by Ijaz, Usman
Alexis looked up from his food and looked at the two boys. “I don’t know, Connor, perhaps just a feral tribe. But whatever they are, they are behind us now and we must look to what is ahead.”
4
They all attended the dinner with the captain, even though Alexis had to be helped to the room.
The dinner comprised mostly of large quantities of salted cod, fish chowder and sea biscuits and dried fruit. The conversation was mainly between the captain and the Legionnaire while the two boys listened and watched on.
”I find it rather odd that you happened to be coming around just as we needed you,” Alexis said after a lull in the conversation of Grandal.
“Aye, so do I. I didn’t plan on sailing in the middle of the night, or to choose the left fork of the Konul River - it’s much too long and dangerous, you see - but when the queer notion took me, it wouldn’t leave my mind,” Lavos explained. He laughed abruptly. “In fact, I remember thinking that I wasn’t in control of my own thoughts, and I suppose the crew must have thought the same when I told them to set sail under a waxing moon. That’s terrible luck to sailors, you see.”
His three guests listened with quiet attention.
They left the captain’s room soon after that, with the boys aiding the Legionnaire between them. As Alexis lay down on his cot, he turned to Adrian. “Do you know what he was talking about in there?”
Adrian nodded. “The Source ... it guided him to us.”
“Yes,” agreed Alexis. “Now we know of another fact.”
“What’s that?”
“It knows of you as well ... and wants you to reach it.”
Chapter 18
On the Hunt
1
The two assassins rode out of the small town early the next morning and made their way down the road. They had crossed over into Arcadia two days earlier, and it was here that Amon said they would likely find the Legionnaire and the Ascillian child.
Iris watched the prairies on both sides of the road with calm emerald eyes. She studied the lazy sway of the tall Horn flowers, their bright red tops stirring in the wind, and smiled. The warm breeze that blew back her dark hair from her face and stirred dust around the horses hooves also carried the flowers’ scent, and she found it a wonderful smell.
The road they traveled was long and dull, but she didn’t mind at all. Amon was a different matter, however - she could tell just by looking at his tensed back. Amon seemed to detest anything that still showed life, it sometimes seemed to her.
They rode for most of the morning, stopped around mid-afternoon with the sun high in the sky to eat at an inn, and then were on the move again. Iris rode a little behind Amon, allowing the rest of the road to be used by travelers going the opposite direction. The sky overhead was a brilliant blue that she found herself gazing at for long moments. Amon’s harsh voice snapped her out of her reverie.
“Keep up! We don’t have time for daydreaming.”
Iris sped her horse up and rode beside him. She felt better simply by being closer to him. He had always been with her, for almost as long as she could remember. Most of her earliest memories were of Amon and her. What came before was hazy; sometimes she imagined she saw a woman’s face that stuck in her mind for no reason, at other times a man’s, but then she would become certain they were both people she had killed in the assassin’s trade. The memories that were clear to her were of Amon teaching her the skills of death, some as simple games that included stealing a fishmonger’s ware without ever him seeing anything, others as hard as trying to imagine that the people she intended to kill were simply wooden puppets.
She watched Amon from the corner of her eyes, and though she could remember standing before him while he drove her to tears with his words for failing him, she still could not help but feel a strong love for him. He was the only one in this world who cared for her, and he was her closest friend.
“Amon...?” she said, trying to gauge his mood.
“What?” he growled, but in his voice she did not hear impatience or anger, only a calm resignation.
She took her chance then, hoping that she had read his mood correctly. “Amon ... who taught you the assassin’s craft?” He had taught her not to question him in anything, and she had not asked him this in years, but she asked him now on the long road. He had not bothered to answer her in the past, and she thought he would keep his quiet this time as well. He certainly looked annoyed by the question.
They rode on for another quarter of a mile before Amon said anything. His voice low as though answering her made him confront something he did not dare speak of too loud. At the sight of the weariness on his face, she was about to tell him he need not tell her, but he spoke in a blunt tone, and she listened.
“I was taught by the streets of Mahdenpoor.” And that was all he said for a while. Then: “There is no harder teacher than the world around you, and no stricter rules than the ones you apply to yourself.” It seemed to Iris that he had forgotten about her, the way he watched only the road before him and spoke to himself. “What I learned, I learned while fighting to survive. The streets make for a poor bed, as I quickly found out. I slept in whichever hole I found, and hoped it didn’t belong to another, larger rat. When I was hungry, I took what I needed from vendors’ booths and the harbor, not caring that I had no right there, not by the Imperial King’s writ, anyway.”
Disgust made his voice thick. “There were others like me, of course, but I was different than them or they were different from me, which is to say we were not at all alike. Everywhere I go I find a hierarchy, and I suppose I should not be surprised that street urchins work in the same manner. I refused to be a part of the rest of the babble, and paid for it whenever they caught me. In time the lot of them were to die at my hands, but not then. I lived on the streets, and discovered the world for what it is.”
