The Widow and the King (55 page)

Ambrose was looking around him as he rode.

‘I've been here,’ he called forward to Sophia. ‘Sophia, I've been here. I came this way last season, before I crossed the lake.’

‘Did you?’ She looked round and smiled at him.

She did smile for him, now, although he knew she did not feel like smiling inside herself. And now that he could use her name, he liked doing so.

‘There's a ruin along here, Sophia. A small castle …’

‘That will be Hayley,’ said Hob from behind him. ‘We will see it from the next bend.’

‘Hayley?’ repeated Sophia.

‘Will we stop there?’ asked Ambrose, hopefully.

Orcrim's pattern was to start early, halt the company for the heat of the day, and then press on long into the evening. The sun was now rising high and Ambrose would have welcomed a rest. But Hob shook his head.

‘Too soon. He's planning to pass the March-stone before nightfall. That's a long push from here. So he'll want to press on this morning and make the midday halt a short one.’

So by tonight they would have left the Kingdom again.
They would be in the real mountains, where he had lived his whole life. In a few days they would reach the pool, if nothing stopped them.

And then? Where was the Heron Man now?

The hillsides shifted as they passed. Among the grey outcrops a brown-stained rank of battlements shouldered into view. Hayley was a small, square keep, surrounded by a curtain wall, with no moat. Ambrose saw Sophia look up at it as they rode by. It must have seemed a poor place to her – no bigger than some of the lesser holds of Develin to which the Widow's court had travelled on its Midwinter passage. Still, he saw her watch the deserted shell closely as they sidled past it, and she looked back at it several times until the valley wound again and bore it out of view.

The path took them another league up the stream in bright sunshine, and then dipped across it at a ford among tumbled boulders and bare, grey willows. The leading horsemen rose into view as they followed the path up the steep slope opposite. One of them laughed and pointed at something he saw on a rock at the stream's edge. The riders passed. The same joke was repeated, but Ambrose could not catch it. He saw Sophia reach the far bank and check her horse, looking down at something on the rock.

‘Sophia, what is it?’ he called.

She looked back at him, but did not answer. Instead she set her mount at the slope in the wake of the others.

Feet dripping, Ambrose's mule climbed out of the stream. Now he could see that on the flat, bare top of the rock lay a bunch of picked snow-fishers. Their leaves were wet despite the sun, and the flowers were still fresh. Among the horse-clatter behind him, he heard Hob chuckle.

‘What is it?’ Ambrose asked.

‘There are still some folk who live along the banks of this stream. Someone brought this posy down to their lover as the price of a cuddle, I guess. Then they hopped into the bushes when they heard us coming – or for some other reason.’ He grinned, knowingly.

Ambrose looked about him. He had seen no sign of people, and there was nothing on the sunlit stream-banks to say that any were near now. The water rippled endlessly in its broad ribbon over the grey stones. The snow-fishers lay on their rock at his stirrup. If they bore any meaning at all, it was not for him.

‘Come on,’ said Hob. ‘We must keep up with the others.’

The path wound upwards among tall bushes which quickly hid the stream from view. Then it broadened and climbed more easily up a cleft between two hillsides that were dark with thorns and low trees. Here, despite the high sun and stony ground, they kicked their horses into a trot to close the gap with the leaders. There was space to let the riders bunch up as they made their way between the hillsides. Ambrose could see Orcrim glancing to left and right. He hoped the old war-master was looking for a place with shade where they could halt, but he knew that it was unlikely. Orcrim was watching the thorns for another reason; and that could only be fear of ambush.

It would be a good place for it, Ambrose thought, if there was anyone who wanted to attack them. The high slopes were thickly covered and close to the path on both sides. The ground was difficult for horses.

‘What's that?’ said someone sharply.

Ahead of them, by a pile of boulders, a robed and hooded figure had risen to its feet. It seemed to be waiting for them.

‘Careful,’ called Orcrim to the Company as they approached. ‘Look about you.’

