Blackguards

by J. M. Martin

  Camlin looked about. Two score men were scattered about the dell. The last rays of the sun slanted through the canopy above, bathing the dell in an amber glow. A fire-pit crackled in its center, a deer carcass turning on the spit. Casalu was throwing dice with a few of his inner circle, men here and there attending to their daily tasks—stitching torn clothing, running a whetstone over a blade, skinning and salting meat for the morrow, piling wood for the fire-pit, fetching water from a nearby stream. Normal things, and yet something was in the air. A tension.

  Camlin went back to his routine, running a whetstone along the blade of his sword, then oiling it with an old rag, sheathed it, and then went through the same process with his knife. He emptied his bag between his feet and checked over its contents. A copper box packed with dry tinder and kindling. A flint and iron. Fish-hooks and animal gut for the stitching of wounds. Various medicinal herbs—honey, sorrel leaves, yarrow, and seed of the poppy. A roll of linen bandages. An arterial strap. An iron to heat for the cauterization of wounds. A needle and hemp thread. And a pot.

  Be prepared, he told himself. Or repeated what Braith had told him. Braith had taught him all of this, how to be disciplined, how to prepare as a warrior would. As a man.

  He will come back.

  Braith had been gone for four nights, sent with a small crew to scout and maybe raid near the northern border of the Darkwood, where a new fortress was being built to guard the giantsway. Casalu had insisted that Drem, his captain, go with them.

  He should have been back by now.

  He packed his bag, putting it all away neatly, in its place.

  An owl hooted three times and he felt his pulse quicken.

  They’re back.

  The soft footfall of feet on forest litter. All of them in this crew were woodsmen, knew how to move through the forest like a whisper. Whoever was coming was relaxed, not concerned about masking their approach.

  Is Drem going to walk in with one of Braith’s ears in his collection?

  The footsteps grew louder, no more than three, maybe four people.

  Seven men left here.

  Men walked into the dell, Braith at their center, his warm smile on his face. He saw Camlin and nodded a greeting, carried on walking, stopped a dozen paces from Casalu, who was still playing at dice.

  Casalu had not moved, but his eyes flitted from Braith to the men with him.

  “You looking for Drem?” Braith asked him.

  Casalu said nothing.

  Braith held up a leather thong, draped with ears. Most of them were dried out bits of skin, almost unrecognizable from their original form, but one was fresher, crusted blood still upon it.

  “Drem and I had a little chat before he parted with his ear. He told me all kinds of interesting tales. Mostly about how you want me dead.”

  Camlin reached a hand inside his pouch and pulled out a string wrapped in parchment and wax. Slowly he set to stringing his bow.

  “Help yourself to some bread and stew,” Casalu said, looking back to his dice. “You can report to me later.”

  Braith threw the necklace of ears onto the throw-board.

  “I call you out, Casalu ben Artair,” he said, voice raised, filling the dell.

  Casalu snorted. “Shut him up,” he said, and one of his companions burst into life, Niall, a newcomer that Casalu had adopted. It was generally accepted that he was the best sword the Darkwood brigands had ever seen. He surged to his feet, drawing his sword at the same time and took a few running steps towards Braith, who stood still as stone, just watching him. Niall’s head jerked back, he stumbled, then crashed to the ground, rolled and lay still, Camlin’s arrow through his eye.

  Men were on their feet everywhere now, iron scraping from sheaths, insults and challenges flying. Camlin had another arrow nocked, bow half drawn.

  “Hold,” Braith yelled, his voice drowning the others. “No need for more of us to die. Just one. Me or him.” He pointed at Casalu, still sitting at his throw-board.

  Casalu stood slowly, uncoiling like a wyrm from the old tales, all muscle and sinuous grace.

  “We’ll do this Darkwood style,” Casalu said.

  “Of course,” Braith grinned.

  Both men stripped to the waist, a circle forming around them. It was dusk now, the fire-pit sending huge shadows flickering against the trees lining the dell.

  Braith and Casalu held their left arms out, together, and Camlin bound them wrist-to-wrist with a leather thong.

  Casalu reached behind his back and drew his cleaver from its sheath.

