by Tim Stead
“Well, you will do what you must,” Aidon said. “Bring us word of what you learn.”
“I shall. Please inform Prince Havil that I am gone. I will return as soon as I am able.”
Narak inclined his head respectfully and left them. He strode back to his private tent. First he had to find Cain, and a wolf close to him so that he could translocate and stop the colonel trying to storm the duke’s fortress. It would cost thousands of lives. It would also give them another very good chance to kill the colonel, and that was something he didn’t want. Cain was a sort of talisman in this war, second only to Narak. If he lost Cain things would become more difficult.
A small part of him regretted upsetting Aidon. He had somehow never managed to establish the rapport with the new Duke that he had shared with the old, even if had been for only a span of weeks. He had a better understanding with Quinnial, the younger son. Quinnial was clever, if perhaps a little naïve.
He sat on his bed. He found the Sirash easier now than a year ago. That was usage, he supposed. He seemed always now to be always swimming among the constellations of life that it held. It was perhaps unfortunate that he found himself enjoying it less. He closed his eyes and settled into long, steady breaths.
34. Assassins
Quinnial had finished with his papers for the day. It was a relief to be free of the burden for a couple of hours, and he longed to be back with Maryal. They had married three weeks ago in a ceremony that had been both tasteful and restrained, although many had complimented Maryal on her ability to make austerity look like excess. She had been delighted. He had never seen her happier. He had shared that joy and now his life was quite changed. However much he longed to return to their apartment he felt it his duty to practice with a blade for an hour a day. He was nominally the chief defender of the city, and he would have been ashamed to let what little skill he had acquired with his left hand wither away through lack of use.
He made his way down to one of the courtyards, all deserted now that most of the garrison and all the noble born above the age of sixteen were loaned to the war. The castle seemed almost haunted by the ghosts of men who were still alive, the echoes of their feet, the memory of their voices. Quin felt quite melancholy when he thought about it.
He had ordered the court set up for his private use. A post bound in sacking had been set up for strength work, and a number of other devices rigged so that he could improve the accuracy of his thrusts, the speed of his blows.
He used his sharp blade. There was nobody here that he might injure, though from time to time he saw Harad, the old armourer, in the practice courts, and sometimes they fenced. Harad was still a formidable blade, though considerable faded from the supremacy of his youth. Harad had been his mentor as he had learned to fence with his left arm, and had become a friend.
Today, it seemed, he would be alone. He removed his heavy jacket. The effort of training would soon warm him against the spring chill.
He chose the rings for his first exercise. There were seven of them, varying in size and height above the ground. The principle was to execute seven thrusts, each beginning in the guard position and returning to it again, each driving the sword through one of the rings. They were numbered, and in normal use a fencing master would have called out the numbers and Quin would have attempted to thrust through the called ring as quickly as possible. On his own he lacked the unpredictability, but he was working on speed and accuracy, so he simply went from one to seven, then seven to one, then one to seven again.
The first run through was fairly gentle. His muscles were cold, his legs stiff from sitting for hours at a table full of administration. He stepped back having made nineteen hits out of nineteen. It was easy, though, at this pace. He rolled his shoulders, feeling the tightness leave them.
Now faster.
It was like ringing bells. Each of the rings was a different size, and each had a different tone. When the blade touched them they chimed. He liked the effect. These were expensive toys, and each had been tuned to a perfect tone, so that the sound of a clean set of hits was quite musical. Quin missed number three, however, and the music was broken.
He stood back again, rolled his shoulders and bent at the waist a couple of times to drive away the last traces of stiffness. Sometimes Harad had amused himself by calling out numbers that played popular tunes. It was possible, and Quin had always been surprised and delighted by the effect. He tried to remember one of them now.
Three, two, five, five, one, five, seven, five. An eight hit sequence that rang part of the chorus of “I met a miller’s maid”.
He took his guard position and rang the rings, moving quickly. He hit all eight and grinned at the result. There was another one that he thought he recalled. It was more difficult, being a sequence of twenty rings and aping the first verse of another popular tune: “A wandering far”. He thought he knew the sequence, but when he tried it, moving slightly slower because of all he had to hold in his mind, there were at least three bad tones. He tickled the rings with the point of his sword to hear their voice and corrected the sequence in his head.
He tried again, but this time he missed a ring in the middle and gutted the tune. Even so, he was pleased to have missed only one at a slightly increased speed. One more time, he thought. It was the purpose of the tunes, of course. It kept you working, first to get the tune, then to get the same tempo as you’d heard them played in a tavern, which was almost impossible unless you cheated on the guard position.
He set himself, ran through the actions in his mind, counting off the rings, and then began. This time he rang all the rings and the tune was whole.
Enough of that, he thought, feeling pleased with himself. He’d done better than usual. He was warm now. Not sweating yet in the winter air, but certainly warm. His body felt supple, his arms loose and strong.
