by Dave Duncan
chase after us eastward, so they'll assume that it
really means we want them to assume that we must be
planning to double back and therefore in fact we have
gone east after all."
"And where are we going?" There was not enough light
to see Raider's expression clearly. His
voice sounded mightily puzzled.
"We're going to double back anyway, because if
they think we want them to think that, then they'll
assume we're trying to deceive them." Flames!
Who was he to think he could outwit Montpurse?
The entire Order would be hot on his trail like
starving wolves. They'd have every junior in
Ironhall out riding the moors. "We're going
to Prail. We're going to steal a boat there.
Or maybe Lomouth and buy passage, but one
way or another we've got to get out of
Chivial."
Raider tucked a boot in a stirrup and
swung lithely into the saddle. He said no more for quite
some time.
After living on Starkmoor for five years a
man knew every tuft of heather within three leagues
and every tor and tarn within ten. By the time the larks were
caroling in blue sky, the fugitives were circling
well to the north of Ironhall. Wasp had seen
no signs of pursuit so far, but all ports
within reach would be alerted by nightfall, so he
absolutely must get his ward out of the country before
then.
He wasn't up to being a Blade. It was his
fault that Raider was now a fugitive instead of the
King's honored guest. Janvier's death gnawed
at his conscience. Dumb kid had panicked and
made a good situation incredibly bad. He should
have had the courage to refuse the binding. Raider
would be infinitely better off without him; and even
if they did manage to escape from Chivial,
Wasp was going to be a lead weight round his neck
when they got to Baelmark. Baelmark was full of
Baels. ...
"You are quite right," Raider said suddenly,
addressing the sky. "Ambrose was being devious."
"You said Geste's sword was called
Fancy?"
Raider glanced around with a grin. "You caught
that? Yes, they do write the names of the swords in
the archives. They'll write nothing for you."
Not funny anymore. Nothing was funny
anymore when a man was a murderer, a Blade
who had failed his ward within an hour of being bound.
"How did you get in there?"
"Wasn't hard. Hid behind the door. I was still
the Brat and it's not uncommon to find the Brat
hiding in weird places. I wasn't caught,
though."
"So whose sword was Fancy?"
"Sir Yorick's. Admitted in 328.
He must have been good, because he was the first Blade
to be bound by Crown Prince Ambrose. That was in
Fifthmoon, 333--1 present from Daddy on his
sixteenth birthday, I suspect. He lied
to me about more than just his name. He was commander of the
Prince's Guard until King Taisson died
in 349. Then he was dubbed knight and
Montpurse was promoted to command the combined
Guards."
"So he was at Candlefen that day. Must have been!
It was his men who died when your mother was carried off?"
"Undoubtedly."
"And years later, when he's a free agent
without a ward to worry about, he turns up in
Baelmark on the very day, or almost the very day, your
father is murdered. Was your father a good
swordsman?"
"Not by Ironhall standards."
"Sixteen years with Ambrose. Do you know the
name of Montpurse's sword?"
Raider looked at him in surprise. The
rising sun made his stubbled chin shine like polished
copper. "Talon. Why?"
"Just that we all know that." Wasp rode on for a
few minutes, thinking it over. "Hoare's is
called Wit and Durendal's Harvest. Not
important, but we all know. Montpurse must
have served under this Yorick. Do you believe that neither
he nor Ambrose recognized the name of
Yorick's sword tonight?"
"I'm just a stupid Baelish pirate,"
Raider said.
Rich and secure inside impregnable walls,
Lomouth had been the greatest port in Chivial
until the third year of the Baelish War. Then
King Aeled had taken it in one of the lightning
raids for which he was famous and had held it for almost
two months against every force King Taisson had
been able to send against him. During that time he had
looted it down to the last spoon and shipped out
prisoners by the thousand. Then he had burned it and
sailed away unscathed. Lomouth was a great
port again, but it was not what it had been.
"The only thing I ask," Raider remarked as
they rode in the south gate, "is that you don't
mention whose son I am."
"Why not?" Wasp asked bitterly. "You have
me to defend you."
His ward gave him a quizzical glance. "You
are doing very well so far. I mock you not, friend.
I am hugely impressed." He had always been
a source of comfort in time of troubles, but Wasp had
never realized what a good liar he was.
Inside the gate the streets were narrow and full
of people, horses, voices, carts, fascinating
storefronts, noise, abuse, stenches and
fragrances, hawkers' cries, flapping
pigeons, wagons, scavenging dogs, and children
liable to get under the horses' feet. A few
minutes of Lomouth were enough to make Wasp want
to scream and drag his ward away by the scruff of the
neck.
