A Sellsword's Hope

by Jacob Peppers

  Brandon seemed to start as if coming awake, then gave a shrug. “The man attacked, and though I hesitated, the guard with me didn’t. He gave a shout and charged the assassin. The guard—Pike, I think his name was, though after so long I couldn’t swear to it—was a good man, and a good hand with the blade, too. But within moments of them joining combat, I saw that he was clearly outclassed. I wanted to help, knew that I needed to help, yet my feet wouldn’t obey my commands, and I watched them fight, watched Pike take one small wound after the other, wanting to help but somehow unable to.”

  He shook his head, a pained expression crossing his face. “Anyway, it wasn’t until Pike gave a loud scream of pain as the other man’s blade stabbed through his upper arm that I finally got my feet moving. Somehow, during the fight, the two had switched sides, and the assassin’s back was facing me. My sword was in my hand, the opening there for me to take, but I hesitated.” He turned to Adina, a quiet desperation on his face, as if praying she would understand. “You see, I was so wrapped up in my own honor, in the idea of it, that it felt wrong to strike him when he was unaware. This, after all, wasn’t like the dreams I’d had, the imaginings of myself as some great knight, charging into the king’s enemies and cutting them down with my skill, winning the day with my courage. For one, the dreams never smelled of blood, not the way that castle hallway did. For another, in such dreams I never cut a man down while he was defenseless. I never…” He trailed off then, clearing his throat.

  Adina felt a surge of sympathy for the captain, to have been put in such a position. “So what happened?”

  When Brandon went on, his voice was thick with emotion. “I hesitated, and the next time the assassin’s blade struck, it went into Pike’s stomach, runnin’ him through. A mortal wound—even then, I knew that much, and the look on the old guard’s face when he turned to meet my eyes said he knew it too. I’ll never forget that look, Majesty. It was…anyway. Pike’s own blade had fallen from his hands, and he grabbed hold of the assassin’s, keeping the man from pulling the sword clear. His hands were shredded to ribbons in the process, and it must have hurt like the curse of the gods, but still the old man held on. Finally, I came to my senses, and I struck the assassin from behind. He never saw it coming; thanks to Pike, he couldn’t have got his own blade around to defend even if he had, and the cut was clean. It was over in another moment, and the two men were lying at my feet, dead.”

  He snorted. “Funny thing. They called me a hero, after that. Said I’d saved the king’s life. There were speeches and awards, and far more women batting their eyelashes at me than there ever had been before or since. Everyone talked about my courage, my honor. But in their smiling faces, all I ever saw was Pike’s own, covered with his blood, his eyes weighing me, measuring me. In their cries of adulation, in their words of praise, I only ever heard Pike’s final scream as the assassin’s blade went in.” He turned and met Adina’s gaze. “See, Majesty, the thing about honor is that it isn’t something one man can give to another—no manner of medals or coin can do it. It’s something a man has to earn for himself, has to learn for himself. I didn’t understand, then, what honor meant, and the gods alone know I’ve only recently discovered it, in truth. But for my lack of knowledge, for my hesitation, Pike died. For my want of honor, another man—a better man—lost his life. And, you ask me, all the pretty eyelashes in the world can’t make up for a thing like that.”

  Adina stared at the man, her own eyes threatening to mist over with tears, and she understood the gift that he had given her, understood, too, what the giving had cost. “Thank you, Captain.”

  He smiled then, and it was a fragile thing. “Of course, Majesty.” He bowed his head, then turned and nodded to Gryle before walking out of the audience chamber.

  “I remember that night,” the chamberlain said in a soft voice once the captain was gone. “I remember it, but I never knew…I never knew. That wasn’t the story we were told.”

  Adina wasn’t surprised. The world, after all, needed its heroes, and why let a little thing like the truth, like a man’s suffering, get in the way of a good story? Still, for all the pain she felt for the captain, she felt a certainty fill her, as a thought she had been considering crystallized within her mind. “I think it’s time we talked to Urek, Gryle. I may have another job for him after all.”

