Assassin's Quest

by Jon Kiln

  “I’ve no time for games,” Rothar growled and turned to walk away. “Do your worst, boys!” he shouted.

  He never looked back, he didn't need to. The roars of Brath’s incensed men and the screams of the Southlander told him all that he needed to know about the melee under the willow tree.

  Walking back to Stormbringer, Rothar realized that Kenner was keeping stride with him. Once they were far enough away from the havoc to be heard, Kenner began to speak.

  “Brath told tales about you for as long as I knew him,” he began. “To listen to him speak, one would think that there was no man, nor army, that you couldn't bring to their knees. I know you were close, and I know you are why we have been able to have free reign here in the Banewood. Tell me, now that he is gone, what will become of us?”

  Rothar looked at Kenner sorrowfully. “Brath and I chose very different paths, but I still could never speak a foul word about him. He was a good man, at the heart. Perhaps he just had a different way of showing it. In most ways, I suspect he was better than me. The King has always been aware of the good that Brath and his men have done for the security of the King’s City, and I know he will mourn Brath’s passing. And I assure you, the service that you do for the King is more important now than ever.”

  Kenner nodded. “And what of all this,” he asked, gesturing towards the mob under the tree. “What type of hell should we expect is coming?”

  Rothar gazed back at the scene. There was nothing left to see but a rope now, and a tangle of angry men, some screaming, some crying, every one of them bloody.

  “That is what I hope to find out.”

  Chapter 8

  Rothar rode carefully through the rest of the night, turning over the events of the past several hours in his head, while keeping a watchful eye and ear out for any further complications. Seven Southlanders had gone unaccounted for, and their direction was unknown.

  How had the captured Southlander known his identity? Only a select handful of nobles in King Heldar’s inner circle had ever known about Rothar and his dark vocation. The nature of his duties made it imperative that few knew of him. A well known assassin is an ineffective - and soon deceased - assassin.

  In the city and in the Banewood, there were other people with knowledge of Rothar’s doings. By necessity, Harwin knew that he was a hired sword of the crown, but Harwin was the closest thing Rothar had to a true friend, and he had no doubt that the blacksmith’s loyalty was infallible.

  Clearly, Brath and his men spoke of the lore of Rothar. Now Brath was dead, and his dubious followers were more likely to rejoice in the exploits of a death dealer than betray him.

  On top of it all, no man within the trust of Rothar would ever have any dealings with the hired mercenaries that hailed from the Southlands. As a rule, the Southlanders were despised throughout the kingdom. It had been one hundred years since anyone within the King’s domain had dared to make contact or contract with the heathens. Until now.

  Rothar entered the King’s City at daybreak. He inquired of the guards at the gate if there had been any trouble or suspicious happenings the night before. He was informed that the night had passed without event.

  As much as Rothar wished to ride straight to Castle Staghorn to confer with King Heldar, his steed had ran through half a day and a full night, and was faltering. Even such a mighty horse as Stormbringer has it’s limitations. Rothar walked Stormbringer to his house, a small and humble dwelling at the edge of Witherington, and fed and watered the beast.

  He cleaned the invisible poison from his broadsword and stored it in the house, carrying only his precious new dagger with him to the castle. Rothar was reaching the limits of his endurance as well, and it felt good to be rid of the burden of the cumbersome sword.

  Walking to the castle, he passed Harwin’s shop. The door was barred and no light burned inside. The blacksmith was either sleeping late this morning, or was out.

  Rothar told the guard at the castle keep to send word ahead that he must hold court with the King, and he sat down to wait. The morning was warming as the sun climbed up over the Banewood in the distance. From this vantage point, the treacherous forest looked green and inviting, the sunrise illuminating the canopy and concealing the dangers within.

  The streets around the castle were beginning to bustle with the day’s trade and traffic. Street performers, which were only permitted on the avenues around the castle because of the Queen’s affinity for their entertainment, lolled about juggling and performing pantomimes. Peasants pulled carts of produce and led livestock to the slaughter or the market.

