Short fucker, he thought as his sword continued its lethal sweep. Someone let out a whimper, and his eyes shot down. He stared in shocked realization at the person in front of him. Not a soldier or assassin at all, but a young boy that couldn’t have been more than ten summers of age. He grunted as he tried to arrest the forward motion of his blade. He managed it, but only barely, and the blade quivered inches above the blonde haired boy’s head. There was a frozen second when the kid stared, wide-eyed at the blade mere inches from his face. Aaron’s nostrils filled with the sharp, pungent smell of piss and a puddle began to grow at the youth’s feet. The moment passed and the kid collapsed to the ground on his butt, letting out terrified, screeching whimpers as he inched his way backward along the pavement.
Suddenly, the owner of the second pair of footsteps, a heavy-set, middle-aged woman with limp, dull brown hair tied up in a bun, came around the corner. The woman gasped in shock and fell beside the boy, hugging him tightly against her heaving bosom. “What did you do?” She demanded of the sellsword, piercing him with an angry gaze.
Aaron stared, confused, “I … I don’t—“
“You don’t what?” The woman shrieked, as the boy cried against her, and he realized with growing dread that the red-faced, thick-jowled woman was the boy’s mother. “What’s wrong with you, you bastard? Does it make you feel like a man to wave your sword at children?”
“What? No, of course not. Listen, I thought—“
“Oh, I very seriously doubt you thought much of anything,” the woman shot back, and he noticed people staring curiously down the alley as they walked by.
Perfect, he thought, just what I need. “Well what were you thinking?” He demanded, suddenly angry, “why were you following me?”
“He saw you fight!” The woman screamed, “You were his favorite. He just wanted to see you, you … you monster!”
I tried to tell you, Co said.
Aaron sighed heavily as he knelt down in front of the kid. He looked into the boy’s watery gaze, saw that his bottom lip was trembling. “Listen, kid. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—“
“Don’t you get near him.” The woman was back to her feet faster than Aaron would have thought possible given her weight, and slapped him in the face, hard. She jerked the boy behind her and began to back away from him, waving a sausage-sized finger at him in warning, “Don’t you come near us. Guards. I want the guards!” She shouted, turning toward the street, “Someone get the guards, this man tried to kill my son!”
“What?” He asked, shocked, “Lady, what in the name of the gods are you talking about?” But the woman was too far gone now, screaming and wailing at the top of her lungs for the guards. He noticed with dismay that a crowd was beginning to gather, drawn by the mother’s screams like flies to shit. It was only a matter of time, he knew, before the whale got her wish and the guards began to show up as well.
He opened his mouth to try to explain what had happened, but shut it again when he looked into the faces of the crowd and saw the anger building in their scowls and the hard set of their jaws. They, like the woman, were past reasoning. The woman was screaming as if he had killed her boy, and in answer to her shouts, the kid had begun to wail loudly. He considered waiting for the guards so that he could explain what happened and immediately dismissed the idea. In his experience, guards cared little for the truth at the best of times, and with the excess of people and no doubt crimes the contest had drawn, they’d be even less willing to listen than usual. If he was lucky, he’d end up spending the night in a cell for his trouble; a cell that, with all of the people chasing him, he’d never make it out of alive. More likely, though, they’d hang him and have done. So, instead of waiting for his fate to come to him, he employed a skill that any successful sellsword cultivated. He ran.
He darted down the alley, slammed into a wall as he made a sharp turn and kept going, leaping over beggars and ignoring their cries of shock as he wound his way through the maze-like side streets, putting as much space between him and the crazy lady as he could and heading, in what he thought was the direction of the inn.
Finally, he emerged out of the alley and onto the main road of the city, panting and gasping for air. He glanced behind him and was relieved to see no mob of angry, kid-loving fat women barreling after him. He propped his hands on his knees and tried to get control of his breathing. A few passersby took in his sweat-covered face and heaving chest with strange looks, but not murderous looks, so that was alright. He looked around and saw, with relief, that the ramshackle inn was only a short distance up the lane.
