by Morgan Rice
“This is where the former duke was killed?” he asked as he moved. One of the noblewomen nodded a reply. “And the boy, Royce, was here?” That got another nod. “Then I require you to leave me here.”
The nobles seemed only too glad to flee the place, and Dust could understand it. He knew how much most people feared death, rather than welcoming it at its appointed time. He suspected that the nobles might be back with more guards in due course, but the prospect didn’t bother him.
Instead, he knelt, attending to his task. Back when he had been trained, each of his senses had been honed by the priests in turn, the better to look out for the smallest sign of the foes he was sent to slay. Now, he bent those senses to his will, looking for clues as to where his target might have gone, listening and touching and tasting.
Scent was the sense that gave Dust something first, though, because there was something on the edge of what his nose could detect that was familiar. He was not a dog to track a man with ease by it, but the priests had at least trained him with flasks of water which might or might not be poisoned, suits of armor that might or might not contain a foe to fight. His nose was sharp enough to pick out the subtle distinctions that marked one man from another, and Dust knew this scent, had smelled it before, but where?
The forest.
Royce had been the boy he had passed in the forest.
Dust laughed then, and the sheer rarity of that laughter caught him a little by surprise. Things were not funny or good or unexpected; they just were. But in this case, the runes he had cast near the stranger had told him that it was not the time for that one’s death yet. It seemed that the fates had a sense of humor, leading him so close to his prey only to lead him away again.
That, or they had some deeper purpose.
Dust heard the sound of men gathering beyond the room in the scrape of armor, and the rasp of blades being drawn. Probably the men doing it believed that they were being stealthy, and a part of Dust urged him to leap forward among them, showing them the weakness of their attempt at surprise.
His eyes fell upon the still intact symbol for peace, though, and Dust bowed his head in acknowledgment of the sign. This was not the moment for more violence, but for a more subtle approach instead.
Dust surveyed the box, examining his options to see with seemed the most favored by the signs. The box had a sloping roof that headed up to the edge of the pit’s walls, and from there to the streets beyond. The scampering of a rat across it showed him the best route, the only route.
Bunching his muscles, Dust leapt up, catching hold of the rim of the roof with his fingertips. He pulled himself up smoothly, muscles moving with the perfection of long training. Somewhere below him, he heard the crash of the door, and the shouts of men come to try to kill him.
“Where has he gone?” one demanded.
“He’s a sorcerer! Vanished into thin air!” another declared.
Dust smiled at that. The only magic he had was that which the priests had drawn into his body, and the knack for reading the signs. He needed no more. Idly, he wondered if these men knew how close they sat to their deaths, and if they understood that only the sign of peace had saved them.
Of course not, because they were not angarthim.
For the moment, he stayed still, picking out his route across the roof. Dust became a part of it for the time that he was there, still enough to let eyes slide from him, silent enough that his breathing was the loudest thing about him. He saw that the rat had been correct, and that its path would avoid those spots where the roof might squeak or give him away. Silently, on padding feet, Dust ran.
Once he reached the walls, he dropped lightly, not caring that the drop might have killed another man. It was not his moment to die. He rolled at the bottom, coming up smoothly, and pulled his hood up to obscure his features. Sticking to the shadows, he headed for the parts of the settlement where the violence was, knowing that it would be easiest to lose any pursuers there, because what sane man would step into such violence?
Dust would, and he would come through unscathed, because none of the runes he had cast today had told him otherwise. Besides, he still had a task to complete. He knew his prey now, and would not be fooled again. He would not pass him by next time. Instead, he would come upon the boy as swiftly as an arrow fired from some celestial bow.
“And when I do, fates willing,” he whispered, “I will be every bit as deadly.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
It seemed so strange to Royce to be walking away from the village in which he had grown up, and to be doing it with so few answers. He and the others were only walking slowly through the forest, yet it seemed as if every step was taking him a hundred miles from the spaces where he had grown up, and the person that he had been doing it.
“There is a blacksmith a couple of villages over who forges good weapons,” Hendrik said. “He has been providing people with them ever since the first rumblings against the duke started. Now that you’ve struck the first blow in the fight against the nobles, I’m sure he will want to help.”
“That wasn’t what I planned to do,” Royce said. He held out his hand and Ember leapt from his grip, circling up amongst the trees.
If he concentrated, Royce could see things as the hawk saw them now, seeing the clusters of people spread out there, making their way through the spaces where there were no tracks, just in case there were any of the duke’s men watching. He could also see that there weren’t, and quickened his pace.
“Whatever you planned to do,” Matilde said, from the other side of him, “the fact is that you did it. You struck the blow that started all this, and you stood all night over the dead. People won’t forget that.”
Royce wasn’t so sure about that, but he knew that he wouldn’t forget it, just as he wouldn’t forget any of the things that had made it necessary. He wouldn’t let the people who had died slip away into oblivion, forgotten by everyone. He would make sure that they were remembered, and avenged.
