The Rebel Prince (42 page)

Useless? My God!
When had she ever judged Razi by his uses to her? Yet she was incapable of weighing her joy at his apparent health over the damage that his condition might do to Alberon’s delicate negotiations. Even her hope that Razi would soon recover was overshadowed by fear that he may not recover
soon enough
.

They turned a corner – quite literally the path took a sharp branch left and down – and suddenly the wind was gone. It was as if someone had shut the door in a quiet room, blocking the storm outside, and for a moment the effect was almost stunning. Wynter straightened, blinking. Behind her, Sól’s saddle creaked as he turned to regard the path behind them. The wind could still be heard there, moaning past the narrow mouth of the ravine, rushing like water through the pass they had just left.

‘
Frith an Domhain
,’ murmured Sól, unwrapping his scarf.

It was much warmer without the breeze, and Wynter quickly divested herself of cloak and scarf. As they rode on, the men did the same, though it was not clement enough to do without jackets.

The further they ventured into the ravine, the quieter it grew. This sudden silence made Wynter feel vulnerable somehow, as if they were the only prey in a darkly shifting world of silent predators. Unease settled on the party and they rode with heads swivelling on tense necks, eyes searching the loose gravel slopes and precipitous bluffs overhead. The horses’ footsteps echoed from watchful cliffs, and Boro’s skittering expeditions onto the shale sounded horribly loud.

Christopher scanned the jumbled slope below them, his eyes hopping from rock to rock, while Razi’s attention seemed focused on the rough landscape that loomed to their left. Boro repeatedly tried to run up into those same boulders, his hackles raised, but Sólmundr kept him firmly to heel. Wynter, however, kept her eyes on Razi, and as soon as the path widened she kicked forward to ride side-by-side with him.

‘There is someone up there,’ he murmured, ‘my horse can sense them.’

‘It is a Loup-Garou,’ said Wynter, regarding him closely. ‘He is tracking us. I suspect there is another in the rocks below.’

Razi seemed more surprised than disturbed. ‘Loups-Garous?’ he said. ‘I have heard that they are vile creatures. Your friend is right to keep his crossbow strung.’

He went back to scanning the rocks. His calm acceptance of the situation was terrifying; his lack of questions bizarre.

‘Razi?’ asked Wynter.

He smiled, and glanced kindly at her. ‘You should really call me
my Lord
,’ he said. ‘My knights might take offence otherwise. Though in private you may call me Razi; I shall not mind.’

Who does he think I am?
thought Wynter in despair. ‘Razi!’ she cried, drawing his full attention again. ‘Where do you think we
are
?’

Wynter saw confusion rise up in his face.

‘What do you think we’re doing here?’

Obviously neither question had occurred to him, and he looked about him as if for the first time. ‘I . . .’ he said. ‘We . . .’ Not finding an answer readily to hand, Razi’s confusion rapidly turned to panic. ‘I should know that,’ he said, the knowledge that something was wrong suddenly very clear in his face. ‘I should
know
that!’ he cried. ‘I
do
know that! It’s
here
!’ He clutched his forehead, as if to capture a black shadow there. ‘It’s right
here
! O
H
!

’ Razi slammed his fist into his temple, startling his mare and causing her to throw her head in fear. He hit his temple again, very hard, as if trying to dislodge something within his brain, and Wynter grabbed his arm, appalled.

‘Don’t!’ she cried.

‘But I should
know
!’ he shouted, his horse pawing and dancing beneath him. ‘I should
know
.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ called Christopher.

Razi reined his panicked horse to a standstill and stared at his friend with anxious hope.

‘It’s all right,’ said Christopher.

‘You are sure?’

‘Yes. You know your name, do you not?’

Razi nodded. Christopher did not ask, as Wynter would have done,
Do you know what it means? Do you recall who your
father is?
Instead he waited patiently while Razi turned to look at Sólmundr. The warrior smiled sadly and raised his chin in greeting.

‘I . . . I am the Lord Razi Kingsson,’ murmured Razi, turning to scan Wynter’s face, ‘al-Sayyid Razi ibn-Jon Malik al-fadl.’

‘There you have it,’ said Christopher, and he turned his horse without meeting Wynter’s eye and set off up the trail again. ‘That is all that counts.’

Razi relaxed instantly. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Good.’ He laughed ruefully. ‘Good. That’s very good.’

But it’s
not
all that counts!
thought Wynter.
It’s not all that
counts at all.

Up in the rocks, something snickered. Wynter and Christopher crouched in their saddles, reaching for their swords. The sly, dirty sound skittered from rock to rock around them and slithered its way in echoes from the cliffs above. Boro tried to bolt after it, but Sólmundr snapped at him,
‘Tar anseo
,’ and the warhound came reluctantly to heel.

Razi did not crouch. Instead he straightened indignantly and glared into the rocks with absolute disdain. ‘Loup-Garou vermin,’ he hissed. ‘Surely there’s something that can be done about the damned things?’ And with a tut of disapproval, he swung his horse around and nodded for Christopher to lead the way.

They journeyed until late into the evening, when the waning light made the uneven ground too treacherous and the danger of Wolves too dire to continue on. Still deep in the heart of that silent, echoing valley, they set up camp in a sheltering alcove of rock.

