I have never known any expedition to get off exactly as planned. Generally, the larger one is, the more difficulties it has. Ours was no exception. The morning before we were scheduled to depart, I was rudely shaken out of my sleep.
“Get up, Fitz, we have to leave now,” Kettricken said tersely.
I sat up slowly. I was wide awake instantly, but my healing back still did not encourage me to move swiftly. The Fool was sitting on the edge of his bed, looking more anxious than I had ever seen him. “What is it?” I demanded.
“Regal.” I had never heard so much venom in one word. Her face was very white and she knotted and unknotted her fists at her side. “He has sent a courier under a truce flag to my father, saying that we harbor a known traitor to the Six Duchies. He says that if we release you to him, he will see it as a sign of good faith with the Six Duchies and will not consider us an enemy. But if we do not, he will loose the troops he has poised on our borders, for he will know that we plot with his enemies against him,” She paused. “My father is considering what to do.”
“Kettricken, I am but the excuse,” I protested. My heart was hammering in my chest. Nighteyes whined anxiously. “You must know it has taken him months to mass those troops. They are not there because I am here. They are in place because he plans to move against the Mountain Kingdom no matter what. You know Regal. It is all a bluff to see if he can get you to turn me over to him. Once you do, he will find some other pretext to attack.”
“I am not a simpleton,” she said coldly. “Our watchers have known of the troops for weeks. We have been doing what we can to prepare ourselves. Always our mountains have been our strongest defense. But never before have we confronted an organized foe in such numbers. My father is Sacrifice, Fitz. He must do whatever will best serve the Mountain Kingdom. So now he must ponder if by turning you over, he will have a chance to treat with Regal. Do not think my father is stupid enough to trust him. But the longer he can delay an attack against his people, the better prepared they will be.”
“It sounds as if there is little left to decide,” I said bitterly.
“There was no reason for my father to make me privy to the courier’s message,” Kettricken observed. “The decision is his.” Her eyes met mine squarely, and held a shadow of our old friendship. “I think perhaps he offers me a chance to spirit you away. Before I would be defying his orders to turn you over to Regal. Perhaps he thinks to tell Regal you have escaped but he intends to track you down.”
Behind Kettricken, the Fool was pulling on leggings under his nightshirt.
“It will be harder than I had planned,” Kettricken confided in me. “I cannot involve any other Mountain folk in this. It will have to be you, me, and Starling. Alone. And we must leave now, within the hour.”
“I’ll be ready,” I promised her.
“Meet me behind Joss’s woodshed,” she said, and left.
I looked at the Fool. “So. Do we tell Kettle?”
“Why are you asking me?” he demanded.
I gave a small shrug. Then I got up and began dressing hastily. I thought of all the small ways in which I was not prepared and then gave it up as useless. In a very short time, the Fool and I shouldered our packs. Nighteyes rose, stretched thoroughly, and went to the door to precede us. I shall miss the fireplace. But the hunting will be better. He accepted all so calmly.
The Fool took a careful look around the hut, and then closed the door behind us. “That’s the first place I’ve ever lived that was solely mine,” he observed as we walked away from it.
“You leave so much behind to do this,” I said awkwardly, thinking of his tools, his half-finished puppets, even the plants growing inside by the window. Despite myself, I felt responsible for it. Perhaps it was because I was so glad that I was not going on alone.
He glanced over at me and shrugged. “I take myself with me. That’s all I truly need, or own.” He glanced back at the door he had painted himself. “Jofron will take good care of it. And of Kettle, too.”
I wondered if he left behind more than I knew.
We were nearly to the woodshed when I saw some children racing down the path toward us. “There he is!” one cried, pointing. I shot a startled glance at the Fool, then braced myself, wondering what was to come. How could one defend oneself against children? At a loss, I awaited the attack. But the wolf did not wait. He sank low to his belly in the snow, even his tail flat. As the children closed the distance, he suddenly shot forward straight at the leader. “NO!” I cried aloud in horror, but none of them paid me any heed. The wolf’s front paws struck the boy’s chest, to drive him down hard in the snow. In a flash Nighteyes was up and after the others, who fled, shrieking with laughter as one after another he caught up with them and mowed them down. By the time he’d felled the last one, the first boy was up and after him, vainly trying to keep up with the wolf and making wild grabs at his tail as Nighteyes flashed by him, tongue lolling.
He felled them all again, twice more, before he halted in one of his racing loops. He watched the children getting to their feet, then glanced over his shoulder at me. He folded his ears down abashedly, then looked back to the children, his tail wagging low. One girl was already digging a chunk of fatbread out of her pocket while another teased him with a strip of leather, snaking it over the snow and trying to get him involved in a tug-of-war. I feigned not to notice.
I’ll catch up with you later, he offered.
No doubt, I told him dryly. The Fool and I kept walking. I glanced back once to see the wolf, teeth set in the leather and all four feet braced while two boys dragged at the other end of it. I surmised that I now knew how he had been spending his afternoons. I think I felt a pang of envy.
Kettricken was already waiting. Six laden jeppas were roped together in a train. I wished now I had taken the time to learn more about them, but I had assumed the others would have the care of them. “We’re still taking all of them?” I asked in dismay.
“It would take too long to unpack the loads and repack with only what we need. Perhaps later we’ll abandon the extra supplies and animals. But for now, I simply wish to be gone as soon as possible.”
“Then let’s leave,” I suggested.
Kettricken looked pointedly at the Fool. “What are you doing here? Wishing Fitz farewell?”
“I go where he goes,” the Fool said quietly.
The Queen looked at him and something in her face almost softened. “It will be cold, Fool. I have not forgotten how you suffered from the cold on the way here. Where we go, now, the cold will linger long after spring has reached Jhaampe.”
“I go where he does,” the Fool repeated quietly.
Kettricken shook her head to herself. Then she shrugged. She strode to the head of the line of jeppas and snapped her fingers. The lead animal flapped his hairy ears and followed her. The others followed him. Their obedience impressed me. I quested briefly toward them and found such a strong herd instinct at work that they scarcely thought of themselves as separate animals. As long as the lead animal followed Kettricken, there would be no problems with the others.
Kettricken led us along a trail that was little more than a path.
It wound mostly behind the scattered cottages that housed the winter residents of Jhaampe. In a very short time we left the last of the huts behind and traveled through ancient forest. The Fool and I walked behind the string of animals. I watched the one in front of us, marking how his wide, flat feet spread on the snow much as the wolf’s did. They set a pace slightly faster than a comfortable walk.