hard, as if trying to dislodge something within his brain, and Wynter grabbed his arm, appalled.
‘Don’t!’ she cried.
‘But I should know!’ he shouted, his horse pawing and dancing beneath him. ‘I should know.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ called Christopher.
Razi reined his panicked horse to a standstill and stared at his friend with anxious hope.
‘It’s all right,’ said Christopher.
‘You are sure?’
‘Yes. You know your name, do you not?’
Razi nodded. Christopher did not ask, as Wynter would have done, Do you know what it means? Do you recall who your father is? Instead he waited patiently while Razi turned to look at Sólmundr. The warrior smiled sadly and raised his chin in greeting.
‘I . . . I am the Lord Razi Kingsson,’ murmured Razi, turning to scan Wynter’s face, ‘al-Sayyid Razi ibn-Jon Malik al-fadl.’
‘There you have it,’ said Christopher, and he turned his horse without meeting Wynter’s eye and set off up the trail again. ‘That is all that counts.’
Razi relaxed instantly. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Good.’ He laughed ruefully. ‘Good. That’s very good.’
But it’s not all that counts! thought Wynter. It’s not all that counts at all.
Up in the rocks, something snickered. Wynter and Christopher crouched in their saddles, reaching for their swords. The sly, dirty sound skittered from rock to rock around them and slithered its way in echoes from the cliffs above. Boro tried to bolt after it, but Sólmundr snapped at him, ‘Tar anseo,’ and the warhound came reluctantly to heel.
Razi did not crouch. Instead he straightened indignantly and glared into the rocks with absolute disdain. ‘Loup-Garou vermin,’ he hissed. ‘Surely there’s something that can be done about the damned things?’ And with a tut of disapproval, he swung his horse around and nodded for Christopher to lead the way.
They journeyed until late into the evening, when the waning light made the uneven ground too treacherous and the danger of Wolves too dire to continue on. Still deep in the heart of that silent, echoing valley, they set up camp in a sheltering alcove of rock.
The horses tended to, the equipment checked, Wynter once more took Alberon’s folder and sat with it across her knee. She ran her hands across its plain cover and contemplated the impact it would have upon the kingdom. Glancing at Razi, she wondered how he would have tackled presenting this to his father. Certainly he did not believe in Alberon’s plans. In fact, they seemed to go against his very nature. But, despite his very great difficulty in seeing Alberon’s point of view, Wynter was certain Razi would have done his best to represent his brother’s argument. She could not fathom how he would go about defending a plan so contrary to his own personal beliefs, but if anyone could have managed the task, it would have been Razi.
Now, as her friend placidly watched the sun withdraw its dismal light from the valley, Wynter hugged the folder to her chest and fretted over what was going to happen. Razi had not recognised these documents when she had shown them to him, and he had simply gazed curiously at her when she had tried to explain his mission. The urge to grab him and shake him and scream What are we going to do? had been almost too much to handle. But, despite her frustration, Wynter did not want to cause another of Razi’s horrible panics, and so, faced with even this mildest of confusion, she had risen to her feet and walked away from him. Razi had been sitting, ever since, with his back to the cliff wall, completely still and passive. Wynter thought he had never looked so serene, and to her shame, that infuriated her.
Sólmundr hummed as he cooked the supper. Boro lay at his side, his chin on his paws. Now and again, the giant hound’s ears would swivel upwards and he would growl at something unseen in the rocks above. But he was used, by now, to Sólmundr calling him back, and he made no attempt to run off to what Sól was convinced would be a fatal encounter with not one but two Loups-Garous.
Christopher was fussing with the mule-packs. He too was driving Wynter mad, though it was hard for her to understand why. It was not really that she blamed him for the terrible encounter with the Wolves. It was more, oh God forgive her, that she wanted him to blame himself. At least a little. At least to the extent that she could then hug him and tell him,