  CHAPTER

  FIVE

  Caleb yawned heavily, and gave his head a shake, as if by doing so he might banish the exhaustion creeping over him. He sat in his room in the Akalian barracks. The desk in front of him was covered with parchments—many crumpled into balls, evidence of Caleb’s periodic frustrations as he tried and failed to come up with a better way of the Akalians breaching Baresh’s walls. He’d spent the last several days in consultation with the Speaker on the matter, and to add to his frustration, the man seemed completely content with a plan that, almost certainly, ended in his death and the death of those other Akalians who followed him.

  Caleb, though, was convinced there was another way, a better way, and his own anger stemmed in large part from his inability to see it. The answer was there, it had to be. With that thought, he snatched up one of the papers from the desk, seemingly at random, but though his Virtue-enhanced intelligence had, so far at least, proven of no use in coming up with a better strategy for the attack on the city, it did let him remember the contents of each parchment scattered haphazardly across the desk’s surface. The paper he’d grabbed showed, in detail, the composition of the western wall of Baresh, and Caleb studied it, struggling to think of any means of breaching the walls that wouldn’t require a significant amount of time—no doubt more than they would have with Kevlane’s creatures bearing down on them—and effort.

  He searched for a solution, strove for it and, for what must have been the hundredth time, he came up empty. With a hiss of frustration, he tossed the paper aside, leaning back in his chair and rubbing at his burning eyes. They’d heard news from Perennia a few days ago—good news, as it turned out. Apparently, Aaron and the others had taken the city back from Grinner and his men. Even now, they were busy about setting things right within Perennia’s walls. Soon, within the next few days at the latest, they would march on Baresh.

  And when they arrive? he thought. Will we be stuck outside of the city, the Akalians failing at what looks to be an impossible, suicide mission, while we are cut down by Kevlane’s creatures? It was a fate, an outcome, that seemed all too likely, perhaps even inevitable. Caleb hated himself then, with a passion he’d felt few times in his young life. Aaron and the others were counting on him to find some better way into the city, and it looked as if, in the end, he would fail them. Despite the Virtue of Intelligence, he was still as his mother had named him years ago: an idiot. A fool.

  Palendesh, the Virtue of Intelligence, appeared floating in the air in front of him, a glowing ball of blue light. “Enough, Caleb,” the orb scolded in a voice that belonged to a grandfather. “I will not listen to you criticize yourself any longer. You take on too much, expect too much.”

  Caleb let out a tired, frustrated breath. “They need me, Palendesh. I am not strong like Gryle, I’m not a great warrior like Aaron, or clever like Leomin. This,” he said, gesturing with both hands at the stack of papers lying in front of him, “is what I’m supposed to be good at. If I can’t do even this then of what use am I?”

  The orb floated closer, as if it was studying him. “What use?” he asked. “You have been of much use, Caleb. Thanks to you, the army has tools, such as the caltrops—clever design, by the way—that will help them defend themselves against Kevlane’s creatures.”

  “Thanks to you, you mean,” Caleb grumbled. “And what difference does it make anyway? Caltrops, trip lines…none of them will do any good if we’re never able to get inside the city at all. All the clever gadgets in the world won’t save us if we’re stuck in the fields and forests outside Baresh.”

  “And you feel that, if the army is defeated, then it will be you wh
o has failed them? You who is responsible?”

  “Well somebody has to be!” Caleb screamed, jerking out of his chair and sweeping an arm across the desk, scattering the papers into the air where they fell about the room and onto his small bed. He slumped against the wall then, feeling as if what little energy he’d had left had departed him, and slid down it until he was sitting on the floor, his face buried in his hands. “Somebody has to be,” he repeated in a voice that was little more than a whisper.

  “Yes,” the Virtue said in a sad voice. “Somebody has to be, young Caleb. But it is not you, and there is no wisdom in carrying a burden that is not your own. If a man is pricked with another’s blade, he might blame himself, might claim that only had he been faster, smarter, it might never have happened at all. But the truth is that the fault lies with the man who grasped it in the first place, and no amount of self-loathing will change that. Just as,” he continued, his voice soft, “no amount of intelligence might create a solution that is not there, for the truth is not a beast to be tamed and made to be bent to our will. It is and always will be its own master.”

