Chapter Seven Knowing Death #3
They were silent as they absorbed Tomaz’ absence, which made as much, if not more, of a statement as anything he could have spoken aloud. The giant was forcing the girl to deal with what he had already come to understand about the Prince.
Slowly, she turned back to him.
As one, they walked over to the tree closest to the campsite.
He waited patiently for her to tied him to the trunk, then sat down as she left to get firewood.
He felt a slight pang of regret that he hadn’t remained calm but was also proud that he had finally said something to which the girl had no response.
Nearly an hour passed, enough time for the sun to set completely, leaving him alone in the dark, before Tomaz returned with an enormous animal slung over his shoulders, the rack of its antlers nearly large enough to hold the Prince’s entire body.
It had four legs and a heavy, deep chest covered in a thick layer of soft gray-brown fur.
If the Prince had to guess, he’d say it was an elk or a deer, though since he had never seen one outside of a book or a dinner plate, he wouldn’t have staked his life on it.
One of its eyes was glassy and dead, while the other one was simply missing, a thin trail of blood tracing downward from the empty socket.
It would appear the Prince had been correct—Tomaz was just as deadly with the sling as he was with his enormous greatsword.
As he walked into the clearing, the giant paused. He took in the Prince, the noticeable lack of a fire, and the absence of a certain green-eyed girl.
“Where is she?” he asked. His voice was gruff, but not unkind.
“She went to get firewood and never came back,” the Prince replied, keeping his answer simple and direct.
The big man grunted and then crossed to the fireless fire pit.
With a quick shrug, he lifted the antlered creature off his shoulders and dropped it to the ground, where it landed with a heavy thud.
He then crossed to where he had left his greatsword and unsheathed it. Turning, he approached the Prince.
Shocked, the Prince recoiled from the giant, but he was tethered to the tree and in the end there was nowhere to go. The giant raised the sword and the Prince closed his eyes.
Something tugged at his wrists, and with it came the snick of taunt fibers being cut, and the Prince was no longer tied to the tree.
He opened his eyes just in time to see the sword flash twice more, and the Prince, too shocked to move, felt another tugging sensation on both his hands and his feet, and then the fabric parted and slid off, falling to the ground and leaving him free, completely unbound.
The giant turned away and sheathed his sword in a single, fluid motion, as effortlessly as the Prince would do up a button.
“Do you know how to dress an elk?” Tomaz asked while rummaging around in his pack.
“You mean… put clothes on it? Why would you want to do that? I was under the impression that you intended to eat it.”
Tomaz snorted and stood up, holding a long, oddly curved knife.
“Here,” he said, and tossed the knife, unsheathed, to the Prince.
Alarmed, the Prince caught the knife by the hilt, almost dropping it in surprise.
“Open the stomach and pull out the insides,” the big man said. “Dig a deep hole with this,” he tossed the Prince a small wedge-shaped tool, “and throw them in there so we don’t get any wolves looking for handouts. Try not to hit any rocks, it’s a good spade.”
And with that he turned and left, slinging his sword across his back and moving off in the direction the girl had gone, no doubt following her trail, though the Prince could never have said how.
For a long moment, the Prince stood there, unfettered, armed, and alone.
He turned his head and saw the two horses cropping the scraggly mountain grass not twenty yards away, and realized he could take one and leave.
The Exile’s packs were there, full of supplies.
He could take them and go. No doubt the girl’s pack contained the map she’d used, and with that he might be able to chart his own way to Banelyn, and… .
He moved off to the side of the small clearing and began to dig a hole, using the metal triangle—spade?
—to pull large clumps of dirt out of the ground.
It took a few tries to get the hang of it, but it was easy enough, and soon he was making good progress.
As he worked, he told himself again and again that the only reason he was staying was that no matter how fast or stealthily he ran, the Exiles would catch him again before he left the mountains.
He was no woodsman, of that there was no doubt, and he would last barely a day, if that, before they caught him and ruined everything.
