Serpentine (The Beggar's Ride Book 1)

by Tim Stead

  She got her chance the next day. It had been mentioned by one of the servants that the candidates were being housed in the west wing of Col Boran, on the second level. It was where she might expect an apartment of her own were she to ask for it, so that was a fine excuse.

  The west wing was a long, low stone building with a peaked roof. A narrow terrace ran along its eastern side offering what views were available at this modest elevation. The apartments here were on two levels with a living area below and a bedchamber above, both taking advantage of the views and the eastern light.

  Callista saw the candidates as soon as she stepped onto the terrace. They were lounging in chairs outside the open door of one of the apartments, talking. They looked up as she approached.

  “Is it time?” The one who asked was a young man, fair haired, blue eyed. He looked intelligent and had the sort of chiselled features traditionally associated with heroism. His firm chin was even dimpled.

  “I’ve not come from Eran Pascha,” Callista replied.

  “So who sent you?” It was the girl who asked the second question, the young man’s sister at a guess. Her hair was darker, but they had the same eyes, the same straight nose and full lips.

  “Nobody,” Callista said. “I just came to look at the apartments. The Eran said I might have one.”

  “You spoke to the god mage?” the boy asked, a hint of disbelief in his voice.

  Callista nodded.

  “We should introduce ourselves,” the girl said. “I’m Laya and this is Rodric. And you…?”

  “Callista.”

  “The Serpent’s Ward?” Rodric seemed excited. “You’ve really talked to the Eran, then?”

  “I have.”

  “So what do you know about the test?”

  “Nothing I can tell you will help,” Callista said.

  “You don’t know anything?”

  “I do, but when you do the test she takes your memory away.”

  The candidates exchanged a look.

  “Tell us anyway,” Laya said.

  So Callista told them – the two halves of the test, everything that Pascha had told her in the roof garden.

  “We’ll pass the first part, no problem,” said Rodric. “We both have the talent.”

  “How do you know?” Callista was surprised. She thought that the only way to know if you had the talent was to wear Pelion’s crown.

  “The gifts,” Laya said.

  Callista noticed a sharp look between the two of them. Rodric shrugged. “The talent manifests itself in different ways if it’s strong,” he said. “We both have gifts.”

  “Gifts? What do you mean?”

  “Rodric is a truth teller,” Laya said. “Like the dragons.”

  “But far less reliable,” Rodric said. “Laya is a seer, she sees things that are far away, usually inconveniently. It’s like a kind of occasional blindness.”

  “Oh.” Callista hadn’t thought such things existed among ordinary men and women. These two must be so talented that it leaked from them like wheat from a rat-nipped sack.

  “Tell me more about the second part of the test,” Rodric said. “What aspect of character is she looking for? Determination? Strength of will? Rationality?”

  “Kindness, I think,” Callista replied. “Something like that.”

  “Kindness? What use is that to a god mage?”

  Callista shrugged. She was beginning to feel uncomfortable with these two. There was something in the way they looked at her that reminded her of her uncle. Laya seemed to sense this.

  “We’re asking too many questions,” she said. “Won’t you sit with us for a while and have a cup of wine. It’s Telan. They only serve the best here.”

  She wanted to leave, to go back to her room in Sithmaree’s house, but she didn’t want to offend, so she agreed to the cup of wine and sat in a nearby chair.

  “So where did you come from?” Laya asked.

  “Afael.”

  “And did you come to be tested?”

  “I thought so,” Callista said. “But I think I was just running away. My uncle was plotting to kill me. I think he’d already killed my father.”

  “Really?” Rodric leaned forwards. “Why didn’t you kill him?”

  It had never occurred to Callista that she might kill her uncle. He was older, stronger, backed up by the presence of her cousins. She would not have known how to go about it, and not sure she could have done it even if the opportunity had arisen.

  “He was my uncle,” she said. “Killing him would have been wrong.”

  “Nonsense,” Rodric said. “It would have been self defence – perfectly justified.”

  Many people, almost everyone she knew, would have agreed with Rodric. Sithmaree certainly would have, but Callista believed that something could be understandable, excusable, even justified, without being right. Killing her uncle would have been one of those things.

  “I couldn’t have done it,” she said. She saw again a trace of scorn in Rodric’s eyes and it was like a door opening in her mind, a sudden rush of knowledge. If Rodric took the test he would die. With this knowledge came a new dilemma. Pascha had confided to her that the test was there to eliminate those who might become a threat, and not just to Pascha and Col Boran, but to the entire world. Yet Rodric did not seem a bad man. It would be hard for her to live with what she knew would happen if she did not speak.

  “Don’t take the test,” she said.

  Rodric stared at her. “What? Why?”

  “If you take the test you’ll die,” she said.

  “How do you know?” Laya demanded, but Rodric had turned pale, and he was still staring at her.

  “It’s the truth,” he said. “I’ve never been so certain of it.” He sounded devastated, completely knocked out of his customary assurance.

  “How could she know?” Laya said.

  “I don’t know. Perhaps she has a talent, but it’s a deep truth, not a belief. She knows it.”