  “Truth,” Caleb snapped, but with little strength. He shook his head wearily. “I have to save them, Palendesh. I need to save them.”

  “What will come will come, lad,” the Virtue said. “We cannot change the equation, or the problem, only because we do not like its answer. The Speaker knows this and, I believe, you do as well.”

  “But they’ll die,” Caleb said, his voice desperate.

  “Perhaps,” the Virtue said. “But all things that live will die someday, young Caleb. All that which has a beginning has an ending.”

  “It isn’t fair,” the youth said. “It isn’t fair that we have to do this, that Aaron and the others have to. They’re my friends, Palendesh.”

  “Yes,” the Virtue said, “they are. Now, why don’t you go to sleep? Perhaps, in the morning, things will look better.”

  Caleb was tired, there was no denying that. He’d gotten little sleep in the past week, spending his days meeting with the Speaker and discussing their plans, his nights bent over his small desk, searching for an answer that, in all probability, wasn’t there to begin with. “I should really check on Tianya,” he said uncertainly. Since Aaron and the others had left, Caleb had regularly checked on the woman. She was growing stronger each day, but she was still weak from a long time spent without any food and water but that which the Akalians managed to get down her throat when she was in the grip of her madness. Caleb had made it his personal responsibility to see she got well again.

  From brief, once-forgotten memories of his own as well as the stores of knowledge Palendesh had acquired over hundreds of years of bonding one person or another, he had managed to create some tinctures and herbal remedies from plants gathered from the forest to aid her recovery. Although she claimed to be feeling better, growing stronger, Caleb’s sense of urgency to get her well grew with each passing day. After all, Kevlane’s creatures were still out there, hunting them, and the only thing keeping him and the Akalians from going to the city and meeting up with Aaron and the others was that moving Tianya in her current state would be very dangerous.

  So he waited, searching the forest for what herbs it could provide and poring over his parchments, making plans only to discard them, and all the while, what little time they had slipped away.

  “You have done everything you can for her,” Palendesh said. “You know that as well as I. Now, sleep, Caleb, for exhaustion is the thief of reason, and you will need all your wits about you in the coming days.”

  “Fine,” Caleb agreed, rising and shuffling to his small bed where he lay down. He sank into it, his eyes seeming to close of their own accord. “But only for a moment…and then I need to look at the papers again. Perhaps there is something I’ve missed.”

  “Yes,” the Virtue said softly, and Caleb could barely hear his words past the fog that settled over his drowsy mind. “Only for a moment.”

  CHAPTER

  SIX

  Urek was uncomfortable. There were a few reasons for it. For one, being a criminal by trade, he tried to avoid the attention of the guard whenever possible. It was as natural, to his way of thinking, as a mouse avoiding a cat’s gaze. It wasn’t that the cat would definitely eat the mouse, only that it could and, if it chose to, would feel no great emotion one way or the other. All the lessons of his life, all of the commons sense he had, told him that the last place he wanted to be was standing in front of a guard or—as was the case now—several of them, being scrutinized with obvious and, he had to admit, warranted, suspicion.

  So it was with some small surprise, then, that he found himself standing at the castle gate, shifting from foot to foot and trying to look as innocent as possible.

  Judging by the frowns of the guardsmen stationed at the gate, he wasn’t doing a particularly good job. Of course, that could also have been caused, in some degree, by the thickly-muscled woman beside him. Beautiful was a good six inches taller than Urek and the guardsmen, and looked as if she could juggle them, if she took it in her mind to do so. But, just then, she was busy smiling demurely at the guards, as if she were some princess being admitted to a royal ball.

