Blood of Assassins

by RJ Baker

  But if I did not test him I would have no idea of his skill.

  The hush of the crowd, a lead weight on my back

  We continued to circle, Karrick always keeping me to his right side. When I felt it was becoming a little dull for those watching I made my first feint, a few skittering steps that took me round to his left. He did nothing, leaving a huge gap I could run into, but as soon as I moved closer he pivoted, almost inhumanly fast, and if I had made the move seriously I would have run myself onto his spear. What the crowd did at that moment, whether they shouted, sighed, called my name or his, I have no idea; all my concentration was on the spear tip thrusting forward to impale me. His reach was far longer than I had expected. I fell back, and we continued our slow revolve. I could feel the crowd becoming impatient but made no further move. Karrick had too many advantages in defence for me to be hasty, but he was also carrying a heavy shield and, no matter how strong he may be, he would eventually tire against a quick man with light weapons. Karrick would have to move on me soon or I would wear him down, like the sea does a rock.

  When he came he came fast – like a riptide, crouching behind his spear, jabbing the point at me as he advanced, trying to herd me backwards into a place I could not escape from. I made to roll away, but he had been waiting for it and his spear was there. I turned the roll into a spring and that into the Carter’s Surprise. Had I been more practised, more ready and more sure of myself, I would have reversed, vaulted his shield and gone for the killing blow, but I did not. Instead I threw myself feet first at his shield. As I hit it Karrick hunkered down, digging the rim into the ground and taking my hit. I hacked down with a stabsword at his head, but the armour of his helm was thick. I did not care – that was not the aim of my attack. My weight fell onto the shield’s frontspike, and I used it as a springboard into a high somersault. Landing hard in the mud I saw my aim achieved: the frontspike now hung from the shield half broken, not only useless as a weapon but a dead weight dragging on the shield to tire Karrick further.

  He dropped his spear, drew his longsword and smashed the spike off his shield. Then he was back down behind it, longsword out, a lethal spine of silvered steel.

  The crowd cheered but I could barely hear them over the thundering of blood in my ears. My club foot ached from the hard landing, but more worrying was the sharp pain in my good foot and the blood I could feel pooling in my boot. The razor hooks of the spike had cut through the sole and into my foot as I had pushed myself off. Now I was the one who would tire quickly.

  He will beat you.

  A moment of distraction.

  Karrick attacked, slashing his sword in front of him, creating an arc of pain I could not get past. Back and back I went, waiting for my moment and …

  Now.

  Stabsword out, deflecting the tip of his blade and disrupting his rhythm. Forward. Running the edge of my stabsword along his steel. Pushing in close. Forcing his blade to the right and getting ready for for the moment I was near enough to either go under his guard or round his back.

  He threw his shield at me. Totally unexpected.

  While he had been slashing at me, somehow he had loosened the straps holding the shield on to his arm. The heavy wood knocked me backwards and I went careening into the crowd, who pushed me forward. I tripped over my club foot, the sharp pain of the cut on my good foot stopped me righting myself and I fell, scrambling onto my back as Karrick came in.

  He will beat you.

  I almost used the-Speed-that-Defies-the-Eye, but caught myself at the last moment – to use magic in front of fifteen sorcerer hunters would be suicide. Instead I rolled left and right as Karrick, screaming like Coil the Yellower, brought his blade down again and again. My rolling brought me up against his fallen shield, and I pushed the roll further, dropping one stabsword and grabbing the handle of the shield. Rolling again so it covered me and the thunder of Karrick’s blade filled my ears as it started to cut through the wood, only moments until it was through. The Landsmen chanted, “Ka-rrick! Ka-rrick!” banging their spears on the ground. They thought he had already won.

  I can end this.

  A momentary image of a black sword skewering Karrick through the gut, leaving him writhing in agony as I stood to claim victory.

  Madness. The crowd would rip me apart.

  The black antler, jagged, branching lines of magic holding up a hundred bodies on a thousand spines.

