Assassin's Shadow (Veiled Dagger Book 2)

by Jon Kiln

  Without any command from Rothar, Stormbringer circled around tightly, cutting off Allette’s path. She ran face first into the horse’s side, crumpling to the ground.

  Rothar climbed down and tried to help her back to her feet, but she began screaming and thrashing at his face with her hands.

  “Let me go! Let me go! They have it in there! There is a ladder in there!” she shrieked.

  Doors were beginning to open and glassy eyed heads hovered in them, tendrils of white smoke escaping their noses and grinning mouths.

  “There is nothing in there but misery, woman!” Rothar shouted.

  All at once, Allette went limp, her exhaustion and wasted body betraying her rage. Rothar lifted her onto Stormbringer’s back and remounted, casting a deadly look at the addled villagers, who were now shrinking back into the darkness of their dens.

  Rothar took Allette home.

  Chapter 16

  Taria crouched silently in the inky darkness of a Banewood thicket. It was early morning, and dew drops still hung heavy on the foliage, wetting her clothes and skin if she moved at all. Just as the sun was beginning to filter meekly through the dense landscape of tree trunks, a snapping twig announced the arrival of her quarry.

  A large elk stepped onto the game trail thirty yards ahead, and Taria smoothly brought up her bow and drew back, taking aim at the majestic animal. Before she released the arrow, Peregrin reached from behind her and put his hand on her elbow, moving it ever so slightly to one side, correcting her aim.

  Taria loosed the arrow and watched it whistle through the air, striking the elk right behind the shoulder. The animal leapt once and disappeared, crashing through the underbrush with the sound of a dozen reckless men.

  Taria stood up and stomped her foot. “I cannot believe I lost him!” she complained.

  Peregrin laughed. “Oh, I do not think you lost him, not yet at least! Now for the fun part: tracking the kill!”

  “The fun part?” Taria asked, raising an eyebrow coyly. “I thought the eating was the fun part.”

  “Oh, it is all good fun!” answered Peregrin, and the two laughed together.

  Walking to the spot where the elk had been shot, Peregrin showed Taria the first blood spots. They moved in the direction in which the animal had ran and followed the trail of blood deeper into the Banewood. Shortly, Peregrin stopped, pointing out the blood to Taria, and let her track the elk on her own.

  Peregrin greatly enjoyed having Taria with the clan. She was skilled with the horses, friendly with everyone, and prepared for them exotic meals that most of them had never tasted, not to mention, she was very beautiful to look at.

  Several huntsmen had proclaimed their love for her already - half jokingly, and Peregrin took care to remind them all that she was only a guest in their midst, and Rothar would be coming for her in time. At times, Peregrin even had to remind himself of this.

  “What do you think I will do when I go to the city?” Taria asked as she carefully scanned the forest floor for elk blood.

  “I suppose you will do whatever you choose to do,” Peregrin answered, unintentionally pert.

  “What kind of an answer is that?” asked Taria with a grin. “Do you not see me as being suited to any one thing more than another?”

  Peregrin was apologetic. “No, no, that is not true at all. I am just saying, you are a very able woman, and you will do well at whatever you choose to do.”

  Taria found another spot of blood and the two changed course slightly. Happily, the elk had veered away from a black swamp and opted for dryer means of escape, apparently scrambling up a steep rise.

  “Perhaps you will not want to do anything,” Peregrin said. “Rothar does well enough, you could simply stay home and wait for him.”

  Taria stiffened slightly and breathed in through her nose.

  “No,” she said. “It would be too much like before, too much like Rama. I have been a kept woman long enough. I wish to have a job to do, money of my own. Freedom.”

  “I am very sorry, Taria. I, of course, did not mean it like that.”

  “I know. It is alright.”

  At the top of the hill, they could hear heavy breathing coming from a cluster of small pines. Approaching carefully, they found the elk, down and panting hard. Peregrin pointed to a spot behind the animal’s ear and Taria finished the beast.

  “Very good, Taria. Now you can pack him back to camp,” Peregrin joked.

  On a small strip of paper, Peregrin wrote out instructions to where they were and tied it around his falcon’s leg. The raptor flew off to deliver the message to the men waiting back at camp. Within a half an hour, there would be a handful of men there to help butcher and carry the elk back to Heaven’s Falls.

  Taria and Peregrin sat on the hill and watched the sun rising over the Banewood.

  “This land is so beautiful,” Taria said, dreamily. “You are very lucky to get to live here.”

  “Indeed, but I have known no other life, so to me, this is the standard by which all other beauty is judged,” replied Peregrin.

  He was not looking at the sunrise, or the forest, he was looking at Taria, and she sensed it. Turning to him, she said, “You are an irreplaceable friend, Peregrin. It gives me great joy to be reunited with you after all of these years. I am happy that we are having this opportunity to get reacquainted before I go off with Rothar.”

  She placed her hand on his. He looked at it mournfully. She would always be Rothar’s.

  In the distance, Peregrin caught site of the huntsmen, approaching on horseback at a surprisingly fast pace. The clan never moved so recklessly through the Banewood unless there was a matter of some urgency.

