King of Assassins

by Rj Barker

  “The high king had many entertainments, Girton Club-Foot.” Gamelon spoke quietly, as if awed. “Many of the distractions one expects of any king: fighting pairs, copulating couples and such—in every variation that can be imagined, every entertainment a ruler could need. But it is the menageries which marked him out for true greatness.” He held out a hand toward the cages that squatted in the shadows.

  As he finished speaking, I started to hear sounds but they were all very quiet. Whimpers, miserable sounds the like of which I had only ever heard in the dying rooms of the Grey Priests of Anwith. I approached the nearest cage. It was piled with straw and in among the straw I saw the thick curls of a type of serpent I was unfamiliar with. In the poor light it was hard to make it out. I saw the long, limbless body, the outline of scales and between them running and infected sores caused by lack of care. The size of the beast hypnotised me and, as I approached, I felt its existence as one of those strange lives I had felt in the bathhouse, a barely perceptible red glow—I did not understand how I could feel life within a souring. The creature shifted, and I felt more uncomfortable. For a serpent its proportions were wrong, the body too thick and too short, the face too flat.

  Eyes opened.

  I recoiled.

  “Dead gods below the sea!”

  The eyes were human. Beyond question they were human. Full of pain and misery and as the creature rolled over there was no mistaking that its body was, or once had been, human. The arms and legs were gone, either removed or never there. The scales I thought I had seen were nothing of the sort, they had been carved into the flesh as if with hot knives.

  “Fire,” said Gamelon as he came to stand beside me. “Darsese was an artist when it came to sculpting flesh with fire; the things he and the girl Arketh could do, the beasts they created for us, well, his art is amazing.”

  “No,” I said, but it was barely a whisper.

  Gamelon took my arm, pulling me forward, forcing me to confront the horrors he was so proud of.

  “Arketh still tries to create, of course, when she has time, but without Darsese’s skill she struggles.” He showed me a man who appeared to have been cut in half at the waist but lived. “Her creations barely live, and never for long.” A woman who had no body from her breasts downward, her face gone, only a small hole where a mouth should be. Her hair had been elaborately cut and curled. “Do not recoil,” his hand was like a vice around my arm, “try and appreciate. This is power, Girton.” A thing, its sex unapparent, the only way to know the pulsing red mess was human was because everything I had been shown before was also. “Or are you weak? Like your king, Girton Club-Foot? For we both know there are no gods, only men.” A pyramid of quivering flesh, one lidless eye staring out from the summit. I hoped to Xus that whoever this had been had lost all their senses and sanity. “And what we can create is astounding. If this can be done,” he whirled me around, showing me the expanse of the menageries, “age-of-balance secrets cannot be far away. But we must not be constrained, do you understand?”

  I did not understand. I could barely even think. To be confronted by such things as I had never dreamed could exist. Here in Ceadoc power had run amok. With no one holding it in check it was clear right and wrong had long ago ceased to have meaning. Gamelon stared at me, his eyes twinkling and I wondered if he waited for some confirmation from me. Because for these sorrowful creatures to exist, surely magic must be involved. The souring beneath Ceadoc started to make a sort of sense. No, it made no sense, none at all. How could these creatures have been made in secret with the souring in existence? Once, twice maybe, but after that? And with the Landsmen, men committed to stopping magic, here as well?

  Was I wrong? Was it simply that Darsese did have some sort of terrible skill with blade and fire? The likes of which I had never heard of? Or was there some sort of age-of-balance machinery hidden within Ceadoc that allowed this horror?

  I glanced at the creature in the cage again, fighting the revulsion, fighting to see it as human, but my mind rebelled. Because with recognition came a tumult of feeling, of empathy, and a deep and unstoppable anger—and here and now that was too dangerous. I felt as if I may burst and if I did the first to die would be Gamelon—and for him to die I would have to kill the two highguard with him also, and the moment I drew my blade Rufra’s chances for any peaceful transfer of power here died.

  “Did you show Rufra this?” I said. I wanted to vomit.