  “Darkwood style is knives,” Camlin said, others around the dell muttering their agreement.

  “If we’re using our weapon of choice…” Braith rested his hand on his sword hilt.

  Casalu glowered at Camlin, then cast a baleful glare at the rest of the crew. He threw his cleaver to the ground. Braith unbuckled his sword-belt and passed blade and sheath to Camlin.

  “When I’ve gutted him you’re next,” Casalu growled at Camlin, patting the knife at his belt.

  “That’s a wager I’d bet against,” Braith said, still smiling.

  Then Camlin was stepping back and lifting a horn to his lips. He blew once, long and keening, and the fight began.

  Both men pulled at their bound wrists, Casalu heavier, stronger, but Braith’s feet shifting, body swaying, taking the power out of Casalu’s attempts to drag him off balance.

  Why haven’t they drawn their knives?

  They moved back and forth, sending wild shadows dancing around the dell.

  They’re measuring one another.

  Casalu gave another wild tug and Braith slipped to the side, hooked a foot behind Casalu’s ankle and sent him staggering off balance; at the same time Braith’s hand finally reached for his knife. Somehow Casalu righted himself and lunged forward, his fist smashing into Braith’s mouth, sending him reeling.

  Braith spat blood and teeth from split lips, waving his knife wildly to slow Casalu’s charge. Then they both had a knife in their hands and were stabbing, slashing, iron sparking in the twilight, trailing incandescent arcs through the air, at the same time their tied arms pulling and pushing, lunging and dragging.

  They staggered close to the fire-pit, Casalu trying to throw Braith into it, Braith using Casalu’s momentum to swing them both in a half circle. For a moment they stood there, leaning into one another, silhouetted by flame and still as carven stone, wrists locked, knives grating above their heads, lips twisted and snarling, then Braith spat blood into Casalu’s face and they were moving again, spinning, lunging, stabbing, blocking. Braith tripped and staggered, Casalu’s knife plunging at his belly, Braith suddenly pulling backwards, falling, Casalu on top of him, the two of them rolling, punching and stabbing, then they were both on their feet again, crouching low, stepping away from each other.

  Casalu was breathing hard, blood sluicing down his left arm, dripping from his fingertips, Braith’s ear bleeding, mangled from what looked like a bite, blood running down his neck, another thin red line along one thigh.

  They regarded each other for one long moment, the crackle of the fire-pit and Casalu’s heavy breathing punctuating the silence, then they were moving together again, knives clashing, scraping, bodies slapping together, Camlin and the rest of the crew shouting and cheering.

  Then Braith’s knife was spinning through the air.

  Casalu tugged Braith forward, wrapped his bound hand about Braith’s waist, twisting Braith’s left arm behind his back, holding him close. Braith grabbed Casalu’s wrist with his free hand, both of them shaking with the strain, but Casalu’s knife edged steadily closer.

  Camlin felt a jolt of fear, both for Braith and for himself. He’d chosen his side, knew the consequences of that choice.

  The knife moved steadily towards Braith’s throat. Veins bulged in Braith’s face, his neck, his arm. The knife a handspan from his throat. Sweat poured from Braith’s face, dripped from his nose. The knife moved closer, now a finger’s widt
h from Braith’s throat.

  Casalu smiled.

  Braith snapped his head forward, crunching into Casalu’s face, a red explosion where Casalu’s nose had been. And again, teeth flying. Casalu staggered back, knife hand falling, blade slipping from his fingers.

  Braith followed him, brought a knee up into Casalu’s groin, pushed the big man staggering back, and Braith dropped to the ground, rolled, came up with something gripped in his fist.

  Casalu’s cleaver.

  Casalu blinked, opened his mouth, then with a wet thump the cleaver hacked into his neck. Blood spurted. Braith wrenched the blade free, chopped again, Casalu stumbling away, mouth flopping, Braith following. Another blow and Camlin heard the crack of bone splintering. Casalu dropped to his knees, swayed, fell onto his face.

  Braith stood over him, chest heaving, nostrils flaring, blood splattering his face. Then he swung the cleaver again, severing Casalu’s bound hand at the wrist.

