The Misbegotten (An Assassin's Blade Book 1) (23 page)

“Look out!” a guardsman said.

“I think he was aiming for me,” another suggested.

They hurried past the alleyway.

We moved deeper into the alley and emerged into the market square. Merchant carts had been turned over, some of them splintered and beyond repair. A tavern door had been caved in and the wooden sign mangled. Probably from the resulting riot of frightened peasants, although the horses madly galloping around likely didn’t help matters.

A guardswoman turned the corner near the fountain, where the square intersected with paths that led to the stables on one side and the barracks on the other. A grating voice stopped her.

“What’s going on here?” That voice… straight from the mouth of the commander of the city guard, Wilhelm Arch. He probably wasn’t a very happy man.

“Sir, the stables are on fire and the horses are running freely. Captain Quill has requested buckets.”

“Get out of my way,” he snarled.

The commander stormed past his soldier. Vayle and I crouched behind a broken merchant cart, although his tired eyes probably wouldn’t have seen so much as a tail of our shadows.

“Quill,” Wilhelm barked. “Get your men to the keep.”

“This thing will burn to the ground!”

“Then let it burn. Get your men to the keep now and form ranks. Let the servants put the fire out. The Shepherd is still here.”

Wilhelm marched back across the front of the square. He stopped a guardsman who bounded through with a bucket in hand. He snatched the bucket from the guard’s grasp and sat it on the frozen fountain. “Go find some servants and tell them to put this fire out.”

“Which servants, sir?”

“All of them! I don’t give a damn if they’re sleeping, washing, cooking or serving the fucking king. Get them down here now.”

“Yes, sir, of course.” The guard obediently loped up the steps toward the keep.

Wilhelm moved swiftly past the fountain. “Gods help you, Shepherd,” he muttered lowly, “I
will
hunt you down.”

“You know,” I whispered to Vayle, “I much prefer when people hide from us. It’s not as much fun the other way around.”

“Damn,” Vayle said, her face scrunched up in frustration. “Guess my plan didn’t work.”

Like ants coming to the aid of their queen, the city guard of Edenvaile formed ranks along the front of the keep and then around it.

“It got us out of the stables,” I said, “and into the square. Which is where
my
plan now comes into effect.”

“You have a plan?”

I smiled. “I do now.”

I crept deeper into the square, treading carefully along the outcrop of shadows dangling outward from the buildings. Most of the city guard had positioned themselves by the keep, but there were still guardsmen and guardswomen who maintained their roving posts atop the parapet, and an eye in the sky is the most difficult of all to avoid.

Vayle and I made it to the outer ward, not far from the gate. From there we followed the snow-dusted cobblestones toward the forge and onward to the barracks that stood near the northeast part of the kingdom. Someone had apparently woken the stable boy, because he had one horse wrangled and tied to a post by the forge. He was in hot pursuit of the other, which made my foray into the barracks clean and quick.

I might have told Vayle I had a plan, but that wasn’t entirely true. I had the fragments of a plan, the bits and pieces that make up the foundation of a plan. I just hadn’t quite filled in the details yet. Which was a problem, because as we stepped inside the barracks, the conclusion to my plan was rapidly drawing near.

The building was made mostly of ancient timber dull as dirt, patched up over the years with fresher pine that looked out of place. Several rooms split off from the main hallway, most of which, from a cursory glance, stored armor, cloth, weapons and stale wheat rations.

The floor of wooden planks and the braced walls twisted and turned beneath ceiling joists appearing in dire need of repair. Eventually, the hallway spat us out into an enormous square room where the luminous glow of torches reflected off a marble floor. The walls were covered in stone, and on the back wall hung a large banner with two swords crossing a shield: the coat of arms of the Edenvaile city guard.

A man stood with his back to us, behind a desk littered with papers, candles and an inkwell. He was admiring a knight’s helmet hanging upon the wall. It looked like it had come hot off the polishing stone, never having seen battle a day in its life.

“Nice helmet,” I said.

He sucked in a silent breath, noticeable only because his shoulders damn near rose up over his ears for a moment. He turned slowly, a solid steel breastplate fastened to his chest. Plate bracers covered his wrists and matching gloves protected his hands. Half of him shined with the luster of gems, the other half dull with the muddiness of leather and old mail.

