The mule’s blanket saddle chafed against Chel’s raw thighs. Streaks of mud splattered the beast’s legs and flanks, and Chel’s boots were caked. The woods around them glistened beneath dark clouds, already thick with the promise of another storm. Chel was cold, he was sore, and he was angry.
‘How in five hells did I get here?’ he muttered. He glared at the great hospital wagon that rumbled on ahead of them, its iron-rimmed wheels leaving thick ruts in the squelching road. Dalim’s men rode either side of it, their robes hanging heavy in the damp. A glimmer of warm light spilled from within, and Chel shivered at the sight.
‘Hunted by red confessors,’ he grumbled, ‘almost blown up by witchfire. My shoulder ruined. Locked in a boat, shot at by Mawn, bitten by wolves. Nearly devoured by fucking cannibals!’
Rennic ignored him. His face and beard were spotted with a fine mist of mud, his knuckles on the rein rope cracked and filthy. He’d offered little conversation on their journey, lost in his own sour reverie.
‘And then this guy? This Watcher. He made it sound like we should have heard of him.’
‘Plenty have heard of the Watcher in the Wind.’
‘Not his title. His name. Did you know him?’
Rennic sighed but didn’t answer.
‘It sounded made-up. I don’t trust him.’
Rennic grunted, adjusting the roll of blankets that constituted his saddle. His mule flicked an ear in irritation as her feet splashed through a shining puddle. ‘This is still about your sister, isn’t it?’
‘Is it fuck. He’s basically kidnapped the prince, dragged him into some scheme against the Church, and for all we know old Watcher is planning to kill both him and his brainless brother out in the woods and blame the wolves.’ He paused. ‘Are there wolves out here?’
‘There are wolves everywhere.’
‘Right. Like I said then.’
Rennic sighed again. Chel found the sighing irritating. He wondered if this was how Rennic felt most of the time. ‘You don’t even know for certain that it’s—’
‘Of course it’s my fucking sister! How else would he know who I was? About my family?’ Thoughts of Sabina were uppermost in his mind, bubbling up to the exclusion of all else. For the duration of the journey he’d stewed, caught between simmering resentment toward those who’d use his sister for their political ends and his own hot shame at being so excluded. He should be the one putting himself in danger, not her …
Chel took a breath, tried to blink mud from his eyelashes. ‘I swore an oath, remember? Remember those? Dalim had plenty to say about your history with keeping pledges. Said you’d broken more vows than a rutting nun.’
The anger returned to Rennic’s eyes in an instant, his gaze fierce as a flash fire. ‘Watch yourself, little man. You don’t know a thrice-damned thing about me.’
Chel felt himself shrink back, and he coughed. ‘Yeah, well, whose fault is that?’ His shoulder was aching in the cold, as Lemon had said it might. ‘All I’m saying is we don’t know who this Watcher is.’
Rennic glared at him a moment longer, then up at Dalim, who sat hunched against the cold in Sisters’ robes at the wagon’s bench. ‘Fuck Dalim, the fur-palmed tool. The fuck would he know about swearing service? All he does is attach himself to whatever cause he thinks will get wenches mewling. Fat chance of that.’ He sat back for a moment, and the rage left him. ‘As far as we’re concerned, little man, that there Watcher is our client. He’s paying the fee, so we do the bidding.’
‘I’m not a mercenary, I’m—’
‘Yes, yes, you swore an oath. Save me from another anguished repetition. But you heard him, no harm will come to your precious princes. He needs them for his grand scheme, whatever the fuck that is.’
A flight of migrating birds went cawing overhead, bellies pale, on their northward journey.
‘Swear it, then.’
Rennic wiped his grubby face with his equally grubby hand, leaving grimy stripes like war-paint. ‘What?’
‘Swear that no harm will come to the princes.’
‘I’m not the fucking Shepherd, little man. The absolute power of life and death eludes me yet, despite my tireless questing.’
Chel gave him the most level stare he could manage, given the wobbling gait of the mules along the rutted mire of the road. ‘Then swear you’ll protect them, if it comes to that.’
‘Shepherd’s cleft, you’re serious.’
Rennic was quiet for a while, staring straight ahead.
‘Very well. I give my oath as a man of the north that I will let no harm fall to your dear princes, should it fall within my power so to do. Happy?’
‘You’re from the north?’
‘You don’t get a nose like this by accident, man-boy. Now be quiet.’
Rennic was upright in the saddle, alert, eyes darting around the trail. All Chel heard was the slushing of the wagon’s wheels, the creak and jingle of its structure, the squelching plod of the mules’ hooves.
‘You think it’s bandits?’
‘No shortage of arseholes in these parts, but in this case, no.’
Something white fluttered out of the slate-coloured sky, wheeling around the wagon before settling on the perch behind the driver’s bench. Palo’s robed form scooped up the bird, then banged on the wagon-side.
‘Good news, little man,’ Rennic said with a bitter grin. ‘This eternal mule-ride may yet have an end.’ He rubbed at his face again, the fresh rain loosening some of the surface mud. ‘Lemon and co had better be right behind us, or they’re going to miss all the fun.’
***
‘This is a bit much, isn’t it? He’ll be on his own, that’s the whole point.’ Chel cast a suspicious eye over the arms and armour Dalim was distributing to his men from the barrels they’d carried up the hill on the mules’ flanks.
Rennic leaned over and rummaged in the nearest barrel. ‘Maybe. Hope for the best, plan for the worst. Where the fuck is Lemon? She’s got all our tools.’ He pulled out a rusty mail shirt and a battered-looking short sword, then pushed them into Chel’s arms. ‘You’ll be needing these.’
Rays of weak sunlight had fought their way through the clouds, casting the hilltop fort in pale yellow light. They’d left the road at dawn, Torht and the heavy wagon with them, and travelled into the woods in the company of a local tracker and two companions. For the day’s first hours their guide steered them through thicket and cloying, sodden brush, until they reached a sparsely wooded hill, proud of the surrounding woodland and the curtain of grave-grey peaks that lurked at the horizon. At the hill’s cleft summit stood a ruined fort, its rugged stonework battered and dilapidated by the elements but still intact on three sides. A slender sister tower, twisted and leaning, jutted from the hill’s second crest, connected to the main structure by a narrow gantry on chipped pillars.
Rennic looked up at the horizon, squinting in the hazy glare. Behind them, Spider shrugged his robe into the mud and set to work climbing the pitted exterior toward the tower-top, while the three local archers clambered up the ruined stairway inside. Dalim and his men were already taking up positions in the ruined courtyard at the tower’s base.
‘Let’s hope the Watcher got Tarfel’s message to his brother in time for the hunt,’ Chel said, staring out over the woods. ‘Or we’re going to spend a whole day sitting around in this crumbling crap-heap for a whole lot of nothing.’
‘At least it’s a good day for hunting,’ Rennic murmured. His eyes were distant, and Chel felt a sudden and growing sense of isolation. Had the whole court travelled to Talis? Would his sister be among them? Would she have some part in the hunt?
‘Why haven’t the others caught us up? It’s not like that wagon was a racer.’
‘Because we went halfway down the coast in the boat, little man, then four days inland from there. Give them a chance. Now collect your princeling from Palo and get him up that tower. Keep him out of sight until she signals it’s time to come down, and keep an eye out for the others while you’re up there.’
‘You really think they can find us?’
‘Whisper’s with them. She could find you underwater.’
Above their heads, the pennant of the Merciful Sisters unfurled from the battlements.