The Winter Prince (The Lion Hunters:01)(64)

Anguished to hear him speak so, I said gently, “We’re barely five miles from Camlan. Did you really not know that?”

He bit his lip. He had seen without fear that he might be dying, and it must be hard now to learn how close he was to home. “You’ll have to leave me,” he said. “I can’t walk any farther.”

“You’re not afraid?”

“Not since I know you won’t slay me.”

I whispered, “If you die now, I will have slain you.” I wrapped my cloak around his shoulders. “I’ll carry you.”

“Sir, how can you?” Lleu also whispered. “I am almost as tall as you.”

“I will,” I said. “Damn her! I won’t be used any longer!” The emotions I had fought so long to deny fired my vehemence. “You’ve driven yourself almost to madness in defiance of my cruelty, and I’ll find the strength to carry you home if it leaves me broken forever.”

Without a further word I gathered Lleu in my arms and staggered to my feet. “Five miles?” Lleu whispered. “Oh, sir… your hand, and the fever…”

“What are they measured against your life?” I cried. “The fever has passed. The hand’s already ruined.” I shifted his weight more comfortably in my arms and slowly began to walk westward beneath the trees. “Try to sleep now,” I added. Lleu leaned his head against my shoulder and slept.

After only a little way I had to stop and rest in exhaustion. I cannot do this, I thought despairingly, it is like trying to carry a young buck in my arms. Idiot, I cursed myself then; you who call yourself a huntsman, would you carry a buck in your arms? After that I slung him over my shoulders. He hardly noticed. He slept as deeply as if he had been drugged.

Not long before dark I was arrested by the sound of a horse behind us, out of sight among the trees but coming closer at a gallop. I had no time to prepare myself against this unknown rider, no time to wake Lleu enough that he could be set on his feet. I turned to face whatever was coming, standing with straight defiance, for all that I bore Lleu on my back. I would not let myself consider how spent I was. I stood waiting, watching the rider arrive in a storm of flying hooves and snow.

It was Goewin. She must have known she was coming upon me even before she had seen me; she sat her horse with a spear balanced under one arm, as if she were leading an army into battle. She pulled her horse to a sudden and startling halt, sending up another burst of flying snow. Clumps of it settled in my hair, and in the folds of the cloak wrapped about Lleu.

“We saw your smoke,” she said. “The blankets youe b and left smoldering there made a cloud black as a tunnel. Did you think no one would notice? What a place to light a fire, if you were trying to go unseen! Another half mile and you’d have been at the summit of Shining Ridge, where the beacons are lit.” She spoke in hard, clean anger, controlled.

“What makes you sure I meant to go unseen?” I said faintly.

“Agravain said you planned to kill the prince yourself,” Goewin said, with no trace of fear in her voice, though Lleu hung still and pale over my shoulders. “I do not trust Agravain so far as I can push him, but you have betrayed my trust as well. You could—you could have at any time—arranged Lleu’s death so that it looked like accident, or someone else’s fault.” Still she covered her fear. “Have you?”

“No,” I said. “He sleeps only.” I said then, “Agravain? Agravain returned to Camlan?”

“He arrived early this morning,” Goewin answered. “He feared his mother’s wrath more than the king’s. And he told us all.” Her hard, clear voice never faltered or changed pitch. She gazed down at me with imperious cold dark eyes. “We went out searching when he arrived, I and my father and Caius. We were going to make Agravain take us back to the place where he left you, but we saw your smoke and found your camp. You tell me, my lord brother, what we were to think: shreds of Lleu’s cloak crumbling to ashes in that stinking, smoking pile of debris, blood in the snow, our satchels and bags abandoned there.”

“The blood was mine,” I said, shifting Lleu’s weight. “You see.” I held my bandaged hand away from his body.

The air rang with hoofbeats as Goewin’s companions caught up with her. “Hai!” she called to them, raising her spear as a standard. “They are here.” Artos and Caius rode into our company, with Agra vain between them. “Lleu!” Artos cried, swinging down from his horse, and Caius leveled a spear at me.