He needed to wait until Banelyn. That was all.
So he dug the hole, and when he judged it to be deep enough, he turned and thought about how best to follow the rest of Tomaz’s instructions, feeling oddly invigorated by the physical activity, even though it had made him sweat.
But then again, with the way he smelled as it was, and with the multiple layers of grime that covered his Commons clothing, it didn’t really matter.
“If only Geofred could see me now,” he muttered raggedly, breathing hard as he looked from the hooked knife to the dead animal.
Or Tiffenal for that matter; the thought of the Fox trying to maneuver his perfectly manicured fingernails around the handle of the metal triangle—the spade, use its name—to dig a hole was certainly amusing.
He bent and stuck the knife into the elk’s stomach, doing his best to map out exactly what his plan of attack was.
As he went about opening the animal’s belly, he found that he wasn’t at all alarmed by the sight of the entrails, nor the smell of the blood or the sounds of the knife.
He supposed that after seeing what he’d seen in the lives he’d taken made this seem…
somehow mundane. The creature was already dead—working with a body held no horrors for him now. It was the living he had trouble with.
Sometime later, the Exiles returned, the girl looking around anxiously until she saw him by the elk. Tomaz bore a slightly exasperated look on his face and was carrying a load of branches and twigs.
The only words that were spoken that night were in reference to the elk and the fire.
Tomaz finished the job the Prince had begun, which in large part involved pulling out bit’s the Prince had missed, and then skinning the creature, before cutting it into large chunks and then strips and hanging it over the fire.
Tomaz showed the Prince how to wash his hands with water from the waterskins and a cake of hard animal-fat soap to remove the blood without getting it all over himself, which the Prince found very useful.
That night they ate what Tomaz didn’t decide to smoke and salt—a process the Prince found fascinating.
The girl ate only a small amount, while the Prince ate ravenously.
He hadn’t gone more than a day without fresh meat in his entire life, and the recent diet of cheese, edible plants, flatbread, and jerky had left him sated but never full.
Tomaz himself ate nearly half the animal, enormous though it was, and looked as though he stopped himself from eating more.
When they had finished eating, they all pulled out their blankets and found a patch of ground on which to sleep. The Prince and the girl situated themselves on opposite sides of the fire as Tomaz took the first watch.
As the Prince lay beneath his blanket trying to find sleep, he wondered why he didn’t feel any sense of triumph.
He felt no anger, no remorse, and also no hope.
He felt… blank. Empty. Numb, that was perhaps the best way to put it.
The only other time he had described the experience of using the Talisman was to his brother Geofred, so that the reaction could be chronicled.
He had felt numb then as well, but mostly because he had recently come out of the coma into which the experience had sent him.
Now, the numbness came from… he didn’t know.
Was it because he knew Tomaz’s reaction was out of understanding and sympathy?
Perhaps because of the way the girl had looked at him, the way her silence showed she too had an idea, however infinitesimal, of what he went through when he used his Mother’s gift.
He was unbound. He had played Tomaz into believing in him, and had convinced the girl, however unintentionally, to lower her guard, though he knew that she still had not done so completely.
He was free to make his escape when they reached Banelyn, to find the Seeker there and make his way back to his Mother…
his Mother who would never have believed in him the way Tomaz did. The way the girl was beginning to.
She is the Empress, he reminded himself.
She knows only right and wrong, as should I.
The Talisman is my gift and my burden as one of the Princes of the Realm, and I should wear it with pride.
I wear it to serve the Empire. Someday, I will be Prince of the Seventh Principality, and I will need to deal with Exiles such as this without pity.
They have broken our laws and turned their backs on civilization.
They threaten the lives of the people of Lucien.
The Prince rolled over and stared at the stars. And suddenly it occurred to him that he didn’t know for what the girl and the giant had been exiled.
The reason doesn’t matter. The Empress has exiled them, and all of the Kindred. That is reason enough, and always will be.
But the words sounded hollow, and he didn’t know why.
.