by RJ Baker
The world rushed at me.
A sudden focus.
I hear a tree branch cracking in a silent forest. See the land as a circle in my vision, a flat spinning plate of sky and earth that curls around itself. It refuses to make sense, it is a reeling vertiginous spin. A sound like the whine of a biting lizard twisting around my head, getting closer and closer, high-pitched and irritating. It is all I can hear. It fills my ears, my mind. My vision telescopes, the colours blurring and twisting into a single dark point surrounded by colour. The world expands and draws in, taking on a weight that would pull me to the ground if the tracks on my skin were not threatening to pull me apart. Then the single point of darkness expands, and it contains everything: me, Rufra, the Tired Lands, the world. It is so big I can barely believe something as insignificant as me can exist within it. Pain follows. The lizard bites me in the centre of my forehead, the world slaps into focus and I am me again. Girton. Not glowing, not lost in a world beyond understanding.
“Girton?” Rufra’s voice.
I shook myself out of my reverie. I had been lost in sensation, lost and confused. I had somehow expected Tomas’s forces to feel different, malignant, but in the low pulse of the magic all life was the same, from the heavy powerful throb of the mount by me to the thready life of the grass it crushed underfoot. All the same.
“Yes.” My voice wouldn’t come, and I had to cough to clear my throat. “Yes, Rufra.” He looked on the point of panic.
“Saris, the mountmaster, brought me. She thought you were ill. She could get no reply, said you were frozen like a hedgescare.”
“Tired, that is all.” The mount growled again and I put my hand on its flank. “Be calm,” I said, and the mount stood still. To those around it would look like it relaxed, but I could feel it was not so. The animal was taut, hard and on the edge of panic as I forced my will onto it. The mountmaster knew something was wrong but not what. How could she? “I am tired, that is all,” I said it again in the hope I would believe it.
“Of course,” said Rufra. He rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand. “I am used to thinking of you as more than most men. I did not think about the toll Gwyre must have taken on you when I asked you to ride. You should take a cart and get some sleep, Girton. That is what you need, sleep.”
“Thank you,” I said. I realised that Rufra’s soldiers were watching. Rufra had put his trust in me publicly and I knew he had told stories of me, of my skill as a warrior. The men and women around me had expectations. I glanced around at those watching and in their eyes I saw a terrible need I had previously been unaware of and I understood the constant pressure Rufra was under. It was not enough that he was a good man; he was a king, and that meant he must be more than just a man, and as his chosen I must also be more. I coughed. “I think it is only clear air that I need, Rufra. To ride will do me good.” I pulled myself up into Stuy’s saddle. “In fact,” I said, raising my voice, “the harder I ride, the better I will feel. I shall scout ahead, if that is all right, King Rufra.”
Relief. He tried not to show it but he was ever a poor actor. I had not let him down, not shown weakness, and by doing that, in the eyes of his troops I had proven him right in choosing me. I wondered how precarious he believed his throne was.
“Thank you,” he said quietly and pulled himself up on Stuy so he could whisper in my ear. “For the dead gods’ sake, Girton, find yourself some comfortable moss in a copse and get some sleep.” Then he dropped down and stepped back, shouting, “Now ride, Girton Club-Foot, champion of Rufra! Ride hard!” I put the spur to Stuy and, wishing it was Xus, galloped from the makeshift day camp to the sound of thunderous cheers I did not deserve.
