Ferras Vansen caught up to his quarry in the lower reaches of the hills, or at least that was where he thought he was, but he could not be sure. Only a few months ago this had been the border of the Shadowline, an eerie but otherwise ordinary place, but now the hills were shrouded in mist and nearly invisible and all the land down to the bay had become alien.
“Prince Barrick!” The rider didn’t turn but glided on through the streaming mist. For long moments Vansen thought he might be mistaken, that perhaps he was calling to some phantom thrown up by the Shadowline, but as he drew closer and eventually pulled abreast of the black horse he could see the boy’s pale, distracted face. “Barrick! Prince Barrick, it’s me, Vansen. Stop!”
The young prince didn’t even look. Vansen nudged his horse closer still, until it was rubbing shoulders with Barrick’s mount, then reached across and grabbed at the prince’s arm, remembering only too late that it was the wounded one, the crippled one.
Crippled or whole, it seemed to make little difference. Barrick snatched his arm away but still did not turn to look at Vansen, although he did speak for the first time.
“Go away.”
There was something odd in his voice, a sleepwalker’s distance; the boy’s refusal to turn his head began to seem more like madness than contempt. Vansen grabbed him again, harder now, and the prince jabbed at him with his elbow, trying to wriggle free. The horses bumped against each other and whinnied, uncertain whether this was war or something else. Vansen ducked a lashing fist, then wrapped his arms around the prince and pulled Barrick toward him. Barrick’s feet caught in the stirrups and he fell, taking the guard captain with him.Vansen avoided being kicked by the horses, but the ground seemed to rise up and hit him like a huge fist. For long moments he could only lie on his back, wheezing.
The horses had trotted on a little way and stopped. When Vansen at last sat up, still not able to fill his lungs completely, he saw to his dismay that Barrick was already on his feet and limping toward his large black horse where it cropped at the meadow grass, half-hidden by mist although it stood only a few dozen yards away. The prince was holding his side as though it hurt him badly, but showed no sign of letting it stop him.Vansen struggled upright and ran after him, but he was weary and battered from the day’s fighting and the fall; Prince Barrick had almost reached his horse by the time Vansen caught him.
“Your Highness, I cannot let you go there! Not into that land!”
In reply, Barrick pulled his dagger from his belt and took a clumsy swipe at Vansen without even looking at him.Vansen stumbled back in surprise, tripped, fell. The prince showed no urge to follow up on his advantage; he turned and caught his horse again, which had skipped away in nervousness at their struggle. Just as Barrick got his fingers under the belly strap to hold the horse and began to search for the stirrup with his foot, Vansen reached him again.
This time he was expecting the knife and was able to twist it out of the prince’s fingers. The boy let out a small grunt of pain, but still seemed to care little about Ferras Vansen himself; he simply turned again to clamber up onto his saddle. Vansen grabbed him around the waist and pulled him backward so that they both crashed to the ground This time he shoved his helmeted head against the boy’s cloaked back and held on. Barrick gasped with pain and his struggles became increasingly desperate, his arms and legs thrashing as wildly as those of a drowning swimmer. As it became apparent that Vansen was the stronger, that the boy couldn’t reach the older man’s eyes or vitals with his hooking fingers, Barrick writhed more and more madly. The low moan he had been making as they rolled on the ground rose to a shriek, a horrible raw noise that dug intoVansen’s ears like a sharp stick, and the prince began to fling his arms and legs about, kicking, thrashing. Vansen could only hold tight. He felt a little like a father, but of a child who was very ill. An insane child.
How will I ever get him back to Southmarch? he wondered. Barrick’s shrieking grew increasingly ragged but did not stop or even slacken.Vansen started to crawl, trying to drag the boy along the ground toward his horse. I will have to tie him up. But with what? And how will I sneak him past the shadow folk?
Barrick’s struggles became even wilder, something Vansen would not have thought possible. He could pull the prince no farther, and had to stop a few yards from the horses, holding the boy wrapped in his arms and legs as Barrick went on screeching as monotonously as a broken-hinged gate fanning in the wind.
At last it was too much. Vansen’s own limbs were achingly weary, the boy’s cries so heartrendingly terrible, he began to believe he was somehow crippling the young prince’s mind. He let him go, watched as the boy stopped shrieking, got to his feet, swaying—it was a blessed relief to have the silence come rushing back—and staggered toward his horse, which waited with unnatural calm.
Vansen got to his feet and stumbled after him. “Where are you going, Highness? Don’t you know you are traveling into the land of shadows?”
Barrick climbed into the saddle, slipping, struggling, clearly almost as weary as Vansen. He sat up, holding his side again. “I… I know.” His tone was hollow, miserable.
“Then why, Highness?” When there was no reply, Vansen raised his voice. “Barrick! Listen to me! Why are you doing this? Why are you riding into the shadowlands?”
The boy hesitated, fumbling for the reins. The black horse, Vansen noticed for the first time, had strange, amber-yellow eyes. Vansen reached out, gently this time, and touched the prince’s arm. Barrick actually looked toward him for a moment, although his eyes did not quite touch Ferras Vansen’s. “I don’t know why. I don’t know!”
“Come back with me.That way there’s nothing but danger.” But Vansen knew there was danger behind them as well, madness and death. Hadn’t he first thought Barrick was fleeing the horrors of the battle? “Come back with me to Southmarch.Your sister will be afraid for you. Princess Briony will be afraid.”
For an instant it seemed that he might have touched something in the prince regent: Barrick sighed, sagged a little in his saddle. Then the instant passed. “No. I am… called.”
“Called to what?”
The boy shook his head slowly, the gesture of a doomed, lost man. Vansen had seen such a face once before, eyes so empty and distraught. It had been a man of the dales, a distant relation of Ferras Vansen’s mother, who had found himself caught up in a border dispute between two large clans and had seen his wife and children slaughtered before his eyes. That man had worn just such a look when he came to say his farewells before going out to find his family’s killers, knowing that no one would either accompany or avenge him, that his own death was inevitable. Vansen shivered.
Barrick abruptly spurred his horse northward. Vansen ran to his own mount and spurred to catch him until they were riding side by side.
“Please, Highness, I ask you one last time. Will you not turn back to your family, your kingdom? Your sister Briony?” Barrick only shook his head, bis eyes once more gazing into nothingness.
“Then you will force me to follow you into this terrible place that I barely escaped the first time. Is that what you want, Highness, for me to follow you into death? Because my oath will not allow me to let you go alone.” Vansen could see her now in his mind’s eye, her lovely face and poorly hidden fear, as well as the bravery that was all the more striking because of it. Now I pay back for your older brother’s life, Briony. Now I pay for dead Kendrick’s with my own. But of course, she would likely never know.