Metal scraped in a scabbard. Ambrose glanced down at his own sword, but he needed both hands to manage his mule as it sidled on the stony ground, uncertain of what he wanted. Its movements carried him forward. The standing figure threw back its hood. He looked down into his mother's face.

‘Well met, Count of Tarceny,’ she said with mock gravity. ‘Beneath your Doubting Moon.’

Ambrose was so startled that he could not say anything.

She stepped past the mule's head.

‘A good morning to you, Orcrim,’ she said. ‘And thank you for bringing my son so far.’

‘I am well paid for the present,’ grunted Orcrim from his saddle. ‘What is it you want?’

They were watching her, with their lined faces set like stone. Two or three had swords out. They had not lowered them. Ambrose could see Aun, at the back of the group, craning for a view. He was too far away.

She stood among the men she had betrayed and spoke with them.

‘I want you to rest, and listen to me.’

‘I had not thought to rest here. Why should I?’

‘Because from here your road may take a different way.’

‘Different?’

‘You plan to cross the ridge at the head of this defile and follow the wooded valley that runs west and north into the mountains. If you go that way it may take you another four days to reach your destination, and your coming will be expected. I can bring you by another way, and within what would seem to you a single hard march – if you will listen.’

‘What way is this?’

‘I think you know it, Orcrim.’

When he did not answer, she added: ‘Can you not tell me how my father's house fell so quickly to you, the year that I wed your lord?’

‘Witch,’ muttered someone.

‘We can't stop here,’ another voice said.

‘We need shade and water.’

‘We can water the horses later,’ said Orcrim sharply. ‘It won't kill them. Get out of my ear.’ He frowned. ‘All right, then. You can dismount. Let's hear what she has to say.’

‘Why did you risk it?’ Ambrose whispered to his mother, as they waited in the little shade thrown by a boulder for the Company to peg out their horses. ‘They hate you.’ ‘And I do not love them, although I begged for their lives, once,’ she said. ‘But too many good causes have failed because their people could not hold together. And in truth, as we come closer to the enemy, it is no longer safe for me to make my way on my own. I, too, wish to come inside your ring of steel.’

‘I thought you couldn't travel with us.’

‘No. But you can travel with me. And that is what I intend.’

Something must have showed in his face, for she put her hand on his arm.

‘My darling, it is a hard place, I know. But it will not be so long a journey as we made from Develin. And there is no other way that we can succeed.’

‘Why not?’ said Orcrim, who had come up to stand over them.

Around them, the Company was gathering, looking down at them. Aun was there. Ambrose looked about him, counting.

‘Where is Sophia?’

Orcrim looked around and scowled. ‘Gone for a bit of woman's privacy, I guess,’ he said. ‘I cannot do
everything
for her. Cradey – take a walk up the hill and make sure she reappears, would you? Now, mistress,’ he went on, turning to Ambrose's mother.

‘I know where you want to take us. Tell me why we must follow you.’

‘I have told you about the stones, Orcrim.’

‘And I have made some preparations – such tackle as Aclete could afford me; although I still lack baulks and levers.’

‘That is good. But if you approach the ring as you plan to, climbing under the sun from the house on the mountain spur, you would need an army of craftsmen and horse-teams with you, for at least one stone has fallen to the very base of the pit beside the pool. And until you could raise those stones, you might wait for your enemy in vain, because he would have no need to come against you when you were strong and prepared for him.

‘But within the Cup of the World, the ground is not the same. There, what is a mountain for you, may be a
rise in the earth. A lake is a cleft, a castle may seem to be a pile of rocks. I have stood within the Cup and looked at the pool as it appears there. There the cliffs are shallow, tumbled slopes. Coming from within the Cup, we have a chance to raise these stones again, with the strength that we have.’

‘How big are these stones?’

‘Perhaps of a size with that one.’ She indicated a boulder, larger than a man, that lay a little way from them. Someone swore under his breath.

‘Can we bring horses through the Cup?’ Ambrose asked.

‘I have known it,’ said Orcrim. ‘But why should we do it now?’

‘There is a man following you.’

‘A friend who is an enemy, I gather. So?’