He forced himself to take calm, measured strides as he headed for it. The last thing he needed was to attract attention. Well, any more attention at any rate. “What in the name of the gods was I thinking?” He muttered angrily to himself.
I think—Co began.
“Best you stay quiet just now, firefly,” he interrupted gruffly.
Adina and Gryle were sitting at the bar waiting on him. As he entered, they both jumped up from their stools and hurried toward him. “Where have you been? We thought—“ Adina paused as she glanced around the room. Deciding that the inn’s patrons were too busy drinking or swatting playfully at the harried serving girls to pay her any attention, she turned back, “We’ve been worried sick.”
“I’m alright,” he lied. Pulling a sword on kids? Charging down alleyways like a damned maniac? Buddy, you’re about as far from alright as it gets.
The princess looked at him dubiously, as if she could read his thoughts. “But where were you? Why are you so sweaty? Did something happen?”
He hesitated, “You could call it that, I guess.”
“Sir,” Gryle said, his face apologetic as he looked between the two of them, “what my m—“ he winced and his mouth worked soundlessly for a moment before he cleared his throat and tried again, “What your wife means to say, is that she is glad you’re alright—we both are—but if you still intend to fight in the tournament, we’d best be heading to the arena. It won’t be long before the matches start again.”
Aaron nodded, struggling not to let his relief show on his face. He’d done a lot of pretty shitty things in his career as a sellsword, but he was just fine not sharing the fact that he’d pulled his sword on a child. Even if the kid was a whining brat. “You’re right. Come on, let’s go.”
He could feel Adina frowning at his back as he led them out into the road and started toward the tourney grounds. “What happened, really?” She asked, and the determined look in her eyes assured him that she wasn’t going to let it go.
As they walked, he told them about the note and about his meeting with his old master. They didn’t interrupt him as he relayed the tale, but as he spoke he noticed the princess getting angrier and angrier. By the time he was finished, she looked ready to chew iron and spit horse shoes. “I knew you two knew each other.”
He nodded, “I would have told you, but I couldn’t, not in the arena where anyone could hear.”
“Oh?” She asked, her eyes flashing, “So why didn’t you tell me about the note? We could have come with you. What if it had been an ambush?” He didn’t answer, and she grabbed him forcing him to a stop, “Tell me why you didn’t tell us,” she demanded, and he suddenly thought he knew how her servants must have felt, but though her voice was angry, her eyes were pleading, “Why didn’t you trust us?”
“Trust you?” He asked, incredulous. “Trust you?” He shook his head angrily, “Him!” He hissed, “Don’t you get it? I didn’t trust him.”
Her eyes widened in shock, “You mea—“
“Yes!” He interrupted, “I didn’t tell you about the note, and I didn’t take you two with me because for all I knew it was an ambush, and if it was, there was no point in all three of us being killed, was there?” She didn’t answer. Instead, she stood staring at him, a strange look in her deep blue eyes. “What?” He asked, “Look, I might be an asshole, but I’m not a monster. I couldn’t just let—“
Suddenly, she reached her hands behind his neck and pulled him into a kiss so deep, so all-encompassing, that he completely forgot what he was going to say. Instead, he reached his arm behind her back, and pulled her closer, all his thoughts and worries vanishing as he felt her body, soft yet firm, yield to his embrace. He had no idea how long they’d been at it when he felt a tug on his shoulder. “Sir, we really should be going.” I’ll kill him, Aaron thought.
The princess pulled away, her cheeks and face flushed, “O-of course, Gryle, you’re right. I’m sorry I … I don’t know what came over me.”
Aaron frowned at the chamberlain then back at Adina, “You sure he’s right?”
She smiled, and he could see the laughter in her blue eyes, “Come on. We wouldn’t want you to be late.” He stared after her as she turned and started down the street. He turned to Gryle, and the chamberlain must have seen something in his eyes because he cleared his throat uncomfortably and hurried after.
