Fool's Errand ttm-1

by Robin Hobb

  Adgerlock's "Old Blood Tales"

  I awoke before dawn, with the terrible sensation of having forgotten something. I lay still for a time in the darkness, piecing together my uneasiness. Sleepily I tried to recall what had wakened me. Through the tattering veils of a headache, I forced my mind to function. Threads of a tangling nightmare came back to me slowly. They were unnerving; I had been a cat. It was like the worst of the old Wit-tales, in which the Witted one was gradually dominated by his beast until one day he awoke as a shapechanger, doomed to take on the form of his beast and forever prey to his beast's worst impulses. In my dream, I had been the cat, but in a human body. Yet there had been a woman there also, sharing my awareness with the cat, mingled so thoroughly that I could not determine where one began and the other left off. Disturbing. The dream had caught at me, snagged me with its claws, and held me under. Yet some part of me had heard… what? Whispers? The soft jingle of harness, the grit of boots and hooves on sand? I sat up and glared around at the darkness. The fire was no more than a dark red smudge on the earth nearby. I could not see, but I was already certain that my prisoner was gone. Somehow he had wriggled loose, and now he had gone ahead to warn the others that we followed. I gave my head a shake to clear it. He had probably taken my damn horse, as well. Myblack was the only one of the horses dumb enough to allow herself to be stolen without a sound. I found my voice. "Lord Golden! Awake. Our prisoner has escaped."

  I heard him sit up in his blankets, no more than an arm's length away. I heard him scrabble in the darkness, then a handful of wood bits was thrown on the fire. They glowed, and then a small flame of true fire leapt up. It only flared briefly, but what it showed was enough to confound me. Not only our prisoner was missing, but Laurel and Whitecap were gone.

  "She went after him," I guessed stupidly.

  "They went together." The Fool pointed out the more likely scenario. Alone with me, he completely abandoned Lord Golden's voice and posture. In the fading flare of the fire, he sat up on his blanket, his knees tucked under his chin and his arms wrapped around his legs as he expostulated. He shook his head at his own stupidity. "When you fell asleep, she insisted she would take first watch. She promised to wake me when her duty was over. If I had not been so concerned over your behavior, I might have seen how peculiar that offer was." His wounded look was almost an accusation. "She loosed him, and then they left deliberately and quietly. So quietly that not even Nighteyes heard them go."

  There was a question in his words if not his voice. "He isn't feeling well," I said, and bit down on any other explanation. Had the wolf intentionally held me deep in sleep while he allowed them to leave? He still slept heavily by my side, the sodden sleep of exhaustion and sickness. "Why would she go with him?"

  The silence lasted too long. Then, unwillingly, the Fool guessed, "Perhaps she thought you would kill him, and she didn't want it to come to that."

  "I wouldn't have killed him," I replied irritably.

  "Oh? Well, then, I suppose it is good that at least one of us is sure of that. Because frankly, the same fear had crossed my mind." He peered at me through the dimness, and then spoke with disarming directness. "You frightened me last night, Fitz. No. You terrified me. I almost wondered if I knew you at all."

  I didn't want to discuss that. "Do you think he could have freed himself and then forced Laurel to go with him?"

  He was quiet for a time, then accepted my change of subject. "That is possible, but only just. Laurel is… very resourceful. She would have found some way to make a noise. Nor can I imagine why he would do so." He frowned. "Did you think they looked at one another oddly? Almost as if they shared a secret?"

  Had he seen something I had not? I tried to think that through, then gave it up as a hopeless task. Reluctantly, I pushed my blanket completely away. I spoke quietly, still not wishing to wake the wolf. "We have to go after them. Now." My wet, muddy clothes from the night before were clammy and stiff on my body. Well, at least I didn't have to get dressed. I stood up. I refastened my sword belt a notch closer to its old setting. Then I stopped, staring at the blanket.

  "I covered you," the Fool admitted quietly. He added, "Let Nighteyes sleep, at least until dawn. We will need some light to find their trail." He paused, then asked, "You say we should follow them because you think… what? That he will go to wherever the Prince has gone? Do you think he would take Laurel there with him?"