Night had fallen by the time I approached the main camp, and I smelled the place before I saw it. The cold air of the plains had driven away the familiarity that had allowed me to stop noticing the stink of the camp while I was in it. Riders had arrived ahead of me, even though I had not stopped as Rufra had suggested, and I found a camp in a jubilant mood. Stiltwalkers loomed out of the darkness and huge torches had been lit. Music played and fire-eaters spat great plumes of flame into the air. But all I wanted was my bed, my body ached and I smelled even worse than the camp. I handed Stuy over to a mountmaster and stumbled through the crowds. I had never enjoyed crowds and the people felt like a pressure on the top of my head, flames on my cheek. Men and women recognised me as a warrior and tried to push drinks into my hand. A garland of wildflowers and hobby dolls was placed round my neck as I staggered through a night that was red and black and black and red. Eventually I found our tent and stumbled in. It was quiet. My master did not lie abed; no doubt she was out with Mastal, dancing and feasting, enjoying herself. I was glad. It meant the doxy I had put in her medicine had not killed her. The bottles of medicine were lined up by her bed. I meant to put it right, immediately, but a voice in my head was telling me to lie down, if only for a moment. When I did, my exhaustion was such that I fell straight into the deepest, blackest sleep.
Blue Watta
In the dream of the past. I am death and I wear his face.
In the darkness she is against me. Her warmth seeps into me. Our desperate land is fully explored, our bodies are sated. I breathe slowly and list into sleep: I topple, I fall.
Down
And down
And down.
In the darkness the currents have me, they are as strong as the weeds that tangle around my feet – cannot fight them cannot cut them dead gods let me breathe. A hand pulls me free but as I am about to break the surface I let go. Blue Watta laughs, Blue Watta pulls me on. The water is an insistent lover, it explores me, holds me, smothers me and will brook no escape. It pulls me on.
I surface.
Our first meeting is a hesitant one. She drops the bread, we both go to pick it up. She laughs. I laugh. I pick up the bread. Her name is Hattisha, she was the daughter of a man who made weapons for the Landsmen before he died. Now she makes bread for them. Her name is Hattisha, she makes me laugh and warms my bed and when I have a spare moment I always seek her out. She mixes secret herbs and leaves into unguents and rubs them on tired muscles. She cleans blood from my skin. She is not Drusl, my first love, and I do not love her.
Down
And down
And down.
The current is a storm that binds, pulls me hither and thither, steals the air from my mouth and gently closes my eyes. Blue Watta is a dancer that will not be denied, everything in the water is his, including my life. I am a toy, a plaything to be tossed from side to side without care. I am hollow and bound in weeds. I rot into nothing and Blue Watta enjoys the spoiling of his prize.
I surface.
Her name is Hattisha and her skin is warm and sweet like biscuit. The work with the Landsmen is grinding – “Do this, mage-bent, do that, mage-bent.” I am latrine digger, gibbet raiser and executioner. I fight in the front line, cutting down the desperate who fight with makeshift weapons. I do it in the name of gods long dead. I kill without thought or belief. I fear being discovered. I fear being myself. I am a wheel that turns without volition. At night I squeeze my eyes shut and try not to see the faces of the dead. I am a canvas of scars.
“Shhh, shhh. It will be all right, it will be all right.”
She is not Drusl, my first love, and I do not love her.
It will not be all right.
Down
And down
And down.
The water is full of bodies, sexless and amorphous and they are drawn past me in the current. Some are slack as backwater, some as watchful as the moon shuddering and shimmering far above the drowning water. Hands without fingers, faces without noses, mouths and eyes. Cold flesh is crushed against me, desperate to share my warmth. I struggle. I push. I drown. I beg for air as the bodies around me become more real: faces form, hands reach. I struggle. I push. I drown.
I surface.
Her name is Hattisha and a Landsman tried to drag her into his tent. She cries in
my arms, she shakes with anger and shame. She tells me how much she hates them. Speaks animatedly of the time I will have earned enough to leave their employ and we can run away, set up a life in a village somewhere and she will bake bread. Then she cries herself to sleep in my arms. I entertain ideas of being the night, drifting out into the darkness, mixing herbs and leaves into a water bottle, watching a Landsman slowly wither and die knowing that I did that – I avenged the woman in my bed.
But I do nothing, the scars on my body numb my anger. She is not my first love, Drusl; I do not love her and it will not be all right.
