Assassin's Quest (13 page)

“And cool, my lady,” I observed blithely. “I prefer the night for walking. The moon’s close to full, which should be light enough on a road as wide as the river road.”

“Have you no fear of the Forged ones?” Harper Josh asked in consternation.

Now it was my turn to be surprised. “This far inland?”

“You
have
been living in a tree,” Honey exclaimed. “All the roads have been plagued with them. Some travelers hire guards, archers, and swordsmen. Others, such as we, travel in groups when we can, and only by day.”

“Cannot the patrols at least keep them from the roads?” I asked in astonishment.

“The patrols?” Honey sniffed disdainfully. “Most of us would as soon meet Forged ones as a pack of Farrowmen with pikes. The Forged ones do not bother them, and so they do not bother the Forged ones.”

“What, then, do they patrol for?” I asked angrily.

“Smugglers, mainly.” Josh spoke before Honey could. “Or so they would have you believe. Many an honest traveler do they stop to search his belongings and take whatever they fancy, calling it contraband, or claiming it was reported stolen in the last town. Methinks Lord Bright does not pay them as well as they think they deserve, so they take whatever pay they are able.”

“And Prince . . . King Regal, he does nothing?” How the title and the question choked me.

“Well, perhaps if you go so far as Tradeford, you might complain to him yourself,” Honey told me sarcastically. “I am sure he would listen to you, as he has not the dozens of messengers who have gone before.” She paused, and looked thoughtful. “Though I have heard that if any Forged ones do make it far enough inland to be a bother, he has ways of dealing with them.”

I felt sickened and wretched. It had always been a matter of pride to King Shrewd that there was little danger of highwaymen in Buck, so long as one kept to the main roads. Now, to hear that those who should guard the King’s roads were little more than highwaymen themselves was like a small blade twisted in me. Not enough that Regal had claimed the throne for himself, and then deserted Buckkeep. He did not keep up even the pretense of ruling wisely. I wondered numbly if he was capable of punishing all Buck for the lackluster way he had been welcomed to the throne. Foolish wonder; I knew he was. “Well, Forged ones or Farrowmen, I still must be on my way, I fear,” I told them. I drank off the last of my mug and set it down.

“Why not wait at least until the morning, lad, and then travel with us?” Josh suddenly offered. “The days are not too hot for walking, for there’s always a breeze off the river. And four are safer than three, these days.”

“I thank you kindly for the offer,” I began, but Josh interrupted me.

“Don’t thank me, for I wasn’t making an offer, but a request. I’m blind, man, or close enough. Certainly you’ve noticed that. Noticed, too, that my companions are comely young women, though from the way Honey’s nipped at you, I fancy you’ve smiled more at Piper than at her.”

“Father!” indignantly from Honey, but Josh plowed on doggedly.

“I was not offering you the protection of our numbers, but asking you to consider offering your right arm to us. We’re not rich folk; we’ve no coin to hire guards. And yet we must travel the roads, Forged ones or no.”

Josh’s fogged eyes met mine unerringly. Honey looked aside, lips folded tightly, while Piper openly watched me, a pleading look on her face. Forged ones. Pinned down, fists falling on me. I looked down at the tabletop. “I’m not much for fighting,” I told him bluntly.

“At least you would see what you were swinging at,” he replied stubbornly. “And you’d certainly see them coming before I did. Look, you’re going the same direction we are. Would it be that hard for you to walk by day for a few days rather than by night?”

“Father, don’t beg him!” Honey rebuked him.

“I’d rather beg him to walk with us, then beg Forged ones to let you go unharmed!” he said harshly. He turned his face back to me as he added, “We met some Forged ones, a couple of weeks back. The girls had the sense to run when I shouted at them to do so, when I could not keep up with them any longer. But we lost our food to them, and they damaged my harp, and . . .”

“And they beat him,” Honey said quietly. “And so we have vowed, Piper and I, that the next time we will not run from them, no matter how many. Not if it means leaving Papa.” All the playful teasing and mockery had gone out of her voice. I knew she meant what she said.

I will be delayed,
I sighed to Nighteyes.
Wait for me, watch for me, follow me unseen.

“I will travel with you,” I conceded. I cannot say I made the offer willingly. “Though I am not a man who does well at fighting.”

“As if we couldn’t tell that from his face,” Honey observed in an aside to Piper. The mockery was back in her voice, but I doubted that she knew how deeply her words cut me.