  A silence filled the dell.

  “Looks like we’ve got a new chief,” Camlin roared, and then men were cheering and yelling.

  Camlin handed Braith his sheathed sword back.

  “For a moment there, I was a bit worried,” he said.

  “Me too,” Braith grinned. “But he forgot the first rule.”

  “The first rule?”

  “Aye. The one that cancels out all others. The only rule, really.”

  “And what is that?” Camlin asked him.

  “That it is better to live than to die.” He nudged Casalu’s corpse with his boot, then sucked in a deep breath and smiled through lacerated lips.

  “Why so happy?”

  “I have plans for this crew.” Braith’s smile broadened as he cleaned Casalu’s blood from his cleaver.

  The Secret

  Mark Lawrence

  “The Secret” is set in the world where my Broken Empire and Red Queen's War trilogies take place. I've been writing short stories based on the various members of Jorg Ancrath's 'brotherhood of the road', exploring their origins. When I saw that the Blackguards anthology was seeking tales of assassins, I thought it was time to write about Brother Sim.

  ~

  The moon shows her face and Sim crouches, low to the ground. On the castle walls, on the high towers, a dozen pairs of eyes hunt the darkness of the slopes outside, but only the wind finds Sim, tugging at his cloak, keening in his ears. He studies the battlements, the sheer expanse of stonework, the great gatehouse hunkered above the heaviest of portcullises. When the time comes he’ll be fast. But now he waits. Sinking the teeth of his patience into the problem, watching how the guards move, how they come and go, where they rest their eyes.

  “Every good story tells at least one lie and holds a secret at its heart.”

  The young man kept his head so still as he spoke that Dara thought of the statues in her father’s hall. She watched his lips form the words, her gaze drawn by their motion amid the stillness of his face. All part of the storyteller’s art, no doubt.

  “The secret of this story hides in darkness, trapped behind the eyes of an assassin.”

  Dara let her gaze stray from Guise’s mouth to encompass the rest of him, slight within his teller’s tunic, buttoned to the top, his velvet tricorn rakishly askew, features fine, the light that had first lit her up still burning in those gray eyes.

  “Sim they called him. Perhaps it was his name. Assassins wear such things lightly. In any event Sim had been his name since the brotherhood took him in.”

  “A brotherhood? Was he a holy man?” Dara knew the pope kept assassins—the best that money could buy.

  Guise smiled, a true storyteller doesn’t bridle at questions. When questions are not welcome the story will not allow its audience to speak. “A holy man? Of a kind…he offered absolution, dealt in peace. Steel forgives all sins.”

  When Guise smiled Dara’s heart beat faster and the lingering worry retreated. If her father discovered she’d snuck a man into her rooms, a mere commoner at that, he would double the guard—though she doubted the walls would hold more soldiers—have the bars at her window shackled together so no illicit key would open them, and worst of all, he would talk to her. He would summon her before the chair from which he spoke for all of Aramis and treat her not like a child, but like an adult in whom his trust had been misplaced. She would have to stand there, alone in that echoing expanse of marble, and explain the knotted curtain pulls she’d lowered as a rope, the alarm she’d had Clara raise to distract the guardsmen from their patrols…

  “Brother Sim took his work seriously. The taking of a life is a—”

  “Was he handsome, this Brother Sim?” Dara stretched on the couch, a languid motion, hot and sultry as the night. She felt sure a storm was building, the tree tops in the gardens had been thrashing in a humid wind when she opened the window for Guise, rain lacing the breeze. It would break soon. The distant thunder arrive and make good on its threats.

  Dara half rolled to face the storyteller. He leaned forward on his small chair, close at hand, the story scroll unopened on his knee. About his wrist he wore her favor, a silk handkerchief, embroidered with flower and tiny glass beads. “Was he handsome? Was he tall, this Sim?” she asked.

  “Ordinary,” Guise told her. “Unremarkable. The kind of face that might in the right light be anyone. Handsome in one instant, in the next forgettable. He stood shorter than most men, lacking the muscle of a warrior. His eyes though, they would chill you. Empty. As if he saw just bones and meat when he looked your way.”