  “Aye, for a man who doubts all gods, he called on them enough. I had hoped he would be stronger. I had thought him a visionary until I met him.”

  Well, at least now I understood why Rufra had brought us here, and why he was so desperate to be high king. He could never abide suffering.

  “Denying the gods again, Gamelon?”

  We turned to find Fureth, the Trunk of the Landsmen, and with him ten men. One of them was huge, bigger even than Aydor, and he wore the blank visor of their elite. Stood on the other side of Fureth was Prince Vinwulf. For a man who was meant to defend the dead gods Fureth seemed remarkably calm about Gamelon’s casual denial of them.

  “Of course I am, Fureth.” He bowed low. “One day we should make a wager on their existence.”

  “Should we?” said Fureth. He peered into the nearest cage, unconcerned.

  “You seem very unconcerned by blasphemy, for a Landsman, Fureth,” I said. He smiled at me.

  “I am a practical man, cripple.” And one who loves power, I thought. “Time changes all, isn’t that what the priests teach us? They say Torelc brings only sorrow, but I am not so sure. I reckon your own king would disagree also.”

  “He would disagree with this,” I said, nodding at the nearest cage. Fureth walked over to it.

  “The Landsmen’s job is to keep the land safe when magic springs up in some commoner and they think they can change the correct order of things.” He stopped by the cage. “No good ever comes of magic, but you know that, you have seen the sourings.” He stared at the thing in the cage.

  “Rufra tells me,” I said, “that despite the cruel things you do, the blood gibbet, the questioning—that not all Landsmen are bad men. I took a step away from the cage I stood near. That you could know about a place like this and not stop it shows me just how wrong he is.”

  Fureth nodded slowly, staring into the cage in front of him.

  “Very few know about the menagerie. You have a very simplistic way of seeing life for a paid murderer, cripple.” He flicked one of the metal bars on the cage. “Darsese, as Gamelon will tell you, was a practical man. All he really wanted was to be left alone to enjoy his amusements with his sister.” He flicked the bar of the cage again. “He rewarded loyalty, did Darsese, rewarded those who kept him safe. I was always loyal. My predecessor, Kuflyn, he was not as loyal. He paid the price for it. This place,” he glanced over at me, “well, it helped ensure the loyalty of those close to Darsese. Kuflyn would tell you that,” he said, staring at the thing in the cage, “if he still had a mouth. Wouldn’t you, Kuflyn?”

  “It is remarkable, is it not, Girton?” I had been so caught up in the horror of the place and in seeing the Landsmen that I had forgotten about Vinwulf skulking behind them.

  “It is foul, Vinwulf. And what in the dead gods’ names are you doing here?” He made no attempt to hide from me or to look ashamed that he was with his father’s enemy.

  “Fureth offered to show me the castle.”

  “What would your father say?”

  “He knows.”

  Before I could snap back at him, Fureth interrupted.

  “Ceadoc is under truce, Girton Club-Foot, and even if it were not, I would not murder the heir to Maniyadoc. There has been enough strife.” His smile was entirely false.

  “Have you seen all the beasts of the menagerie, Girton?” said Vinwulf. “Are they not miraculous?”

  “They were people once.” He faltered then, I saw it in his eye, even in the dim light.

  “Really?”

  “Did you not h
ear what Fureth said?”

  “Well, yes, but I thought …” He walked over to the cage nearest to him and stared in at something roughly square. It quivered and whimpered when he breathed on it. He turned and I could not tell whether he was repulsed or thrilled by what he saw. “They were really people?”

  “They are a living lesson,” said the Landsman.

  “They are monstrous,” I said. “An insult to Xus.”

  “And you would know?” said Fureth.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “They were made by Darsese,” said Fureth, “and as such are wrought by the will of the dead gods, for he was their voice.” The words were said by rote, but I did not think he believed them.

  “If the gods exist,” chipped in Gamelon, full of glee.

  “Maybe we should wager the gods do exist,” said Fureth.

  “But what would you wager? And what on?”

  “A fight,” said Vinwulf. “That should be the wager. What could be more fitting for a place like this?” His eyes sparkled in the darkness. “A trial of pain and blood.”