  I bit a torn corner off my thumbnail. "I don't know what I think," I admitted.

  For a time we both pondered in silence and darkness. I drew a breath. "We must go after the Prince. Nothing must distract us from that. We should go back to where we left his trail yesterday and try to discover it again, if the rains have left anything for us to discover. That is the only path that we are absolutely certain will lead to Dutiful. If that fails us, then we will fall back on trying to follow Laurel and the Piebald and hope that that trail also leads to the Prince."

  "Agreed," the Fool replied softly.

  I felt oddly guilty because I felt relief. Not just that he had agreed with me, not just that the Piebald had been put out of my reach, but relief that with Laurel and the prisoner gone, we could drop pretenses and just be ourselves. "I've missed you," I said quietly, knowing that he would know what I meant.

  "So have I." His voice came from a new direction. In the dark, he was up and moving silently and gracefully as a cat. That thought brought my dream back to me abruptly. I grasped at the tattered fragments of it. "I think the Prince might be in danger," I admitted.

  "You're only now concluding that?"

  "A different type of danger from what I expected. I suspected the Witted ones of luring him away from Kettricken and the Court, of bribing him with a cat to be his Wit-partner so that they could take him off and make him one of their own. But last night, I dreamed, and… it was an evil dream, Fool. Of the Prince displaced from himself, of the cat exerting so much influence over their bonding that he could scarcely recall who or what he was."

  "That could happen?"

  "I wish I knew for certain. The whole thing was so peculiar. It was his cat, and yet it was not. There was a woman, but I never saw her. When I was the Prince, I loved her. And the cat, I loved the cat, too. I think the cat loved me, but it was hard to tell. The woman was almost… between us,"

  "When you were the Prince." I could tell that he could not even decide how to phrase the question.

  The mouth of the cave was a lighter bit of darkness now. The wolf slumbered on. I fumbled through an explanation. "Sometimes, at night… it's not exactly Skilling. Nor is it completely the Wit. I think that even in my magic, I am a bastard cross of two lines, Fool. Perhaps that is why Skilling sometimes hurts so much. Perhaps I never learned to do it properly at all. Maybe Galen was right about me, all the time—"

  "When you were the Prince," he reminded me firmly.

  "In the dreams, I become him. Sometimes I recall who I truly am. Sometimes I simply become him and know where he is and what he is doing. I share his thoughts, but he is not aware of me, nor can I speak to him. Or perhaps I can. I've never tried. In the dreams, it never occurs to me to try. I simply become him, and ride along."

  He made a small sound, like breathing out thoughtfully. Dawn came in the way it does at the change of the seasons, going from dark to pearly gray all in an instant. And in the moment, I smelled that summer was over, that the thunderstorm last night had drowned it and washed it away, and the days of autumn were undeniably upon us. There was a smell in the air of leaves soon to fall, and plants abandoning their greenery to sink back into their roots, and even of seeds on the wing seeking desperately for a place to settle and sink before the frosts of winter found them.

  I turned away from the mouth of our cave and found the Fool, already dressed in clean clothes, putting the final touch on our packing. "There's just a bit of bread and an apple left," he told me. "And I don't think Nighteyes would fancy the apple."

  He tossed me the bread for the wolf. As th
e light of day reached his face, Nighteyes stirred. He carefully thought nothing at all as he rose, cautiously stretched, and then went to lap water from the pool at the back of the cave. When he came back, he dropped down beside me and accepted the bread as I broke it into pieces.

  So. How long have they been gone? I asked him.

  You know I let them go. Why do you even ask me that?

  I was silent for a time. I had changed my mind. Couldn't you feel that? I had decided I wouldn't even hurt him, let alone kill him.

  Changer. Last night you bore us both too close to a very dangerous place. Neither one of us truly knew what you would do. I chose to let them go rather than find out. Did I choose wrong?

