“Where . . . which way, sir?”
“Keep going straight ahead. You’ll strike a cleared path about twenty feet further.”
“T-twenty feet!” Alfred stammered. He gestured at the thick brush in which he was entangled. “It will take us an hour to get that far, at least!”
“If something doesn’t get us first,” teased Bane, round-eyed with excitement.
“Most amusing, Your Highness.”
“We’re still too close to the road. Get moving,” commanded Hugh.
“Yes, sir,” muttered the chamberlain.
They reached the path in less than an hour, but it was hard going nonetheless. Though brown and lifeless in the winter, the bramble bushes were like the hands of the undead, reaching out with their sharp nails to tear flesh and rend clothing. This deep in the forest, the three could hear quite plainly the faint crystalline hum caused by the wind rubbing against the hargast branches. It was much like someone running a wet finger over a crystal glass, and had the effect of setting the teeth on edge.
“No one in his right mind would come in this accursed place!” grumbled Alfred, glancing up at the trees with a shudder.
“Exactly,” said Hugh, and continued to beat a path through the brush. Alfred walked ahead of the prince and held back the thorny branches so that Bane could pass through them safely. The brambles were so thick, however, that this was often not possible. Bane endured scratched cheeks and torn hands without complaint, sucking his wounds to alleviate the pain. How bravely will he face the pain of dying?
Hugh hadn’t meant to ask himself the question, and he forced himself to answer it. As bravely as other kids I’ve seen. Better to die young, after all, as the Kir monks say. Why should a child’s life be considered more precious than a man’s? Logically, it should be less so, for a man contributes to society and a child is a parasite. It’s instinctive, Hugh supposed. Our animal-like need to perpetuate our own kind. This is just another job. The fact that he’s a child shouldn’t, won’t matter!
The bramble bushes gave way eventually, with a suddenness for which Alfred was evidently unprepared. By the time Hugh reached him, the chamberlain was lying sprawled facefirst on a narrow space of cleared ground.
“Which direction? That’s it, isn’t it?” cried Bane, dancing around Alfred in excitement. The path led only one direction. Deducing that it must lead to the ship, the prince bolted down it before Hugh could answer his question. Hugh opened his mouth to command him to come back, then shut it abruptly.
“Oh, sir, shouldn’t we stop him?” queried Alfred anxiously as Hugh waited for the chamberlain to drag himself to his feet.
The wind whipped around them, shrieking and moaning, driving the bits of stinging coralite and hargast bark into their faces. Leaves swirled at their feet and the crystalline tree branches swayed above their heads. Hugh stared through the fine dust to see the boy running headlong down the path.
“He’ll be all right. The ship’s not far from here. He can’t mistake the trail.”
“But . . . assassins?”
The child’s fleeing his one true danger, Hugh said silently. Let him go.
“There’s no one in these woods. I would’ve seen the signs.”
“If you don’t mind, sir, His Highness is my responsibility.” Alfred was edging his way down the path. “I’ll just hurry after—”
“Go ahead.” Hugh waved his hand.
Alfred, smiling and bobbing his head in servile thanks, broke into a run. The Hand half-expected to see the chamberlain break his head at the same time, but Alfred managed to keep his feet under him and pointed the same direction as his nose. His long arms swinging, hands flapping at his sides, he loped down the path after the prince.
Hugh lagged behind, deliberately slowing his steps, pausing, waiting for something uncertain and unknown. He’d felt the same when a storm was approaching—a tension, a prickling of the skin. Yet there was no rain smell in the air, no acrid whiff of lightning. The winds always blew high along the coastThe sound of the crack splitting the air was so loud that Hugh’s first thought was of an explosion, his next that elves had discovered his ship. But the subsequent crash and the shrill, agonized scream, cut off abruptly, informed Hugh of what had really happened.
He felt an overwhelming sense of relief.
“Help, Sir Hugh! Help!” Alfred’s voice, blown apart by the wind, was barely heard. “A tree! A tree . . . fallen . . . my prince!” Not a tree, thought Hugh. A branch. Most likely a big one, from the sound. Sheared off by the wind, it had come crashing down across the path. He’d seen such a thing many times before in this wood, narrowly missed being struck himself.
He did not run. It was as if the black monk at his shoulder laid a restraining hand on his arm and whispered, “There is no need for haste.” The shards of broken hargast branch were sharp as arrow points. If Bane was still alive, he wouldn’t be for long. There were plants in this forest that would ease the pain, put the boy to sleep, and, though Alfred would never know it, speed the child to an easy death.
Hugh continued walking slowly down the path. Alfred’s cries for help had ceased. Perhaps he’d realized how futile it was. Perhaps he’d discovered the prince already dead. They’d take the body to Aristagon and leave it there, as Stephen had wanted. It would appear as if the elves had badly abused the boy before killing him, and that would inflame the humans. King Stephen would have his war, much good it would do him.
But that wasn’t Hugh’s concern. He’d take the bumbling Alfred along to help, and at the same time worm out of the chamberlain the dark plot he was undoubtedly aiding and abetting. Then, with Alfred in tow, the Hand would communicate with the king from a safe hiding place and demand his fee be doubled. He’d [...] Rounding a bend in the path, Hugh saw that Alfred hadn’t been far wrong when he said a tree had fallen. A huge limb, big as most trees itself, had cracked in the wind and split the trunk of the ancient hargast in two when it came down. The tree must have been rotten, to have separated like that. Coming nearer, Hugh could see within what was left of the trunk the tunnels of the insects that had been the old tree’s true killer.
Though it was lying on the ground, the limb’s branches that had remained intact towered above Hugh. The branches that had struck the ground had shattered and cut a wide swath of devastation through the forest; its crystalline remains completely obliterated the path. The dust it had raised still hung in the air. Hugh searched among the branches but could see nothing. He climbed over the split trunk. When he reached the other side, he stopped to stare.
The boy who should have been dead was sitting on the ground rubbing his head, looking dazed and very much alive. His clothing was rumpled and dirty, but it had been rumpled and dirty when he entered the forest. There weren’t, Hugh noted, his eyes scanning the boy, any shards of bark or filaments in his hair. He had blood on his chest and on his torn shirt, but nowhere else on his body. The Hand glanced at the split trunk and then turned his measuring gaze on the path. Bane was sitting squarely in the spot where the branch must have fallen. He was surrounded by the sharp, deadly shards.
Yet he wasn’t dead.
“Alfred?” Hugh called.
And then he saw the chamberlain, crouched on the ground near the boy, his back to the assassin, intent on doing something that Hugh could not see. At the sound of a voice, Alfred’s body twitched in startlement and he jerked to his feet as though someone had yanked him up by a rope attached to his shirt collar. Hugh saw now what the chamberlain had been doing. He was binding a cut on his hand.
“Oh, sir! I’m so thankful you’re here—”