  My teeth hurt, my jaw ached.

  Black arrows pouring from my mouth.

  No magic, no more.

  As the shield splintered, my position became untenable. Karrick must have been sure he had won. If I threw away the shield he had me, if I kept the shield it would only be moments before he could thrust his sword straight down through it. All must think me beaten.

  But, magic or not, five years of battle had made me hard to kill.

  Looking down past my feet, I saw Karrick’s legs. He stood with his feet slightly apart and his knees locked to give him strength as he rained blows on me. His metal greaves shone, the chains of his skirt swung. I slithered down and kicked out hard with my club foot. The boot I wore was built up with wood to make walking easier but it also made a weighty club. Karrick’s knee had nowhere to go and I heard it dislocate, the joint tearing itself apart, the sort of sound that makes you want to vomit. He fell with a scream of agony and, sure I had won, I threw myself on to him.

  But just as I was not someone easily beaten, neither was the Landsman. He grabbed my wrist as I brought my stabsword down on him and with his other hand he brought his own short blade out. I grabbed his wrist. The fight became about strength. He tried to roll me; I stopped him by spreading my legs, digging my feet into the earth.

  My stabsword moved down two fingers’ breadth towards his face. I angled the blade at the eye slit in his visor. To threaten an eye brings on soul-sucking fear. The crowd chanted my name but it was a faraway noise, almost drowned out by my harsh breathing and the grunts of Karrick as he tried to hold me off.

  No. It was not grunts, it was words, thickened almost beyond understanding by his desperate efforts to live.

  “Why … do … you … lie?” Because of his mirrored visor it was as if I heard the words from my own distorted face.

  “You lie,” I hissed back and my blade moved closer. He was tiring, the agony of his ruined leg sucking his strength away like the wind takes leaves from a yearsdeath tree.

  “Forven Aguirri,” he gasped out. He dropped his blade, and his hand came up, gauntlet clawing at my face, but I simply raised myself out of his reach. His hand joined the other on my wrist.

  “What?” I pushed the blade down a little further.

  “Chase that name,” he said. “I am innocent.” He let go of my wrist with one hand and pushed up his visor so I could see his face. “Innocent,” he said again, grabbing my wrist once more, but he could not stop the slow descent of my blade towards his eye.

  I doubted. I saw nothing in his face that spoke of guilt. Oh I hated him. I hated him for being a Landsman, I hated everything I had experienced at their hands, but as he gasped out, “I did … not kill … Arnst,” and the blade descended until it almost touched his eye, I doubted.

  What if I was wrong?

  “Forven … Aguirri.”

  I could let him live. None would doubt I had won. And I saw in him hope. Saw him think he may survive. Then, with our faces almost touching, with sweat from my brow dripping onto his face, he took in a great lungful of the air we shared and sealed his fate. Shock on his face. Eyes widening. He drew another lungful through his bleeding nose, the air bubbling and snorting through the blood.

  He could smell the magic.

  Dead gods curse all magic. He knew what I was.

  None can know.

  “Sorcer—” he began but never finished. I put all my weight and strength into the blade and it passed through his eye and pinned his skull to the ground. Beneath me his corpse shook, and his muscles twisted and shifted as they gave u
p his spirit to Xus.

  I pushed myself up, wincing as I stood on my bleeding foot and wincing again as I transferred my weight to my club foot. There was only pain.

  I pointed my blade at the old woman in front of the Landsmen.

  “She is innocent,” I said. “Now release her.”

  Fureth held a blade in his hand and I wondered whether he had been about to come to his master’s aid. Then he gave a small bow of his head and his blade came down on the old woman’s neck where it met her shoulder, hacking into her flesh the way a butcher would hack into meat. She groaned as she fell to the ground, and was dead before she landed face first in the mud. A silence fell over the crowd.

  “She is released,” said Fureth.

  I walked forward, every step like walking on fire, blade held tightly, legs stiff with anger.