Raider's red hair attracted some scowls,
but no one took any real notice of the
visitors. The rare exceptions were a few young
women, whose eyes were certainly caught by the
rangy, Baelish-looking horseman, if not
by his boy companion. Apart from miners' daughters
in Torwell--who were always extremely well
guarded--those were almost the first girls either of them had
seen in five years. Girls had been of no
interest back then. They had changed. Raider's
head was swinging like a weathercock, and even Wasp
felt the distraction.
"First thing we-- Pay attention!"
"You're too young to understand. And you should speak more
respectfully to your ward and oh wow! look
over there!"
"Die, then. See if I care."
"After you. What do we do next?"
They were both saddlesore and starving--especially
Wasp, who had lost his last meal when he
murdered Janvier--but Raider had already given his
opinion that, from the look of the estuary, they had
only two hours until the last ship sailed, so
time was perilously short. The King's warrant would
have arrived by the next tide and then the sheriff's men
would be hunting for a redheaded man and a boy bearing
cat's-eye swords.
"Sell the horses?" Raider s
uggested.
"They have the King's mark on them. That gets you
hanged from the battlements."
"We can't just abandon the brutes in the
street!"
They could have done that, but it was as easy to dismount in
the stable yard of an inn and tell the boy to look
sharp there and see to the nags. Then Wasp led his
ward into the inn itself and out the front door.
At ground level, the crowds were infinitely more
menacing. Every man, woman, and child was a potential
knife-wielding Bael-hating fanatic. Every
door held an assassin. Every mangy dog was
rabid. How did any Blade stay sane?
"Now we sell the sword?" Raider asked,
staring at a buxom blonde plucking a goose
at a butcher's stall.
"No. Anyone wearing a cat's-eye sword
in Chivial gets questioned sooner or later.
It'll fetch a lot more money abroad. Next
we find a goldsmith and you sell this ring."
Raider tore his eyes away. "Why me?"
"Because you're tall and handsome and romantic.
If I try, they'll think I stole it from my
mother."
Apparently Raider had inherited an
ancestral skill at fencing stolen goods. The
goldsmith was a crabbed, suspicious little man
who conducted his business behind an iron grille in
a well-lit garret. He barely glanced at the
ring being offered. "Two crowns and I'm being
generous."
"Two thousand," Raider responded. "So am
I."
The goldsmith took a harder look at these
shabbily dressed young men and then a much closer one
at the ring, holding it to the light, peering at it with a
lens. "It's a fake, of course, but quite a good
one. Eight crowns. Take it or leave it."
"Two thousand five hundred. You're
wasting my time."
A little later, when the goldsmith had gone up
to a hundred and Raider was back to two thousand,
Wasp remarked helpfully, "She's going to skin
you, you know."
His accomplice did not even blink. "There's
lots more cuddly stuff where she came from."
It was an article of faith in the Order that the
Blades' binding made them irresistible to women.
There did seem to be enough truth behind this belief
to make it widely known among--if not
necessarily shared by--the general population of
Chivial. The goldsmith was allowed to notice the
cat's-eye pommels.
For the next half hour, as the argument ebbed and
flowed and the tide inexorably ebbed, Wasp died
in agony. But he must have done a good job of
concealing his impatience, because Raider was able
to bargain the price up to 1,145 gold crowns.
As they clattered down the rickety stairs, he
grumbled that the Baelish-obscenity miser was going
to make thousands on the deal.
"I'd have taken his first offer," Wasp said.
"How did you know it was a real emerald?"
"I saw his eyes. The pupils went as big
as wine casks." Raider paused on the
doorstep. "Now we find a ship to somewhere?"
"Not yet," Wasp said. Time was precious, but
they did not look right--two youngsters in threadbare
clothing wearing silver-hilted swords had
thieves written all over them. If they tried
to buy passage out of the country they would be branding
themselves fugitives and the fare would sextuple at
least.
He took Raider over to a cordwainer's
shop across the street and made him buy the
fanciest pair of boots they had that would fit him
plus a gilt-buckled, embossed leather belt
for each of them. Then next door for blankets that
could be made up into a bedroll to hide
Janvier's saber.
"One Blade's enough," he explained.
"Two Blades wouldn't go overseas without a
ward. But now we look like rich folk trying
to travel incognito."
"Aren't I a bit young to need a Blade?"
