by J. P. Ashman
It’s only a matter of time, he thought, hesitating at his work as the patient groaned.
Iron struck iron in all directions, and the shouting of the living mixed with the wails of the dying. Souch’s eyes opened and widened all the more when he saw who was tending him. He sucked in a breath and tensed.
‘Fear not,’ Cheung said, holding his gloved hands up to show he meant no harm. ‘I haven’t been able to tell them, but I know you didn’t kill that boy.’
Souch’s visible relief was short lived, the sounds outside the vardo registering. Pain hit Souch again and he tensed again at Cheung’s renewed touch.
‘I need to remove this wire, but you’re lucky they didn’t kill you.’ The fear on Souch’s face remained. His eyes were locked on Cheung, despite another thud of an arrow on the side of the vardo followed by a scream from above.
Souch opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. It was clear to Cheung that the man waged a war within himself, but about what, Cheung could not know. He looked scared though, of that Cheung was sure; not surprising with the adlets surrounding them and what had happened to him by their clawed hands.
Working away, pulling bloodied wire from torn legs, Cheung felt Souch’s eyes on him. The sorcerer studied him more intently than anyone else since he’d joined the caravan.
‘Sir Xand,’ Souch managed, through a grating throat.
‘Dead.’ Cheung’s eyes remained on his work. ‘He tried to lay too low after what he did; tried to lay with the wrong girl.’ And still his stare fails to break. Cheung glanced up and saw Souch’s throat move once, twice. Is it me he fears?
Jevratt’s voice came from above. Loud, aggressive, accompanied by Belcher’s and Legg’s.
A brief respite, Cheung thought, proceeding to mop exposed flesh with a cloth soaked in wine. It was all he had to hand.
Although Souch winced, clenched his fists and tensed at the cloth’s touch, his eyes remained on Cheung.
A knock at the vardo’s door. Cheung looked up, Souch didn’t.
The palomino rider entered, clothes and sword bloody. He sported a wound to his right shin, bad enough to have cut through the boots he wore, but other than that he seemed unharmed.
His face… Cheung frowned. I can’t place his origins? Cheung continued, lost in the man’s unusual features. And those eyes, so—
‘He knows,’ the man said, his tone urgent but hushed.
Cheung sat back, head tilted within its covering.
‘Souch Sader knows, damn it!’
Before Cheung could wonder who the man was, his words and the sudden look of horror on Souch’s face struck home.
A renewed attack became obvious, as howls, horns and curses filled the air beyond the open doorway. The man looked behind him, worried. ‘Do what must be done,’ he said. ‘You are at risk, Cheung, and I can only hold a path for your escape so long. Your masters would not want you to tarry. My name is Dignaaln and you need to trust me.’
Cheung’s heart hammered, matching the fresh clashes of weapons and thump of arrows. Someone cried out and landed heavily behind Dignaaln, who pulled back from the vardo and out into the night once more.
A horse whinnied.
Two pairs of eyes met. Fear present in both. One for his life, and maybe a great deal more than that; large stakes were at risk to the man and the man’s king should he fail, both knew that. The other for the loss of what he had found on the road; friendship.
You know what I am, Cheung thought. He rocked back as the man before him nodded.
Yes, Souch thought in return, doing all he could and using all he knew to read the hooded man’s thoughts. The effort drained what little he had, but he needed to leave enough in reserve, despite what was to come. The assassin’s eyes gave more away in that moment than Souch would have believed possible; barriers had been willingly dropped. He’s reluctant to do what he needs to do, Souch thought. The realisation that the dropped barriers allowed Cheung to hear Souch’s thoughts as much as he could hear Cheung’s own came too late for Souch.
He looked down at what seemed to be a nothingness, pressing into his chest. He tried to take a breath but the sharp pain made it difficult. He attempted to make sense of the bone handle hovering before him, but couldn’t.
Cheung dropped his hood.
Looking up, Souch felt none of the hate he would have imagined would come from looking into his killer’s eyes. Sorrow, he thought, as what little light there was in the vardo began to fade. He feels sorrow, and regret…
Cheung tensed at that, swallowed hard. Nodded.