  I didn't know. That was the frightening part, that I didn't know. I wouldn't ask him to help me track Laurel and the archer. Instead I asked, Think we can pick up the Prince's trail?

  I promised you I would, didn't? Let us simply do what we must do and then go home.

  I bowed my head. It sounded good to me.

  The Fool had been juggling the apple in one hand. Once Nighteyes had finished eating, he stopped, gripped the apple in both hands, and then gave it a sudden twist. It broke smoothly into two halves, and he tossed one to me. I caught it, and shook my head at him, grinning. "Every time I think I know all your tricks—"

  "You find out how wrong you are," he finished. He ate his half rapidly, saving the core for Malta, and I did the same for Myblack. The hungry horses were not enthusiastic about the day ahead. I smoothed their ragged coats a bit before I saddled them and fastened our saddle packs to Myblack. Then we led them out and down the gravelly slope, now slippery with mud. The wolf limped along behind us.

  As so often happens after a good thunderstorm, the sky was blue and clear. The scents of the day were strong as the rising sun warmed the wet earth. Birds sang. Overhead, a flock of ducks headed south in the morning light. At the bottom of the hill, we mounted. Can you keep up? I asked Nighteyes worriedly.

  You'd better hope so. Because without me, you haven't a chance of trailing the Prince.

  A single set of horse tracks led back the way we had come. Heavy imprints. They were riding double, as fast as Whitecap could carry them. Where were they going, and why? Then I put Laurel and the Piebald out of my head. It was the Prince we sought.

  Whitecap's hoofprints returned to where we had been ambushed the day before. I noted, in passing, that the Piebald had retrieved his bow. Then they had ridden back toward the road. Whitecap's tracks were still pushed deep in the damp soil. They had gone on together, then.

  Theirs were not the only fresh tracks under the tree. Two other horses had come and gone there since the night's rain. Their tracks overcut those of the heavily burdened Whitecap. I frowned over that. These were not the tracks of the pursuers from the village. They had not come this far; at least not yet. I decided to hope that the deaths of their friends and the horrid weather had turned them back. These fresh tracks came from the northwest, then turned, and went back that way. I pondered for a time, then the obvious hammered me: "Of course. The archer had no horse. The Piebalds sent someone back for their sentry." I grinned ruefully. "At least they've left us a clear trail to follow."

  I glanced over but the Fool's face was still. He did not share my elation. "What's wrong?"

  He gave a sickly smile. "I was imagining how we would feel now if you had killed that boy last night, beating their destination out of him."

  I did not want to follow that thought. I said nothing and concentrated on the tracks in the earth. Nighteyes and I led, and the Fool followed. The horses were hungry, and Myblack in particular fractious because of it. She snatched at yellow-veined willow leaves and clumps of dry grass whenever she could, and I felt too much sympathy to correct her. Had I been able to satisfy my belly that way, I would have snatched a handful of leaves myself.

  As we pushed on, I saw signs of the rider's haste as he raced back to warn his party that their sentry had been taken. The tracks followed the obvious routes now, the easiest way up a hill, the clearest path through a tongue of woods. The day was still young when we found the remnants of a camp under the spread of an oak grove.

  "They must have had a wet, wild night of it," the Fool guessed, and I nodded. The fire spot showed the remains of charred logs extinguished by the downpour and never rekindled. A woven blanket had left its imprint on the sodden ground; whoever had slept there had slept wet. The ground was churned with tracks. Had other Piebalds awaited them here? The departing tracks overcut one another. There was no point in wasting time trying to puzzle it out.

  "If we had pressed on yesterday after we encountered the archer, we would have caught them up here," I said remorsefully. "I should have guessed that. They put him in place, knowing that they would not go much farther. He had no horse. It's so obvious now. Damn, Fool, the Prince was within our grasp yesterday."

  "Then likely he is today, also. This is better, Fitz. Fate has played into our hands. Today we go unencumbered, and we yet may hope to surprise them."

  I frowned as I studied the tracks. "There is no sign that Laurel and the ambusher came this way. So a man was sent back to pick up their sentry and returned alone, with the news that he'd been taken. What they will make of that is hard to say, but they definitely left in a hurry, without their archer. We should assume they'll be on their guard now."

