by Robin Hobb
Not mangy. Indignant. Fleas. The cage is full of fleas.
So I wasn’t imagining that itching on my chest. Wonderful. I’d have to bathe again tonight, unless I wanted to share my bed with vermin for the rest of the winter.
I had reached the edge of Buckkeep Town. From here, there were only a scattering of houses, and the road would be steeper. Much steeper. Once again, I lowered the cage to the snowy ground. The cub huddled in it, small and miserable without anger and hate to sustain him. He was hungry. I made a decision.
I’m going to take you out. I’m going to carry you.
Nothing from him. He watched me steadily as I worked the catch on the cage and swung the door open. I had thought he would charge past me and vanish into the night and the falling snow. Instead he crouched where he was. I reached into the cage and seized him by the scruff to drag him out. In a flash he was on me, driving into my chest, jaws going wide for my throat. I got my arm up just in time to shove my forearm crossways into his jaws. I kept my grip on the scruff of his neck and pushed my arm hard into his mouth, deeper than he liked. His hind legs tore at my belly, but my jerkin was thick enough to divert most of the damage. In an instant we were rolling over and over in the snow, both snapping and snarling like mad things. But I had the weight and the leverage and the experience of tussling with dogs for years. I got him on his back and held him there, helpless, while his head thrashed back and forth and he called me vile names that humans have no words for. When he had exhausted himself I leaned forward over him. I gripped his throat and leaned down to stare into his eyes. This was a physical message he understood. I added to it. I am the Wolf. You are the Cub. You WILL obey me!
I held him there staring into his eyes. He quickly looked away, but still I held him, until he looked back up at me and I saw the change in them. I let go of him and stood up and stepped away. He lay still. Get up. Come here. He rolled over and came to me, belly low to the ground, tail between his legs. When he got close to me, he fell over on his side and then showed his belly. He whined softly.
After a moment I relented. It’s all right. We just had to understand each other. I don’t intend to hurt you. Come with me now. I reached over to scratch his chest, but when I touched him, he yelped. I felt the red flash of his pain.
Where are you hurt?
I saw the brass-bound club of the cage man. Everywhere.
I tried to be gentle as I felt him over. Old scabs, lumps on his ribs. I stood, and kicked the cage savagely aside from our path. He came and leaned against my leg. Hungry. Cold. So tired. His feelings were bleeding over into mine again. When I touched him, it was difficult to separate my thoughts from his. Was it my outrage over how he had been treated, or his own? I decided it didn’t matter. I gathered him up carefully and stood. Without the cage, held close to my chest, he didn’t weigh nearly as much. He was mostly fur and long, growing bones. I regretted the force I’d used on him, but also knew that it was the only language he would have recognized. ‘I’ll take care of you,’ I forced myself to say aloud.
Warm, he thought gratefully, and I took a moment to pull my cloak over him. His senses were feeding mine. I could smell myself, a thousand times stronger than I wanted to. Horses and dogs and wood smoke and beer and a trace of Patience’s perfume. I did my best to block out my awareness of his senses. I snugged him to me and carried him up the steep path to Buckkeep. I knew of a disused cottage. An old pig man had once lived in it, out back behind the granaries. No one lived there now. It was too tumbledown, and too far from everyone else at Buckkeep. But it would suit my purposes. I’d put him there, with some bones to gnaw and some boiled grain, and some straw to bed down in. A week or two, maybe a month, and he’d be healed up and strong enough to care for himself. Then I’d take him out west of Buckkeep and turn him loose.
Meat?
I sighed. Meat, I promised. Never had any beast sensed my thoughts so completely, or expressed his own to me so clearly. It was good that we would not be around one another for long. Very good that he’d be leaving soon.
Warm, he contradicted me. He set his head on my shoulder and fell asleep, his muzzle snuffling damply against my ear.