  Far off down the street that ran parallel to the castle gate, Rothar heard a commotion. Peddlers and performers were scrambling out of the way of something unseen. All at once, a six-horse team pulling a heavy black carriage burst into view and turned the corner, heading away from the castle.

  Rothar stood up. It was identical in every way to the carriage he had seen across from Sleeth’s shop in Thurston, right down to the powerful black horses that pulled it. The carriage careened through a right turn at the next street and disappeared out of sight.

  “Sir,” a castle guard said. “His Highness will see you now.”

  ***

  Rothar entered the throne room and approached the royal couple. King Heldar was still rubbing sleep from his eyes. Queen Amelia was much more alert and put together. Feril was absent from this conclave. Rothar was pleased to consider that the hour may be too early for the snide Duke. He would have to remember to only call on the King in the early morning.

  Rothar bowed. King Heldar waved him off.

  “Enough, enough of that,” Heldar said. “I trust you were successful as always?”

  Rothar did not speak, but produced the head of Sleeth from his satchel, grasping the blond hair and holding the gaping face toward the King and Queen.

  “Good god, Rothar! Put that thing away!” cried the King.

  The Queen covered her face with a fan, but Rothar thought he could see her eyes laughing. It always amused him that the King could order grisly killings with such passion, but recoiled at the sight of the results.

  Rothar put the head back in his satchel. He would wait until night and give it to the pigs behind Bester’s butcher shop.

  King Heldar regained his composure, although it seemed as though he may need to delay his breakfast this morning.

  “Well done, Rothar. The children of my kingdom are safe again.”

  “I wish I could say that is true, your Highness,” replied Rothar. “But the things I have seen and heard this past night make me fear that the kingdom itself is in danger.”

  King Heldar’s eyebrows raised and he leaned forward on his throne.

  “How so, old friend?”

  Rothar proceeded to relay the events of the past night to the King and Queen. He needed to omit nothing, the King was well aware that Rothar moved amongst the thieves of the Banewood with familiarity. It was in fact he who had brokered the terms for the silent agreement between the criminals and the crown.

  Heldar was saddened to hear of the passing of Brath, and his brow furrowed with worry when Rothar told him how the captive Southlander knew of his identity.

  “Are you suggesting we have a traitor in our midst, Rothar?” asked King Heldar.

  “I do not feel that I am making a suggestion, Your Highness,” he answered. “I am telling you the facts, and the fact is that someone hired Southlanders to come into your realm. What they have been hired to do is unknown. But these devils are in possession of privileged information. You can derive from that what you wish.”

  The King sat back in his throne and rubbed his beard.

  “I must inquire of Feril if his spies have observed anything out of the ordinary on the southern front,” he said.

  The Queen spoke up for the first time. “If we rely on Feril’s connections, we are all doomed.”

  Rothar stifled a laugh.

  The King didn't laugh but nodded wearily. “I worry that
the trouble is not with the spies, but with their handler.”

  “You are a wise King, Your Highness,” said Rothar.

  ***

  Before he departed, King Heldar ordered Rothar to go to the castle kitchen and get something to eat.

  “You look like you are about to drop dead,” were the King’s exact words.

  Rothar exited the throne room and angled down a narrow hallway, ducked through a low door and climbed a winding staircase. After so many years, he was still familiar with every nook and cranny of Castle Staghorn.

  Halfway down the corridor that led to the kitchen, he paused by a wooden door. He checked the handle, unlocked as it always was. He opened the door to let torchlight from the corridor spill into the tiny room. Two small beds sat on either side of a wooden side table. The walls were covered with crudely drawn maps of lands that had never been. A box in the corner teemed with harmless variations of every weapon a knight would carry: wooden swords, tin armor, a mace with a cork ball.

  Everything was untouched, everything was just as it had been.