"Not if you're your cousin, Rupert Lord
Candlefen. We're close enough to Westerth that a
lot of people will know of him. I don't suppose
anyone will have met him or know he
doesn't rank a Blade."
"Who's going to ask?"
"I hope nobody!" Wasp snapped. "But
now you have a name ready if you need one. You're a
prince. Stick your nose in the air and act the
part."
Raider's admiring stares were becoming more convincing
as he practiced them. "Where did you learn all
this admirable duplicity?"
"By keeping bad company." The binding was making
Wasp think as he needed to think. He wasn't
Wasp anymore, he was only Raider's
Blade and would never again be a person in his own
right.
The docks were bustling as vessels cast off and
sailed on the tide. Playing arrogant
aristocrat, Raider sauntered along the quay
reciting every ship's readiness, cargo, destination,
seaworthiness, likelihood of accepting
passengers, and the captain's honesty.
"How can you know all that?" his henchman complained.
"All sorts of things--the state of the rigging,
what they're loading, what it smells like. That
one's just a coaster, not going anywhere we want.
That one would scare away rats. And ..."
Baels! A whole shipload of the brutes!
The longship was unlike anything else in view--
longer, sleeker, and infinitely menacing. Of
course the gang of half-naked sailors swarming
over her could not be the monsters who sacked
Haybridge five years ago, slaying everyone
Wasp had ever known, but the sight of all that red
hair buried him in memories so vivid that they
blurred his view of the harbor. He saw again the
big house, whose stout stone walls had blocked
efforts by the raiders to take slaves or booty;
the ghouls dancing around it; the flames pouring from its
roof after they torched it in their anger. He heard
the screaming and laughter as mothers threw their babies
out the windows and the Baels threw them back in again.
He even smelled the reek of roast flesh on the
wind. Then the shouts as the monsters hunted him,
the cold embrace of the soil as he squirmed
frantically down into the badger's sett. ...
They were back and now he had a sword--
For an instant he stood paralyzed, rent
by conflicting urges to flee, screaming in terror,
or leap down from the dock and lay about him. He was
fast. He would get five or six of the
monsters before they overpowered him. ...
"Wasp? Fire and pox, man! Are you
all right?"
His ward needed him! Sir Wasp felt his
binding grab him like a fist. The memories
faded. He blinked. "Belly cramp. I could
eat rats raw."
"They taste better warmed," Raider said
cautiously. After a moment he resumed his
progress. Wasp followed, trying not to look
sneaking worried glances at him.
"Ah! That's Thergian rigging or I'm a
Thergian. Looks like she's been loading lumber
--good cargo, that; keep her afloat even if she
springs a leak." Raider headed for the
gangplank, arriving just as it was being hauled in.
"You there, my good man. Tell your captain to come
here, will you?"
The hefty, hairy man thus addressed
replied with some guttural words that Wasp was
happy not to understand. Just their tone was enough to make his
sword hand twitch, but Raider's cavalier
demands did eventually bring an officer, even
larger and more villainous. He confirmed in heavily
accented Chivian that the ship was bound for Thergy and
could carry two passengers: "Twenty crowns
each. You sleep where the crew sleeps."
"Including meals."
"Meals are a crown apiece and you eat what
the crew eats."
"I expect the food will kill us if the fleas
don't." But Raider paid up and stalked aboard
with his Blade at his heels--and his nose in the
air.
Wasp insisted they stay on deck until the
Zeemeeuw had spread her sails and was heading
down the broad waters of the Westuary. No shouting
Blades on lathered horses came charging along
the quay at the last minute. At last, he could
begin to relax a little. It went without saying, of
course, that all the hands and officers were planning
to cut his ward's throat at the earliest possible
opportunity, but from now on he would have to live in
a world of monsters.
He took pity on Raider, who was staggering from
lack of sleep. They retired to the fo'c'sle--
dark and evil-smelling, with barely enough headroom
for a man to sit upright, let alone stand.
A sailor tried to rent them hammocks, but
Raider had Baelish contempt for such decadence
aboard ship and just rolled himself up in a
blanket, without even a pillow. Putting
Nothing within reach, Wasp leaned back against the
ship's side to wait for his ward's awakening. He
would never sleep again.
As the hours passed and Zeemeeuw put ever
more water between her and Chivial, he began to feel
better. He had successfully smuggled Raider
out of the country. Now they were fugitives, liable
to be hanged if they ever returned, but they were
alive and free. He had only his peculiar
Blade instinct to reassure him that this was a safer