Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [219]
It was too fast for fear. It was so fast that he forgot to steer for the first seconds, and only remembered when he saw the first bump coming up. A little later he realised that the roar of the crowd had receded, and what he was hearing was the wind, and the rumble and hiss of the runners, and a squeak from Jordan as he heeled off something and jerked back immediately. He was a little behind. Then there was a lot of rough territory ahead, and they both had to start to navigate round it.
He lost speed, doing that, and once heeled too abruptly, so that he nearly flipped over, and clods of half-frozen snow slapped his face and his body. His leg muscles were working, and he was panting as if he were running. The brat was still behind, but not by much. He had a crimson hat of dyed coney that reminded Henry of a quintain he had once had, which whirled when you struck it. He had been young at the time, and the master-at-arms had screamed at him when he missed, which was often.
They were on the straight, smoother slope now, and gathering speed. The torches were nearer. To one side, he saw a snatch of smithy-red sparks and heard a crack, as an unseen rock snagged the brat’s runner. For a moment the boy’s sledge slewed right and left, then he had it level and running again. The brat would want to win, for his father. The brat’s father was waiting below, probably wishing he were at home by the fire with Henry’s grandfather. De Fleury had saved the fat old man’s life, back at Beltrees. De Fleury and Henry’s grandfather were a pair.
The trees came. Not so many, but wickedly spaced, so that you couldn’t get a clear run. As he steered, he could hear himself gasping from the vibration. He could see the boy being tossed about, and clinging on. He saw the other sledge tip, as his had done, and right itself, and then tip in the other direction. Trying to right it, the brat had failed to watch, for a moment, what lay further down.
Henry saw the tree, and moved his weight to swerve gracefully round it. Then he saw the red capped head flying past him in a straight line.
He only had to do nothing. He was expected to do nothing. He was tired of doing what he was expected to do. Henry de St Pol changed his weight, and his direction, and brought the sledge round in an arc which sheared the roots of the tree and crashed full tilt into the other hurtling sledge, which fell on its side, throwing its occupant into the snow. The brat yelled ‘Zot!’ and vanished into a snowdrift. His sledge slewed and slithered and stopped. Henry stopped his and stepped over into the drift. He found an arm and a collar and hauled. He said, ‘Have you never done this before?’
The snow was nearly knee-deep. Climbing out and back to the sledges, they both slipped from time to time on the crust: soon, that kind of spill would crack bones. The brat said, ‘You nearly went over too. Do we go on?’
Henry said, ‘Well, we’d look a bit silly if we stayed here all night.’
The brat gave a grunt and a passing grin, and knelt back on his sledge. Then he got up. ‘I’ll push you.’
‘Why?’ Henry said.
‘You saved me,’ the brat said.
‘More fool me. All right,’ Henry said, and lay down, and allowed the brat to push him. After that, it wasn’t a bad slide to the bottom, although he never reached such a good speed again. It pleased him to think of the brat behind, scrabbling with his pathetic feet, trying to get the sledge to run off. Serve him right. If he couldn