by Robin Hobb
Hunting, came the reply.
Wish I was with you. Good luck.
Aren’t we supposed to speak but little, lest Regal hear us?
I didn’t reply. It was a clear cold morning, almost shockingly bright after yesterday’s snow. It was colder than it had been the day before; the wind off the river seemed to cut right through my garments, finding the gaps at cuffs and collars to poke its cold fingers through. I helped Kettle mount the cart, and then tucked one of her blankets around her in addition to her wraps. ‘Your mother trained you well, Tom,’ she said with genuine kindness.
I still winced at the remark. Starling and Nik stood talking together until everyone else was ready to go. Then she mounted her Mountain pony and took a place beside Nik at the head of our procession. I told myself that it was likely Nik Holdfast would make a better ballad than FitzChivalry anyway. If he could persuade her to go back with him at the Mountain border, my life would only be simpler.
I gave my mind to my task. There was really little to it, other than to keep the mare from lagging too far behind the pilgrims’ wagon. I had time to see the country we traversed. We regained the little-used road we had been on the day before and continued to follow the river upstream. Along the river, it was sparsely treed, but a short distance away from the riverbank, it became a rolling, treeless terrain of brush and scrub. Gullies and washes cut our road on their way to the river. It seemed that at some time water had been plentiful here, perhaps in spring. But now the land was dry save for the crystal snow that blew loosely across it like sand and the river in its bed.
‘Yesterday the minstrel made you smile to yourself. For whom is the frown today?’ Kettle asked quietly.
‘I was thinking it a shame, to see what this rich land has come to.’
‘Were you?’ she asked drily.
‘Tell me of this seer of yours,’ I said, mostly to change the subject.
‘He is not mine,’ she said with asperity. Then she relented. ‘It is probably a fool’s errand I go on. He whom I seek may not even be there. And yet what better use do I have for these years, than to chase a chimera?’
I kept silence. I was beginning to find it was the question she answered best. ‘Do you know what’s in this cart, Tom? Books. Scrolls and writings. Ones I’ve collected for years. I have gathered them in many lands, learned to read many tongues and letterings. In so many places, I found mention, over and over again, of the White Prophets. They appear at the junctures of history and shape it. Some say they come to set history on its proper course. There are those who believe, Tom, that all of time is a circle. All of history, a great wheel, turning inexorably. Just as seasons come and go, just as the moon moves endlessly through her cycle, so does time. The same wars are fought, the same plagues descend, the same folk, good or evil, rise to power. Humanity is trapped on that wheel, doomed endlessly to repeat the mistakes we have already made. Unless someone comes to change it. Far to the south, there is a land where they believe that for every generation, somewhere in the world there is a White Prophet. He or she comes, and if what is taught is heeded, the cycle of time moves into a better course. If it is ignored, all time is pushed into a darker path.’
She paused, as if waiting for me to say something. ‘I know nothing of such teachings,’ I admitted.
‘I would not expect you to. It was in a far place I first studied such things. There they held that if such prophets fail, again and again, the repeating history of the world will grow more and more evil, until the entire cycle of time, hundreds of thousands of years, becomes a history of misery and wrong.’
‘And if the prophet is heeded?’
‘Each time one succeeds, it is easier for the next one. And when an entire cycle passes in which every prophet succeeds, time itself will finally stop.’
‘So they work for the end of the world to come?’
‘Not the end of the world, Tom. The end of time. To free humanity of time. For time is the great enslaver of us all. Time that ages us, time that limits us. Think how often you have wished to have more time for something, or wished you could go back a day and do something differently. When humanity is freed of time, old wrongs can be corrected before they are done.’ She sighed. ‘I believe this is the time for such a prophet to come. And my readings lead me to believe that this generation’s White Prophet shall arise in the Mountains.’
‘But you are alone on your quest. Do no others agree with you?’
‘Many others. But few, very few, go to seek a White Prophet. It is the folk the Prophet is sent to who must heed him. Others should not interfere, lest they set all time awry forever.’
I was still puzzling over what she had said about time. It seemed to make a knot in my thinking. Her voice fell silent. I stared forward between the mare’s ears and pondered. Time to go back and be honest with Molly. Time to follow Fedwren the scribe instead of being an assassin’s apprentice. She had given me much to think about.
Our talk lapsed for some time.
Nighteyes reappeared shortly after noon. He came trotting purposefully out of the trees, to fall into place trotting beside our wagon. The mare gave him several nervous glances as she tried to puzzle out wolf smell and dog behaviour. I quested toward her and reassured her. He had been for some time on my side of the cart before Kettle caught sight of him. She leaned forward to look past me, then sat back again. ‘There’s a wolf beside our cart,’ she observed.
‘He’s my dog. Though he has some wolf blood in him,’ I admitted casually.
Kettle leaned forward to look at him again. She glanced up at my placid expression. Then she sat back. ‘So they herd sheep with wolves in Buck these days.’ She nodded, and said no more about him.