“My thanks are all I have to pay you with, Cob.” Josh reached across the table for me, and I gripped hands with him in the ancient sign of a bargain settled. He grinned suddenly, his relief plain. “So take my thanks, and a share of whatever we’re offered as minstrels. We’ve not enough coin for a room, but the innkeeper has offered us shelter in his barn. Not like it used to be, when a minstrel got a room and a meal for the asking. But at least the barn has a door that shuts between us and the night. And the innman here has a good heart; he won’t begrudge extending shelter to you if I tell him you’re traveling with us as a guard.”

“It will be more shelter than I’ve known for many a night,” I told him, attempting to be gracious. My heart had sunk into a cold place in the pit of my belly.

What have you got yourself into now?
Nighteyes wondered. As did I.

5

Confrontations

W
HAT IS THE
Wit? Some would say it is a perversion, a twisted indulgence of spirit by which men gain knowledge of the lives and tongues of the beasts, eventually to become little more than beasts themselves. My study of it and its practitioners has led me to a different conclusion, however. The Wit seems to be a form of mind linking, usually with a particular animal, which opens a way for the understanding of that animal’s thoughts and feelings. It does not, as some have claimed, give men the tongues of the birds and beasts. A Witted one does have an awareness of life all across its wide spectrum, including humans and even some of the mightier and more ancient of trees. But a Witted one cannot randomly engage a chance animal in “conversation.” He can sense an animal’s nearby presence, and perhaps know if the animal is wary or hostile or curious. But it does not give one command over the beasts of the land and the birds of the sky as some fanciful tales would have us believe. What the Wit may be is a man’s acceptance of the beast nature within himself, and hence an awareness of the element of humanity that every animal carries within it as well. The legendary loyalty that a bonded animal feels for his Witted one is not at all the same as what a loyal beast gives its master. Rather it is a reflection of the loyalty that the Witted one has pledged to his animal companion, like for like.

I did not sleep well, and it was not just that I was no longer accustomed to sleeping at night. What they had told me about Forged ones had put the wind up my back. The musicians all climbed up into the loft to sleep on the heaped straw there, but I found myself a corner where I could put my back to a wall and yet still have a clear view of the door. It felt strange to be inside a barn again at night. This was a good tight barn, built of river rock and mortar and timber. The inn kept a cow and a handful of chickens in addition to their hire-horses and the beasts of their guests. The homely sounds and smells of the hay and animals put me sharply in mind of Burrich’s stables. I felt suddenly homesick for them as I never had for my own room up in the keep.

I wondered how Burrich was, and if he knew of Patience’s sacrifices. I thought of the love that had once been between them, and how it had foundered on Burrich’s sense of duty. Patience had gone on to marry my father, the very man to whom Burrich had pledged all that loyalty. Had he ever thought of going to her, attempting to reclaim her? No. I knew it instantly and without doubt. Chivalry’s ghost would stand forever between them. And now mine as well.

It was not a far jump from pondering this to thinking of Molly. She had made the same decision for us that Burrich had made for Patience and himself. Molly had told me that my obsessive loyalty to my king meant we could never belong to one another. So she had found someone she could care about as much as I cared for Verity. I hated everything about her decision except that it had saved her life. She had left me. She had not been at Buckkeep to share my fall and my disgrace.

I reached vaguely toward her with the Skill, then abruptly rebuked myself. Did I really want to see her as she probably was this night, sleeping in another man’s arms, his wife? I felt an almost physical pain in my chest at the thought. I did not have a right to spy on any happiness she had claimed for herself. Yet as I drowsed off, I thought of her, and longed hopelessly after what had been between us.

Some perverse fate brought me a dream of Burrich instead, a vivid dream that made no sense. I sat across from him. He was sitting at a table by a fire, mending harness as he often did of an evening. But a mug of tea had replaced his brandy cup, and the leather he worked at was a low soft shoe, much too small for him. He pushed the awl through the soft leather and it went through too easily, jabbing him in the hand. He swore at the blood, and then looked up abruptly, to awkwardly beg my pardon for using such language in my presence.

I woke up from the dream, disoriented and bemused. Burrich had often made shoes for me when I was small but I could not recall that he had ever apologized for swearing in my presence, though he had rapped me often enough when I was a boy if I had dared to use such language in his. Ridiculous. I pushed the dream aside, but sleep had fled with it.