  Chapter 9

  Walking home to his house in Witherington with a sack of dried meat and some cheese, Rothar had come to the decision that his fatigue was severe enough that he was no good to the crown until he had eaten and slept. The edges of his vision were blurred, and he felt as though he were walking on air.

  He rounded a corner near the candle shop and was run into by a hooded man carrying a bundle. Rothar apologized to the stranger, who nodded and mumbled a reply. Rothar walked on, bothered by the impression he had gotten of the man. His thin features and darting eyes reminded him so much of the man he had just killed the day before, who’s head swung in the satchel at his side this moment.

  Looking up the street, Rothar could see that Harwin’s door was now open, and the fire was burning. He decided to stop in, in spite of his exhaustion, to say good day and let Harwin know that Esme’s knife was a very effective weapon indeed.

  Harwin was hammering powerfully at a piece of glowing iron as Rothar approached, and gave his friend a worried smile when he saw him.

  “You look as though you might fall over dead,” Harwin told him.

  “My friend, you would make an excellent King,” Rothar retorted.

  “Nay, I’ll keep to my metal work. But you tell King Heldar that if he ever wants to take a holiday, I would be happy to fill in for him.”

  “I will do exactly that,” Rothar said. “Anyhow, I wanted to let you know that your position as town blacksmith is in peril.”

  Harwin looked confused. “How’s that?”

  “Well,” Rothar said, “I know a young girl who makes severely deadly weapons, and not only that, she makes them far more beautiful than any of the homely trash that you've been peddling me.”

  Harwin started to laugh. “I gather it that you sullied the blade of Esme’s gift already?”

  “You know me too well. Where is she? I’d like to be the one to tell her she’s being promoted within the family business.”

  Harwin called for Esme, but she didn't answer, or tiptoe out of the back of the shop.

  “Wait here, I’ll go fetch her,” Harwin said.

  A moment later, Rothar heard Harwin frantically calling for him from the back room. Rothar rushed through the door and through a maze of cluttered rooms before he found his friend, standing over an abandoned doll. There were tiny drops of blood on the rough hewn wood floor. All about were splinters of wood from the back door, which now hung loosely on it’s hinges, wide open to the street beyond.

  Rothar knelt and touched one of the spots of blood with his fingertips. It was beginning to dry. Pursuit would be fruitless, the abductor could be miles away in any direction. He could try to track the attacker shortly, but right now, the first order of business was to calm Harwin. “Panic is a coffin nail,” was a saying Rothar had heard often as a youth in the wild, and presently, Harwin was supplying enough nails to seal all of Witherington in their boxes.

  The large man was scrambling all about, from the back room to the garden outside, back into the shop and around the front again, screaming for Esme. At some point he had taken up his blacksmith’s hammer, still glowing orange from the furnace. The sight of the wide eyed peasant, his auburn hair matted down with sweat and smoldering hammer raised and ready, drew a crowd of curious onlookers to the street in front of the shop.

  Rothar shooed away the gawkers and carefully urged Harwin back into the inner rooms. He removed the sledge from his friend’s hand and doused it in a bucket of cold water. As the hammer steamed and hissed, Rothar plied Harwin with urgent questions, all the while being careful not to send him back into a frenzy.

  “Harwin, old friend, it is of utmost importance that you listen to me,” Rothar began. “You must try to remain calm. Think, how long ago did you last see Esme with your own eyes?”

  Eyes narrowing and pointed towards the floor, Harwin tried to concentrate. When he spoke again, his voice was a testament of deepest pain.

  “I… I had been working hard. She always takes good care of herself,” he broke off.

  “I know, Harwin. It’s alright. How long had it been since you saw her?”

  “An hour… maybe more,” Harwin began to weep.

  “No time for that, Harwin,” Rothar said, a little more sharply than he had intended. “Did you see anyone around this morning that seemed out of place? Did anyone loiter about?”

  Sniffling, Harwin shook his head slowly. “I was not looking. How did I not hear anyone knock down the door?”

  Rothar gazed into the back room from which Esme had been taken. “You make such a din when you hammer at the steel, they probably timed it with your blows.”