Down
And down
And down.
In the water we are dislocated, we exist in another world. Blue Watta says and I do – my actions are not my own. I cut through the water with blade hands and water hedgings fall apart at my touch and reform behind me. The fight is endless and unchanging, my actions desperate and futile. I cut and slash, cut and slash, and all that wears down is my blade arms until I stand in front of Blue Watta. He is a million tendrils of weed bound in water ice and fish skin, he is a construction of weathered bones and broken ships and he laughs.
“You dive too deep.”
Her name is Hattisha and she mixes unguents and herbs like a village wise woman. Her name is Hattisha and she is too trusting around cruel men who hold grudges. My master’s hand is on my arm, my master’s knife has cut my flesh. The Landsmen wait for me to act as the cage door swings shut.
“Girton, don’t leave me here, Girton!”
Beneath the weight of the scars I am screaming.
I am too deep.
The weed tightens around my feet.
The sound of the river running is a gentle gurgle. It is a mocking laugh. Her cry fades on the wind and a blood gibbet crowns a hill behind us. A pattern throbs on my chest. I feel nothing and I do not betray what we are. My life goes on. The next village to be pacified awaits.
Her name was Hattisha. She was not Drusl, my first love. The scars on my chest burned all the colour out of the world and I did not love her.
Down.
And down.
And down.
And down.
And down.
Chapter 22
I awoke, tiredness gone but my limbs strangely leaden. My master and Mastal were still absent. For a moment I was struck with fear – had they gone? Had he already stolen her away to the Sighing Mountains? If so maybe it was for the best. But as I emerged from the warm cocoon of sleep I saw their packs were still there and my master’s knives were stowed under the bed where I had put them. She would never leave without her knives. No doubt they had bedded down together somewhere, drunk and giddy like children.
While I had slept in the filth of death, as she had trained me to do.
I stood, stripped off my armour and washed in a bowl of cold water, the icy sting making me feel far cleaner than the meagre amount of dirt it removed. That done I headed out into the camp, thoughts of my master’s medicine forgotten behind a wall of old resentments woken by my dreams.
I intended to steal into the Landsmen’s compound and find Karrick’s tent. He would think himself safe there with his people, and I was sure I would find the proof I needed to place before Rufra to show that Karrick had murdered Arnst. Then Rufra would have to act, and if there was definite proof one of their own had betrayed the king the Landsmen would not be able to move against him.
I glided through the camp, skills I thought I had forsaken the day I picked up the warhammer coming back to me. I moved between people like a silver fish through water, my passage barely disturbing the busy current of their lives. Not that anyone was paying attention; it was clear that Rufra’s victory at Gwyre had been celebrated well the night before. Shattered pots and cups lay at the sides of the paths, and men and women moved carefully, nursing sore heads. I ran into Neliu who, unlike most others, looked fresh and happy.
“Practising your assassin’s tricks, Girton, Champion of Rufra?” In her mouth the title became a mockery.
“If you said that a little louder everyone would hear you.” She grinned at me. “You seem happier than you have been before, Neliu.”
“I am no longer bound to guard your master.”
“Why?”
“She made an impassioned plea to the king last night, saying that she was back to strength, and she proved it by beating two warriors in hand-to-hand combat.”
“She is better then.” I could not hide my relief. Maybe what I had done to the medicine had not had any effect at all. Maybe Mastal didn’t even need the yandil leaf. Had it all been a lie to get her away from me?
“No,” said Neliu. “She beat them but she tired quickly. She must have been a sight to see in her prime. Anyway, she proved she has enough energy to protect herself from an assassin.” I remembered my master duelling Sayda Halfhand in a badly lit Maniyadoc courtyard and knew that, though Neliu affected an air of worldliness, she knew very little of assassins. “Where do you go today, Champion of Rufra?” she said.
“Why do you keep calling me that?”
“Aydor was singing your praises to Karrick.”