Around me, when I quested out softly, were only the muzzy dreams of the sleeping animals. All were at peace save me. Thoughts of Chade came to niggle and worry at me. He was an old man in many ways. When King Shrewd had lived, he had seen to all Chade’s needs, so that his assassin might live in security. Chade had seldom ventured forth from his concealed room, save to do his “quiet work.” Now he was out on his own, doing El knew what, and with Regal’s troops in pursuit of him. I rubbed vainly at my aching forehead. Worrying was useless, but I could not seem to stop.

I heard four light foot scuffs, followed by a thud, as someone climbed down from the loft and skipped the last step on the ladder. Probably one of the women headed for the backhouse. But a moment later I heard Honey’s voice whisper, “Cob?”

“What is it?” I asked unwillingly.

She turned toward my voice, and I heard her approach in the darkness. My time with the wolf had sharpened my senses. Some little moonlight leaked in at a badly shuttered window. I picked out her shape in the darkness. “Over here,” I told her when she hesitated, and saw her startle at how close my voice was. She groped her way to my corner, and then hesitantly sat down in the straw beside me.

“I daren’t go back to sleep,” she explained. “Nightmares.”

“I know how that is,” I told her, surprised at how much sympathy I felt. “When, if you close your eyes, you tumble right back into them.”

“Exactly,” she said, and fell silent, waiting.

But I had nothing more to say, and so sat silent in the darkness.

“What kind of nightmares do you have?” she asked me quietly.

“Bad ones,” I said dryly. I had no wish to summon them by speaking of them.

“I dream Forged ones are chasing me, but my legs have turned to water and I cannot run. But I keep trying and trying as they come closer and closer.”

“Uhm,” I agreed. Better than dreaming of being beaten and beaten and beaten . . . I reined my mind away from that.

“It’s a lonely thing, to wake up in the night and be afraid.”

I think she wants to mate with you. Will they accept you into their pack so easily?

“What?” I asked startled, but it was the girl who replied, not Nighteyes.

“I said, it’s lonely to awake at night and be afraid. One longs for a way to feel safe. Protected.”

“I know of nothing that can stand between a person and the dreams that come at night,” I said stiffly. Abruptly I wanted her to go away.

“Sometimes a little gentleness can,” she said softly. She reached over and patted my hand. Without intending to, I snatched it away.

“Are you shy, prentice-boy?” she asked coyly.

“I lost someone I cared for,” I said bluntly. “I’ve no heart to put another in her place.”

“I see.” She rose abruptly, shaking straw from her skirts. “Well. I’m sorry to have disturbed you.” She sounded insulted, not sorry.

She turned and groped her way back to the loft ladder. I knew I had offended her. I did not feel it was my fault. She went up the steps slowly, and I thought she expected me to call her back. I didn’t. I wished I had not come to town.

That makes two of us. The hunting is poor, this close to all these men. Will you be much longer?

I fear I must travel with them for a few days, at least as far as the next town.

You would not mate her, she is not pack. Why must you do these things?

I did not try to form it into words for him. All I could convey was a sense of duty, and he could not grasp how my loyalty to Verity bound me to help these travelers on the road. They were my people because they were my king’s. Even I found the connection so tenuous as to be ridiculous, but there it was. I would see them safely to the next town.

I slept again that night, but not well. It was as if my words with Honey had opened the door to my nightmares. No sooner had I dipped down into sleep than I experienced a sense that I was being watched. I cowered low inside my cell, praying that I could not be seen, keeping as still as I possibly could. My own eyes were clenched tight shut, like a child who believes that if he cannot see, he cannot be seen. But the eyes that sought me had a gaze I could feel; I could sense Will looking for me as if I were hiding under a blanket and hands were patting at it. He was that close. The fear was so intense that it choked me. I could not breathe, I could not move. In a panic, I went out of myself, sideways, slipping into someone else’s fear, someone else’s nightmare.

I crouched behind a barrel of pickled fish in old man Hook’s store. Outside, the darkness was splintered by the rising flames and shrieks of the captured or dying. I knew I should get out. The Red Ship Raiders were certain to loot and torch the store. It was not a good place to hide. But there was no good place to hide, and I was only eleven, and my legs were shaking beneath me so that I doubted I could stand, let alone run. Somewhere out there was Master Hook. When the first cries arose, he had grabbed his old sword down and rushed out the door. “Watch the store, Chad!” he had called after him, as if he were just going next door to hobnob with the baker. At first I had been happy to obey him. The uproar was far down the town, downhill by the bay, and the store seemed safe and strong around me.