  Peregrin stood up.

  “Is there something wrong?” asked Taria, reading the concern on his face.

  “We shall find out soon,” he replied.

  In a few moments, a half dozen riders approached. Their horses were lathered and panting. The men looked grave. Leading the group was an older huntsman called Briar. Peregrin’s falcon circled high above the horsemen.

  “Should I be afraid to ask, what brings you in such haste?” said Peregrin.

  Briar’s face was drawn and his eyes looked sad and haunted. Taria was not yet familiar with the man, and wondered if he always looked that way.

  “It is about the men who went scouting to the east…” Briar replied, trailing off as a wind from the north kicked up and swept across the hills.

  “Yes, what of them?” Peregrin asked, impatiently.

  “Two horses returned to camp today, just a short while ago…” Briar was having difficulty finding his words. “One of them still carried it’s rider… dead… stabbed through with a spear.”

  Peregrin bowed his head. Taria saw his lips move as he uttered a quick prayer for his clansman. When he looked back up he asked Briar who it was they had lost.

  “It was Nester, son of Hale.”

  Peregrin nodded sadly. “A good young lad. And what of the other horse?”

  Briar swallowed hard. “No rider, but there is a great amount of blood.”

  Turning to Taria, Peregrin explained. “Eight men went out to scout the eastern forest for herd movements. We expected them back a couple of days ago.”

  Violence against the huntsmen in the Banewood was not unheard of, but it was extremely rare. Occasionally, some upstart band of thieves would tangle with the clan, but only once, for they were all quick to learn that the huntsmen were nothing to be trifled with. All in all, the huntsmen lived in relative peace with everyone, so something like this was quite unsettling. At least two hunters had been, at the very least, grievously wounded. Most huntsmen considered themselves more likely to die by the claws of a bear than at the hands of any man.

  “I am taking you to the King’s City,” Peregrin said to Taria.

  “The City? Already?” Taria asked, her voice a mixture of excitement and confusion.

  Peregrin was slow in response.

  “Yes, I am afraid I must in
sist,” he said. “Huntsmen are being attacked and killed, and I can not risk having you hurt. I swore myself to protect you, and I believe the best way for me to do that right now is to take you to Rothar immediately.”

  “But he is not prepared for me,” Taria half-heartedly protested.

  “He is going to have to be,” Peregrin answered. “He is a man of creative means, he will find a way.”

  Peregrin gave instructions to the riders. Most of them were to head east, with reinforcements, to search for the other six scouts, but two of them were to retrieve Taria’s belongings and bring them to the City.

  “We leave at once,” he said.

  Before they parted ways with the riders, Peregrin asked Briar, almost as an afterthought, “Who’s horse was it? The riderless one?”

  Briar was turning away, and his voice trembled as he replied.

  “Canus.”

  ***

  Riding westward through the Banewood, Taria asked Peregrin who Canus was, although she felt as though she already knew the answer.

  “Canus is, or was, Briar’s only son,” said Peregrin. “And woe to the man that harmed him, if Briar ever gets a hold of him.”

  Chapter 17

  Rothar had never seen his home in such disarray. By nature, he used the place for nothing more than sleeping and reading, and he only did those things there occasionally, as his vocation caused him to be away most nights.

  But three days of Allette had transformed his neat and meager domicile into what amounted to a battlefield. The floors were a treacherous clutter of books, dishes, cups and broken furniture, dotted here and there with puddles of vomit.

  Rothar had eventually resorted to tying Allette down to his bed, in an effort to prevent her from injuring herself or him. The madness that the woman had shown in the street when she caught the sent of Obscura had redoubled when she realized that Rothar would not be feeding her habit. And each hour that passed without the drug, Allette had become more ill and crazed.

  Finally, late on the third night, it was as though a fever of the mind broke within the woman, and she spoke lucidly for the first time since Rothar had found her.

  She looked around the room as though she had never seen it before, then she looked at her bindings, and at Rothar. She no longer fought against her restraints, but she began to weep softly. Rothar brought her water and soup and she ate and drank with enthusiasm for once. When he was confident that she was sufficiently over her madness, Rothar untied Allette, and she got up to walk unsteadily about the room.

  As she walked, she began to speak to Rothar. She said that the last thing she remembered was the night of the riots. She had been smoking with a group of working peasants for two days straight, when they suddenly realized they were out of “the ladder,” as she called it.

  They went out into the village to try to seek out more, only to find that nobody had any. Like them, everyone had used it all up. Allette told Rothar that that was the point when things started to go awry in Witherington. As users began to discover that there was no smoke to be had, they became despondent, desperate, and angry.

  It was rumored that someone in the King’s City had some stashed away, but they were demanding a premium price for it, more than anyone in Witherington could afford - especially those who had been spending their days smoking in dark hovels instead of plying their trades.

  Allette did not know where the looting started or who started it, but she said that before she knew it, she was running with a crowd of townspeople, breaking into any place that they could and taking what they could carry. The spree was eventually pushed out of Witherington by the intervention of the King’s men, but Allette and her group took the chaos right to the King’s front door.

