Regis sighed. “I’ll come and help you get them in.” He opened the door again on the snow-swept twilight; the world toppled dizzily around him and he clung to the door.
“Regis, let me go, you’re ill again.”
“I can manage.”
“Damn it!” Suddenly Danilo was angry. “Will you stop pretending and playing hero with me? How the hell will I manage if you fall down and can’t get up again? It’s a lot easier to drag a couple of armfuls of dry branches in, than try to carry you through the snow! Just stay in here, will you?
Pretending. Playing hero. Was that how Danilo saw his attempt to carry his own weight? Regis said stiffly, “I wouldn’t want to make things harder for you. Go ahead.”
Danilo started to speak but didn’t. He set his chin and strode, stiff-necked into the snowy darkness. Regis started to unload the saddlebags but became so violently dizzy that he had to sit down on one of the stone benches, holding on with both hands.
He was a dead weight on Danilo, he thought. Good for nothing but to hold him back. He wondered how Lew was faring in the mountains. He’d hoped to draw pursuit away from him, that hadn’t worked either. He felt like huddling on the bench, giving way to the surges of sickness, but remembered Javanne’s advice: move around, fight it. He hauled himself to his feet, got his flint-and-steel and the wisps of dry hay they had kept for tinder, and knelt before the fireplace, clearing away the remnants of the last travelers’ fire. How many years ago was that one built? he wondered.
Wind, and cold slashes of snow blew through the open doorway; Danilo, laden with branches, staggered inside, shoved them near the fireplace, went quickly out again. Regis tried to separate the driest branches to lay a fire, but could not steady his hands enough to manipulate the small mechanical flint-and-steel, fed with resinous oil, which kept the spark alive. He laid the device on the bench and sat with his head in his hands, feeling completely useless, until Danilo, bent under another load of branches, came in and kicked the door shut behind him.
“My father calls that a lazy man’s load,” he said cheerfully, “carrying too much because you’re too lazy to go back for another. It ought to keep the cold out awhile. Anyway, I’d rather be cold here than warm in Aldaran’s royal suite, damn him.” He strode to where Regis had laid the fire, kneeling to spark it alight with Regis’s lighter. “Bless the man who invented this gadget. Lucky you have one.”
It had been part of Gabriel’s camping-kit that Javanne had given him, along with the small cooking pots they carried. Dani looked at Regis, huddled motionless and shivering on the bench. He said, “Are you very angry with me?” Silently, Regis shook his head.
Danilo said haltingly, “I don’t want to … to offend you. But I’m your paxman and I have to do what’s best for you. Even if it’s not always what you want.”
“It’s all right, Dani. I was wrong and you were right,” Regis said. “I couldn’t even light the fire.”
“Well, I don’t mind lighting it. Certainly not with that gadget of yours. There’s water piped in the corner, there, if the pipes aren’t frozen. If they are, we’ll have to melt snow. Now, what shall we cook?”
The last thing Regis cared about at that moment was food, but he forced himself to join in a discussion about whether soup made from dried meat and beans, or crushed-grain porridge, would be better. When it was bubbling over the fire, Danilo came and sat beside him. He said, “Regis, I don’t want to make you angry again. But we’ve got to have this out. You’re no better. Do you think I can’t see that you can hardly ride?”
“What do you want me to say to you, Dani? I’m doing the best I can.”
“You’re doing more than you can,” said Danilo. The light of the blazing fire made him look very young and very troubled. “Do you think I’m blaming you? But you must let me help you more.” Suddenly he flared out, “What am I to say to them in Thendara, if the heir to Hastur dies in my hands?”