Amon stopped and watched the prairies on the side of the road. Iris watched him closely and not without a little awe. That fact that he was telling her this still amazed her; Amon was not at all a man to discuss his past. She wanted desperately to hear the rest of what he had to say, but she dared not press him if it hurt him too much. For a long time they traveled in silence then. The sun drifted a little closer to its resting place and pale wisps of clouds drifted across the sky.
As they crested a hill and saw the road stretching before them with no town or village in sight Amon continued in a plain voice. “My first kill was when I was twelve. It was for no other reason than that the boy had pummeled me more times than I could count. I watched him die, filled with a frustration and anger that made me wish there were others at hand, others whose blood I could spill. When I calmed I dumped the body in the harbor - to hell with the Imperial King!” He beat his right fist against his breast in mockery, a faint smile twisting his lips. “I left Mahdenpoor and traveled across Anoura. Everywhere I went I found vermin for killing. Sometimes I killed for no more than a passing glance. I stalked my prey, not like a rat but as a hunter. I became exceedingly good at it.” His eyes stared out at the pastures with a distant gaze. “I once killed five men of the old Legion, simply to see if I would die that night or them. One by one I stole upon them like mist, and left them dead in the guardhouse. The King sent a warrant out for the murderers, but they never knew where to look.
“By the time I turned nineteen I had been across most of Anoura and Xian, and had killed more men and women than I cared to count. I was making money by then, and beginning to realize where my skills could take me. Most of the fools that hired me did so for political reasons that I never cared about. What struck me as odd was the irony - they hired me to kill a rival, and the next week it could be their heads I’d come looking for. I also learned the dangers to myself in that time. Too many ambushes nearly avoided made me wary. I lay low for a time, and headed back to Mahdenpoor. I had never missed the cursed place, but I wanted to come back to it as something more than I had left it.
“There I met you.”
“I’m glad,” Iris told him. “I don’t know where I would be right now if not for you, Amon.”
But Amon was silent once more, and this time he did not break the silence.
3
“Have you seen a lone man and a boy passing through in the past day or two?”
The question was asked gruffly, in the tone that Amon used when he did not wish to speak. People flowed by either side of him on the street, and there was that bustle and noise that was found in every town and city. He hated the noise, and associated it with the mingling of rodents.
The old man looked up at him, squinting to get a better look. Amon muttered a curse in annoyance. “No ... I can’t say I have, son.”
“I’m not your son, you old bastard,” Amon growled as he rode on.
They were in the town of Juwail, but to Amon’s eyes it looked like every other little town they had passed through in the outer reaches of Grandal. The buildings were different, here they were flat topped and just as many made of wood as stone, but the endless milling throngs moving through the town could be the same as he had seen anywhere. The only noticeable differences he saw was the cut of their clothing, how coats sometimes flared around the hips and were divided along the sides, or how the women seemed dedicated to exposing as much of their bosoms as they could. He felt disgusted, and thought: Just like rats who rose above their place.
He rode on, with Iris following behind him. The crowds were thinning out as many headed home with the setting sun. Amon maneuvered his horse through the townsfolk, who parted before him quickly as they realized he did not intend to stop or slow down. He stopped in front of a small tavern with a ramshackle sign atop the door creaking in the wind.
“Wait here,” he told the girl, and went in.
The smell of sawdust and spilled beer hit him like a fist to the jaw, and he scowled as he made his way to the fat man behind the counter, wondering if there was such a thing as a thin innkeeper in all the world. God forbid should one of them not look like a bloated bear on its hind legs. He looked around the bleak room and saw many of the tables taken up by small groups, nursing their mugs of whatever filth they drank. He dismissed the regulars and stopped before the fat innkeeper. The man’s face lit up in a false smile and he began to say something before Amon cut him off.
“I’m looking for a young man and a boy traveling through here. Have you heard anything of it?”
The innkeeper frowned at the sudden inquisition, and he looked ready to say something humorous, perhaps even insolent, but changed his mind as he got a good look at Amon’s face. He ran a hand through his thinning hair. “Uh ... can’t say that I have.”
Amon turned and left. He had expected as much, but how wonderful it would have been to find the two bastards here and capture the boy. He went to where Iris waited, watching the darkening sky and the crescent moon that hung in the night.
“Let us find an inn.”
“They are not here?” Iris asked.
“No.”
They headed up a stark avenue in hopes of finding a suitable inn. Amon was ready to put Juwail to his back. If they haven’t come this way then--
“You there!”
Amon tensed at once as he turned around to look at who had hailed them, one hand already held a knife disclosed in it. Behind them, in the middle of the street, stood a small band of men wearing poorly made uniforms of bright red. There were perhaps a dozen of them in all. But to call them men was stretching it, he realized; even in the fading light he could see that they were barely out of their teens.
They stood with an arrogant assurance that their numbers would protect them. All of them stood with some sort of weapon; most with staves, but one with a sword and a few with spears, and two with a bows; one, Amon saw, even had a revolver at his waist.
“What are you doing out so close to curfew, strangers? Identify yourselves!”
Amon relaxed his guard a little. He had thought they had been recognized, but it seemed these fools were only acting as the town Guard. They were boys, hardly ready for what they were preparing themselves for.