  The idea, ostensibly, had been to rob the castle of items of value, which could be sold to pay the high price for the fabled stash of Obscura. The looters, of course, had been driven away by the sentinels, but Allette had fallen from the wall and injured her ankle, that was the last thing she remembered.

  Rothar filled her in about how he had found her, and everything else they had endured together since that morning.

  She was sitting now, and looking more human, and more weary.

  “I must know something,” she said. “Why did you help me?”

  “Because you needed help,” he answered simply.

  “But there are so many who need help right now, the… what did you call it? Obscura? It is making people worthless when they have it, and mad when they do not.”

  Rothar thought for a moment.

  “Yes,” he said, “and I will also help them. It is my sworn duty to do so. But I came across you in your time of need, and had I left you there then you would be in the castle dungeons now, and that is no place for a young woman.”

  The answer seemed to appease Allette.

  “How will you help them, Rothar?”

  Rothar had not given the woman any indication of who he was or what he did, and he would not reveal his true vocation to her.

  “Honestly, I have been hoping that you might be able to help me with that,” he answered. “Can you tell me about how you first came into contact with the Obscura?”

  Allette looked up at the ceiling, trying to remember.

  “It was as though one day, it was just there, all of a sudden,” she began. “I am sorry that I can not say where it came from, I just know that it was everywhere.”

  “But who did you get it from?” he asked.

  Allette hesitated.

  “You have no need to worry, you are not going to get anyone into any sort of trouble. I am merely trying to track the drug back to whomever is bringing it into the city.”

  “Bringing it in?” Allette asked. “Is it not grown here? I assumed it was some creation of the apothecary Ariswold.”

  Rothar sighed. “I wish it were as simple as that, but unfortunately even Ariswold does not know where it is coming from.”

  The mention of Ariswold made Rothar wonder how the old man was faring. He must be sure to check in on him as soon as he could.

  “Well, I first tried it with Tabor, who runs the shop I work in. I do not know where he got it,” Allette said.

  Rothar got up. “Very well then. I sent for some clothes to be brought for you, they are over there in the corner. I believe they will fit you. You are welcome to stay here until we can arrange other accommodations for you. For now, you must sleep.”

  With that, Rothar walked out of the house and saddled Stormbringer, setting off for Castle Staghorn.

  Chapter 18

  The sentries around Castle Staghorn were still doubled, but Rothar was glad to see that at least there had been fresh men brought in to fill the duty. The hour was late, and he was admitted into an empty throne room. He had expected to have to wait for the King and Queen to arrive, and he could probably have waited until morning to call upon them, but he felt he was wasting his time in the King’s City when he knew the Obscura was coming from parts unknown, and he needed to be traveling.

  He was as yet unsure of where he should go, but he knew that going anywhere would be more use than sitting still, and he needed to check his trap.

  King Heldar and Queen Amelia finally entered. Heldar looked sleepy, and Amelia still wore black.

  “This must be important, Rothar,” the King said, plopping down upon the throne. His tone was gruff, but his face was placid. He could never be truly angry with his oldest friend.

  “Not all of us can sleep when there is evil afoot,” Rothar said with a slight grin.

  King Heldar waved off the comment. Amelia looked as amused as she had since the death of the stable boy.

  “I just felt that I should let you know I am leaving the City tonight, in search of the source of the Obscura,” Rothar said.

  “Well, it’s about time, I should say,” said the King, almost joking. “It is just as well, order seems to have been restored here, and rather quickly I might add. My men seem to have had quite an effect on those willing to
incite upheaval.”

  “Your men are skilled indeed,” replied Rothar. “But I must tell you that this peace has more to do with the fresh supply of Obscura that seems to have found it’s way into the city the morning after the riots.”

  The King’s face turned red.

  “Fresh supply?! Why did you not say that in the first place! I will send out my men to search every home and seize every last pinch of this infernal weed!”

  Rothar put up a hand to quiet the King.

  “If you do that, you will have another uprising one your hands - a bigger one. The addicted will be knocking down your door. They have your men outnumbered and will fear nothing. I suggest you let things be until you hear from me. A city dazed and delirious is better than a city on fire.”

  The King started to protest, but realized that Rothar was right. He slumped back on the throne.

  “Another thing, Heldar,” said Rothar.

  “Yes?”

  “There is a woman staying in my home. She is weak and injured, and has no family; I would be thankful if you could send someone by to check in on her until I return.”

  King Heldar’s eyebrows went up.

  “You have never been one for romantic conquests, Rothar, are you getting sentimental?”

  “I can assure you, it is nothing of the sort,” Rothar replied with a half smile. “And as for my romantic conquests, you should be inclined to mind your own business.”

  The King roared with laughter and Rothar could not help but chuckle himself. Even Queen Amelia let forth a soft laugh. Rothar was glad to see her show some emotion besides melancholy.

  Before Rothar had even left the throne room, he heard the door shut at the other end. The King and Queen were heading back to bed. He was unsure of where the night might take him, but he knew this darkness was not for sleeping.

  Chapter 19