‘As long as you are still days from the pool, I believe that the real enemy will be content to wait and play his game with our friend. Such devices give him the only delight he knows. But if he cannot stop you that way, he will sooner or later send his creatures against you, as he sent them to kill Tarceny, and Tarceny's father before him. Between here and the pool there are many places where the path can be attacked suddenly, and where horses will be disadvantaged. For these reasons it would be better to move quickly, now, and challenge the enemy on ground of our choosing – by the pool itself.’

‘I have not said yes yet. What strength has he?’

‘Do you not know?’

Orcrim scowled. ‘Two men, we think. One behind, one ahead. But also things that are not men. I do not know how many.’

‘I think – no more than seven.’

‘Seven!’ The riders looked at one another. Ambrose saw a face clear, a pair of shoulders straighten. These men had been marching towards an unknown enemy: shapeless, nameless and uncounted. Now someone had given them a number. Now the odds could be reckoned.

‘Seven,’ said Orcrim. ‘Well, if that is true, it is not so bad.’

‘How do you know?’ Ambrose murmured to his mother.

‘Because I have begun to guess who they must be,’ she said, in a voice that everyone could hear.

‘So that is seven, plus two, nine, and the old scarecrow too,’ Hob was saying. ‘Ten at most, against …’ He looked around and hesitated.

‘Fourteen?’ said Ambrose, firmly counting himself. He looked around, too.

There was something wrong. The numbers were wrong.

‘Who's that, there?’ barked Orcrim.

They were one too many!

‘Hold him!’ cried Aun. ‘Hold him!’

There was a scuffle on the far side of the group. Someone yelled and cursed. Swords leaped from their scabbards among the Company. A man broke free from another, stumbling among the thorns. He looked across at Ambrose. Their eyes met.

It was the Wolf.

‘Back to the stream! The stream!’ he snarled. ‘He's killing one of you, now!’

Men were surging through the thorns to reach him.
He turned, and stepped away. For a moment Ambrose saw him, leaping among brown stones while the riders floundered in the bushes. Then he had disappeared.

Orcrim swore.

‘When did he creep up on us? How much did he hear?’

‘He was warning us,’ said Caw, standing waist-deep among thorns.

Ambrose looked about him.

‘Where's Sophia? Where is she?’

Sophia was on the path that led back downhill to the stream.

The air hummed with the warmth of late morning. All around her the bushes shrieked with the song of grasshoppers. She could see insects busy among the yellow thorn flowers. She could hear the distant rush of the stream water ahead of her. It was hard to believe in nightmares.

Nevertheless, she took care to walk in the very middle of the path, leaving as much space between her and the thorns on either side as she could. She went warily, looking to left and right for any sign of movement on the hillside. This was the first time in days that she had walked beyond call of the armed men she had drawn about her. And she had slipped away without attracting attention to herself, for she had not wanted them to know where she was going.

She was on her own. She knew that she might be in danger. But she had to get back to the waterside.

Down there, on the unseen riverbank, there had
been a bunch of white flowers placed so that anyone who crossed the stream might see them. They all had. They had ridden by the rock on which the flowers lay, one after another, and had sneered or chortled as they passed. The men had all read the message of the snowfishers, and yet none of them had understood it. They had not understood it, because the message had been for her.

The flowers had said
I love you
.

They were freshly picked. There had been waterdroplets upon the silver-grey leaves. Chawlin had laid them there that morning, knowing that she would pass and see them. He must be close. He would have laid them there, and watched the crossing from hiding, because if it had been important to him to send the message it would have been important also to know that she had seen it.

He must be somewhere near the stream. He would not know that she was coming. He could not know that the Company had halted, unless by chance he had looked into the cup. She would have to find him. And if she could not find him, she would at least take the snow-fishers, so that he would know, if he passed that way in the next few hours, that she had not only seen his message but had wanted to keep it, because it came from him.

I love you.

She had to speak with Chawlin. Ambrose had been right about that. She had to see the truth as Chawlin saw it. And, one way or another – with words, with looks, with all her heart – she had to draw him willingly out of hiding. The Company could not catch him. She could. She would bring him home.