“We should find a better name for you,” Matilde said. “Maybe Royce of the Pyre. Royce Vigil Holder. Royce… What’s that?” she turned toward a sound in the forest.
Royce was already looking at the cause of it through Ember’s eyes.
“A deer,” Royce said. “We’re causing enough noise…” He was about to say “to wake the dead” but didn’t, because the dead of last night wouldn’t be so easily woken. “…to scare off anything, and there’s no need to play at sneaking about anyway. There aren’t any of Altfor’s men here that I can see.”
“Sharp eyes you have,” Hendrik said. “Maybe we should call you Royce Game Spotter.”
“Just Royce is fine,” Royce said. He knew the others were trying to cheer him up, but right then, he couldn’t see anything that would lift his spirits after everything that had happened. He still had the soot of the fire on him, could still smell the stench of burning flesh and hear the things Lori had said about him. They put him no closer to learning who his father had really been, though.
He flexed his hand, considering the mark on the palm there. The lines on it were as clear as if they’d been designed that way, rather than being burnt into place in some moment he had no memory of. They stood, white and silvery, against the rest of his flesh.
“I think they’ll call you more than that before this is done,” Hendrik said.
Royce shrugged and kept walking. “I don’t care about that.”
“Then what do you care about?” Matilde asked.
A part of Royce wanted to simply say vengeance, but even as he thought it, he knew that it was more complicated than that. He took a moment to think, and when he spoke, he picked his words carefully. This felt like a moment when the world was listening. The people following him through the forest certainly were.
“I want to save my brothers,” he said. “I want Altfor to pay for what he did to my village. I want the man who killed my parents dead, and I want people to be free to live without nobles swooping down on them whenever t
he whim takes them. If my friend Mark survived the pit, I want to find him too.”
“Sounds like a lot to achieve,” Hendrik said.
Royce looked over to him. “If it’s so much, why are you coming with me?”
“I said that it was a lot,” the other boy said. “Not that it was impossible. Some things are worth the effort. Some things are worth dying for.”
Royce thought back to his village, and the pyre. He thought back beyond it, to the Red Isle, and the pit. He even found himself thinking about what it must have been like on the night he was conceived, wherever and whenever that was.
“There has been a lot of death already,” he said, “but I suppose, if anything is worth fighting for, this is it.”
They walked until the edge of the trees came into view, revealing a flat landscape of fields in which a village sat behind the kind of low palisade that might slow down horses long enough for the inhabitants to flee. Royce saw people going about ordinary days there, and somehow that felt wrong. It felt anything but right that normal life could go on so calmly when his own village had been wiped from the world. It felt to Royce as though even walking down into it would be a betrayal.
Even so, he did it, because where else could they all go?
They walked down into the village together, and they should probably have looked like a rabble with no direction in that moment, but through Ember’s eyes, Royce saw the beginnings of an army below, dozens moving in concert, following him. The others with him followed along in his wake like a broad shadow spread across the ground, or like an arrowhead of which he was the point.
As they came into the village, some of the villagers there came out to meet them, and some of them had weapons in their hands as if expecting an attack by the nobles, or maybe the Picti who sometimes poured out of the wild places. They had blades and they had bows, and more than that, they looked as though they knew how to use them.
For a moment, Royce thought that maybe they would attack, and that perhaps he had done the wrong thing by bringing these people here. Then Hendrik waved, and one of the villagers waved back with a smile.
“Ho there!” Hendrik called out. “We’re here with Royce, the one who killed the old duke!”
That got a moment of silence from the villagers, and then a cry went up. Royce half expected it to be a cry to kill him for the treason of attacking the duke like that, because whatever these villagers felt, surely they would need to show their loyalty if they wanted to avoid the nobles’ retaliation.
Instead, he heard them calling out his name.
“Royce… Royce… Royce!”
Some of them jabbed their weapons in the air while they did it, while others moved forward to join in the throng of people who went with him. Some of the ones with him were talking to the villagers, and Royce was surprised to find that the snatches of conversation he caught were mostly about him.
“…killed the duke as easily as breathing…”
“…fought in the pit and won…”
“…say he trained on the Red Isle…”
“…he stood there all night, I swear it…”
Royce swallowed at the thought of so many people talking about him, but he didn’t tell them to stop. Instead, he walked in the direction of what was obviously a blacksmith’s forge, where smoke billowed out over the rooftops from a stone building. An older man stood in front of it, hammering on a billet of red hot steel with a hammer that looked as though even Royce would have struggled to swing it. The man had gray hair, a braided beard that had been tied back over his shoulder, and a leather apron covering up his clothes.
He glanced up as Royce approached, but then looked back down, continuing with his work. Royce approached closer, waiting for the man to acknowledge him, but he just kept hammering.
“You must be the only person in this village who isn’t interested in me showing up,” Royce said.
“Man takes his eye off his work, man might hit his thumb,” the smith said. “They say you’ve done some stuff, but that doesn’t make a thumb grow back.”