“Aydor was talking to Karrick?”
“Oh they get along famously. Then Nywulf told everyone about you shooting down the Nonman general, and Rufra informed us all of the title he’d bestowed upon you. You’re quite the favourite.” There was an edge to her voice, something hard underneath the words and I wondered if she was jealous. “You’ve been practising with Crast as well, haven’t you?”
I nodded. “Helping him train, when I get the time.”
“You should practise with me next time. I’m better, not as soft.”
“I’ll try and find time to train you too then,” I said.
Her grin, all bared teeth. “Will you be at the court tonight?”
“Court?”
“Aye. Just because you’re off fighting, the business of being a king doesn’t stop. People have grievances, anger, reasons to be at one another’s throat. These people –” she gestured around her as though we were not part of the crowd “–they are like a storm-tossed lake and Rufra must pour oil upon it to calm them.” There was no mistaking the sarcasm. “Gusteffa will perform – she at least will be interesting.”
“I may come then.” I glanced over her shoulder. A phalanx of men in green armour was pushing through the crowd followed by a chorus of swearing, though people were careful not to do so when the Landsmen were looking at them.
“Enjoy your day, Champion. I have important things to do for my king.” She jogged off.
“I have important things to do for the king also,” I said under my breath, and made off after the Landsmen.
Their compound was walled, which annoyed me. The palisade of sharpened stakes around it was a naked statement of distrust in Rufra. It made me want to spit that they called themselves his allies but acted as if they could not trust him. The irony – that I was thinking this while looking for a way to break in was not lost on me, but it only served to make me more annoyed. The palisade made it difficult to get in, but not impossible. I would wait and watch. My master always said that patience was an assassin’s greatest ally. All I needed to do was melt into the background and—
“Champion?” I turned. A child in sacking and rags stood in the mud, whether a boy or girl it was hard to tell. “You are Girton, the champion of Gwyre, aren’t you?” I nodded, unsure what to say, and the child – it was a girl – took from her rags a small package wrapped in the same filthy cloth she wore. “Bread,” she said, “for you, for saving us.” I considered saying no, but she clearly had very little and this act meant very much to her. I did not want to insult her.
“Thank you,” I said, taking the bread. She very solemnly bared her throat to me and I nodded back, then she walked away.
When I turned, a Landsman was watching me from the top of the palisade. “You want something?” he said. At least he did not recognise me as Rufra’s champion.
“Maybe
you could help, Blessed,” I said, my mind racing as I made myself appear as small and meek as possible, contorting my body to seem far more crippled than I was. “The night before Aydor came to camp, my uncle said he made a bet with a Landsman called Karrick over some hog meat and he has sent me to collect it.”
“Go away, mage-bent,” said the Landsmen, “and take your ill luck with you.”
“If I do not get his meat my uncle will beat me.”
“Your uncle is lying to you. Karrick was away with Rufra that night. He did not return until the next day; he came with Aydor.”
“Oh,” I said. “Maybe my uncle was mistaken.”
“He was. Now piss off before I put an arrow in you.”
I let myself blend back into the crowd. So Karrick was not where he should have been on the night Arnst died. More than anything now I wanted to see his quarters, and so I looked for a new place to watch from. I found one quickly enough, but it was spoilt by a woman bringing me a piece of rancid mutton. My next place was ruined by a half-blind man who wished to touch my hair. And so it was for the rest of the day: any chance I had of sneaking into the Landsmen’s compound was ruined by a constant stream of good cheer and well-wishing. With each approach I became increasingly uncomfortable and started to understand my master’s desire to keep away from people. At one point I had to chase after a woman after she heard me mutter, “Xus save me from generosity of spirit,” under my breath and ran away in tears. Only profuse apologies calmed her. By then it was clear I had no chance of sneaking into the Landsmen’s compound. If anything untoward happened, it would be my name on everyone’s lips. Every Landsman in their camp must have seen me.