The vardo shook and fresh shouts came from above.
‘Where’s that sorcerer, Priest?’ Jevratt followed his question with a string of inventive curses.
Souch used the sorrow he felt pouring from the man before him, the sorrow he felt within the man before him, as another depth-less blade appeared, drawing a crimson line below the assassin’s right eye. The cut was deep, parting flesh to bone, and Souch felt Cheung’s pain on top of his own, the connection was so thorough. Souch’s final thought was all the more powerful for all of that, feeding off the emotion that fell within Cheung’s bloody tear; passing leagues in a final heartbeat, in the only way a thought could.
Souch Sader passed peacefully, despite the horror beyond the vardo. He’d managed to fulfil what he’d been asked to do. He’d managed to send a warning all the way to the top of Tyndurris and he’d managed, with what little he had left at the end, to do it without the assassin’s knowledge.
Cheung slid his kamas free and stared at the body of the sorcerer, ignoring Jevratt’s renewed shouts for that very man’s aid in the horrific fight outside. Thoughts and fears and possibilities lost and found whirled around Cheung’s head like a zephyr of confusion.
Pulling his eyes from Souch Sader’s immobile form and looking to the fire-flecked darkness outside the couch, Cheung made his gut wrenching decision.
***
Damp from a cold sweat despite a warm summer’s night, Ward Strickland woke, heart racing, fists clutching his blanket… eyes wide, seeing beyond.
The assassin has crossed the border.
Souch Sader’s transmitted thought accompanied an image of a pale, scarred face and a tear of blood.
Chapter 14 – Road to Rowberry
Anger surged within Cheung. His head spun, his teeth ground and his calm, his control… was gone. He knew too little. He’d spent weeks with the Caravaneers; the most he’d spent with any people in as long as he could remember. He’d eaten and drunk with them, talked and sang with them, laughed and… lied to them. His fists gripped the bone of his kamas tight as he thought about how easily he’d thrust one of those weapons into the man he’d been treating moments before.
Surging to his feet, Cheung stormed from the vardo, looking about the flame-lit darkness. Vardos, carts and traps burnt in all directions. People ran and adlets cut them down. Lit arrows flitted through the night, most landing on the ground, some taking fleeing people or animals. The ground thundered as beasts of burden were set free by caring owners, only for those freedom fighters to be hacked down by iron wielding raiders. Oxen and camels groaned and ponies whinnied. Traps raced to-and-fro, with too few bare-chested lads aboard them.
Cheung turned and looked up, to the backs of Jevratt, Legg and Belcher. Two other men stood atop the armoured vardo. One fell to an arrow as Cheung looked on.
Jevratt shouted curses as he loosed arrows in return. Belcher threw rocks like the shot putters of the Eatrian Games and Legg flung stones from a sling with tremendous speed.
Hooves thundered behind Cheung. He turned to see the golden mount of Dignaaln approaching.
‘You must flee!’ Dignaaln shouted as he neared.
‘Run, Priest!’ Jevratt called down, without turning. ‘Go with the rider, he’ll take ye to safety. I can’t protect ye here.’
Breaths came quickly and as a guttural cry turned Cheung to the next vardo along, adlets appeared atop it, the defenders fallen.<
br />
The palomino shifted beside him, pawing the ground, snorting.
‘Cover your weapons and come, now,’ Dignaaln said, his voice barely more than a rasping hiss of anger.
Cheung looked back to Jevratt, who leapt across the gap between vardos and tackled the first adlet he came to, throwing bare knuckles into the raider’s face before attacking the next. Cheung sucked in a breath and almost rushed forward as another adlet climbed up behind Jevratt, drawing a blade, ready to thrust.
From the darkness above, a silent flyer screeched before impact, knife-like talons outstretched. The adlet behind Jevratt arched its back and roared as the talons sunk in. Dropping to one knee and turning, the raider took hold of the eagle-owl and pulled its huge wings from its body. The shriek was horrific. Jevratt turned too late to save the bird, but was quick enough to avenge it.