But that had been an hour ago. Now the wind from the harbor carried the taint of smoke, and the night was no longer dark, but a terrible torchlit twilight. The flames and the screams were coming closer. Master Hook had not come back.

Get out,
I told the boy in whose body I hid.
Get out, run away, run as far and as fast as you can. Save yourself.
He did not hear me.

I crawled toward the door that still swung open and wide as Master Hook had left it. I peered out of it. A man ran past in the street and I cowered back. But he was probably a townsman, not a Raider, for he ran without looking back, with no other thought than to get as far away as he could. Mouth dry, I forced myself to my feet, clinging to the doorjamb. I looked down on the town and harbor. Half the town was aflame. The mild summer night was choked with smoke and ash rising on the hot wind off the flames. Ships were burning in the harbor. In the light from the flames, I could see figures darting, fleeing and hiding from the Raiders who strode almost unchallenged through the town.

Someone came about the corner of the potter’s store at the end of the street. He was carrying a lantern and walking so casually I felt a sudden surge of relief. Surely if he could be so calm, then the tide of the battle must be turning. I half rose from my crouch, only to cringe back as he blithely swung the oil lantern against the wooden storefront. The splashing oil ignited as the lamp broke, and fire raced gaily up the tinder-dry wood. I shrank back from the light of the leaping flames. I knew with a sudden certainty that there was no safety to be gained by hiding, that my only hope was in fleeing, and that I should have done it as soon as the alarms sounded. The resolution gave me a small measure of courage, enough that I leaped to my feet and dashed out and around the corner of the store.

For an instant, I was aware of myself as Fitz. I do not think the boy could sense me. This was not my Skilling out but his reaching to me with some rudimentary Skill sense of his own. I could not control his body at all, but I was locked into his experience. I was riding this boy and hearing his thoughts and sharing his perceptions just as Verity had once ridden me. But I had no time to consider how I was doing it, nor why I had been so abruptly joined to this stranger. For as Chad darted into the safety of the shadows, he was snatched back suddenly by a rough hand on his collar. For a brief moment he was paralyzed with fear, and we looked up into the bearded grinning face of the Raider who gripped us. Another Raider flanked him, sneering evilly. Chad went limp with terror in his grasp. He gazed up helplessly at the moving knife, at the wedge of shining light that slid down its blade as it came toward his face.

I shared, for an instant, the hot-cold pain of the knife across my throat, the anguished moment of recognition as my warm wet blood coursed down my chest that it was over, it was already too late, I was dead now. Then as Chad tumbled heedlessly from the Raider’s grasp into the dusty street, my consciousness came free of him. I hovered there, sensing for one awful moment the thoughts of the Raider. I heard the harshly guttural tones of his companion who nudged the dead boy with his booted foot, and knew that he rebuked the killer for wasting one who could have been Forged instead. The killer gave a snort of disdain, and replied something to the effect that he had been too young, not enough of a life behind him to be worth the Masters’ time. Knew too, with a queasy swirling of emotions, that the killer had desired two things: to be merciful to a lad, and to enjoy the pleasure of a personal kill.

I had looked into the heart of my enemy. I still could not comprehend him.

I drifted down the street behind them, bodiless and substanceless. I had felt an urgency the moment before. Now I could not recall it. Instead, I roiled like fog, witnessing the fall and the sacking of Grimsmire Town in Bearns Duchy. Time after time, I was drawn to one or another of the inhabitants, to witness a struggle, a death, a tiny victory of escape. Still I can close my eyes and know that night, recall a dozen horrendous moments in lives I briefly shared. I came finally to where one man stood, great sword in hand, before his blazing home. He held off three Raiders, while behind him his wife and daughter fought to lift a burning beam and free a trapped son, that they might all flee together. None of them would forsake the others, and yet I knew the man was weary, too weary and weakened by blood loss to lift his sword, let alone wield it. I sensed, too, how the Raiders toyed with him, baiting him to exhaust himself, that they might take and Forge the whole family. I could feel the creeping chill of death seeping through the man. For an instant his head nodded toward his chest.