There was a device for practicing cut and parry, an oiled things with many arms that swivelled when you hacked at it, striking at your hip, leg, head, chest, or wherever with stout wooden staves. Harad had named it ‘The Bastard’ but he didn’t feel like tangling with it. As often as not he came away bruised after a session with the wedlock-deficient thing.
He positioned himself in front of the post. Someone had tied new sacking around it, and some wag had painted a face on the top with a grimace and frowning brows. It was quite well executed. Whoever had done it was not without talent.
He heard a step behind him and turned, expecting to find Harad, or perhaps some servant, come to give him a message. Instead he saw four men. He knew immediately that they were assassins, and that their purpose was to kill him. They were dressed in dark colours, carried short swords already drawn, and their eyes were all on him in that peculiar hungry way that killers stare. He’d seen assassin’s before. Two had come to kill his father when he was a boy, and he remembered their faces, the way they’d stared at his father before they were cut down.
He turned to face them, falling once more into the guard position. Four men was a difficult prospect, though not impossible for a blademaster of exceptional skill. He was not such a blademaster, however. He had no second blade, or more accurately nothing to wield it with, his crippled right arm being strapped to his side. These were not skilled men, though. These were not the ancient days when Ohas assassins fought their way through thirty guards to strike down their prey. These were men with muscle and sharp points; men who did not like to think too much, or could not. If one of them had not been clumsy they would have struck him down from behind, but now their job was trickier. He was certain he could kill any one of them. Two would have been possible, but four…
“Four of you?” he asked, making his voice drip with scorn. “Four to kill a boy with a crippled arm?”
It was a good ploy, but they didn’t fall for it. They began to spread out. Already his escape was cut off. If he attacked the man who blocked the doorway he would himself be attacked from behind by the other three.
It was a poor way to die. Married
three weeks, left at home, safe from the war, and cut down in a practice court. Well, he would be sure to take one of them with him, at least. Apparently none of them had thought to bring a bow, which in itself was a blessing. At least it would be a traditional death. Five duke’s had been assassinated in the past; two by foreign powers, and three by their supposed countrymen. These would be Avilian, he was sure. They were certainly not Seth Yarra.
The troubling question was why? Why was he being killed? The image that sprang unbidden to his mind was Lord Hesham and his exquisite blade. Was Hesham behind this? There was no reason that made sense. He knew that Hesham was part of the faction that preferred tradition, part of the old blood of Avilian. They would not be happy with some things in the conduct of this war, but to kill Quin was an extreme response.
Unless they were killing Aidon as well. That was it. Of course that was it. With Aidon dead and Quin dead who then would take the seat at Bas Erinor? The man with the clearest voice in the succession would be the Duke of Carillon. Carillon was a traditionalist, a stick in the mud, a dunce by all accounts, and Quin agreed with the common opinion of the man, but he would be next in line.
Clearly he had underestimated the man’s ambition.
Quin was running out of room. He had backed about as far as he could. The wall behind him would defend his back, and he had manoeuvred himself in beside an old apple tree, which would do to defend his right. It was a good position, but still a hopeless one.
He wished he could leave a message for Maryal. He would have liked the chance to speak with her again, but he had already said everything that he could have said. She knew how he felt. He just wanted to let her know that he had thought of her at the last, and that she had made him happy, and that he was sorry it had ended like this. Even to see her once more would be a blessing.
One of the assassins came too close and Quin tried a quick lunge. Unlike the rings, the man did not wait for his point, but jumped back. He did not score. He appreciated their caution. They were not skilled and he was. They were like men stalking a bear. A mistake would be paid for in blood. It occurred to him that if they were too cautious he could hold them off for hours, but that seemed a ridiculous idea, and he smiled.
Perhaps it was the smile that unnerved them, but certainly something did. Two of them came forwards at once, cutting at him. He had the advantage of a longer blade, and managed to step out of the way of one cut and parry the other. The third man stayed back, but the fourth, seeing his comrades lunge, decided to follow them, but his timing was poor, or he was very slow, and he found himself blade to blade with Quin, isolated.
Quin took full advantage. He feinted, side stepped, and cut at the man, catching him on the hip with the last two inches of his blade. He felt the jarring shock of steel on bone, and knew it was a telling blow. The assassin cursed and stumbled back, but the other three renewed the attack, and Quin was required to use all his skill to keep their shorter blades at bay. For all that he could do one of them got past his guard and he felt the sting of steel on his arm. It was a scratch, though, just a knick.
They were at him now. All three at once. They meant to finish it. The fourth man, the wounded one, was still stumbling around the courtyard cursing.