FIVE
Gambit
Certainly there is an ancient code of conduct, and certainly its customs were harsher than ours today. But I would venture that we have not wandered so far from those customs, so much as put a veneer over them. A warrior’s word is still his bond, and among those who serve side by side, there is nothing so foul as one who lies to his comrade, or leads him into dishonour. The laws of hospitality still forbid those who have shared salt at a man’s table to shed blood on his floor.
Winter deepened around Buckkeep Castle. The storms came in off the sea, to pound us with icy fury and then depart. Snow usually fell in their wake, great dumps of it that iced the battlements like sweet paste on nut cakes. The great darks of the long nights grew longer, and on clear nights the stars burnt cold over us. After my long journey home from the Mountain Kingdom, the ferocity of the winter didn’t threaten me as it once had. As I went my daily rounds to the stable and to the old pig hut, my cheeks might burn with cold and my eyelashes cling together with frost, but I always knew that home and a warm hearth were close by. The storms and the deep colds that snarled at us like wolves at the door were also the watch beasts that kept the Red Ships away from our shores.
Time dragged for me. I called on Kettricken each day, as Chade had suggested, but our restiveness was too much alike for us. I am sure I irritated her as much as she did me. I dared not spend too many hours with the cub, lest we bond. I had no other fixed duties. There were too many hours to the day, and all were filled with my thoughts of Molly. Nights were the worst, for then my sleeping mind was beyond my control, and my dreams were full of my Molly, my bright-red-skirted candle-maker, now gone so demure and drab in serving-girl blue. If I could not be near her by day, my dreaming self courted her with an earnestness and energy that my waking self had never mustered the courage for. When we walked the beaches after a storm, her hand was in mine. I kissed her competently, without uncertainty, and met her eyes with no secrets to hide. No one could keep her from me. In my dreams.
At first, Chade’s training of me seduced me into spying upon her. I knew which room on the servants’ floor was hers, I knew which window was hers. I learned, without intention, the hours of her comings and goings. It shamed me to stand where I might hear her step upon the stairs and catch a brief glimpse of her going out on her market errands, but try as I might, I could not forbid myself to be there. I knew who her friends were among the serving-women. Though I might not speak to her, I could greet them, and have a chance bit of talk with them, hoping always for some stray mention of Molly. I yearned after her hopelessly. Sleep eluded me, and food held no interest for me. Nothing held any interest for me.
I was sitting one evening in the guard-room off the kitchen. I had found a place in the corner where I could lean against the wall and prop my boots up on the opposite bench to discourage company. A mug of ale that had gone warm hours ago sat in front of me. I lacked even the ambition to drink myself into a stupor. I was looking at nothing, attempting not to think when the bench was jerked out from under my propped feet. I nearly fell from my seat, then recovered to see Burrich seating himself opposite me. ‘What ails you?’ he asked without niceties. He leaned forward and pitched his voice for me alone. ‘Have you had another seizure?’
I looked back at the table. I spoke as quietly. ‘A few trembling fits, but no real seizures. They only seem to come on me if I strain myself.’
He nodded gravely, then waited. I looke
d up to find his dark eyes on me. The concern in them touched something in me. I shook my head, my voice suddenly gone. ‘It’s Molly,’ I said after a moment.
‘You haven’t been able to find where she went?’
‘No. She’s here, at Buckkeep, working as a maid for Patience. But Patience won’t let me see her. She says …’
Burrich’s eyes had widened at my first words. Now he glanced around us, then tossed his head at the door. I arose and followed him as he led me back to his stables, and then up to his room. I sat down at his table, before his hearth, and he brought out his good Tilth brandy and two cups. Then he set out his leather mending tools. And his perpetual pile of harness to be mended. He handed me a halter that needed a new strap. For himself, he laid out some fancy work on a saddle-skirt. He drew up his own stool and looked at me. ‘This Molly. I’ve seen her then, in the washer-courts with Lacey? Carries her head proud? Red glint to her coat?’
‘Her hair.’ I corrected him grudgingly.
‘Nice wide hips. She’ll bear easily,’ he said with approval.