  “Girton!” The shout came from the dais behind me but I walked on. The Landsmen drew their weapons. A dark voice whispered promises in my ear:

  We can end this.

  The sky was puce, purple and dull – bruise painful. The Landsmen were paper-thin men, skin greasy with loathing, and I could pick them up on the wind and dash them against the rocks to burst like overripe fruit. My ears felt gravid, heavy. All sounds were hollow, weighty and echoing as the crowd cheered each step I took towards the Landsmen. Lines, silver and flowing, surrounded the crowd and their faces contorted into wood and souring, hate and hunger, hedgings excited by pain and violence. Is this what I fought for? Were any of them worthy of Rufra? I could clear this ground, remove this rabble from Rufra’s—

  “Girton!” This time the voice reached something inside me, and I halted. Stumbling to a stop. The pain in my feet crippling. Fureth in front of me, blade in hand, an almost-smile on his face. I turned back to my king to see him balancing on the edge of fury. “Return to your place, Girton. You have proved your point.” I stared at him, and he screamed at me, squireyard loud. “Do it now!” And I did as he asked. I would not defy him in front of the crowd.

  As I neared the dais Danfoth the Meredari moved to stand in front of me with his strange flag. “You have defended Arnst, and for that the followers of his ways will follow you. We will call you Blessed of Arnst and Chosen of Xus.”

  I didn’t know what to say, the words in my mouth were misshapen. I knew I did not deserve any honour, and over Danfoth’s shoulder I could see Nywulf, fury on his face and his hand on the hilt of his weapon. If I accepted Danfoth’s loyalty it would undermine Rufra.

  “You can serve me by serving Rufra,” I said eventually. “It was his authority that allowed me to fight Karrick, and only his.” Danfoth’s face furrowed in confusion, behind him I saw Nywulf relax a little.

  “Very well.” Danfoth turned. “Many heed the words of Arnst,” he said, “and they will follow you, King Rufra. For now,” he added.

  Rufra lifted his head, baring his throat to Danfoth in the old way of showing respect. “I am honoured to have you at my side,” he said. Then he looked around the clearing at the crowd. Fureth had been watching us, bright eyes following every movement, his bloody sword still in his hand.

  “You had no right to kill that woman, Fureth,” said Rufra, and a silence fell on the clearing. The crowd may as well have been absent for all the noise they made, though their expectation of some further violence was an almost palpable force.

  “I had every right,” said Fureth, “and you know it. In fact she got off easily. Karrick paid you a courtesy and nothing else, and now you ally with those who speak against the dead gods.” He pointed at Danfoth. “We would take our dead,” he said, “or will you deny us that too, and pay us further insult?”

  “No insult was meant,” said Rufra, and for a split second only I saw the lonely boy I had known in Maniyadoc. “Take Karrick and honour him, as I will.” Fureth did not reply; he simply pointed with his blade at Karrick’s corpse. Four Landsmen came forward, lifted it onto their shoulders and marched in lockstep out of the clearing, followed by Fureth. He did not sheathe his bloody sword.

  Rufra watched until they turned down a row of tents. As excited chatter broke out among the crowd, he shouted, “The court is over, and we will have peace among ourselves again as Arnst’s killer has been brought to justice.”

  He retreated back into his tent with his council, leaving me standing on the field of battle aching and pained and, worst of all, no longer sure I had brought any sort of justice to Rufra’s court at all.

  Far to the east, great black pillars of cloud grew into the sky. The Birthstorm gathered strength.

  Chapter 24

  I limped back to our tent, every step agonising. Twice I saw Landsmen standing and watching as I passed. They made no move to stop me or attack, only turning their heads to follow my passage and I could not fail to understand the unspoken threat of their presence. I had taken one of theirs and they had marked me for it. But even if they had wanted to move on me they would have found it difficult as I was followed by a small crowd of ragged people in black clothes. They did not speak, though occasionally one would dart forward and touch of the edge of my armour.