The horses tended to, the equipment checked, Wynter once more took Alberon’s folder and sat with it across her knee. She ran her hands across its plain cover and contemplated the impact it would have upon the kingdom. Glancing at Razi, she wondered how he would have tackled presenting this to his father. Certainly he did not believe in Alberon’s plans. In fact, they seemed to go against his very nature. But, despite his very great difficulty in seeing Alberon’s point of view, Wynter was certain Razi would have done his best to represent his brother’s argument. She could not fathom how he would go about defending a plan so contrary to his own personal beliefs, but if anyone could have managed the task, it would have been Razi.

Now, as her friend placidly watched the sun withdraw its dismal light from the valley, Wynter hugged the folder to her chest and fretted over what was going to happen. Razi had not recognised these documents when she had shown them to him, and he had simply gazed curiously at her when she had tried to explain his mission. The urge to grab him and shake him and scream
What are we going to do?
had been almost too much to handle. But, despite her frustration, Wynter did not want to cause another of Razi’s horrible panics, and so, faced with even this mildest of confusion, she had risen to her feet and walked away from him. Razi had been sitting, ever since, with his back to the cliff wall, completely still and passive. Wynter thought he had never looked so serene, and to her shame, that infuriated her.

Sólmundr hummed as he cooked the supper. Boro lay at his side, his chin on his paws. Now and again, the giant hound’s ears would swivel upwards and he would growl at something unseen in the rocks above. But he was used, by now, to Sólmundr calling him back, and he made no attempt to run off to what Sól was convinced would be a fatal encounter with not one but two Loups-Garous.

Christopher was fussing with the mule-packs. He too was driving Wynter mad, though it was hard for her to understand why. It was not really that she
blamed
him for the terrible encounter with the Wolves. It was more, oh God forgive her, that she wanted him to blame
himself
. At least a little. At least to the extent that she could then hug him and tell him,
This is not your fault.
But Christopher’s reaction to Razi’s condition was so calm, so hard-faced and practical, that it left Wynter with no room for anything – not anger, not forgiveness, not even affection. Christopher had become remote and as brittle as ice. He cursed quietly to himself, tugging at the luggage, and Wynter was just about to ask him to stop fiddling and to sit down when he strode past her, something in his hand.

‘Here,’ he said, crouching by the fire and plopping the doctor’s bag at Razi’s feet.

Sólmundr tensed. Razi frowned uncertainly, and Wynter sat straighter, clutching the folder to her chest. She waited for Christopher to demand,
Do you know what this is? Do you
recognise it?
But instead, he snapped the catches on the bag and opened it.

Razi jerked forward, as if tempted to stop him.

‘It fell off the mule,’ said Christopher, peering inside. ‘Some of the vials are broken.’

‘Be careful!’ Razi shot out a hand and grabbed Christopher’s wrist, stopping him from reaching into the bag. Gently he pushed the young man’s hand aside. ‘If you cannot tell the contents of the broken vial, a cut could prove disastrous.’ He smiled reassuringly at his friend. ‘I should like to check it for myself.’

Christopher watched as Razi took the bag and began an expert survey of its contents. As their friend sorted through the tools of his trade, Wynter saw Christopher working himself up to speak. As he struggled to articulate his question, Christopher’s emotions seemed to worm their way to the surface of his composure, so that when he finally spoke his expression was achingly raw and vulnerable. It stabbed Wynter to see all the hurt and all the guilt that he had been hiding from her. She almost cried at the knowledge that Christopher had chosen not to share with her his pain and grief.

‘Is anything important broken?’ he finally managed.

How would he recall?
thought Wynter bleakly.
He barely
knows who he is.

But Razi answered without hesitation. ‘There is not much damage. Just a few tonic vials and a crushed pillbox.’ He glanced up, smiling, and it almost broke Wynter’s heart when he said, ‘Everything is just as it is meant to be. Nothing of any importance is lost. What happened to it?’

‘It fall when Wolves attack,’ said Sólmundr.

Razi made no response to that, but his attention focused on Sólmundr’s bruised face as if noticing the wounds for the first time. ‘That cut on your cheek is quite inflamed,’ he said. ‘I can treat it for you, if I may?’ He must have mistaken Sól’s silence for reluctance, because he smiled again. ‘I’m a doctor,’ he said. ‘Did you not realise that? Here, come over and I shall see what I can do.’

As Sól submitted to Razi’s care, Christopher gazed at Wynter. The knowledge of what had been retrieved was written large in his glittering eyes. Wynter tilted her head and smiled sadly, the knowledge of what remained lost written in her own.

DAY EIGHT: MESSAGES

D
AWN DID
not break to birdsong in this particular valley, or even to rosy tinted skies. Instead, the light seemed to drizzle in, grey and uniform, as if seeping up from the rocks themselves.

Wynter pushed herself upright and groaned.
How do
soldiers do this
, she wondered,
day after day on a campaign? Of
all the tasks presented to them, how do they ever manage to push
their bruised bodies from bed?

Alberon, she realised with a wince, would be the one to answer her that.

Carefully, she disentangled the covers and slipped from Christopher’s side. Neither he nor Sólmundr stirred. Like all Merron, they trusted their warhound to guard them in the night, and Boro had been the camp’s sole sentinel against the Loups-Garous.

‘And a good job you did of it too,’ she whispered, crouching to fondle his ears. He gazed ruefully up at her, not lifting his chin from his paws. In order to prevent him from running after the Wolves, Sólmundr had tethered the warhound to his ankle, and Boro could not quite reconcile himself to the indignity. There was a palpable air of embarrassment about him. ‘Never mind, dog,’ murmured Wynter. ‘You’re still a big brave beastie.’