Aaron watched him go and sighed heavily as he started after them. “Yeah, you’re right,” he muttered, “Wouldn’t want to be late.”
CHAPTER
THIRTY-NINE
As soon as he stepped out of the armory and got a look at the other contestant, Aaron knew he was in trouble. The man that approached the center of the circle from the other armory had dull brown hair, a face and build that was completely unremarkable. He was both shorter and smaller than Aaron himself. He wasn’t handsome or ugly only very … plain. He was the type of person that people forgot the name of minutes after meeting him, uninteresting in every way. None of these things were what bothered Aaron. What bothered him was the man’s walk.
His father, years ago, had told him that you could tell a lot about a man from how he walked. Did he shuffle along, his head down, each step taken as if it was a chore, avoiding people’s eyes, or did he swagger, staring at those around him in silent challenge? At the time, his father had been trying to educate his young son on the importance of understanding people’s motivations and, therefore, how to best lead them, imparting a small bit of knowledge that, he claimed, was invaluable for any general or leader.
Back then, Aaron hadn’t thought anything of it. It hadn’t been the first time his father had given him a strange lesson, and he’d just been happy to be able to spend time with him, but later in life he’d discovered that his father had been right. In fact, many people of similar backgrounds shared the same walk. Farmers, merchants, nobility, they could all be identified by the walk they used, and so, too, could soldiers.
The walk of a fighting man wasn’t the weary, purposeful walk of a farmer, nor was it the sauntering, vain strut of a noble. Instead, it was the confident stride of a man who knew how to handle himself, a man who had shed blood before, who knew he would shed it again and wasn’t much bothered by that. The man’s hands never strayed far from the sword at his side, and his dull brown eyes took in the crowd in the stands, the announcer, and Aaron, in an assessing, calculating manner, as he stalked into the circle. Not the walk of a soldier, Aaron thought, revising his opinion as he entered the center of the circle and stared into the man’s eyes, the walk of a killer.
The brown-haired man smiled at Aaron revealing straight, white teeth. He knows he has me, Aaron thought as he frowned back, knows it like he knows the sun is shining. Knows it like I know it.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Flynn Daltan and his opponent, Rodrick Elarn.” The announcer shouted, and then jogged toward the edge of the circle to the wild applause of the crowd.
“Just me and you,” the man said as he slid his sword free of its scabbard.
Aaron pulled his own sword free in reply. “Begin!” The announcer shouted, and before the word was finished the brown-haired man shot forward with alarming speed, his sword blurring as he attacked with a flurry of jabs and slashes. Backpedaling furiously, Aaron only just managed to avoid getting his stomach cut open. By the time he brought his own blade around for a strike, his opponent had already backpedaled away.
They began to circle each other and the brown-haired man smiled. “Are you scared yet?’ He asked in a low voice that only Aaron could hear. “You know that you can’t beat me, don’t you? You know that you’re not good enough, especially not wounded like you are.”
How does he know that? Aaron thought, is it really as easy to see as Darrell said? The man dashed forward once more, and all thought was pushed from Aaron’s mind as he was forced back under the heavy rain of blows.
CHAPTER
FORTY
Adina gasped as she watched Aaron retreat from the other contestant’s fearsome barrage of strikes and lunges. “Come on, Aaron,” she whispered fiercely, her hand tightening on Gryle's, “Come on.” She took a relieved breath as the sellsword managed to circle away from the other contestant, batting his sword aside in a desperate parry and putting some distance between the two of them.
“He won’t win,” a voice said beside her, and she turned to see the old man, Aaron’s one time master, beside her on the bench. The man watched the combat with a resigned expression, and to Adina’s eyes, he looked as if he’d aged twenty years in the last few hours.
“You don’t know that,” she shot back angrily, “You don’t know.”
