by Robin Hobb
I could detect no sign of Nighteyes. I was trying not to think about him, nor look for him, a strenuous mental denial that was fully as demanding as keeping Verity’s consciousness with me. So quickly had I become accustomed to reaching out for my wolf and finding him awaiting my touch that I felt isolated, and as unbalanced as if my favourite knife were missing from my belt. The only image that could completely displace him from my mind was Molly’s, and that too was one I did not wish to dwell on. Verity had not rebuked me for my actions of the night before, but I knew he regarded them as less than honourable. I had an uneasy feeling that if I allowed myself time to truly consider all that had happened, I would agree with him. Cowardly, I kept my mind reined away from that, too.
I realized I was putting most of my mental effort into not thinking. I gave my head a shake and opened myself up to the day. The road I was following was not well travelled. It wound through the rolling hills behind Buckkeep, and far more sheep and goats trod it than men. Several decades ago, a lightning fire had cleared it of trees. The first growth of trees on it was mostly birch and cottonwood, now standing bare but for snow-burden. This hilly country was ill-suited to farming, and served mostly as summer pasturage for grazing animals, but from time to time I would catch a whiff of wood smoke and see a trodden path leading from the road to a woodcutter’s cottage, or a trapper’s hut. It was an area of small, isolated homesteads occupied by folk of humbler persuasions.
The road became narrower, and the trees changed as I entered an older part of the forest. Here the dark evergreens still stood thick and crowded close to the road’s edge. Their trunks were immense, and beneath their spreading branches snow lay in uneven hummocks on the forest floor. There was little underbrush. Most of the year’s snowfall was still up above resting on those thickly-needled limbs. It was easy to turn Sooty aside from the trail here. We travelled under the snow-laden canopy through a greyish daylight. The day seemed hushed in the dimness of the great trees.
You are seeking a specific place. You have definite information as to where the Forged ones are?
They were seen on a certain creek bank, eating from a winter-killed deer. Just yesterday. I thought we could trail them from there.
Who saw them?
I hesitated. A friend of mine. He is shy of most folk. But I have gained his confidence, and sometimes, when he sees odd things, he comes to me and tells me.
Um. I could sense Verity’s reservations as he considered my reticence. Well, I shall ask no more. Some secrets are necessary, I suppose. I remember a little half-wit girl who used to come and sit at my mother’s feet. My mother kept her clothed and fed and gave her trinkets and sweets. No one ever paid much attention to her. But once I came upon them unawares, and heard her telling my mother about a man in a tavern who had been selling pretty necklaces and armbands. Later that week, the King’s guard arrested Rife the Highwayman in the very same tavern. Quiet folk often know much.
Indeed.
We rode on in a companionable silence. Occasionally I had to remind myself that Verity was not here in the flesh. But I begin to wish I were. It has been too long, boy, since I rode through these hills simply for the sake of riding. My life has become too heavy with purpose. I cannot remember the last time I did something simply because I wanted to do it.
I was nodding to his thought when the scream shattered the forest quiet. It was the wordless cry of a young creature, cut off in mid shriek, and before I could control myself, I quested toward it. My Wit found wordless panic, death fear, and sudden horror from Nighteyes. I sealed off my mind to it, but turned Sooty’s head that way and urged her toward it. Clinging low to her neck, I nudged her along through the maze of banked snow and fallen limbs and clear ground that was the forest floor. I worked my way up a hill, never getting up to the speed I suddenly so desperately wanted. I crested the hill, and looked down on a scene I shall never be able to forget.
There were three of them, raggedy and bearded and smelly. They snarled and muttered at each other as they fought. They gave off no life sense to my Wit, but I recognized them as the Forged ones that Nighteyes had shown me the night before. She was small, three perhaps, and the woolly tunic she wore was bright yellow, the loving work of some mother’s hands. They fought over her as if she were a snared rabbit, dragging on the limbs of her little body in an angry tug of war with no heed to the small life that still resided in her. I roared my fury at the sight and drew my sword just as a Forged one’s determined jerk on her neck snapped her free of her body. At my cry, one of the men lifted his head and turned to me, his beard bright with blood. He had not waited for her death to begin feeding.