  Eventually I tired of this and caught one by the wrist. “What are you doing?”

  “I …” she stammered. She was young, no more than twelve or thirteen.

  I let go of her. “I will not hurt you, girl.”

  “I only wanted to touch the chosen of Xus. Get meself the unseen’s blessing.”

  “I am only the champion of Rufra, and please,” I said as gently as my pain allowed, “I wish to be left alone.”

  She nodded and returned to the ragged group, talking in a low voice with them. As they turned to leave she said, “We will return tomorrow, Chosen,” and I cursed under my breath. The last thing I wanted was a following of fanatics.

  My master and Mastal were talking quietly but fell silent when I entered the tent.

  “Girton,” said Mastal, “have you arranged for the cart? We …”

  My master took one look at me, bloodied and battered, and silenced him with a hand on his arm, a familiar gesture that caused a surge of dark anger inside me.

  “Leave us, Mastal.” He looked at her as if confused by her words. “Please,” she said, and he shrugged, walking out of the tent without giving me a second glance. I listened to his footsteps. It did not sound like he went far away, not as far away as I would have liked. “What has happened to you, Girton?” She stood.

  “I fought the Landsman, Karrick. I killed him.”

  “But he hurt you?”

  “I cut my foot.”

  She crouched down, undoing my boot. “I told you not to confront the man until you were sure.”

  “I was sure,” I said, but she could hear the waver in my voice and glanced up.

  “And now?” She went back to pulling on the knots in my laces.

  “Less so.”

  She pulled frustratedly at the lace of my boot and then made me sit. I watched her hands move, noting how she struggled with her right hand and how the bandage covering where she had cut her arm to remove the Glynti poison was marked by fresh blood. Behind her were the rows of medicine bottles.

  “But you still killed him, even though you were unsure?”

  “He knew what I was.”

  “Then you had no choice,” she said. There was no trace of doubt or remorse in her, and I shuddered as she pulled bandages and unguent from under her bed. When she started to treat the long cut running across the sole of my foot I let out a hiss. “It is a painful place to be cut, but the wound is not deep. Keep it clean and you will be fine.”

  “He said he was innocent and gave me a name, Forven Aguirri, but it means nothing to me.”

  “There is no ‘ap’ in that name, so he is likely not from Maniyadoc – probably from outside the Tired Lands,” she said. “But that is all I can tell you. Karrick must have thought the name would mean something to someone, or why say it? If you think he may have been innocent and you wish to protect your friend you must chase it.” She
started wrapping a bandage around my foot and I found the repetitions – such small and perfect movements – mesmerising. “I will help you,” she said.

  “But you are going away with Mastal.”

  She made a face, wrinkling her nose and smiling.

  “He is a good man, but I am starting to think he fusses too much. I am far better now than I was. I have even returned to training – only gently, mind – and what would I want with the Sighing Hills? They are a long way from all that matters to me.” She tied off the bandage and stared into my eyes. “There, Girton. Everything is better now, yes?”

  I swallowed. The next words were hard to force past my lips – it was as if some force sat between my mind and my mouth. “You have to cut me again, Master.”

  “Cut you?”

  “Aye, the magic – I can feel it growing. It wells up, and I am not sure sometimes where what I want ends and what it wants begins.”

  “You said you wanted to learn to control it.”

  “I almost killed everyone at Rufra’s court, Master,” I whispered. “It was overwhelming, like when Drusl died. I saw how easily I could end ev—”

  “But you did not.” She put her hand on my knee and smiled. “You controlled it, you won.”

  “Only because Rufra called my name. If he had not …”

  “But he did. And next time you feel that way you will remember Rufra’s voice and you will know you can control it. You were right, Girton: I cannot cut you for ever, and you are not weak or foolish. Just remember, do not give it what it wants.” Behind her the rows of bottles gleamed, catching a shaft of stray sunlight.