“Answer me!” shouted the boy. “Who are you?”
Amon looked at them levelly. “No one.” He turned his horse and Iris followed suit.
“Do not dare turn your back on us!” came the indignant shout.
Amon stopped his mount and for a moment sat still as a statue, reigning in the anger that always boiled beneath the surface. He was truly beginning to despise this town and this chase. “Go home, you impudent brats, try and impress your fathers some other way.”
Their silence made him believe for a moment that they would let it go. He made to kick his mount into motion. A crossbow bolt flew through the empty street. The quarrel missed Iris and him by quite a large margin. Amon let out a tired breath, glanced at Iris, and turned around. His hand flicked out, nothing more than a casual movement, but the next moment the man with who the crossbow lay on the ground, a knife hilt protruding from his throat.
Now he would give way to the demon within him.
The Guard stared at their fallen comrade in surprised horror, and then as one they ran towards the two assassins, shouting their litany.
Amon and Iris slid off their horses with the graceful tact of twin snakes and ran to meet the mob, weaving to avoid the crossbow bolts that were shot at them. Amon reached inside his tunic and grabbed hold of three daggers. He drew them out and threw them in the same fluid motion. One boy fell fingering the hilt in his chest, the other fell shrieking in pain as blood ran down his cheek from the ruined mess of his right eye. Iris was letting the daggers fly beside him, and when the Guard struck them, the two of them met it with a knife in hand.
Amon sidestepped a blow from a large scythe and buried the knife in the boy`s throat. He quickly stepped aside to avoid a large cudgel and kicked the man wielding it in the side of his knee. A dry snap erupted and the man to fell to the ground screaming with a twisted leg. Amon threw another knife into the chest of an oncoming man, and then wheeled around to successively stab a younger boy in his leg and thrice in the chest. The boy collapsed to the ground wearing a look of surprise.
He looked to Iris and saw the girl duck a swipe from a javelin and elbow the man in the ribs, causing the man to emit his last breath before slicing his throat. She turned to face another attacker, and leapt back immediately to avoid a clumsy sword slash. Her hand darted up one wide sleeve and the next moment the knife was buried in the boy`s chest.
Between the two of them, Amon and Iris lay waste to the Juwail Guard within minutes. What was left of the Guard lay on the ground, begging for mercy and staining the cobblestones with their blood.
“Are you satisfied now?” Amon asked harshly as he walked to the boy who had challenged them. The boy lay with one of Iris’s knives sticking from his ribs and tears rolling down his smooth cheeks.
“Please ... no ... don’t ...,” the boy pleaded.
Amon faltered in his step, and then stood looking down on the boy with eyes that were for a moment hesitant. In his mind he was suddenly a boy of eight and crying those very same words to the large drunk that had cornered him in an alley. But in the end the man had ignored his pleas, as the gods had ignored him from birth, and the walls of the alleyway had amplified his screams and torment. That had been when he had realized that the world was a maze, and they were all but doomed to wander aimlessly.
“Please ... no!” the boy wept as Amon knelt before him. He drew the knife out of the boy’s torso, causing the boy to scream aloud.
Amon leaned forward and whispered harshly into the boy’s ear, as though to remind him a lesson he had forgotten. “This world is not meant for the weak!”
He slit the boy’s throat.
4
That night, as they prepared to lie down in an old inn, Iris asked the question that had been on her mind.
“Amon, why did you kill that boy?”
“Why did we kill any of them? Why do we kill at all? Might as well ask those
!” Amon spat bitterly. Iris only stared at him in bewilderment. She had never seen him like this. Amon sounded almost lost. Amon sighed, and his voice returned to his usual harsh tone, as if he despised the simple act of talking. “I did it as a favor to him. And in case you have forgotten, they would have done the same to us.”
Iris did not pursue the matter further. Since the bloodbath in Juwail, her companion had become tense and easy to petulance - even more so than usual.
When she lay down to sleep the other man was still standing before the window and staring out into the cold night. The girl wondered what sort of thoughts must be going through his head.
The next morning they continued their hunt.
Chapter 19
Sune
1
The Sea Spirit slowed as it approached the harbor of Sune. Alexis and the boys stood on the deck and watched the docks grow nearer. They had no belongings with them, what little they had possessed was now strewn on the Konul river’s embankment. Alexis watched the docks and the awaiting people there. He moved his left shoulder slightly, and felt a twitch of pain. He was healing, but still not yet quick enough to suit him. But he contented himself with his remarkable progress so far, and assured himself that the wound would heal completely.
As he looked at the other ships already moored at the docks a faint memory brushed his thoughts, something about a dream, a dream full of darkness and light. But as quickly as the thought came it was gone. He shook his head and let it pass.
After days of stumbling around in the woods, and then days of being stuck aboard the ship, they were finally visiting civilization again. At the forefront of his mind was an imperative need to find out what had happened to Hamar and Owain. He had asked Lavos if he had heard any news of Legionnaires in Haven, but the captain had been hauling cargo and had heard nothing.