I kicked Sooty and rode down on them like vengeance on horseback. From the woods to my left, Nighteyes burst onto the scene. He was upon them before I was, leaping to the shoulders of one and opening his jaws wide to set his teeth into the back of the man’s neck. One turned to me as I came down, and threw up a useless hand to shield himself from my sword. My blow was such that my fine new blade half severed his neck from his body before wedging in his spine. I pulled my belt knife and launched myself from Sooty’s back to grapple with the man who was trying to plunge his knife into Nighteyes. The third Forged one snatched up the girl’s body and raced off into the woods with it.
The man fought like a maddened bear, snapping and stabbing at us even after I had opened up his belly. His entrails hung over his belt and still he came stumbling after us. I could not even take time for the horror I felt. Knowing he would die, I left him and we plunged off after the one who had fled. Nighteyes was a befurred grey streak that undulated up the hillside and I cursed my slow two legs as I sped after him. The trail was plain, trampled snow and blood and the foul stench of the creature. My mind was not working well. I swear that as I raced up that hillside, I somehow thought I could be in time to undo her death and bring her back. To make it have never happened. It was an illogical drive that sped me on.
He had doubled back. From behind a great stump he leapt at us, flinging the girl’s body at Nighteyes and then leaping bodily onto me. He was big and muscled like a smith. Unlike other Forged ones I had encountered, this one’s size and strength had kept him fed and well-clothed. The boundless anger of a hunted animal was his. He seized me, lifting me clear of my feet, and then fell upon me with one knotty forearm crushing my throat. He landed upon me, barrel chest on my back, pinning my chest and one arm to the earth below him. I reached back, to sink my knife twice into a meaty thigh. He roared with anger and increased the pressure. He pressed my face into the frozen earth. Black dots spotted my vision, and Nighteyes was a sudden addition to the weight on my back. I thought my spine would snap. Nighteyes slashed at the man’s back with his fangs, but the Forged one only drew his chin into his chest and hunched his shoulders against the attack. He knew he was killing me with his strangle. Time enough to deal with the wolf when I was dead.
The struggle opened up the wound on my neck and warm blood spilled out. The added pain was a tiny spur to my struggle. I shook my head wildly in his grip, and the slipperiness of my own blood was enough to let me turn my throat a tiny bit. I got in one desperate wheeze of air before the giant shifted his grip on me. He began to bend my head back. If he could not throttle me, he would simply break my neck. He had the muscle for it.
Nighteyes changed tactics. He could not open his jaws wide enough to get the man’s head into them, but his scraping teeth found enough purchase to tear part of the man’s scalp from his skull. He set his teeth in the flap of flesh and pulled. Blood rained down on me as the Forged one roared wordlessly and kneed me in the small of the back. He let go with one arm to flail at Nighteyes. I eeled around in his arms, to bring one knee up into his groin, and then to get a good knife thrust into his side. The pain must have been incredible, but he did not release me. Instead he cracked his head against mine in a flash of blackness, and then wrapped his huge arms around me, pinning me to him as he began to crush my chest.
That is as much of the
struggle as I can remember coherently. I don’t know what came over me next; perhaps it was the death fury some legends speak of. Teeth, nails and knife I fought him, taking flesh from his body wherever I could reach it. Still, I know it would not have been enough had not Nighteyes also been attacking with the same boundless frenzy. Some time later, I crawled from under the man’s body. There was a foul coppery taste in my mouth and I spat out dirty hair and blood. I wiped my hands down my pants and then rubbed them in clean snow, but nothing could ever cleanse them.
Are you all right? Nighteyes lay panting in the snow a yard or two away. His jaws were likewise bloodied. As I watched, he snapped up a great mouthful of snow, then resumed his panting. I rose and stumbled a step or two toward him. Then I saw the girl’s body and sank down beside it in the snow. I think that was when I realized I was too late, and had been too late from the instant I had spotted them.
