Blood of Assassins

by RJ Baker

  “You?”

  “Darvin was my priest. I confided in him. I have betrayed my king.”

  “No,” I said. “You will not be the only one who confided in the priest. He fooled everyone: you, me, Rufra. You cannot blame yourself for a man whose wits have fled.”

  She stared at me for a moment but I am not sure she believed me. I worried for her. Shame is a dangerous thing for a warrior to take into battle.

  “Thank you for saving him,” she said and turned away. “But we cannot let this stop us. We must still fight Tomas. We must still ride. Catch us up when you have seen the healer.”

  I walked away. All was chaos in the moments after the attempted killing, and none looked to me. The crowd were restless, noisy and dangerous, full of an anger that had no target. As Cearis left to return to Rufra, guards closed up behind her. Up on the stage Rufra shrugged off those trying to help him and swept down the stairs, pulling off his golden cloak and throwing it to the floor. Areth went to him, and they spoke hurried words. She touched his cheek and he put his hand against hers, nodded and smiled. Troops moved through the crowd quieting them, trying to re-assert some sense of normality. A shout of “Rufra!” went up, though it lacked the jubilation it had held earlier. I turned to see my friend pull himself up into the saddle of his mount. He waved to the crowd, smiling as if nothing had happened. I wanted to go to him, but all I would be was a reminder of what had just happened, and Rufra would not want the crowd thinking of that. As he began his speech I walked away.

  I barely heard him, only some of his words seeped through as I limped back to my tent for my bruises and cuts to be treated. He spoke of danger, of how everyone there shared it and how he respected the bravery of all, from those who fought to those who made the bread or minded the children. From what I heard, it was a good speech, one that should have brought the crowd together, but as omens for battle went there could not have been many worse than Rufra’s blessing ceremony.

  In the sky, dark clouds gathered as the Birthstorm readied itself to break.

  Chapter 29

  “Will you join Rufra for the battle?” My master worked unguent into my club foot, I could already see the spreading blue of new bruises.

  “Yes. If I ride now I should be able to reach them before battle is joined. Two days from now is when Tomas has said for them to meet, and it is a day and a half’s ride for an army. I should be able to do it in a day.”

  “You need not, you know,” she said, lightly touching my shoulder. “You did well with Darvin.”

  “I should have seen it far earlier, Master,” I said. “If I had not been so foolish, Rufra would not have set out under a bad omen or lost the Landsmen to Tomas.”

  “But also Tomas may not have called him to the blade. Girton, you cannot know what may have been; all you can do is live with what is. And you have caught the spy, that is important.”

  “It does not feel right.”

  “People talk to priests, Girton, you know that. Cearis even told you that. What better way is there to get information than to have a priest report to you, eh?”

  “I suppose so,” I said, “but I cannot help feeling there is more.”

  “Then talk it through with me.”

  “Darvin had a daughter, Fara. He rejected her, out of shame, I think.”

  “Shame is often a whisper of Dark Ungar.”

  “But he still cared for her, in his own way. On the other hand we have Arnst, who felt no shame and used his place to seduce women, and if that did not work, he would force them.”

  “And Arnst was involved with Fara?”

  “Aye. Danfoth controlled Arnst as much as he could, and when he could not stop him he bought silence.”

  “And if they were not silent?”

  “Then I suspect Danfoth killed them. But he is cleverer than I gave him credit for and I cannot tie him to it. If he is backed into a corner he will simply blame Arnst.”

  “So Darvin killed for revenge?”

  “Partly, I think. Arnst’s rejection of the dead gods and what he did to Fara must have been like blood to a warmount for Darvin. But I have seen his writings. He was a man obsessed. He believed the world to be falling apart, that the dead gods were ready to be reborn, and he thought Rufra in thrall to a hedging. His daughter may have been ill treated and even killed because of Arnst, but Darvin saw him as a symptom. I think, at the end, he saw Rufra as the disease.”

  “There is often a strange logic to the mad, and it would make sense for him to betray Rufra to Tomas.”

  I scratched my head and hissed at the pain in my bruised shoulders.