“Did I catch you while you were changing?” I asked.

“You did,” he said, taking a meaningful step toward the table. “I was preparing for a hunt.” His lips glowered from behind the denseness of his beard. He reached down and took a long, heavy-looking great sword from the table.

“Seems a weapon you’d want if you were hunting pigs.”

He heaved the greatsword into his clutches, holding tight to the cracked leather hilt with both hands. “It is a weapon intended to be used while mounted. A weapon you need swing only once.” He dropped it onto the table, where it crashed with a deafening thud. “I suppose it’s not needed anymore. My prey has come to me.”

He sounded mad. Looked mad, too. Had that empty, voided look about him that a person gets when their mind has fled, leaving behind a cold, dark husk.

“Listen to me, Wilhelm,” I said, hoping that my plea with insanity would for once work. “What you heard on that balcony… none of it was true. Why would the Black Rot ally with the Danisers? Since when have you known us to be players in the game? We’re hired swords, that’s all.”

“You’ve played me for the third time now,” Wilhelm said. He took a pair of plate greaves from the table and fastened them around his legs.

“Vileoux is dead, Wilhelm. For all intents, he’s dead. His mind is being controlled by the conjurers. He’s a puppet. It’s all a show. It’s a front.”

Wilhelm secured pauldrons around his shoulders. “Conjurers? That’s your best lie?”

“Think about it,” I said. “Truly think about what Sybil accused me and Dercy of. Forget for a moment the passion in your heart, the perceived deception you accuse me of, and instead question the logic of your queen’s accusations.”

Wilhelm turned and removed the knight’s helmet pinned to the wall. “Vileoux will have me put to death for this. I failed him. Twice. My only hope for survival is delivering your head to his bedchambers.”

“How long have we known each other?” I asked. “A good thirteen, fourteen years? Almost as long as the Rots have been around.”

He put the helmet on. It fit loosely around his thin neck. When he spoke, his words reverberated off the brushed steel. “Fourteen long years of deceit.”

Vayle stepped forward. “Commander Wilhelm, I know of a young man who had been part of your city guard many years ago, a young man whose name you will undoubtedly recall better than I. A night in a tavern that had run too long and seen far too much ale drain from the kegs ended with this soldier bedding a barmaid. His wife caught wind, and left for deeper into the North with their two children, back to her family. It drove the man mad, and in this madness, with passion disfiguring his thoughts, he murdered fifteen people and then himself.”

“Eulys Torr was a coward,” Wilhelm said.

“Only after passion had made him one,” Vayle said. “Don’t let the madness of passion turn you into something you may greatly regret, Commander. Something you may not return from. Astul tells the truth. The conjurers are coming, and they have Sybil Tath orchestrating their arrival.”

“I saw the end of the conjurers,” Wilhelm said, taking a large triangular shield made of hardened iron and covered with embossed designs. He produced a sharp short sword, marred with scratches and dents. “They don’t exist anymore.”

He moved slowly around the table. “This ends now, Shepherd.”

Damn. This wasn’t how my plan was supposed to conclude, with the death of a, for the most part, good man who I’d known for many years. I was supposed to convince him, to lure him in with the power of persuasion. People think an assassin’s greatest strength is his blade, but it’s not. Sharpened steel — or ebon — is only fitting for the throat you intend to slice. Often, lots of good men, proud women and innocent children stand between you and that throat. You can’t just go along and kill everything in your way. You’ll soon find yourself dangling from a rope, and if you evade capture long enough, all the death, the murder, the blood… it’ll mess with you. It’ll change you.

There was another reason I didn’t want to duel Wilhelm. Iron clanking against plate is loud enough, but ebon smacking against the heavy shit sounds like the god of thunder erupting in orgasmic glory. It’s a great way to give everyone in a half-mile radius the precise point of your location, which I suppose is wonderful if you’re a merchant looking to hawk your wares or a whore eager to make your day’s fill. It’s less enticing for an assassin attempting to sneak into a heavily guarded keep.

“Give me a fair duel, at the very least,” I said. “An honorable one.”

Wilhelm laughed. “I know of the sword you swing. Don’t take for me an imbecile.”