  Dara shuddered, and Guise unrolled his scroll, fingertips floating above the characters set there, dark and numerous upon the vellum, crowded with meaning. “To find out why Sim watched those walls we have to journey, first many miles to the east, and then back through the hours and days until we find him there.” Guise raised his voice, though still soft, for the guards outside the door mustn’t hear him, and as he lifted his hand from the page, the story bore her away.

  #

  Brother Sim waited, for that is what assassins must do. First they wait for their task, then for opportunity. The brotherhood had made camp in the ruin of a small fortress, amid the wreckage and char-stink of whatever battle had emptied it. Sim had sought out the highest tower, as was his wont, and sat upon the battlements, staring at the point where the road that brought them became compressed between sky and land and vanished into a point. His legs dangled above a long drop.

  “A name has been given.” Brother Jorg spoke behind Sim. He’d climbed the spiral stair on quiet feet.

  “Which name?” Sim still watched the road, leading as it did back into the past. Sometimes he wondered about that. About how a man might retrace his steps and yet still not return to the place he’d come from.

  And Brother Jorg spoke the name. He came to stand by the wall and set a heavy gold coin beside Sim. In a brotherhood all brothers are equal, but some are more equal than others, and Jorg was their leader.

  “Find us on the Appan Way when this is done.” He turned and descended the steps.

  Assassination is murder with somebody else’s purpose. Sim reached for the coin, held it in his palm, felt the weight. Coins hold purpose, they bear it like a cup. A murder should always carry a weight, even if it’s only the weight of gold. He turned the coin over in his scarred fingers. The face upon it would lead him to his victim.

  #

  Sim rode from the fort, beneath the gutted gatehouse, his equipment stowed, his weapons strapped about his person. The brothers saw him go and made no comment. Assassination is lonely work. They each feared him in their way. Hard-bitten men, dangerous with a sharp edge or a blunt instrument, but they feared him. Everyone sleeps after all. Every man is vulnerable.

  Sim slowed his horse to a walk and set out along the trail that would bear him to a larger way, and thence to the Roma Road that led to Aramis. There was no haste in him, no eagerness. The assassin requires no passion. His work is not artistry, simply efficient. The very best assassin is no wa
rrior, he doesn’t achieve his ends through skill at arms. Instead he must know people, he must understand them, intimately. Sometimes it’s the people who stand in his way, whose skin he must inhabit—sometimes the victims themselves.

  Sim found an apple in his pocket, wizened but still sweet, and took a small bite, leaving a precise wound. The catch of course is that knowing the full depth of any human, knowing their hopes and frailties, the hurts of their past, the tremor with which they reach for the future…that knowledge is akin to love.

  #

  “Do you think that’s true, Guise?” Dara asked the question into the pause the young man left. “Because who knows people better than a storyteller?” She drew herself up upon the couch so she sat opposite him, their knees almost touching. “You make your living telling our tales. And so many of them are about princesses…you must know us very well.”

  They shared a knowing smile, close enough now that Dara could see the rain’s moisture still clinging to his hair. Dara laid her hand upon his knee—she could guess how this night’s story would end. She had invited him to her chamber for more than old tales. Guise set his fingers above the symbols on the scroll, and began to speak again, not looking down but holding her gaze, as if he could read the story by drawing the words up through his hand.

  #

  “Sim sat and waited and watched, as he had sat and waited and watched on each of ten previous nights, sometimes at the walls, sometimes in the city that washed up around the barren mount upon which the castle squatted. Always he listened, learning what could be learned, presenting a new face to each night, seeking his way in.”

  Dara frowned. “This Brother Sim came to Aramis to murder the man whose face was on the coin?” She shot Guise a sharp look. “My father—”

  “Or some grandsire of his, my princess? Or perhaps just someone who might be found wherever the king might be? Or maybe Hertog the Second, that fearsome warlord who died in mysterious circumstances and whose brother, Jantis, inherited Aramis’ throne three centuries back? Jantis proved somewhat inept in the business of armies and wore the crown for just two months before your family disposed of him upon the battlefield…Give the story space and it will tell itself.”