‘I can’t leave them!’ Cheung shouted back to Dignaaln, anger pulling at his scarred face.
Dignaaln looked genuinely surprised. Dark eyes narrowed on Cheung. Leaning from his saddle, he pulled Cheung by his robes. Cheung let him, although he didn’t know why.
Feeling the wetness of blood beneath his eye, following his latest kill, Cheung listened to the words backed by a cold breath. ‘This is not your mission, assassin. Your masters command you to flee, to finish what you set out to do. Much rests on King Barrison’s death.’
Cheung turned back to the vardos, watching as adlets made the top where Belcher and Legg fought with fists. They handled themselves well, as always, yet they were hard pressed. Legg nearly fell to an adlet’s axe, but Belcher stepped in, taking the blow on the arm and losing much of it in the process.
Dignaaln pulled again on Cheung’s robes. This time his hold was shrugged off.
Cheung looked about frantically, listening to the curses, shouts, howls and grunts whilst the flying of lit arrows continued. A ball of burning pitch joined the lighting of the clouds above, its successful target a vardo off to the side, which erupted in a sky reaching fireball. The residents’ screams faded instantly.
A man’s loud grunt, a cry from another and a dull thud behind Cheung turned his head as the emissary’s words sunk in and took control. Your masters command you…
Belcher lay motionless on the ground, his half-arm twitching, an arrow embedded in his face.
Adlets appeared from somewhere off to the side, whooping as they ran. They came at Cheung and Dignaaln. A heavy ended goedendag swung in at Cheung and thrust back at him after he’d stepped aside. The iron point of the goedendag jabbed back as another adlet sliced down with a large cleaver. Cheung avoided both weapons. He embedded a black blade in each adlet before they could come at him again. Metal crashed behind as Dignaaln parried an adlet’s blow and gave several back in return. Dignaaln finished the adlet alongside his mount before the golden horse kicked out and finished the remaining raider.
Before Cheung could look back to Dignaaln, he caught Jevratt’s eye. Jevratt hesitated as he saw the hoodless priest, kamas bared. The look of disbelief, of betrayal, that Cheung witnessed and felt in that brief moment was bested only by the feeling that twisted his gut and stung his heart as a length of iron forced itself violently, bloodily, from the chest of the Caravaneer staring back.
As Jevratt’s eyes dropped to the crude sword point sucking back into his flesh, Cheung heard Collett scream from somewhere in the flame filled night.
Legg leapt across to his cousin whilst Cheung turned away, to be pulled atop the palomino.
As they rode through the burning camp, Cheung looked past the lads charging to the failing defences of Jevratt’s vardo. Past the staggering, arrow-stuck form of Master Couig, who slumped to the floor, and on to Collett, her wide eyes staring, disbelieving, at the man who she’d defended when his voice had been heard. The man she had accepted into her home within Grounding. The man her son had called friend.
Burning vardos and carts broke that stare as Dignaaln guided his horse through the dying remains of the Caravaneers’ camp and along the road to Rowberry; towards King Barrison, the mark and reason for Cheung’s journey.
With the sounds of the caravan’s death throws chasing him, after all he had sacrificed, Cheung knew what he had to do; knew what he could do. An incredible confidence settled over him. It didn’t come from improved focus or training, if anything, they had worsened. It came from the knowledge that the mission was all he had left.
Cheung no longer thought he would return to the rooftops of Eatri. He no longer believed he deserved to.
Legg carried his wounded cousin across uneven ground at great speed, risking putting a foot wrong, tripping, falling.
Falling would mean dying, for both Jevratt and Legg.
‘Hurry!’ Collett shouted from the back of a bouncing trap, looking at the silhouette of her son being carried, backed by the remains of their camp licking up in yellow flames. Adlets pursued, of course, but not many. Most fell about the dead and dying, finishing off the latter and looting the rest. The last wheeled homes were torched and belongings scattered as the raiders sought what they would.