We pushed on steadily for the rest of the day. We saw no folk save ourselves, and only one small cabin sending up a trail of smoke in the distance. The cold and the blowing wind were a constant, but not one that became easier to ignore as the day went on. The faces of the pilgrims in the wagon in front of us became paler, noses redder, lips almost blue on one woman. They were packed together like fish in brine but all their closeness seemed to be no protection against the cold.
I moved my feet inside my boots to keep my toes awake, and shifted the reins from one hand to the other as I took turns warming my fingers under my arm. My shoulder ached, and the ache ran down my arm until even my fingers throbbed with it. My lips were dry but I dared not wet them lest they crack. Few things are as miserable to confront as constant cold. As for Kettle, I did not doubt it tortured her. She did not complain, but as the day went by she seemed to get smaller within her blanket as she curled closer on herself. Her silence seemed but further evidence of her misery.
We were still short of darkness when Nik turned our wagons away from the road and up a long trail nearly obscured by the blown snow. The only sign of it I could make out was that less grass stuck up above the snow, but Nik seemed to know it well. The mounted smugglers broke trail for the wagons. It was still heavy going for Kettle’s little mare. I looked back behind us once to see the sweeping hand of the wind smoothing our trail out to no more than a ripple in the snowy landscape.
The land we crossed seemed featureless, but it undulated gently. We eventually crested the long rise we had ascended, and looked down onto a huddle of buildings that had been invisible from the road. Evening was drawing on. A single light shone in a window. As we wended our way down toward it, other candles were lit, and Nighteyes caught a trace of woodsmoke on the wind. We were expected.
The building
s were not old. They looked as if they had been recently completed. There was an ample barn. Wagons and all, we led the horses down into it, for the earth had been dug away so that the barn was half underground. This low profile was why we had not seen this place from the road, and I didn’t doubt that was the reason for it. Unless a man knew this place was here, he’d never find it. The earth from the digging had been heaped up around the barn and other buildings. Inside the thick walls with the doors shut, we could not even hear the wind. A milk cow shifted in her stall as we unhitched the horses and put them in stalls. There was straw and hay and a trough of fresh water.
The pilgrims had got out of the wagon, and I was helping Kettle down when the barn door opened again. A lithe young woman with a mass of red hair piled on her head came storming in. Fists on her hips, she confronted Nik. ‘Who are all these people and why have you brought them here? What good is a bolthole if half the countryside knows of it?’
Nik handed his horse to one of his men and turned to her. Without a word, he swept her into his arms and kissed her. But a moment later, she pushed him away. ‘What are you …’
‘They paid well. They’ve their own food, and can make do in here for the night. Then they’ll be on their way to the Mountains tomorrow. Up there, no one cares what we do. There’s no danger, Tel, you worry too much.’
‘I have to worry for two, for you haven’t the sense to. I’ve food ready, but not enough for all this lot. Why didn’t you send a bird to warn me?’
‘I did. Didn’t it get here? Maybe the storm delayed it.’
‘That’s what you always say when you don’t think to do it.’
‘Let it go, woman. I’ve good tidings for you. Let’s go back to your house and talk.’ Nik’s arm rested easily about her waist as they left. It was up to his men to settle us. There was straw to sleep in and plenty of space to spread it. There was a dug well with a bucket outside for water. There was a small hearth at one end of the barn. The chimney smoked badly, but it sufficed to cook on. The barn was not warm, save in comparison to the weather outside. But no one complained. Nighteyes had stayed outside.
They’ve a coop full of chickens, he told me. And a pigeon coop, too.
Leave them alone, I warned him.
Starling started to leave with Nik’s men when they went up to the house, but they stopped her at the door. ‘Nik says all of you are to stay inside tonight, in one place.’ The man shot a meaningful glance at me. In a louder voice, he called, ‘Get your water now, for we’ll be bolting the door when we leave. It keeps the wind out better.’
No one was fooled by his comment, but no one challenged it. Obviously the smuggler felt the less we knew of his bolthole, the better. That was understandable. Instead of complaining we fetched water. Out of habit, I replenished the animals’ trough. As I hauled the fifth bucket, I wondered if I would ever lose the reflex of seeing to the beasts first. The pilgrims had devoted themselves to seeing to their own comfort. Soon I could smell food cooking on the hearth. Well, I had dried meat and hard bread. It would suffice.
You could be hunting with me. There’s game here. They had a garden this summer and the rabbits are still coming for the stalks.
He sprawled in the lee of the chicken house, the bloody remnants of a rabbit across his forepaws. Even as he ate, he kept one eye on the snow-covered garden patch, watching for other game. I chewed a stick of dry meat glumly while I heaped up straw for Kettle’s bed in the stall next to her horse. I was spreading her blanket over it when she returned from the fire carrying her teapot.
‘Who put you in charge of my bedding?’ she demanded. As I took a breath to reply, she added, ‘Here’s tea if you’ve a cup to your name. Mine’s in my bag on the cart. There’s some cheese and dried apples there as well. Fetch it for us, there’s a good lad.’