She was tiny. Sleek black hair and dark eyes. Horribly her little body was still warm and lax. I lifted her to my lap and smoothed the hair back from her face. A small face, even baby teeth. Round cheeks. Death had not yet clouded her gaze; the eyes that stared up into mine seemed fixed on a puzzle beyond understanding. Her little hands were fat and soft and streaked with the blood that had run down from the bites on her arms. I sat in the snow with the dead child on my lap. So this was how a child felt in one’s arms. So small, and once so warm. So still. I bowed my head over her smooth hair and wept. Sudden shudders ran over me, uncontrollably. Nighteyes snuffed at my cheek and whined. He pawed roughly at my shoulder and I suddenly realized I had shut him out. I touched him with a quieting hand, but could not open my mind to him or anything else. He whined again, and I finally heard the hoof beats. He gave my cheek an apologetic lick, and then vanished into the woods.
I staggered to my feet, still holding the child. The riders crested the hill above me. Verity in the lead, on his black, with Burrich behind him, and Blade, and half a dozen others. Horribly, there was a woman, roughly dressed, riding behind Blade on his horse. She cried out aloud at the sight of me, and slid quickly from the horse’s back, running toward me with hands reaching for the child. I could not bear the terrible light of hope and joy in her face. Her eyes seized on mine for an instant and I saw everything die in her face. She clawed her little girl from my arms, snatched at the cooling face on the lolling neck, and then began to scream. The desolation of her grief broke over me like a wave, sweeping my walls away and carrying me under with her. The screaming never stopped.
Hours later, sitting in Verity’s study, I could still hear it. I vibrated to the sound, long shudders that ran over me uncontrollably. I was stripped to the waist, sitting on a stool before the fireplace. The healer was building the fire up, while behind me a stonily silent Burrich was swabbing pine needles and dirt out of the gouge on my neck. ‘This, and this aren’t fresh wounds,’ he observed at one point, pointing down to the other injury on my arm. I said nothing. All words had deserted me. In a basin of hot water beside him, dried iris flowers were uncurling with bits of bog myrtle floating beside them. He moistened a cloth in the water and sponged at the bruises on my throat. ‘The smith had big hands,’ he observed aloud.
‘You knew him?’ the healer asked as he turned to look at Burrich.
‘Not to talk to. I’d seen him, a time or two, at Springfest when some of the outlying trade folk come to town with their goods. He used to bring fancy silverwork for harness.’
They fell silent again. Burrich went back to work. The blood tingeing the warm water wasn’t mine, for the most part. Other than a lot of bruises and sore muscles, I’d escaped with mostly scratches and scrapes and one huge lump on my forehead. I was somehow ashamed that I hadn’t been hurt. The little girl had died; I should have at least been injured. I don’t know why that thought made sense to me. I watched Burrich make a neat white bandage snug on my forearm. The healer brought me a mug of tea. Burrich took it from him, sniffed it thoughtfully, then gave it over to me. ‘I would have used less valerian,’ was all he said to the man. The healer stepped back and went to sit by the hearth.
Charim came in with a tray of food. He cleared a small table and began to set it out on it. A moment later Verity strode into the room. He took his cloak off and flung it over a chair back. ‘I found her husband in the market,’ he said. ‘He’s with her now. She had left the child playing on the doorstep while she went to the stream for water. When she got back, the child was gone.’ He glanced toward me but I couldn’t meet his eyes. ‘We found her calling her little girl in the woods. I knew …’ He glanced abruptly at the healer. ‘Thank you, Dem. If you’ve finished with FitzChivalry, you may go.’
‘I haven’t even looked at …’
‘He’s fine.’ Burrich had run a length of bandaging across my chest and under my opposite arm and up again in an effort to keep a dressing in place on my neck. It was useless. The bite was right on the muscle between the tip of my shoulder and my neck. I tried to find something amusing in the irritated look the healer gave Burrich before he left. Burrich didn’t even notice it.
Verity dragged up a chair to face me. I began to lift the mug to my lips, but Burrich casually reached over and took it from my hand. ‘After you’ve talked. There’s enough valerian in here to drop you in your tracks.’ He took it and himself out of the way. Over by the hearth, I watched him dump out half of the tea and dilute what was left with more hot water. That done, he crossed his arms on his chest and leaned against the mantelpiece, watching us.
I shifted my gaze to Verity’s eyes, and waited for him to speak.