  “Would it?” I stared into the smoky air of the tent. “If you had seen what Darvin wrote in that book, there was no logic to it. How he appeared sane is beyond me, and I cannot see him as a spy. He barely hid his killings, took foolish risks like the death of the priest in Gwyre. He must simply have killed her for admiring Rufra. A spy would have had to be careful, and I cannot marry that with Darvin. Rufra’s spy, Hallan, was a careful man, and he ended up nailed to the gates of Gwyre. I should have seen it, Darvin’s madness, I should have looked harder.”

  “A fractured mind is not mirrored in a face, Girton.” I stood, testing how my club foot took my weight. “It hurts?”

  “Always, Master.”

  “I mean does it hurt more than it does normally,” she said. Usually she would have made a joke, called me a fool, but there was a still a distance between us.

  “Will you fight with us, Master?”

  She shook her head. “I am not strong enough, not yet. And neither are you, really.” I opened my mouth to protest, but she held up a hand. “I am not saying I will try to stop you going. I do not think I could, and Rufra may need you.”

  “There is one thing that worries me, Master.”

  “What is that?”

  “Nywulf.”

  “What about him?”

  “He has not been seen for two days, and he was not at Rufra’s blessing.”

  “You think he could be the spy?” She could not hide her surprise, and I laughed quietly.

  “No, I cannot imagine that –” we shared a smile “– but I wish I knew what was important enough to take him away from Rufra. I wish I knew where he had been.”

  “I have been to Gwyre,” came the reply from behind me, and I turned. Nywulf was a black figure framed in the door to the tent. More figures moved behind him. “Gwyre was important enough to take me away from Rufra.”

  He moved further into the tent, looking old, grey and tired as if life had become an unbearable weight on his shoulders. On one side of him appeared Crast and on the other stood Neliu. Both held crossbows. One was aimed at me, one at my master.

  Behind Nywulf was Ossowin, the man who had been headman of Gwyre. He smiled at me and, because I knew what to look for now, I saw the same madness in his eye that I had failed to see in Darvin. By Ossowin stood a child, a young girl whose frightened eyes and round face I recognised from a burning house full of dead men where I had brought black birds from my mouth and where nothing would ever live again.

  “Merela,” said Nywulf quietly, “step away from Girton, please.”

  “What is this about, Nywulf,” she said.

  Nywulf pointed to a corner of the tent.

  “You are fast, Merela Karn, but you are not faster than a crossbow bolt. Stand over there, please.” My master took slow steps away from me, Neliu’s crossbow following her.

  “What is this about, Nywulf?” she repeated.

  “Betrayal,” he said simply. He turned to the girl and pointed at me. “Is this the man with birds in his mouth?”

  She nodded shyly, bringing her fist up to her mouth and sucking on it. Her face was streaked with dirt.

  “Girton is no traitor,” said my master.

  “Girton is a sorcerer!” shouted Nywulf, and then his voice became dangerously quiet again. “There can be no greater betrayal.”

  “You take the word of a little girl on this?�
�� she said.

  “He has my word, filth,” spat Ossowin. He looked close to mania, a strange and savage joy in his eyes.

  Nywulf turned to him.

  “I have told you not to speak,” he said, every word vicious. He turned away from the man. “And no, I do not simply take anyone’s word. That is why I have been to Gwyre. That is why I skinned my knuckles moving the wreckage of the building Girton fought in to find the souring beneath it.” He transferred his gaze from my master to me. “How could you, Girton?” I felt the pain behind his words. “After what happened to his son, this will break Rufra’s heart.”

  I stared at the floor. Crast covered my master with his Crossbow and Neliu stepped forward with ropes, binding me as tight as the silence in the room.

  “It was not Girton she saw,” said my master quietly. “It was me.”

  “I am not a fool,” said Nywulf quietly. “You were here, ill and close to death in your bed.”

