Flight to the Ratterlin or A Cat and His Boy

[makesthings]

West of Belisaere and south of Sindle in a clump of trees, Sameth sprawled on the forest floor, all but dead to the world through blood loss. His horse, Sprout grazed beside him as the morning turned to afternoon and then to early evening when a piece of grass tickled his nose and he sneezed awake. He felt dazed and tried to remember, he must have

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[mogget_cat]

It's true. He never would. The Book, the bells, the duty, they would follow him forever, even into Death itself.

"A little lost princeling, weeping in the forest?" A voice insinuated itself into Sam's hearing, from somewhere out in the forest. An unnatural voice. "I would have thought you had more steel in your spine, Prince Sameth."

"Still, I am often wrong."

[makesthings]

He didn't know that voice but it knew him, with a jolt of fear, Sameth sat upright and gasped as he reached for his sword.

Sprout took this is as a sign to canter and they went off into the trees for about fifty yards. After rather longer than he'd like, Sam finally got Sprout turned around and his sword partly drawn.

The voice had felt like Free Magic and now he could tell there was something up there, he had to do something, but a spell was too hard this tired.

So he'd just brazen it out, the worst that would happen would be he'd die out here,

"Who calls Prince Sameth? Show yourself, before I wreak a spell on you of great destruction!"

[mogget_cat]

"Save the theatrics for those who respond to them," replies the voice, sharp with thinly veiled disgust. It had followed him, of course.

This time, the voice is accompanied by the sight of two piercing green eyes, flashing the last of the reflected sunlight from a branch high above Sam's head.

"And count yourself lucky that it is only me," it says, acerbic, as the small white cat leapt from the tree, catapulting off a lower branch to land a short distance from the horse's forefeet. "You've left enough of your blood around to call a brace of hormagants."

[makesthings]

"Mogget! What are you doing here?"

Sam called out in surprise, Mogget who was constantly pushing him out the door towards a future. Yet this couldn't be that Mogget.