‘Slow a little,’ Collett said, loud enough for the boy at the reins to hear. The pony slowed and Legg gained ground, nearing the back of the unsteady trap. They were travelling at speed, yet another risk, this time to the pony’s ankles in the dark, but Legg caught up enough to heft the weight of his cousin into Collett’s trembling arms. She fell back with her son, helping hands coming from another woman besides her, and two more young lads. None of them were family; Jevratt’s wife and children were lost to them both. She hoped they’d escaped on one of the many traps she’d seen flee, but didn’t hold out much hope. They’d been in the first vardo-fort to be hit.
What if he wakes and asks for them? She thought, cheeks wet and streaked from the tears she’d already shed. What if he doesn’t? She swallowed hard and looked at the hole in her son’s chest. Dark blood oozed from the wound, which bore a little hope, for she’d seen the pumping a heart could do.
Collett looked up. Legg was gone. She raised herself up a little, eyes working hard to try and see her nephew. Where are ye, Legg? Where’s the idiot gone now? Her fear for her son brought her eyes back down and her tears fell again, mixing with the bag of red petals she’d pulled from around her neck. Working them together in the leather pouch, with some of Jevratt’s own blood, Collett spat into the bag for good measure and turned the contents out onto Jevratt’s wound, smearing the balm in before sitting him up with help and doing the same on his back.
The light of the fires and the screams and howls faded as the trap continued on, jerking about all those on board as they headed along the road to Rowberry, binding Jevratt’s wounds as they went.
Chapter 15 - Overcooked
Cheung could feel the large muscles working beneath his legs. The beast was walking, but the power of the animal remained impressive.
Immaculate cloak before him, Cheung couldn’t recall when Dignaaln had donned the garment; he couldn’t remember stopping since the flight from Stonebridge. They passed tall trees on the left, whilst mountains reared to their right. Cheung followed the landscape up into those peaks. Snow decorated the tops, days’ worth of travel distant. He twisted in the saddle, looking back along the road. They’d travelled throughout the night. The sun had risen behind them, casting shrinking shadows before reaching its zenith above their heads.
‘We will stop up ahead,’ Dignaaln said, without turning.
Cheung nodded, in no mood to talk to the emissary sent by his masters.
‘I said—’
‘I heard you.’
‘You are not wondering why we are stopping here?’
‘I don’t care.’
A laugh, soft, but clear. ‘You should, Cheung. You should.’
Cheung sighed. He rubbed his face, hands pulling away when the line below his eye re-opened. Fresh blood ran warm down his cheek.
‘There is an inn ahead. You need to rest and we need to part company.’ Dignaaln did not
turn.
Looking back towards the distant mountains, Cheung said nothing.
‘You are not surprised I am leaving you?’ Dignaaln asked, and he did turn a little at that, taking Cheung in with one dark eye.
‘I don’t—’
‘Care. Yes, I am beginning to understand that.’ He looked forward once more. ‘Your masters—’
‘My masters?’
‘Ah, a proper response. Yes, your masters, Cheung. Did you think I am their emissary?’
No answer.
‘Your masters are working for my master, and my master wanted you back on track.’
‘I was on track,’ Cheung said, pressing a gloveless, pale finger to his cheek and bringing it away red. He wiped it on his robes.
‘You were losing your perspective and I was ordered to remind you of it. You think I do not have better things to attend to, other than steering one assassin back on track?’
One assassin? Cheung thought, eyes narrowed. There was something in the way Dignaaln said that. ‘I told you, I don’t care.’ Cheung watched the back of Dignaaln’s head shake slowly from side to side.
‘Much is changing in Brisance, and you are an integral part of it. As is your guild.’
‘I was never trained to think of the bigger picture,’ Cheung said, looking left, to the trees. ‘The opposite is true, in fact.’
‘You think they were your friends, don’t you?’
No answer.
‘You forget you paid them your dues. You gave them coins to be fed and led to Rowberry. That is all.’
‘I gave them more than that, and they gave even more in return.’
Immaculate shoulders bobbed.
‘I wouldn’t expect you to understand, emissary.’
‘Because you do not understand it yourself?’
It would have been silent but for the palomino’s hooves on hard-packed earth, and the calls of woodland birds to their left.