“No,” Royce said. “I guess not. I’m Royce.”
“Know who you are,” the smith said.
Royce had the feeling that the smith would keep going like this all day if he had to. He tried to think of something that would catch the other man’s attention, and could think of only one thing. He drew his sword, laying it out on the table nearest the older man.
“When you get a minute, can you make sure my sword doesn’t have any nicks?” he asked. “We’ve a lot of fighting ahead. Hendrik even said you might be able to help get us weapons.”
“Did he now?” the smith said, sounding dismissive, but he still went over to the spot where Royce’s sword sat, the crystal blade shining in the morning light. He looked up, staring Royce in the eyes. “Where did you get this?”
“On the Red Isle,” Royce said. “It was part of the test before they sent me here to die.”
The smith held up the blade, looking along its length to inspect it, looking impressed, even awed, by the object he held.
“It must have been the gods’ own test to earn a thing like this,” he said. “And you know as well as I do that a blade like this won’t nick.” He held the sword out to Royce, hilt first. “I’m Ogren, blacksmith to this place. I’ve made blades for rebels, for soldiers, for wanderers. At a time like this, when there are rebels in the streets and everyone wants to fight, why should I give you and your friends anything when those swords might be needed elsewhere?”
“Because we can actually change things,” Royce said. “Because everyone wants to fight. If it were as easy as wanting it, then the kingdom would already be ruled fairly. You know weapons, so you know it takes more than a willing hand to wield them. I’ve trained on the Red Isle.”
Ogren stood there for a moment or two, apparently considering. “And what will you do with these weapons?”
“I’ll start by saving my brothers,” Royce said.
The smith seemed to consider for another second or three, and then nodded. “Follow me,” he said, and led the way back, away from his forge, to what looked like an old wood store set ready for winter. He pulled away a panel, and Royce saw the gleam of steel within. He saw swords and axes, bows and suits of mail. There was enough there to equip a small army of skirmishers and warriors, and just looking at it, Royce could see that it was of the highest quality.
“A man who can remember family at a time like this is a man worth following, I reckon,” Ogren said. “Tell your friends that they can take what they need, if they can show me that they know enough about using it that they won’t cut their own feet off.”
“That seems fair enough,” Royce said.
Ogren snorted. “Fair? You think this world is fair?”
“Maybe we’ll make it a little fairer,” Royce suggested, and he heard the smith snort again.
“I think I liked your first idea better. At least saving your brothers is something a man might actually do.”
Royce didn’t know what to say to that, so as the others started going to Ogren to get kitted out with blades and armor, he went over to the heart of the village, where it seemed that people were starting to gather. It was only as they turned toward him that he realized they were waiting for him to say something.
“I don’t know what to say to you all,” he admitted. “I’ve no experience of being a leader, and everything I’ve done is just because it seemed like the only thing to do at the time. Now, the next thing for me to do is to save my brothers, and I’m not sure I can ask any of you to come with me.”
“We’re coming anyway,” Matilde said from the side. She had a bow and a couple of long knives now, along with a coat of mail that shimmered in the light.
“Just tell us where we’re going,” Hendrik said.
“That’s the first thing,” Royce said. “We need to find out where they are. My guess is that Altfor will have taken them to the castle’s dungeon, if they’re anywhere.”
&nb
sp; He saw a boy pushed forward, younger than he was, and looking nervous as people shoved him to the front. Royce looked at him, seeing that he obviously wanted to say something, but also seeing that he was clearly uneasy.
“What is it?” Royce asked.
“They… they aren’t there,” the boy called out. “My brother works up at the castle as a guard, and my ma has me bring him food sometimes. Last time, I saw them being dragged out and hauled off somewhere.”
“Somewhere?” Royce asked. He didn’t want to think about the possibility that they might already have been taken to their deaths. He didn’t want to think that after all of this, he might still be too late. “Do you know where?”
The boy shook his head, and Royce could feel the disappointment rising inside himself.
“My brother might, though,” the boy said. “He says that he knows everything that goes on up at the castle. If anyone can tell us, he can.”
That might be true, but it was also dangerous. Royce could hardly just go to the castle and ask, could he? Except… if he didn’t do that, then there was every chance that his brothers were going to die.
“You can’t be considering this,” Hendrik said. “You can’t seriously be thinking about going to the castle, just on the chance that someone’s brother might know something.”
Put like that, it sounded utterly insane. Even so, Royce couldn’t see another way to do it.
“I’ll go,” Royce said. “If there’s a chance to save my brothers, I’ll go, but no one has to come with me.” He looked around at the people gathered there. “I’m serious. I don’t want anyone else risking their lives for me.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Matilde said. “Of course we’re going to come. Where you go, we go.”
She offered a salute with one of her blades, the light shining from the weapon. Around Royce, there was a chorus of murmurs, and almost all of them seemed to agree with what Matilde had just said. They were looking at him as if he were some kind of hero, some kind of leader.