  Harwin began to shake and moan. “I cannot sit here and do nothing! Someone had taken my daughter!”

  “A father’s love is strong and blind, Harwin.” Rothar replied. “I would never expect you to sit idly by, but you must trust me completely if you ever wish to see Esme again. Whoever took her is cunning, fast and quiet. You, crashing through the streets, armed to the teeth, will only drive them deeper underground, if they are still within the city at all. If this is, in fact, the manner of thing that I suspect it is, we may be under a watchful eye even now. So, what I need for you to do is walk with me, right now.”

  With that, Rothar stood and strode towards the front door.

  Harwin was still beside himself and did not move, only sat, slowly rocking back and forth, lips moving in silent curses or supplications, but no sound emitting. Standing and watching his friend, Rothar felt the weight of his fatigue returning, but he knew that rest would not be his today. He walked back over to the big blacksmith and dragged him to his feet. Harwin turned glazed eyes towards him and Rothar met his gaze with one of unshakable confidence and determination. Rothar spoke slowly. “Come with me, Harwin.”

  Suddenly, life returned to Harwin’s eyes and he straightened up, as though a spell had been broken and he was awake again.

  “Rothar,” he said, his voice level and steady. “Help me find Esme.”

  Rothar nodded. “If it is the last thing I ever do.”

  Chapter 10

  Rothar led Harwin, weaving through the busy sprawl of midday Witherington. The streets were especially crowded that day, as throngs of white cloaked men and women were moving through the city toward the Amethyst Sea, making their annual pilgrimage to Rakhan, the Holy City far beyond the Yawning Cliffs.

  The worshippers came from all over the kingdom every year. They converged upon the King’s City and boarded huge white ferries on the shore of the Amethyst Sea. The ships carried the masses eastward until the cliffs flattened out into more traversable rocky outcroppings. The pilgrims scaled the jagged rocks, often leaving blood behind, and ascended to the domed city of Rakhan, overlooking the purple waters of the sea.

  Rothar found the journey rather a waste of time, being that there was no evidence that any of this sacrifice did anything to appease the countless gods of the pe
asants. Today, however, he was grateful for the crowded jumble of travelers, as it would make Harwin and himself harder to follow.

  After a time the pair came to a small, dark shop at the edge of the market. It hardly looked like a shop at all, and most passers by likely mistook it for a pauper’s shack and disregarded it altogether. But Rothar knew that the goods found within were more valuable than most of the trappings in Witherington, besides Harwin’s steel, of course.

  Entering, Rothar called out, “Ariswold? Are you about?”

  There was a sound of shuffling from somewhere within the dim recesses of the shop, which was somehow far larger on the inside than out. A moment later, a tiny old man hobbled out from between two great shelves, seeming to materialize from the shadows like an ancient specter.

  The top of the codger’s head was completely bald, but an unruly spray of gray hair stuck out at all angles from around the sides. He had a narrow, hooked nose and piercing gray eyes that darted back and forth behind a thick pair of round spectacles. He wore a green velvet tunic with a white ruffled shirt, and around his neck hung a wreath of all manner of root vegetables. He smelled so strongly of garlic that the two visitors had to turn up their noses at his approach.

  “Who’s that there?” the old man said, squinting through a haze of smoke that wafted from incense burners all about the room, and was rushing to escape from an open front window. “Ah, Rothar! Good to see you, my lad! Have you brought me more tallo root from the Banewood?”

  “I’m sorry, Ariswold, I’ve none today,” Rothar replied.

  “Ah. Well then, are you injured?”

  Rothar chuckled slightly. “I am alright, old friend, I’ve come to ask for help for my companion here.” Rothar motioned to Harwin, who was looking confused.

  “What do I need of an apothecary?” Harwin asked Rothar in a slightly hushed tone. “I want to find Esme, not chew on roots.”

  “You need to trust me, Harwin,” Rothar said. “Ariswold, please tell me that you have some gilded fern.”