As I did so, I heard Starling’s voice and harp take up a tune. Singing for her supper, I didn’t doubt. Well, it was what minstrels did, and I doubted she’d go hungry. I brought Kettle’s bag back to her, and she portioned me out a generous share while eating lightly herself. We sat on our blankets and ate. During the meal, she kept glancing at me, and finally declared, ‘You’ve a familiar cast to your features, Tom. What part of Buck did you say you were from?’
‘Buckkeep Town,’ I replied without thinking.
‘Ah. And who was your mother?’
I hesitated, then declared, ‘Sal Flatfish.’ She had so many children running about Buckkeep Town, there was probably one named Tom.
‘Fisherfolk? How did a fisherwoman’s son end up a shepherd?’
‘My father herded,’ I extemporized. ‘Between the two trades, we did well enough.’
‘I see. And they taught you courtly courtesies to old women. And you’ve an uncle in the Mountains. Quite a family.’
‘He took to wandering at an early age, and settled there.’ The badgering was beginning to make me sweat a little. I could tell she knew it, too. ‘What part of Buck did you say your family came from?’ I asked suddenly.
‘I didn’t say,’ she replied with a small smile.
Starling suddenly appeared at the door of the stall. She perched on the edge of it and leaned over. ‘Nik said we’d cross the river in two days,’ she offered. I nodded, but said nothing. She came around the end of the stall and casually tossed her pack down beside mine. She followed it to sit leaning against it, her harp on her lap. ‘There are two couples down by the hearth, squabbling and bickering. Some water got into their travel bread, and all they can think to do is spit about whose fault it is. And one of the children is sick and puking. Poor little thing. The man who is so angry about the wet bread keeps going on about it’s just a waste of food to feed the boy until he stops being sick.’
‘That would be Rally. A more conniving, tight-fisted man I never met,’ Kettle observed genially. ‘And the boy, Selk. He’s been sick on and off since we left Chalced. And before, like as not. I think his mother thinks Eda’s shrine can cure him. She’s grasping at straws, but she has the gold to do so. Or did.’
It started off a round of gossiping between the two. I leaned in the corner and listened with half an ear and dozed. Two days to the river, I promised myself. And how much longer to the Mountains? I broke in to ask Starling if she knew.
‘Nik says there’s no way to tell that, it all depends on the weather. But he told me not to worry about it.’ Her fingers wandered idly over the strings of her harp. Almost instantly, two children appeared in the door of the stall.
‘Are you going to sing again?’ asked the girl. She was a spindly little child of about six, her dress much worn. There were bits of straw in her hair.
‘Would you like me to?’
For answer, they came bounding in to sit on either side of her. I had expected Kettle to complain at this invasion, but she said nothing, even when the girl settled comfortably against her. Kettle began to pick the straw from the child’s hair with her twisted old fingers. The little girl had dark eyes and clutched a poppet with an embroidered face. When she smiled up at Kettle, I could see they were not strangers.
‘Sing the one about the old woman and her pig,’ the boy begged Starling.
I stood up and gathered my pack. ‘I need to get some sleep,’ I excused myself. I suddenly could not bear to be around the children.
I found an empty stall nearer the door of the barn and bedded down there. I could hear the mutter of the pilgrims’ voices at their hearth. Some quarrelling still seemed to be going on. Starling sang the song about the woman, the stile and the pig, and then a song about an apple tree. I heard the footsteps of a few others as they came to sit and listen to
the music. I told myself they’d be wiser to sleep, and closed my own eyes.
All was dark and still when she came to find me in the night. She stepped on my hand in the dark, and then near dropped her pack on my head. I said nothing, even when she stretched out beside me. She spread her blankets out to cover me as well, then wiggled in under the edge of mine. I didn’t move. Suddenly I felt her hand touch my face questioningly. ‘Fitz?’ she asked softly in the darkness.
‘What?’
‘How much do you trust Nik?’
‘I told you. Not at all. But I think he’ll get us to the Mountains. For his own pride, if nothing else.’ I smiled in the dark. ‘A smuggler’s reputation must be perfect, among those who know of it. He’ll get us there.’
‘Were you angry at me, earlier today?’ When I said nothing, she added, ‘You gave me such a serious look this morning.’
‘Does the wolf bother you?’ I asked her as bluntly.
She spoke quietly. ‘It’s true then?’
‘Did you doubt it before?’
‘The Witted part … yes. I thought it an evil lie they had told about you. That the son of a prince could be Witted … You did not seem a man who would share his life with an animal.’ The tone of her voice left me no doubt as to how she regarded such a habit.
‘Well. I do.’ A tiny spark of anger made me forthright. ‘He’s everything to me. Everything. I have never had a truer friend, willing without question to lay his life down for mine. And more than his life. It is one thing to be willing to die for another. It is another to sacrifice the living of one’s life for another. That is what he gives me. The same sort of loyalty I give to my king.’
I had set myself to thinking. I’d never put our relationship in those terms before.
‘A king and a wolf,’ Starling said quietly. More softly she added, ‘Do you care for no one else?’
‘Molly.’
‘Molly?’
‘She’s at home. Back in Buck. She’s my wife.’ A queer little tremor of pride shivered through me as I said the words. My wife.