I glared at him. ‘Thank you,’ I said icily.
He shocked me by grinning. ‘Get angry. I’d rather you were that than self-pitying. So. Tell me.’
And I told him. Probably much more than I would have in the guard-room, for here we were alone, the brandy went warm down my throat, and the familiar sights and smells of his room and work were all around me. Here, if anywhere in my life, I had always been safe. It seemed safe to reveal to him my pain. He did not speak or make any comments. Even after I had talked myself out, he kept his silence. I watched him rub dye into the lines of the buck he had incised in the leather.
‘So. What should I do?’ I heard myself ask.
He set down his work, drank off his brandy, and then refilled his cup. He looked about his room. ‘You ask me, of course, because you have noted my rare success at providing myself with a fond wife and many children?’
The bitterness in his voice shocked me, but before I could react to it, he gave a choked laugh. ‘Forget I said that. Ultimately, the decision was mine, and done a long time ago. FitzChivalry, what do you think you should be doing?’
I stared at him morosely.
‘What made things go wrong in the first place?’ When I did not reply, he asked me, ‘Did not you yourself just tell me that you courted her as a boy, when she considered your offer a man’s? She was looking for a man. So don’t go sulking about like a thwarted child. Be a man.’ He drank down half his brandy, then refilled both our cups.
‘How?’ I demanded.
‘The same way you’ve shown yourself a man elsewhere. Accept the discipline, live up to the task. So you cannot see her. If I know anything of women, it does not mean she does not see you. Keep that in mind. Look at yourself. Your hair looks like a pony’s winter coat, I’ll wager you’ve worn that shirt a week straight and you’re thin as a winter-foal. I doubt you’ll regain her respect that way. Feed yourself up, groom yourself daily, and in Eda’s name get some exercise instead of moping about the guard-room. Set yourself some tasks and get onto them.’
I nodded slowly to the advice. I knew he was right. But I could not help protesting. ‘But all of that will do me no good if Patience will still not permit me to see Molly.’
‘In the long run, my boy, it is not about you and Patience. It is about you and Molly.’
‘And King Shrewd,’ I said wryly.
He glanced up at me quizzically.
‘According to Patience, a man cannot be sworn to a king and give his heart fully to a woman as well. “You cannot put two saddles on one horse,” she told me. This from a woman who married a King-in-Waiting, and was content with whatever time he had for her.’ I reached to hand Burrich the mended halter.
He did not take it. He had been in the act of lifting his brandy cup. He set it down on the table so sharply that the liquid leaped and slopped over the edge. ‘She said that to you?’ he asked me hoarsely. His eyes bored into mine.
I nodded slowly. ‘She said it would not be honourable to expect Molly to be content with whatever time the King left to me as my own.’
Burrich leaned back in his chair. A chain of conflicting emotions dragged across his features. He looked aside into the hearth fire, and then back at me. For a moment he seemed on the verge of speaking. Then he sat up, drank off his brandy in one gulp and abruptly stood. ‘It’s too quiet up here. Let’s go down to Buckkeep Town, shall we?’
The next day I arose and ignored my pounding heart to set myself the task of not behaving like a love-sick boy. A boy’s impetuosity and carelessness were what had lost her to me. I resolved to attempt a man’s restraint. If biding my time was my only path to her, I would take Burrich’s advice and use that time well.
So I arose each day early, before even the morning cooks were up. In the privacy of my room, I stretched and then worked through sparring drills with an old stave. I would work myself into sweat and dizziness, and then go down to the baths to steam myself. Slowly, very slowly, my stamina began to return. I gained weight and began to rebuild the muscle on my bones. The new clothing that Mistress Hasty had inflicted on me began to fit. I was still not free of the tremors that sometimes assailed me. But I had fewer seizures, and always managed to return to my rooms before I could shame myself by falling. Patience told me that my colour was better, while Lacey delighted in feeding me at every opportunity. I began to feel myself again.