  Fureth grinned. “I think the boy may be right, you know,” he said. The hulking man next to him, armed with shield, spear and sword, flexed his muscles. There was something of the small armoured lizards about him, something of the way they shook themselves after flight so the bright cases that covered their wings snapped into place.

  The huge warrior came forward a step and I wondered who Gamelon expected to fight his corner. When I turned to the seneschal he was grinning at me.

  Of course he was.

  Chapter 16

  “Is this why you really brought me here, Gamelon? To fight this man for your entertainment?”

  “Oh no.” He sounded wounded. “My wish was only to show you the menageries. I had no knowledge Fureth would be here.”

  “He tells the truth, Girton,” said Vinwulf. “When Fureth told me of the menageries. I asked him to show me, he could not have known you would be here.”

  “But when a situation presents itself,” said Gamelon, clasping his hands together and bowing slightly, “one must make the best of it.” I glanced over at Fureth, who watched me intently.

  “As the boy says, Gamelon did not know I would be here.” The giant by his side rolled his shoulders.

  “And what about you,” I said, “did you know I would be here, Fureth?”

  “Is it so strange,” asked Fureth, “that two groups touring Ceadoc should meet at one of its wonders?” He held my gaze. He was older than me by about ten years but age had not weathered him, he looked as if he had seen no more than twenty yearsbirths.

  “Is this because you are still angry about me killing your master all those years ago, Fureth?”

  “I have heard that story many times,” said Vinwulf, “from Aydor. He tells it again and again. Girton is the greatest swordsman who ever lived.”

  Fureth shook his head.

  “I am not angry. If anything, I should thank you for it. He would have sidelined me, had me sent out into the wild highlands to die in the name of the dead gods. In a way, I suppose, I owe you for my current position.”

  “But you still intend to try and kill me.” I nodded at the man by him.

  “No one intends anyone to die,” said Gamelon, his hands fluttering about his face theatrically. “This is a wager. We will fight only to wound.”

  Fureth grunted out a laugh.

  “You are an ignorant man, Gamelon,” he said. Beside him Vinwulf looked like he could barely contain his excitement at the thought of blood.

  “I fail to see …” began the seneschal.

  “What he means, Gamelon,” I said, “is that the reality of war is that most significant wounds are lethal, eventually. Look at the size of his man,” I said, pointing at the Landsman warrior. “A wound that would stop him is not the sort that it is likely he would recover from.”

  “The same could be said of you, Girton,” said Fureth. “You are not big, but I have seen you fight and you are not a man who gives up.” Fureth’s eyes remained locked on to me. “Though, unlike the boy, I would not say you are the most skilled swordsman I have ever seen.”

  “Why are you doing this, Fureth?” He was baiting me and I knew it. Gamelon watched us with the air of a man who had sat down only to warm his hands on a brazier and ended up setting his hair on fire. Vinwulf grinned to himself, anticipation burned in his eyes. I wondered how many Landsmen besides Fureth’s ten were hidden in the gloom of the menageries. I had the unpleasant feeling of hostile eyes burning into my back.

  “I would like a say in who becomes high king. If I win I want Gamelon to give me a vote, it is in his power. And I think you are a dangerous man, Girton Club-Foot,” said Fureth: “one who would work against me.” I nodded. “But Danfoth says you are the Chosen of Xus, and we must bide our time until you come to him. He says his god has shown this happening.”

  “He is mistaken.”

  “Oh, I agree,” said Fureth, “but I thought I would test what Danfoth says. If you can survive against my man here,” he reached out, but did not touch, the huge warrior, “then maybe he is right. Maybe you are Chosen by Xus.”

  “So, even if I survive, it proves the gods to you?” He nodded.

  “Strange, is it not?” he said. “Gamelon has you fighting to prove something you know is a lie.”

  “Oh, Xus is real,” I said, “but he does not interfere in our affairs.”

  “Fureth,” said Gamelon, “gods or not, I have decided this cannot happen. Girton is part of Rufra’s entourage, he is under Ceadoc’s protection.”