  I took a breath. "They will fight us when we try to take the Prince." I bit my lip, then added, "We'd best assume that the Prince will fight us, also. Even if he doesn't, he's going to be of little help to us. He was so vague last night…" I shook my head and discarded my concerns.

  "So our plan is?"

  "Surprise them if we can, hit them hard, take what we want, and get out fast. And ride for Buckkeep as swiftly as we can, because we won't be safe until we are there."

  He followed the thought further than I had been willing to. "Myblack is swift and strong. You may have to leave Malta and me behind once you have the Prince. Don't hesitate."

  And me.

  The Fool glanced at Nighteyes as if he had heard him.

  "I don't think I can do that," I said carefully.

  Don't fear. I'll protect him for you.

  I felt a terrible sinking in my heart. I kept severely to myself the worry, But who will protect you? I would not let it come to that, I promised myself. I would not leave either of them. "I'm hungry," the Fool noted. It was not a complaint, merely an observation, but I wished he had not said it. Some things are easier to ignore than acknowledge.

  We rode on, the trail much plainer now in the rain-dampened earth. They had cut their losses and pushed on without the archer, just as they had left one of their own behind to die when they had fled the village. Such cold determination spoke loudly to me of how valuable the Prince was to them. They would be willing to fight to the death. They might even kill the Prince rather than let us take him. The fact that we knew so little of their motives would force me to be totally ruthless. I discarded the idea of attempting to talk to them first. I suspected their answer would be the same greeting that their archer had had for us yesterday.

  I thought longingly of a time when I would have sent Nighteyes ahead to spy out the way for us. Now, with the trail so clear, the panting wolf was holding us back. I knew the moment when he realized it, for he abruptly sat down beside the trail. I pulled in Myblack, and the Fool halted also. My brother?

  Go on without me. The hunt belongs to the swift and keen. Shall go on without my eyes and nose, then? And without your brain, too, alas. Be on your way, little brother, and save your flattery for someone who might believe it. A cat, perhaps. He came to his feet, and despite his weariness, in a few steps he had melted into the surrounding brush in his deceptively effortless way. The Fool looked askance at me.

  "We go on without him," I said quietly. I glanced away from the troubled look in his eyes. I nudged Myblack and we went on, but faster now. We pushed our horses and the tracks before us grew fresher. At a stream, we s
topped to let the horses water and to refill our skins. There were late blackberries there, sour and hard, the ones that had turned color but in the shade, without the direct heat of the sun to sweeten them. We ate handfuls of them anyway, glad of anything we could chew and swallow. Reluctantly, we left fruit on the bushes, mounting as soon as the horses had fairly slaked their thirsts. We pushed on.

  "I make out six of them," the Fool observed as we rode.

  I nodded. "At least. There were cat tracks near the water. Two different sizes."

  "We know one rode a warhorse. Should we expect at least one large warrior?"

  I shrugged reluctantly. "I think we should expect anything. Including more than six opposing us. They ride toward safety of some kind, Fool. Perhaps an Old Blood settlement, or a Piebald stronghold. And perhaps we are watched even now as we follow." I glanced up. I had not noticed any birds paying us undue attention, but that did not mean there weren't any. With the folk we pursued now, a bird in the air or a fox in a bush could be a spy. We could take nothing for granted.

  "How long has it been happening to you?" the Fool asked as we rode.

  "The shared dreams with the Prince?" I had not the energy to try to dissemble with him. "Oh, for some time."

  "Even before that night you dreamed he was at Galekeep?"

  I answered reluctantly. "I'd had a few odd dreams before then. I didn't realize they were the Prince's."

  "You hadn't told me of them, only that you'd dreamed of Molly and Burrich and Nettle." He cleared his throat and added, "But Chade had mentioned some of his suspicions to me."

  "Did he?" I was not pleased to hear that. I did not like to think of Chade and the Fool discussing me behind my back.