I ate with the guards each morning, where quantity consumed was always of more importance than manners. Breakfast was followed with a trip to the stables, to take Sooty out for a snowy canter to keep her in condition. When I returned her to the stables, there was a comfort in taking care of her myself. Before our misadventures in the Mountain Kingdom, Burrich and I had been on bad terms over my use of the Wit. I had been all but barred from the stables. So there was more than satisfaction in rubbing her down and seeing to her grain myself. There was the busyness of the stables, the warm smells of the beasts and the gossip of the keep as only the stable-hands could tell it. On fortunate days, Hands or Burrich would take time to stop and talk with me. And on other days, busy days, there was the bittersweet satisfaction of seeing them conferring over a stallion’s cough, or doctoring the ailing boar that some farmer had brought up to the keep. On those days they had little time for pleasantries, and without intending it, excluded me from their circle. It was as it had to be. I had moved on to another life. I could not expect the old one to be held ajar for me forever.
That thought did not prevent a pang of guilt as I slipped away each day to the disused cottage behind the granaries. Wariness always stalked me. My new peace with Burrich had not existed so long that I took it for granted; it was only too fresh in my memory exactly how painful losing his friendship had been. If Burrich ever suspected that I had returned to using the Wit, he would abandon me just as swiftly and completely as he had before. Each day I asked myself exactly why I was willing to gamble his friendship and respect for the sake of a wolf cub.
My only answer was, I had no choice. I could no more have turned aside from Cub than I could have walked away from a starved and caged child. To Burrich, the Wit that sometimes left me open to the minds of animals was a perversion, a disgusting weakness in which no true man indulged. He had all but admitted to the latent ability for it, but staunchly insisted that he never used it himself. If he did, I had never caught him at it. The opposite was never true. With uncanny perception, he had always known when I was drawn to an animal. As a boy, my indulge
nce in the Wit with a beast had usually led to a rap on the head or a sound cuff to rouse me back to my duties. When I had lived with Burrich in the stables, he had done everything in his power to keep me from bonding to any animal. He had succeeded always, save twice. The keen pain of losing my bond companions had convinced me Burrich was right. Only a fool would indulge in something that inevitably led to such loss. So I was a fool, rather than a man who could turn aside from the plea of a beaten and starved cub.
I pilfered bones and meat scraps and crusts, and did my best so that no one, not even Cook or the Fool, knew of my activity. I took elaborate pains to vary the times of my visits each day, and to take every day a different path to avoid creating too beaten a trail to the back cottage. Hardest had been smuggling clean straw and an old horse blanket out of the stables. But I had managed it.
No matter when I arrived, I found Cub waiting for me. It was not just the watchfulness of an animal awaiting food. He sensed when I began my daily hike back to the cottage behind all the granaries and awaited me. He knew when I had ginger cakes in my pocket, and too quickly became fond of them. Not that his suspicions of me had vanished. No. I felt his wariness, and how he shrank in on himself each time I stepped within reach of him. But every day that I did not strike him, every bit of food I brought him was one more plank of trust in the bridge between us. It was a link I did not want to establish. I tried to be sternly aloof from him, to know him through the Wit as little as possible. I feared he might lose the wildness that he would need to survive on his own. Over and over I warned him, You must keep yourself hidden. Every man is a danger to you, as is every hound. You must keep yourself within this structure, and make no sound if anyone is near.
At first it was easy for him to obey. He was sadly thin, and would fall immediately upon the food I brought and devour it all. Usually he was asleep in his bedding before I left the cottage, or jealously eyeing me as he lay gnawing a treasured bone. But as he was fed adequately, and had room to move, and lost his fear of me, the innate playfulness of a cub began to reassert itself. He took to springing upon me in mock attacks as soon as the door was opened, and expressing delight in knuckly beef bones with snarls and tusslings inflicted on them. When I rebuked him for being too noisy, or for the tracks that betrayed his night romp in the snowy field behind the cottage, he would cower before my displeasure.