  “You have already agreed to this,” snapped Fureth.

  “But I did not know it would end in death. And now that I do I forbid it.”

  I was grateful for Gamelon’s interruption, which may sound cowardly, but it is a fool that fights when he does not have to. And I did not believe in Danfoth’s talk of Xus, his god was not the Xus I had experienced.

  “You have no real power here any more, Gamelon,” said Fureth.

  “If the seneschal of Ceadoc Castle does not confirm the high king, it will be meaningless.” Fureth paused at that, and I think he had been bluffing when he said Gamelon had no power. Things may be changing in the castle but Fureth was not confident enough to push the seneschal too far.

  “But you accepted the bet, so if you are to renege the Landsmen get a vote,” said Fureth. He should have stopped there. For all his bluster, Gamelon was weak and would have given him what he wanted to escape a situation he found unpleasant. But Fureth hated me for making fools of the Landsmen in Maniyadoc, many years ago, and he could not contain it. “But Girton may choose to fight if he wishes. Then it has nothing to do with his king.” He stared at me.

  I should say no. I knew it. Rufra would tell me to say no, as would my master. Even Aydor, who loved to fight, would have told me to walk away. One vote would not matter that much. But I did not like Fureth. It would be good to bloody his nose, even metaphorically.

  “No,” I said, somewhat surprised at the sound of my own voice. “Rufra has had enough trouble in Ceadoc already and I will not add to it by killing a Landsman. I did that once before and I have learnt my lesson.” Fureth’s eyes narrowed. “Rufra would not will it and I will not gainsay his will. Also, Gamelon has not denied you your bet—I have. And as I was no part of it I do not believe it entitles you to a vote in this case.”

  If looks could have killed, Fureth would have struck me dead on the spot.

  “Maybe there will be other ways to test Xus’s will then, eh?” he said.

  “I will it.” Everyone turned to Vinwulf. His eyes were bright with excitement. “I am the king-in-waiting of Maniyadoc and I speak with my father’s voice in this place.”

  “Vinwulf,” I said, “your father will—”

  “Not be happy having his Heartblade, his champion, back down in front of the Landsmen. They have publicly insulted him more than once.” He raised himself up to his full height, taller than me even
though he was only a youth. “Fight this man, Girton. Fight him in the name of your king and because I will it.” He looked to Fureth with a wild grin on his face, though whether it was because of the prospect of violence or the joy of exercising his power I did not know.

  “You are sure of this, Prince Vinwulf?” Gamelon, now the responsibility had been removed from his shoulders, looked equally excited.

  “I am sure,” he said.

  “Very well.” I stepped forward, drawing my Conwy stabsword and pointing it at the man. “Until either he or I cannot continue.”

  “As agreed,” said Fureth, giving me a nod.

  “Very well,” I said again and spun the blade in my hand.

  His man stepped forward, moving like the slow crumble of a sea cliff—inevitable and unstoppable. He held a plain and unornamented longsword out to one side, tip pointing at the floor, and a shield studded with hooks along the trunk and branches of the painted white tree on the front. Some may have been fooled by his lumbering walk but not I. Too many thought big meant slow, but I had fought with Aydor for years and knew how lightning quick he could be. If this man was one of Fureth’s finest, if he was pitting him against me, then there was no reason to believe he would be slow. I was glad that we fought in the menagerie where there was plenty of space. In a confined area a man such as this could use his bulk as a weapon and nullify the advantages I had—speed and manoeuvrability. The floor beneath my feet was smooth, paved with heavy stones that made a slip unlikely. I felt the lives of those around me as points on a compass, clouds of gold, and further out the red of the poor, ravaged bodies of the menagerie’s occupants. Again, I wondered how this was possible within the souring and pushed that thought away. It did not matter, not now.

  In my left hand I spun the stabsword I held again. It was a trick I had learned to amuse Vinwulf when he was young and had become an unconscious habit in the years since. I also knew it intimidated the weak-minded who thought it a show of skill—if so it made even the poorest village juggler a warrior of much renown.