a breath, our situation had changed. I saw the wolf fleeing back towards us. On the road behind him, horsemen had suddenly appeared. I made them five at a quick count. Two hounds, Wit-beasts both, ran alongside them. I swivelled in my saddle. Two rises back, other riders were cresting a hill. I saw one lift an arm, waving a triumphant greeting to the other group of riders.
‘They’ve caught us,’ I said calmly to the Fool.
He looked ill.
‘Up the hill. We’ll put one of those barrows at our back.’ I reined Myblack from the road, and my companions followed.
‘Let me go!’ my prince commanded me. He struggled in my arms, but his long insensibility had left him weak. It was not easy to keep my grip on him, but we had not far to go. As we came abreast of the barrow and the adjacent standing stone, I reined in Myblack. My dismount was not graceful, but I pulled the Prince down with me. Myblack stepped wearily away from us, and then turned to give me a look of rebuke. In an instant the Fool was beside us. I sidestepped Dutiful’s swing at me, caught his wrist and stepped behind him with it. I caught his other shoulder and held him firmly, one arm twisted high behind his back. I was no rougher than I had to be, but he did not give in easily. ‘Breaking your arm or dislocating your shoulder wouldn’t kill you,’ I pointed out to him harshly. ‘But it would keep you from being a nuisance for a time.’
He subsided, grunting with pain. The wolf was a grey streak pouring himself up the hill towards us. ‘Now what?’ the Fool asked me as he stared around us wide-eyed.
‘Now we make a stand,’ I said. The riders below us were already spreading wide. The barrow at our backs would be a poor barrier against attack from behind, blinding us as much as it shielded us. The wolf stood with us, panting.
‘You’ll die here,’ the Prince pointed out through gritted teeth. I still held him quite firmly.
‘That seems very likely,’ I conceded.
‘You’ll die, and I’ll go with them.’ His voice was strained with pain. ‘So why be stupid? Release me now. I’ll go to them. You can run. I promise I’ll ask them to let you go.’
My eyes met the Fool’s over the boy’s head. I knew what my answer to that would be, but then I knew what I’d be sending the Prince to face. It might buy us an opportunity to come after him again, but I doubted it. The woman-cat would see to it that they hunted us down and killed us. Death standing and waiting, or death after flight? I didn’t want to choose how my friends would die.
I’m too tired to flee. I’m dying here.
The Fool’s eyes wavered to Nighteyes. I do not know if he grasped that flicker of thought, or if he simply saw the wolf’s weariness. ‘Stand and fight,’ he said faintly.
He drew his sword from its sheath. I knew he had never fought in his life. As he lifted his blade, he looked very uncertain. Then he took a breath, and set his face in the lines of Lord Golden’s expression. He squared his shoulders and a look of cold competence came into his eyes.
He can’t fight. Don’t be stupid.
The riders were closing in. They walked their horses up the hill towards us, unhurried, letting us watch our deaths come. You have an alternative?
‘You can’t hold me and fight!’ Dutiful’s voice was elated. He obviously believed they had already won. ‘The moment you let go, I’ll run. You’ll die for nothing! Let me go now, let me talk to them. Maybe I can bargain for your life.’
Do not let her have him. Kill him before you let them take him.
I felt a great coward, but shared the thought anyway. I do not know if I can do that.
You must. We both know what they intend. If you cannot kill him then … Then take him into the pillar. The boy can Skill, and you were linked with the Scentless One once. It may be enough. Go into the pillar. Take them with you.
The riders below conferred with one another briefly, then fanned out to flank us as they came. As the woman had promised, they would take no chances. They were grinning and shouting to one another. Like the Prince, they believed they had us trapped.
It won’t work. Don’t you remember what it was like? It took all my strength to hold you together in that passage, and we were tightly linked. I might be able to hold the boy together through the journey, or you, but not both of you. I do not know if I could even pull the Fool in with me. Our Skill-link is old and thin. I might lose you all.
You don’t have to choose. I cannot go with you. I’m too tired, my brother. But I will stay here and hold them back for as long as I can, while you escape.
‘No,’ I groaned, even as the Fool suddenly said, ‘The pillar. You said the boy was Skilling. Could not you –?’
‘No!’ I cried out. ‘I will not leave Nighteyes to die alone! How can you suggest it?’
‘Alone?’ The Fool looked puzzled. A very odd smile twisted his mouth. ‘But he will not be alone. I will be here with him. And,’ he drew himself up, squaring his shoulders, ‘I will die before I allow them to kill him.’
Ah, that would be so much better. Every hackle on Nighteyes’ body was standing as he watched the advancing line of men and horses, but his eyes glinted merriment at me.
‘Send the lad down to us!’ a tall man shouted. We ignored him.
‘Do you think that makes it better for me?’ I demanded of him. They were mad, both of them. ‘I might be able to go through the pillar. I might even be able to drag the boy through, though I wonder if his mind would come through intact. But I doubt that I can take you with me, Fool. And Nighteyes refuses to go.’
‘Go where?’ Dutiful demanded. He tried to shake off my grip and I twisted his arm tighter. He subsided.
‘For the last time, will you yield?’ the tall horseman shouted up at us.
‘I seek to reason with him!’ Lord Golden called back. ‘Give me time, man!’ He put a note of panic in his voice.
‘My friend.’ The Fool set his hand on my shoulder. He pushed me softly, backwards towards the stone. I gave ground and took Dutiful with me. The Fool’s eyes never left mine. He spoke softly and carefully, as if we were alone and had all the time in the world. ‘I know I can’t go with you. It grieves me that the wolf will not. But I still tell you that you must go and take the boy. Don’t you understand? This is what you were born for, why you have stayed alive despite all the odds against you all these years. Why I have forced you to stay alive, despite all that was done to you. There must be a Farseer heir. If you keep him alive and restore him to Buckkeep, that is all that matters. We keep the future on the path I have set for it, even if it must go on without me. But if we fail, if he dies …’
‘What are you talking about?’ the Prince demanded angrily.
The Fool’s voice faded. He stared down the hill at the steadily advancing men, but his gaze seemed to go farther than that. My back was nearly touching the monolith. Dutiful was suddenly quiescent in my grip, as if spelled by the Fool’s soft voice. ‘If we all die here,’ he said faintly, ‘then … it ends. For us. But he is not the only change we have wrought … time must seek to flow as it always has, washing all obstacles away … So … fate finds her. In all times, fate battles against