  “No,” she said, “that was all a ruse. I was well and followed you to Gwyre. When Girton went to the house he was knocked out and I took his place. You do not believe me? A jester trains in mimicry; it is all about shape.” She changed – her posture, the way she stood and moved: everything about her became different – and it felt as though I looked into a pool and saw a version of myself staring back. Different, but in the dark, in a burning building surrounded by the chaos of battle, I am not sure I would have known it was not me. “Are you sure who you saw now, little girl?”

  The little girl looked wide-eyed from me to my master and then burst into tears.

  “Enough of your assassin tricks,” said Nywulf.

  “If you do not believe me, Heartblade, the healer we brought guessed my secret and I had to kill him,” she said. “You will find his body sucked dry of life in the copse behind this tent.”

  Nywulf gazed at her thoughtfully.

  “Crast, bind her too.” As Crast advanced, Neliu moved away from me and took up her crossbow. “If you make a move on Crast, Merela, I will put a bolt through your boy, you understand?” My master nodded and seemed to deflate as Crast bound her hands and then pushed her down into a chair and tied her to it. I tested my own bonds – subtly, by flexing my muscles and trying to move my wrists – but the knots were depressingly professional. Nywulf watched as Crast tied my master and then sent him outside to make sure there were no witnesses to see me led to a separate tent. While we waited he knelt by the little girl. “Return to your tent, and you must tell no one of what you have seen. Do you understand?” She nodded. “Good,” he said gently and ruffled her hair. “You have done the right thing. The king will be proud.” He watched her leave and then turned to Ossowin. “And you …”

  “I need no reward,” he said. “It is enough to see that creature brought to justice.” He pointed at me. “I told you, did I not? I told you that you would see me again, Girton Club-Foot? Now—”

  Nywulf plunged his blade into the man’s chest before he could say any more. Then he put his hand on Ossowin’s shoulder and pushed him back, pulling the blade from him. Ossowin staggered back two steps and then fell over the bed, sprawling on it, his mouth opening and closing as he gasped for air.

  “I told you not to speak,” said Nywulf as the light went out of the man’s eyes, “and I meant it.”

  Crast returned. He stared at the dead man for a second.

  “It is clear,” he said.

  “Just let us go, Nywulf,” said my master quietly. “We will leave and never be heard of again. Just let us go.”

  “I cannot,” he said. “I do not doubt your word, Merela Karn, but we cannot allow a sorcerer to live.”

  “It will hurt Rufra,” she said, trying to use the only leverage she had on the old warrior. “To lose his friend will hurt him, and the truth will damage his reputation. It could destroy him.”

  “Aye,” he said, “I know. That is why he must deal with it in public, in view of all. And for all your clever tricks we both know the truth. Rufra must send Girton to the Landsmen, and you too.”

  “You know what they will do to him?” she said.

  “Yes,” said Nywulf, “and were it up to me I would cut your throats here and now, but Rufra is the king – he must be seen to do justice. Think! What if any of this came back to haunt him later? The king who let a sorcerer go? Everything he may ever achieve would crumble. No, we must do this right.” He took me by the arm, he was surprisingly gentle despite the bitterness of his words. “You, come with me. Crast, stay and guard Merela; she is too dangerous to be left alone.”

  “But I am to fight in the battle,” Crast said, and I wondered at the foolishness of youth. He looked truly distraught at the idea of missing the battle with Tomas.

  “And now you are not,” snapped Nywulf. “Do as you are told. Neliu, help me with Girton.” Neliu moved to my side. As I came between her and Nywulf she glanced at Crast and he made some sort of hand gesture to her. I did not understand what it meant, only that it meant something as it had the same weight of meaning as the assassin’s signals my master and I often used. Nywulf pushed me from the tent and for the first time ever I was glad of the sigil cut into my chest and the way it numbed my emotions. But still I could not look at him, could not bear to see the hurt and disappointment in his eyes.

  “Nywulf, will you do me one favour?”

  “I owe you nothing,” he said. I felt the touch of the Birthstorm on my skin, a spattering of cold rain as we passed through the night.

  “Then do Rufra one favour.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t tell him about this until after the battle.”

  “Do you hope I will be killed and this will never come out?” he said.