  Laya stared at Callista, her face quite hostile, but it was Rodric who spoke.

  “My sister. What will happen if she takes the test?”

  “I don’t know,” Callista said.

  “You’re not trying. Look at her. Think about it.”

  Callista tried, but the door inside her refused to open again, and all she saw was Laya looking both angry and afraid.

  “Everybody dies,” she said. “I don’t know, but everybody dies.”

  Rodric looked at his sister. “She really doesn’t know,” he said. “I think we should withdraw.”

  “But I could still pass,” she said. “Think what it would mean.”

  “What are the odds, Callista, how many have taken the test?”

  “Twelve,” she said. “They say twelve and none have passed.”

  “None of them were me,” Laya said.

  17 The Forests of Golt

  Narak understood the hunt. The part of him that was wolf revelled in the chase, but not in the same way that men did. Wolves hunted for food, and it was a sacred rite, governed by simple rules and celebrated by the pack. Men were very different. It was true that they ate what they killed, but they didn’t need to, and the artifice of bows and spears stole a lot of the honour from the pursuit.

  It was also true that men competed with each other, and that was different, too. Wolves cooperated in the hunt and shared in the kill.

  Narak rode with the king. He was competent on a horse, but he would rather have run on foot. He would certainly have been quicker than the horse, and the beast would not have had to endure Narak upon its back for so many hours. The others might think he was a Farheim guard, but the horse was not fooled in the slightest.

  He rode close to Degoran, keeping an eye open for possible assassins. They had been unable to discover the power behind the archer on the roof, though every unpleasant measure had been employed to discover a name, so another attempt on the king’s life was likely.

  The forests around Golt were not what they ha
d once been. There had been some cutting of timber, and some parts were rather thick with underbrush while others were quite open. There were deer here, their sign and scent was everywhere, but they were animals that had been hunted for generations and the slightest sign of a horse or a horn was enough to scatter them.

  King Degoran rode down to a stream that ran along the edge of a clearing. He paused to permit his mount to drink. They had been out for an hour with no success and the king seemed a little dispirited.

  “There’s not much about,” he said. Narak said nothing. He could tell that a doe was watching them from a thicket not a hundred paces away but he saw no reason to point this out. He was there to protect Degoran, not ensure the success of the royal hunt.

  “We should have brought dogs,” the Royal Huntsman said. He was riding on the king’s left, spying out the ground and trying to spot something for Degoran to shoot at. “There is a lot of sign here.”

  “Dogs and beaters are so unfair,” Degoran said. “I prefer to chase my quarry, not have it brought to bay or driven onto my bow.”

  Narak approved of the sentiment, but he didn’t think the king was skilled enough to run down a hunt-wise deer. He stood up in the saddle again and scanned the woods about them. There were quite a few men out in the forest today, as there were in any royal hunt, and it required a considerable proportion of Narak’s attention to keep track of those nearby.

  The doe helped. It was watching them as well as a group of men making their way past to the north. Narak could feel it getting ready to make a break south, but he reached out and soothed it. It was well hidden and would probably be safe where it was.

  Faint sounds indicated that a second group was trailing the first. It was unusual enough to draw Narak’s attention. No hunter would consciously follow another. It reduced the chance of a kill to almost nothing, so the second group was either spectacularly incompetent or up to no good.

  Narak focussed. The second group was one man, and he was moving more quietly than the hunters ahead of him.

  He eased his mount around the back of the king’s and took up a position between Degoran and the lone hunter.

  “Something?” Degoran asked.

  “Perhaps,” Narak replied.

  Something else caught his attention – another lone hunter was moving to the west.

  “This way,” he said. He turned his mount south east and trotted through the clearing on the far side of the stream. They rode into an older part of the wood where thick trunks reached up to a continuous green canopy. It reminded Narak of his own forest, and he felt a pang of longing to be there and away from these noisy men.

  He felt uneasy, too. The dual hunters felt like beaters and the forest felt like a trap. He stopped again and listened. The forest is an open book for a wolf. The scents and sounds carry more information than a man can see, and Narak used these senses to study the path ahead. He heard a silence, a hole in the bird noise ahead of them, and he picked up a man scent again, though whoever it was made no sound.

  It could be anything, of course – a forester stopped for his lunch, a woodcutter taking his ease by a stream.

  The other two, the lone hunters, were still on their courses to the north and west. They had not yet turned to follow. Narak made his decision. He slipped out of the saddle.

  “Wait here,” he said.

  The huntsman began to protest, but Narak ignored him and walked into the forest. As soon as he was out of the king’s sight he took on his aspect and began to run at a pace no horse could have matched, and with a fraction of the noise. Trees flashed past, and in a few moments he was within the cone of silence around the man ahead of them. He slowed and stopped, listening and scenting the air again.

  Now he could pinpoint the man. He was no more that twenty paces ahead, and somewhat above ground level. Narak eased his way around the trunk of a tree and looked up. In the first fork of a large oak he could see a man’s foot. The rest of him was concealed behind leaves and branches.

