confidence, I will have it.’

‘I’m not a “Piebald”,’ I asserted gruffly.

Dutiful ignored me. He took a breath and spoke earnestly to Lord Golden. ‘And the same is true of my lady. I do not need to know her name when it is her essence that I love.’

‘Of course, of course,’ Lord Golden comforted him. He hitched himself closer to the Prince and went on, ‘But I would hear of your first meeting with the fair one. For I confess that at heart, I am as soft a romantic as any court lady weeping at a minstrel’s tale.’ He spoke as if what Dutiful had said was of no consequence. But a profound sense of wrongness washed through me. It was true that Nighteyes had not immediately shared his true name with me, but the cat and the Prince had been together for months. I turned the sword, but the rabbit flopped around on the blade, its body cavity a loose fit, the seared side turning back to the flames. Grumbling, I pulled it out of the fire and burnt my fingers jamming it more firmly onto the weapon. I thrust it back over the flames and held it there.

‘Our first meeting,’ Dutiful mused. A rueful smile curved his mouth. ‘I fear that has yet to happen. In some ways. In all the important ways, I have met her. The cat showed her to me, or rather, she revealed herself to me through the cat.’

Lord Golden cocked his head and gave the boy an interested, if confused look. The lad’s smile widened.

‘It is hard to explain to someone with no experience of the Wit. But I will try. Through my magic, I can share thoughts with the cat. Her senses enhance my own. Sometimes, I can lie abed at night, and surrender my mind to hers, and become one with her. I see what she sees, feel what she feels. It’s wonderful, Lord Golden. Not debased and bestial as others would have
you believe. It brought the world to life around me. If there was some way I could share the experience with you, I would, just so that you could understand it.’