  “No.” I stared at the ground. “I think that Rufra already carries enough pain onto the field and needs no more.”

  Nywulf nodded and pushed me ahead of him.

  “I did not plan to tell him before anyway,” he said, “but do not think it is for you. I serve only him.” They hurried me, into a tent that smelled of old grass and the rancid fat used to oil armour and weapons. Nywulf tied me to a chair, the ropes tight enough to stop my blood, painful where they crossed and cut into my bare flesh. He stood and looked at me and for a moment I thought he would say something. He bit his lip. The pain I saw on his face was almost unbearable.

  “Guard him well, Neliu,” he said. Then he turned and left. He did not look back.

  And that was it. I was lost. All was lost. The scarifying web of magic had caught me. The ties that bound me could not be loosened, and when I struggled it only served to constrict the web around me more tightly. I had fought armies, dodged assassins and toppled a king, but in the end it was my own actions that had brought me down. Now I sat in the dark with only judgment on the horizon. Neliu did not try to talk to me. No doubt she felt only disgust, a pity. I had felt a grudging friendship developing between us.

  Pain started to rack me after about an hour. It began as simple discomfort caused by being unable to move but became a swelling, throbbing thing as the blood trying to move around my body met the resistance of the ropes holding me. My club foot was livid, a pulsing ball of agony that radiated a fiery twisting pain through my muscles and made me gasp. Neliu looked up the first time I let out a whimper, and that added anger to my pain. I had no wish to show her any weakness.

  From very far away I heard a faint voice.

  I could have helped.

  No.

  You could not.

  You never have.

  You do not help at all.

  I shut the voice out, but even the thought of magic caused the sigil on my chest to add a new layer to my pain, a writhing agony, needles worming into my chest. I concentrated on breathing, on the steady out and in of air, pushing my mind away from the prison of my body and into another space where pain and worry could not touch me – they were still there, like cruel jailers poking at me with sharp sticks as I tried to sleep, but as I let myself fall upwards into a grey place t
hey faded. Time ceased to have meaning; only the slow out and in of the air in my lungs was real, a hollow wheezing backed by the slow drumbeat of my pulse. All else was gone: all scent, all sight, all sound. At some point I became dimly aware of someone else in the room, low voices talking, and then I left the world entirely. Lofted up into the darkness while I searched myself within, felt the rhythm of my heart and knew that, given time, I could slow it, stop it. The last iteration: the Assassin’s Peace. The pain of the Landsmen’s questions? The humiliation of the blood gibbet? The awful prospect of seeing Rufra’s face as he pronounced judgment on the friend who had betrayed him in a way no one else could? I could take the hand of Xus now and step away from it all. The slowing beat of my heart filled my ears.

  One, my master.

  Two, my master.

  I heard a voice I had heard before, familiar and unfamiliar, welcoming and awe-inspiring, comforting and terrifying.

  Three, my master.

  Four, my master.

  Five … my master.

  “You would be welcome at my side.”

  I felt no terror; this voice I had known all my life. If anything all fear fled, all pain left me.

  “Only hurt awaits outside my dark palace.”

  Six … my master …

  Seven … my … master … Eight …

  … my … master …?

  “She would join us soon enough.”

  Cannot leave her. Will not.

  “She would call you stubborn.”

  Aye. Stubborn.

  “She would call you foolish.”

  That too. I will not leave her.

  “Very well, best beloved. Very well.”

  Eight … my … master.

  Nine, my master.

  Ten.

  Fire.

  What agony I had felt before multiplied by two, three, ten, twenty, a hundred. Something vicious and cruel gnawing on my hands and feet, numbness receding like the tide to leave me high on burning sands of agony, bringing me back to the world. I leaned over in my chair. How? My hands were loose and I held them before me. How? Barely seeing them, barely recognising them as my own, I fell to the side. How? Whimpering as I hit the floor, saliva spilling from my mouth. What had happened? Keep quiet or Neliu will hear. Had the magic come for me again? Cut my ropes? I could not feel it, could not smell it. Had Xus himself set me free?