“But I do,” he said, his voice sad. “Look at him. His wounds have stolen his strength.” Adina turned back to the fight and saw, with dismay, that Darrell was right. Aaron’s chest was heaving, and his feet were moving sluggishly. Gone was the smooth grace she’d seen him use when fighting Lucius’s two bodyguards. “No,” the old man said beside her, his voice angry, “this fight should have never happened. Please, dear,” he said, meeting her gaze with his steely, gray eyes, “tell him to yield. Yell it to him, before he gets hurt worse. The blades are blunted in tournaments, but mistakes have happened before. Please. He may listen to you.”
Adina hesitated, unsure, and the other contestant waded in behind a flurry of flashing steel again. Aaron worked his sword through desperate parries with more skill than she’d ever seen from any of her or her father’s soldiers, but he was weak from his injury, slower, and in a burst of movement the other contestant knocked Aaron’s blade wide, and brought his sword in a slash across the sellsword’s chest. Aaron shouted in pain as the sword cut across him, and he reeled away drunkenly. The princess felt her breath catch as the sword came away dripping red.
Even from this distance, she could see that Aaron’s shirt had been sliced cleanly through and was staining crimson from his blood. “It can’t be,” she whispered, “the blade is supposed to be blunted.” Her own thoughts were echoed in the confused mutters and whispers of the crowd. She turned to the old swordmaster, “It shouldn’t have cut so easily, should it?”
“No,” he answered, his lined face grim, “no, it shouldn’t have. Something’s wrong.”
“We have to do something,” Gryle whispered fiercely beside her, “Sir Aaron is in trouble and needs our help.” The heavy set chamberlain rose from his place on the bench and was immediately pushed back down by a thick-necked, bull of a man, who seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. The man wore no colors, but plain, simple leather trousers and jerkin. A sword was belted at his waist.
“If I was you, fat man,” he said, gesturing to six, similarly clad men who’d moved up to stand behind him, “I’d worry about myself. I’d say you’ve got plenty enough trouble on your own,” he turned to Adina with a cruel grin, “wouldn’t you, Princess?”
CHAPTER
FORTY-ONE
Aaron took two stumbling steps back and glanced down in shock and pain at the bloody cut across his chest. Luckily, it wasn’t deep. The steel had only just made contact. Another couple of inches, and he’d be a dead man. He turned back to the brown-haired contestant, and saw that the man was still smiling. “Who are you?” He asked, keeping his blade between them as he circled warily.
The man feinted with his blade once, twice, grinning as Aaron brought his blade up to parry blows that never came.
“Doesn’t matter who I am, does it?” He asked, as he circled, his blade low, confident that Aaron had nothing left. “What matters, is what I’m here for, and I think you know that, don’t you?”
“You came here to kill me.”
“Oh?” The man asked, his eyebrows raised in an expression of mock surprise, “and why would I do that?”
“Because you’re one of Belgarin’s soldiers.”
The man’s eyes narrowed, “I’m not anyone’s soldier, fool,” he hissed, and then abruptly he was smiling again. “Then again, I guess you could say that I’m everyone’s soldier. As long as the price is right.”
Aaron nodded as the man confirmed what he’d already known. “An assassin.”
The man shrugged, “So many bad connotations to that word. I prefer to think of myself as a problem solver, and you are a problem that a certain someone is willing to pay handsomely to get solved.” He grinned wider, “Funny thing. When I took the job, I thought that the hardest part would be finding you. After all, the north is a big place, and I didn’t relish the idea of freezing my balls off in this frozen wasteland just to dust some asshole that managed to piss off the wrong person. Imagine my surprise, then, when I track you here, to Baresh?” He laughed and shook his head, “You must be one dumb bastard,” he taunted, “It’s like you wanted to die.”
Co, he thought, if you can do anything for the pain, now’s the time.
I’ll try, but I won’t be able to hold it back for long, the Virtue answered, her young voice sounding impossibly tired and strained. Immediately, the pain lessened, didn’t disappear, but lessened enough so that he could move his left arm, and he could no longer feel the cut on his chest at all despite the blood that still leaked from it.
“I’m not dead yet,” he answered the assassin.
A Sellsword's Compassion_Book One of the Seven Virtues Page 29