Aleksey's Kingdom (A Royal Affair #2)(9)
“I was not dreaming of Hesse-Davia.”
He glanced over, then said, exasperated, “Surely you were not back on that stupid ship again?”
“I do not remember the ship being particularly stupid, but you may be right.”
“So you were? Dreaming of—”
“No, I was dreaming of what we had been talking about, the missing outpost, that is all.”
“Oh.” He fell very silent at this, and I could sense guilt and loss sweeping off him like early-morning mist clearing the lake. It was tangible. He was thinking about his new love in the colony. I moved Xavier ahead once more. My face would have given away my pain to a man far less observant than Aleksey.
After another hour conducted mainly in silence on both our parts, we arrived at the edge of the forest where I wanted to be. I had been planning this trip for us for weeks, waiting for the right time, but now my pleasure in it was wholly gone.
I dismounted and tied Xavier very securely to a tree and bid Aleksey to do likewise with his horse. I would not leave them out of sight, given what we had come to witness. I told Aleksey to get low to the ground, which he did with some amazed looks, but he was so wholly himself now, so excited and intrigued, that my heart wept for what I was losing—and began to grow angry for what another had won from me. Nevertheless, I wriggled to the edge of the small ridge and beckoned him to lie alongside me.
His gasp of wonder was infectious, and I smiled despite the pain in my heart. The escarpment fell away to a river to give us a perfect view of the point where it plunged ten feet or so over a small falls. It was full salmon season, and their glinting forms were leaping desperately, thoughtlessly, against the flow of the water. But it was not this that had elicited the gasp of surprise and pleasure from Aleksey. The valley was packed with bears catching the fish—gorging, grumbling, playing. Dead and dying salmon were scattered on the banks, flapping, flipping, gasping their last breath. Bears lumbered in the water, their great, clumsy, deadly paws missing but catching, tossing, and recatching with lethal claws, fur streaming with glistening water, sunlight sparkling around them. And in the shallows and on the banks, the cubs clustered, watching, copying, failing, learning, and growing bored and playing, tumbling and wrestling and fighting, mouthing harmlessly into fellow cubs and rolling with pure glee at being what they were and where they were in that glorious place.
It was utterly captivating to watch.
Lying there on my belly next to Aleksey, I could not help but remember the first time I had seen this spectacle as a very young boy neither one thing nor the other—not European child anymore, not Powponi. I was not quite captive, not quite slave, not quite adopted son. Had I watched the cubs, safe with their mothers, secure in what they were, and envied them? I think perhaps I had.
“What’s wrong, Niko? Will you not tell me? I have been patient since you awoke in such a bad mood, but I am worried now. It is not funny anymore.”
“There is nothing wrong. Come, we must go. The days are short, and I do not want to be out after sundown.”
“Why not? You love the forest at night.”
“Must you question everything I say? Why can you not just accept my words for meaning exactly what they mean! I have no hidden agenda in this, Aleksey. I want to return. It is getting dark.”
I wriggled back away from our vantage point and stood up, then returned to Xavier, who naturally enough had not been all that happy at being tied to a tree in the proximity of bears.
Aleksey came up to Xavier too and put his hand on my arm. “I am not returning with you unless you admit what is wrong.”
“And pray tell me—where would you go? You do not know where we are.”
“Actually, I do. I am not as stupid and helpless as you seem to think I am. I would follow this river downstream to the coast, and then I would turn south, and the colony would be a few miles farther on at the entrance to the big river.”
Huh, he was right. He had clearly given the route to the colony some considerable thought. “Go, then.” I swung up into the saddle and pulled Xavier’s head to leave. Aleksey was holding my bridle. “Let go.”
“That river will freeze over first.”
“Aleksey—” I did not finish the sentence or the thought. Somehow he unseated me. To this day I’m not quite sure how he did. Perhaps he does not either, for he has not repeated the trick, and it was so successful that I am sure he would have done had he known what he was doing. But being unprepared, I was entirely winded when I hit the ground. It didn’t help that Xavier reared and accidentally clipped me on my forehead with one front hoof. Human scalps bleed fiercely out of all proportion to the amount of blood you would think would be in them. A bright red flow poured immediately over my face, and as I was so badly winded I lay like… well, like death. Which is what Aleksey thought I was. He genuinely thought he’d killed me. He’d pulled me from my horse, heard me hit the ground, and seen Xavier kick me in the head; then, when he’d secured the horse, he’d discovered me covered in blood and lying still. The howl he sent up unnerved me. I think it must have driven off every bear in the vicinity. I opened my eyes, and then he fell upon me, kissing and shaking me and shouting angrily. I may not have attended the new medical universities to become a doctor, but I did know that jolting and screaming at a concussed man was not a good idea. The kissing was all right; that, I was sure, would improve my condition. Eventually I sat up, with Aleksey pressing a piece of his shirt to my head wound. It was still bleeding spectacularly and hurt like all manner of unpleasantness, given pain was relative to me now after my experiences in Hesse-Davian dungeons.