The Winter Prince (The Lion Hunters:01)(54)

I dove at him again. We both got to our feet and struggled together for a moment; I tried to seize my own dagger from his belt, but he had bound it in its sheath. I broke away from him in disgust and stepped aside into the snow and shadow beyond the clearing we had made. Lleu would have let the matter end; but now Agravain scrambled to his feet and caught Lleu’s arms from behind. Lleu rested a prisoner for a few moments, panting a little, as I stood poised and motionless outside the circle of firelight. Agravain could do little more than hold him, for Lleu was armed with the shining steel that we had both sought to win from him. I thought to wear Lleu down, to tire him out. I waited for him.

Lleu suddenly snapped out of Agravain’s hold and spun away, and I sprang to meet him. He sheathed his knife and watched me cautiously, not sure what I meant to do. As he hesitated I threw my weight against his chest and shoulders, trying to knock him off-balance. He kept his feet, but I caught and held him with such ferocity that even he could not break free. I drove my young brother to his knees, then bore him to the ground in a twisted heap beneath me, face down in the snow, sobbing and gasping in fury and defeat. I held him there and said to Agravain, “Bind his hands.”

I toyed with Lleu’s hair with one hand. When he tried to raise his head I held him down without mercy, so that he must lie with one cheek burning against the snow, the cold crystals melting a little when he breathed. “I don’t want to hurt you,” I told him softly. “But so help me, Bright One, I am going to prove to you my power.” Lleu lay quivering with rage and humiliation, while Agravain dragged his cousin’s arms behind his back and lashed his wrists together so fiercely that Lleu gave a little gasp of pain.

“Loosen that,” I told Agravain.

My compassion undid me. When Agravain unfastened the knots he had made, Lleu somersaulted beyond our reach, shedding arrows from the quiver he still wore, and snatched up his bow. On one knee in the snow he fastened one of his remaining arrows to the bow. “I am not a pawn!” he cried. “I am not a precious stone to be fought over, stolen and bartered and tossed from hand to hand!” He drew a long, trembling breath, and said in a calmer voice, “Ah, go to sleep, Agravain. Think how much less alert I’ll be tomorrow. Put the arrows down!”

Agravain stalked back to the fire, where he cocooned himself in furs and seemed to settle to sleep. I watched as Lleu got to his feet and collected the scattered arrows. He dusted the snow from his hair and clothes, then folded a blanket around his laden shoulders and resumed his place by the fire. He sighed. “Medraut, is it lack of power that makes you bound to do this? Surely Morgause cannot offer you more than Artos.”

“It is &#x &#power over you that I crave more than anything, and Artos will never grant me that,” I answered in quiet, sitting by him. “You cannot know how I envy you your youth, your beauty, your father’s love for you.”

He said then, with disarming irrelevance, “Tell me about Africa.”

“Africa!” I laughed. “There is nothing to tell that you haven’t heard already.”

“I like to hear you speak of it.”

He said that, armed against me and sitting in my shadow, with the prospect of another sleepless night ahead of him. I closed my eyes and thought of roosters crowing in the early morning, and the smell of charcoal cooking fires. The dirt, the dust, the unreflecting drab of undyed muslin, the women selling water from clay pots they carried on their backs. The crowds in the noisy marketplace, vendors hawking goats and peppers; and the feeling always that I was a foreigner manifest, never able to hide my white hair and white face. A cold stranger from a cold country.

“When I would walk in the streets of Aksum,” I said, “I would attract a host of beggars. It was because I was dressed well, but also because I was so different. Even in Deva people look askance at my pale hair. In Aksum my very skin was unnatural.”

Lleu watched me, fixedly biting his lip.

I asked, “Do you remember the lepers described in the Christian testaments?”

He nodded.

“The beggars in Aksum were all sick, or mad. They were eyeless and limbless and filthy.”

He cried out, “But you were happy there!”

“Aye.” I leaned forward to place another branch on the fire, stirring sparks skyward. “Well, Kidane’s house was large and cool, with white walls and a courtyard open to the sky. Turunesh kept doves and parrots.”

“What did she look like?” Lleu asked.