Quin was doing surprisingly well. After a good two minutes he was still alive, still holding them off, and had exchange a cut on his thigh and a knick to his shoulder for a slash across one assassin’s cheek and a kick to another’s knee. It was a move that would have seen him disqualified from any fencing tourney, but he’d seen the opportunity and lashed out. It had felt good, and he was sure the man was limping.
He was tiring, though. He had no respite. Another minute at this pace would see him begin to slow. That would be the end.
How wondered where the fourth man had got to. He was wounded quite badly, but surely he would have come back to the fray by now. Well, he had yet to keep his promise to himself that he would take one of these men with him. No further opportunities had presented themselves, so he must force it. He let loose an agricultural cut that swept across all three men. It made them all step back, and he advanced a step behind it. They began to spread to take advantage of the additional space, and he jumped at the left most man, his point dancing around the man’s surprised sword and burying itself in his throat.
It was a job well done, but it had left him open on the right, and the corner of his eye caught the movement as the other two leaped in to finish him. Quin didn’t fall back, though. He pushed on, bowling over the man he had just killed, rolling over the top of him as he pulled the blade free and tried to regain his feet in the courtyard beyond.
It was a desperate move, but a clever one, and he nearly got away with it. One blade missed, but the other caught the back of his thigh, and it was a good hit. He managed to regain his feet, but he was crippled by the pain, unable to move other than a sort of hopping shuffle. Blood quickly soaked his leg, greasing the flags beneath his feet as he backed slowly away. They were splitting up now, one left and one right, trying to get behind him where one blow would finish it. He could not move fast enough to stop them, having given up the protection of the wall.
The man on his right lunged. It was an early move, Quin judged. He should have waited for a better position. It was enough though. Quin was forced to step back to avoid the man, and his injured leg failed him. He went over backwards onto the ground.
To his surprise the assassin didn’t come after him, but instead twitched and shed most of his life’s blood onto the stone through a gaping hole in his chest. It took a moment for Quin to register what had happened. The assassin fell forwards.
“Do you want to finish him yourself?” It was Harad, pointing his blade at the last would-be assassin who was trapped in a corner of the courtyard. There was no way past Harad. So Quin wasn’t going to die after all.
“He’s all yours,” he said. He let himself fall back onto his elbows. He didn’t even watch as Harad killed the man. The first man he’d wounded must have met the same fate, he guessed. He was going to live. He was going to see Maryal again. He sat up again to see Harad wiping his blade.
“We have to get a message to Aidon,” he said, his voice suddenly urgent. “They’ll try for him, too. We might be able to warn him.”
“Who, my lord?”
“Hesham, I think. And Carillon. Both of them in some measure, but I have no proof.”
Harad gestured at the bodies. “They didn’t say anything?”
“No. Not a word.”
“Ah. Perhaps we should have kept him alive,” Harad said. He knelt next to the last man he had killed and quickly searched the body. “Nothing,” he sighed. “Well, I never was much good at the clever bit of soldiering.”
“Clever enough for me, old friend,” Quin said. He’d cut a strip from his cloak and was trying to bind the wound on the back of his thigh, but it was a tricky thing to do sitting down with one hand. “We must send a warning to Aidon, Harad,” he said. “And fetch a physic before I bleed to death, will you?”
Harad bowed. It was almost mockery because Harad hardly ever bowed except to the duke, though he executed the bow perfectly and his face was quite serious. “At once, my lord,” he said, and trotted off down a passageway towards the heart of the castle, shouting his head off about assassins and murder.
Left alone in the evening gloom with the four bodies Quin cast a nervous glance at them, but they remained quite still. Even so, he checked that his sword lay by his hand. He wondered if Aidon was alive. They could just as easily have tried to kill Aidon before they tried to kill him. It would take a rider three days to reach his brother, even changing mounts every ten miles. He could not believe that it would be quick enough, but he hoped that it might be.
If Aidon was dead, if his brother the duke was dead, then Quin was duke, and by rights the commander of the Avilian army. He prayed that the gods had spared Aidon. He did not imagine that the army would take to a one armed general.
Then he laughed,
a surprised and bitter laugh. He’d remembered Arbak.
35. The Wolf Commands
Cain kicked soil over the fire and looked around him. The road was alive with soldiers preparing for the road. His wound still pained him, but it was no more than a sting in his arm now. He could move quite freely; freely enough to fight. A man stood nearby with his mount, saddled and ready. The horse steamed gently in the cold morning air, shifting impatiently against the groom’s grip. It was a good looking beast, a tall, bay mare, but it reminded him of the one the Seth Yarra archers had shot from under him two days ago. He had liked that horse.
He thought of Sheyani, alone with enemies somewhere out there beyond the forest. High Stone, the place was called. He had no idea what it was like, or if five hundred horse would be enough to take it, but it was all he dared strip from the regiment. The rest of them would go on to the White Road Pass, help build the wall there. Cain needed to be elsewhere.