He sighed. ‘I saw the child with you. Saw them fighting over her. Then you were suddenly gone. We lost our joining, and I couldn’t find you again, not even with all my strength. I knew you were in trouble and set out to reach you as soon as I could. I’m sorry I wasn’t faster.’
I longed to open myself up and tell Verity everything. But it might be too revealing. To possess a prince’s secrets does not give one the right to divulge them. I glanced at Burrich. He was studying the wall. I spoke formally. ‘Thank you, my prince. You could not have come faster. And even if you had, it would have been too late. She died at almost the same instant I saw her.’
Verity looked down at his hands. ‘I knew that. Knew it better than you did. My concern was for you.’ He looked up at me and tried for a smile. ‘The most distinctive part of your fighting style is the incredible way you have of surviving it.’
From the corner of my eye, I saw Burrich shift, open his mouth to speak, then close it again. Cold dread uncoiled me. He had seen the bodies of the Forged ones, seen the tracks. He knew I hadn’t fought alone against them. It was the only thing that could have made the day worse. I felt as if my heart were suddenly caught in a cold stillness. That Burrich had not spoken of it yet, that he was reserving his accusations for a private time only made it worse.
‘FitzChivalry?’ Verity called my attention back to him.
I started. ‘I beg your pardon, my prince.’
He laughed, almost, a brief snort. ‘Enough of “my prince”. Rest assured that I do not expect it of you just now, and neither does Burrich. He and I know each other well enough; he did not “my prince” my brother at moments like this. Recall that he was King’s Man to my brother. Chivalry drew on his strength, and oftentimes not gently. I am sure Burrich knows that I have used you likewise. And knows also that I rode with your eyes today, at least as far as the top of that ridge.’
I looked to Burrich, who nodded slowly. Neither of us were certain why he was being included here.
‘I lost touch with you when you went into a battle frenzy. If I am to use you as I wish, that cannot happen.’ Verity drummed his fingers lightly on his thighs for a moment, in thought. ‘The only way I can see for you to learn this thing is to practise it. Burrich. Chivalry once told me that in a tight spot, you were better with an axe than a sword.’
Burrich looked startled. Plainly he had not expected Verity to know this about him. He
nodded again, slowly. ‘He used to mock me about it. Said it was a brawler’s tool, not a gentleman’s weapon.’
Verity permitted himself a tight smile. ‘Appropriate for Fitz’s style, then. You will teach him to use one. I don’t believe it’s something Hod teaches as a general rule. Though no doubt she could if I asked her. But I’d rather it was you. Because I want Fitz to practise keeping me with him while he learns it. If we can tie the two lessons together, perhaps he can master them both at once. And if you are teaching him, then he’ll not be too distracted about keeping my presence a secret. Can you do it?’
Burrich could not completely disguise the dismay that crept over him. ‘I can, my prince.’
‘Then do so, please. Beginning tomorrow. Earlier is better for me. I know you have other duties as well, and few enough hours to yourself. Don’t hesitate to pass some of your duties on to Hands while you are busy with this. He seems a very capable man.’
‘He is,’ Burrich agreed. Guardedly. Another titbit of information that Verity had at his fingertips.
‘Fine, then.’ Verity leaned back in his chair. He surveyed us both as if he were briefing a whole roomful of men. ‘Does anyone have any difficulties with any of this?’
I saw the question as a polite closing.
‘Sir?’ Burrich asked. His deep voice had gone very soft and uncertain. ‘If I may … I have … I do not intend to question my prince’s judgment, but …’
I held my breath. Here it came. The Wit.
‘Speak it out, Burrich. I thought I had made it clear that the “my princing” was to be suspended here. What worries you?’
Burrich stood up straight, and met the King-in-Waiting’s eyes. ‘Is this … fitting? Bastard or no, he is Chivalry’s son. What I saw up there, today …’ Once started, the words spilled out of Burrich. He was fighting to keep anger from his voice. ‘You sent him … He went into a slaughterhouse situation, alone. Most any other boy of his age would be dead now. I … try not to pry into what is not my area. I know there are many ways to serve my king, and that some are not as pretty as others. But up in the mountains … and then what I saw today. Could not you find someone besides your brother’s child for this?’