  Urek suspected that, considering the fact that she was missing several teeth from the gods alone knew how many street fights, the expression was doing little to help their cause. Not that he would be the one to say so—Urek might be a fool, and he was growing surer of that fact with each passing day, but he wasn’t suicidal. At least, not at the moment. He’d accepted the queen’s summons quickly enough, happy for the excuse to flee May and her endless reports. Urek had been a criminal for some time—had done quite a few things of which he wasn’t proud—but he’d never felt more like murdering someone than when bent over the desk studying reports.

  “Well,” one of the guards said, and Urek didn’t miss the surprise in his voice, “their papers seem to check out. This is Queen Adina’s own seal here.”

  Urek couldn’t suppress his sigh of relief. Oh, he’d believed the letter had been legitimate, delivered as it had been by Gryle, the unassuming chamberlain who was known to serve the queen. But he’d had the thought on the way to the castle—more than once, truth to tell—that there were some men and women out there who wouldn’t have been all too upset to see him with a few extra holes poked in him, and what better way to do that than sending by a forged letter inviting him to the castle?

  “Well, course it is,” Urek said, hocking and spitting—always a good way for a man to emphasize his point. The problem, of course, was that he was nervous, and his aim was off, so the spittle didn’t go to the side and strike the cobbles, as he’d intended, but instead landed squarely on the boots of one of the guards.

  Beautiful made a disgusted sound in her throat, shaking her head as if ashamed. “A deplorable habit, spitting. Don’t you think?” she said to the guard who was, even now, staring at his boot in disbelief. The man raised his eyes to look at her, and Beautiful smiled widely at him, an expression Urek suspected was meant to put the man at ease. Judging by the way he recoiled, making a face as if he’d just caught a whiff of something foul—a dead animal, maybe—it didn’t work. He grasped the handle of the sword at his side as if reassuring himself it was there.

  Urek groaned inwardly, wishing—also, not for the first time—that he had left Beautiful back at May’s office or at the tavern he and the rest of the crew had called home for the last week. Not that he’d really had a choice, of course. Beautiful had decided she was going and nothing short of an army—even on that score, Urek thought the issue would have still been in doubt—could have stopped her from visiting the castle. He’d known the volatile woman long enough not to even bother trying to dissuade her. Instead, he’d only sat in impatient silence, pretending to gloss over more of May’s papers while Beautiful tried on a variety of dresses and jewels that the club owner offered to let her borrow, doing his best to smile and keep a straight face as she asked him what he thou
ght. Which, mostly, had been varying iterations of Gods save us, but he was still breathing anyway, so he consoled himself with the idea that he must have managed to hide his thoughts well enough.

  The guards, on the other hand, weren’t so circumspect, and they stared at the heavily-muscled woman in the burgundy sleeveless dress, as if she were putting on some joke, one more offensive to their sensibilities than funny, and gods help the first to laugh. Urek himself had done his best to avoid looking at the woman and her attire. Oh, the dress had looked fine enough hanging in May’s closet, but the club owner was considerably shorter and not nearly so wide at the shoulders as Beautiful. On someone else, the dress might have contrived to hug the woman’s curves, showing them off to best advantage, but on Beautiful, it looked like a tortured, pitiful thing, only one good stretch away from busting at the seams. It didn’t help matters that the woman had also insisted on wearing face paint and had kindly rejected May’s offers to help, preferring to do it herself.

  She’d used too much—even Urek could see that. It looked more like war paint than anything else, and she some insane clown, the kind who told crude jokes, the punch lines of which were always, And he died horribly.

  “So,” one of the other guards said, frowning at Beautiful with a look of disgust usually reserved for when a man found a bug in his ale, “what did you say your business at the castle was?”

  Either Beautiful hadn’t noticed the man’s look yet, or didn’t see the open revulsion in it—an easy enough thing to guess, since she hadn’t yet taken the man’s sword and beaten him to death with it—but Urek did, and he became annoyed despite himself. “I didn’t,” he growled. “I got the letter, and here I am. Now, why don’t you open that gate—if it ain’t too much trouble—and we can all go on about our day?”

  The man’s frown deepened at that, but he turned away from Beautiful to eye Urek now, and that at least was something. “And what, exactly, did you say your profession was again?”