I tossed my blade on the ground. It skittered along the wooden planks and banked off the wall. “Then give me a steel edge that your blacksmith has crafted, and remove all that silly armor and the shield.”

Wilhelm lowered his guard suspiciously. “You don’t care about honor.”

“People always say that. But I do have standards, you know? See, I don’t care about the manner in which I kill the arrogant son of some rapacious lord. But a man who I’ve known for fourteen years — or thirteen, however the hell long — that deserves a modicum of honor if a duel must decide who will continue to piss around on this world.”

Wilhelm nodded his iron head at Vayle. “And her?”

“Oh, my!” I said sardonically. “The vicious Commander Vayle, renowned for the countless corpses her blade has strewn across the lands without mercy and certainly without honor.” I rolled my eyes. “Do you think you can possibly help yourself, Commander? Or do you think your hunger for blood will overwhelm you and cause you to charge into this duel with your teeth gnashing and tongue hanging out?”

“I will sit here idly,” Vayle said. “Nary a clap nor a jeer.”

“And if I kill him?” Wilhelm said.

Vayle smirked. “Then you face me.”

That didn’t seem to worry Wilhelm as much as it should have. My commander was nearly as adept at plunging steel into soft flesh as I was. Some would even say more so, but those people are known for exaggerating things.

Wilhelm went about systematically removing his oversized and overpolished plate armor, stopping after unstringing or unclasping each piece to take a long, hard look at me, as if I might have the audacity to renege on our battle of honor. Smart man.

After dressing himself down to mail and leather, he retreated back to the wall that held various armaments and laid his shield on the table. He picked up a silver greatsword, the hilt shaped in ninety-degree downward curves that thinned to fangs.

He grabbed a matching blade and flung it at me. It fell at my feet, and I picked it up.

The shaft was weighty and much too long. Greatswords are nice when you want reach and impact behind your blows, but I preferred the blinding speed of shorter blades, the swords you can work with in close quarters. Still, I couldn’t complain too much. After all, I wouldn’t be swinging it.

Er, hopefully.

Wilhelm descended from the raised platform that supported his decorated table. He held his sword out like a chalice at an important dinner with the lords and ladies of the court.

“Think of it as a toast,” Wilhelm said.

“Ah, a toast before death? I like it.”

I tapped his blade with mine, and we pulled our weapons back. I heaved the sword into a guard position with both hands and shuffled toward the far wall to my left. Wilhelm matched my pace and my strides, a ceaseless focus bending his brows.

It sounded like we were dancing in there, our feet tip-tapping the marble floor as I retreated and he pursued — the eternal dance of predator and prey. The space between us was of cyclical light and darkness. The blackness trounced the flickers of torches, only to be burned into oblivion moments later.

When Wilhelm closed that space — when his mesh coat jangled a bit louder and his sword glimmered a touch sharper — I lunged and feigned an attack, pushing him back. And then I retreated farther along the wall, scraping the rough stone with my backside.

I leaped onto the platform and hunkered down into a defensive position near Wilhelm’s table.

“An assassin with strategy,” he remarked coolly as I had taken the high ground.

Of course I was an assassin with strategy. You don’t live long as a reaper of life unless you have some wit floating about inside your fucked-up head. But the taking of the high ground in this duel was merely coincidence and not part of my strategy.

As Wilhelm contemplated his next move, I allowed myself a cursory glance at his table, and I inched closer to two objects that would seize me victory. One swayed in all directions, lurching and lunging. The other sat lazily inside the rim of what used to be living bone.

I lowered my sword, offering Wilhelm the opening he’d been looking for.

He took it.

His greatsword dipped to the floor as he lunged, back leg fully extended, front foot rising up onto the platform. The blade rose in an arc, sweeping furiously through the air. A burst of air climbed up my leg and broke against my knee.

The serrated steel continued onward. Had I been a fool, I would have put the tip of my blade at my shoulder and the hilt at my hip, guarding the soft flesh I left unprotected.

But upward strikes are so often feints, and so it was with Wilhelm’s. His wrists rotated over one another as he moved the sword past my thigh. It was now charging ahead, straight as an arrow toward my gut.