  The ground between them was not ideal. Leaf litter was sure to give him away, even if it only took a few steps to cross. He moved slowly, drifting across the ground away from the tree, trying to get a better view. As he edged across his angle improved, and he could see the man to the knee, then the waist, and finally there was the bow, an arrow already on the string.

  It was all he needed.

  Narak jumped.

  Nobody knew what Narak had become. Narak didn’t, and nor did Pascha, not even Kirrith the great dragon. He was Benetheon God, Farheim, Dragon Kin, but more than all these he was the wild chemistry that all these things had blended into being.

  One jump was enough. He covered more than twenty paces, flashing up into the tree where the archer waited, seizing him and tearing both of them out of the canopy and onto the ground the other side. They landed heavily, and Narak rolled to his feet, now in possession of the bow. The archer, who was doubtless an assassin, lay stunned at his feet.

  “Who hired you?” Narak demanded.

  The man stared at him, unable, perhaps, to grasp what had just happened. Narak stepped forwards and picked him up as easily as a child picks up a wooden doll.

  “Who hired you? I am Wolf Narak, and I will have an answer.”

  “I don’t know,” the man gasped, flailing arms and legs. “I don’t know. I swear it.”

  “How were you hired?”

  “A man with a mask. He didn’t speak. What I was to do was on paper.” The terrified archer was telling the truth. He wanted to ask more questions, to get more detail, but out there in the forest were another two men with bows. He broke the man’s neck and dropped him. He ran again.

  He had more ground to cover this time, so it took longer. His preternatural hearing picked up the sound of the hunt master complaining, but the king was doing as Narak suggested, and not moving. He wondered for a moment if the hunt master was part of the plot against the king, but dismissed the idea. The man was simply focussed on the hunt.

  He closed quickly on the second assassin. The man had turned and was moving towards the king. It meant that he had less time, so he ran straight at him.

  The assassin saw him coming. He would have been hard to miss. He was in his aspect and more dragon than man, ripping through the undergrowth, snapping off saplings. The assassin had time to shoot once, and Narak let the arrow strike him and shatter.

  He seized the man and disarmed him.

  “The man who hired you, where did you meet?” The assassin didn’t answer immediately, so Narak shook him. “Tell me!”

  Being a truth teller didn’t necessarily mean that you were told the truth, but Narak had discovered that fear and surprise would often rip the truth from a reluctant heart. It worked again.

  “The Green Hill, the tavern,” the assassin gasped. Narak knew the place. It was favoured by the lower sort of politician and the kind of men they employed.

  “Who was he?”

  “Spare me, lord, and I’ll help you catch him.”

  Well, this one was quick to recover and quick witted with it. Narak was tempted.

  “How?”

  “He owes me payment. I can tell you where and when.”

  “Payment for failure? I doubt it.”

  “He wore a ring, lord, I can identify it.”

  “That’s a lie,” Narak told him. He could see that the assassin was searching desperately for some bargaining chip, and he really should have killed him at once, but Narak waited to give him a chance, just a slim chance of saving his life.

  “A scar. He had a scar on his right wrist, and he spoke with an accent. He wasn’t from Golt.”

  This was true, and helpful. It would give Narak a place to start on his search for the real culprit.

  “I will let you live,” he told the man, throwing him to the ground. “You will meet me in the Loyal Blade this evening. You will not tell anyone who or what I am. If you fail in either of these things I will hunt you down and you will spend many hours regretting your fa
ilure. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, lord. I will do exactly as you say.”

  “Good.” Narak broke the man’s bow and was gone, running once more through the forest. The third man would have moved. He could be close to the king by now. It was even possible that Narak had spent too long questioning the second assassin.

  He angled his run so that he would reach a place between the king and the third man as quickly as possible, but even as he ran he could sense that the assassin had stopped, that he was within bowshot, and his ears picked up the creak of a bowstring. It was going to be very close.

  He leapt again, reaching out with his right hand. He was at full stretch, but his timing was perfect. He caught the arrow in mid flight, not even breaking it. It would only be a few seconds before the archer could fit another arrow and shoot again, and Narak wouldn’t reach him before that. He turned in mid air and threw the arrow.

  It was a move that he had never considered before, and allowing for that handicap it worked quite well. The arrow returned to its origin quite a lot faster that it had left it. Narak had barely seen the man when he threw, but the arrow struck the archer in the arm.

  Narak landed and was running again. As far as he could tell the king had not noticed that anything was amiss, and he wanted to keep it that way, at least for now.

  The archer had been bowled over by the arrow. It had passed right through his arm, shattering the bone. Narak already had his source of information, so he killed the assassin without hesitation. He would probably have bled to death anyway.

  For a moment he stood over the body, listening once more to all the sounds of the forest, scenting the air, but he could detect nothing amiss. There were still groups of men abroad, but all were mounted, and all seemed nothing more than what they should be – the nobility of Avilian about the business of the hunt.

  He turned and walked back to where the king was waiting with his impatient hunt master.

  “Is all well?” the king asked when Narak emerged from the trees.

  “All is well, lord king,” he replied. They would find the bodies, he supposed, and some questions would be asked, but that would be later, and later he would be in the Loyal Blade. Later he would learn more about what had happened this day.