The Unicorn Hunt - Dorothy Dunnett [216]
‘That’s why I was standing next to him,’ Nicholas said. ‘Luckily, I think he guessed that I knew. What have you got on your back? I’ve got an ox on my back and you’re carrying an overgrown rabbit. I wish I hadn’t come. I’m going to spend the rest of my life like a horseshoe.’
He went on talking, because he felt like it.
It was not a descent for weaklings, but neither was it beyond a band of strong and experienced men. The guides led, prodding the snow with their spear-butts and shearing the rounded ledges to reveal their true dimensions. In some ways it was easier because the soft snow provided a grip. In others it was terrible because the wind thrust the snow into their noses and eyes, and twice obliterated everything in a dense white haze in which particles seemed to rise and fall from every direction at once. Then they halted and crouched until it was over.
Along with them in the searing pure air they carried a miasma of blood and perspiration and dung. They also carried, wrapped about them, the beneficent warmth of strong pelt and powerful bodies still hot from the kill. To rest was not entirely a hardship except, in the case of Nicholas, when he came to stand up with the weight on his back. The second time, Father Moriz gave him his spear and a hand under the elbow.
Since it occurred to no one, least of all Nicholas, to be concerned for an animal, there was a subterranean cheerfulness under the strain. When, halfway down, the snowfall stopped and they were able to halt at a platform to make a fire, and release their burdens and eat, men began to smile suddenly and call to one another. Nicholas stretched his legs beside Father Moriz and John. The Duke had turned his back on him, so no one risked greeting him – yet. Nicholas didn’t mind.
He felt happy. He had only recently realised that he felt happy. For a considerable time – for a day – he had been released from everything but physical danger. His difficult gift had not been required, nor had the interminable exercises by which he kept himself sane. He had thought of nothing but each moment as it came.
It would end soon. But, his feet lacerated, his knee on fire, his face cracked and every muscle screaming in protest, he was content.
They were met an hour after that by men battling up from below, who took the beasts from them and led them down cleared ways to the bottom, where the great sledges had been brought, each pulled by eight plumed and iron-shod horses, and covered with velvet fringed awnings with the Duke’s crest in gold. The carts for the chamois came after.
There were braziers fitted inside each sledge, and a place for spiced wine and fresh meat and cushions. They moved off as the last of the light left the sky. Then the torches were lit and, under the canopies, faces glowed red round the braziers. The runners hissed over the snow; the moon rose; they ate and drank and laughed, and became sleepy; and woke, and drank and laughed and argued again. At some point the Duke, in the leading sledge, broke into hearty song, and the roar of a bawdy hunting chorus surged down the chain, and was followed by others. When the lights of the castle appeared, the cheer that rose was not at all sober. The sledges entered the gates and stopped, and men staggered out, Nicholas stumbling among them. Two or three fell. The others waited, respectfully swaying, for their Duke to emerge.
Duke Sigismond of the Tyrol left his sledge on a chair carried by two liveried men who, with twenty others, had run from the building to serve them. The Duke’s hat, fallen awry, showed his fair hair puffed over his face, which was rosy and swollen and lay to one side, on his shoulder. Experiencing a jolt, he opened one large shallow eye and uttered a thick but not unamiable obscenity. A short, bulky shadow at the top of the stairs suddenly moved and walked briskly indoors.
The Duchess. Her expression, Nicholas saw, had not been one of disgust,