Griff looked at me long, all the ghosts in his eyes staring out at me. “What’s it to you?”
“One hundred steel,” I said, and never mind that his look raised the hair on the back of my neck. It was money we were talking, ghosts be damned.
“One hundred steel. .” He traced the figure in the ale-slop on the table. “So what? You can have all we make on this little trip to Haven. I don’t care.”
Out the corner of my eye I saw the rag-eared goblin was gone from the bar. That could mean something, or it could mean nothing. I wasn’t of a mind to chew it over now. “And you? What will you make? Are you doing it for free?” I snorted derisively. “Can’t say I’ve ever heard of Killer Griff giving it away.”
“So what?” He said it just as if he didn’t care. He leaned forward again, elbows on the table, spilled ale wetting his shirt where his arms rested. He didn’t look at me. He kept his eyes on the table and said, “Broc, did I ever tell you how I joined the Dark Queen’s army?”
I frowned, not knowing where this offer of history came from and not much wanting to hear it. “No, and-”
“Well, listen.”
I listened, but he said nothing, while all around us in the tavern the smoke hung and voices rose in shouts and dropped low in growls.
“Listen,” he said again, finally lifting up his eyes, those deep wells all full of ghosts. “I’ll tell you about a boy, skinny brat, living on his father’s farm, away up on the plains of Estwilde. He wasn’t nearly grown, that boy, and not a day older than he had to be to take what was handed him. . ”
The boy, said Griff to me on that windy, wild night in the Swan and Dagger, the boy stood at the well, winding the crank to pull up the bucket from the dark deeps. Water, in those days just before the Second Cataclysm, was scarce. Rain never fell anymore. The well stream, which had always run swift under the ground, had months before choked to a trickle. The boy became used to letting that bucket of his tumble far down and cranking it back up again, turn and turn, until his arms ached with the work.
As he stood cranking, the boy looked out across the brown and dying fields, at the crops burned to ruin, the dust swirling in the ever-blowing wind. He cocked his head, listening to the sounds of the farm, his mother murmuring to his sister, his baby brother cooing in the cradle under the shade of the roof, his father talking to someone behind the barn. He looked up high, the back of his neck prickling. It seemed to him that he heard thunder or felt it rumbling, but the sky was hard and empty.
Like some great beast waking, the ground beneath his feet shuddered faintly. Dark, a cloud rose, up over the hill, past which lay the town. The wind turned, and the thick smell of burning came to him.
“Fire!” the boy shouted, abandoning the well. “Ma! Da! Fire! Fire in the town!”
Halfway to the house, he saw his mother pointing toward the hill, her eyes wide, her mouth open. The boy stopped to look where his mother pointed. All the blood in him went cold. It was smoke, aye, rising over the hill, but there was more-a great cloud of golden dust roiled and rolled before the darkness of smoke.
“Gods preserve us!” his mother cried. “Paladine save us!”
The boy’s belly cramped with fear as that golden cloud became an army, dark and solid and gleaming in the sun. Swords and war axes shone, and the sunlight glinted like bright little spears from the black armor of a troop of Dark Knights riding at the head.
Knights of Takhisis!
The boy didn’t think that. Well, he hadn’t the wit for thinking, had he? Terror ran in him, sweeping away all thought. No matter, that. He knew who came riding. Who hadn’t heard tales of what those merciless Knights had done in Kalaman? Everyone knew how they’d swept south from there into Estwilde on a bloody tide of rapine and killing.
The dark troop moved fast, horses’ hooves chewing up the road. Their voices came like the sound of a river at flood. The Knights kept to their course, thinking the little farm unworthy of their notice. Some of the foot soldiers didn’t hold so true a line. Roaring, they plunged across the field between the road and the farmyard. The boy saw faces contorted with the blood-chilling rage of men who’d lately been at a killing and lusted for more. He bolted to the house for his mother, and he ran right into the arms of his father.
“Cellar!” his father shouted, his infant son in his arms. He thrust the boy into the house, herding his wife and weeping daughter before him. Down under the center room lay a root cellar, cool and dark, a place to hide and pray these rampagers would satisfy themselves with looting. “Hurry, boy! Hurry!”
They had the hatch up from the floor. The boy tumbled in, shoved by his father. The infant wailed. Outside pigs squealed, cows bawled, and the army’s thunder shook the little house to the walls. The boy reached up to take the shrieking infant. Reaching, he heard his father cry out. His sister’s horrified scream echoed in his bones. The hatch crashed down, hitting the boy in the head and plunging him into stilling darkness.
There he crouched, half-conscious and bleeding. Just like in your worst nightmare, he heard his mother wail, he heard his father plead for mercy-not for himself, but for his wife and children. He heard the weeping and the sobbing and then the sudden silences like gaping holes never to be mended, unhealing wounds. All the while he shoved his thin shoulders up against the hatch, furious, raging, and trying to get out.
What did he think he’d do if he got out? Well, well, he was a boy, you remember, and full of mind-clouding fury. He thought he’d kill them, every one of those raiders.
When all the silences had fallen above, when all the deaths were died, the boy’s cursing was the loudest thing in the world to hear. He fell still, heart racing, terrified and knowing his own silence came too late. The hatch opened, and a hand reached down and grabbed his arm, dragging him up into the day. Light glinted off a deeply embossed golden ring, bitterly bright and stabbing the boy’s eyes.
Ach! It was a slaughter-field the boy found up there, red-running with blood. Bodies lay around the floor of the front room, his fair sister’s, his father’s twisted and broken, his mother’s covered in blood. The infant lay dead upon her breast. Shivering, belly-sick and cramping, the boy vomited, falling to his knees, and got kicked hard for doing that. A big man-that one with the big hand and the booted foot-yanked him to his feet. Fire crackled outside, smoke curled all around inside the house. The big man pulled the boy close so they were eye to eye. He stank of blood and sweat and murder.
“Mine,” he growled in Common Speech. “Mine!” He dragged the boy outside, where Griff’s wrists were bound, then tied on a long lead to the saddle horn of a pale horse.
That simply did the boy become a slave. The big man mounted his horse and rode away at the head of his murdering mob. The boy followed-well, he had to, didn’t he? — and he went in stunned silence until, atop a rise, his master stopped to look for sign of the army he’d left and must catch up again. The man looked ahead, but the boy looked behind him and saw his home, the little farmhouse, the barns and outbuildings. They sat like ashes on the land, and in the sky ravens circled, lowering for a meal.
In that moment the boy screamed his rage for the deaths of his family. Thus flew his first, fledgling war cry.
“That’s how I joined the army of Takhisis,” Griff Rees told me, still leaning on his elbows, soaking up the spilled ale.
I said nothing, because I had nothing to say. I’ve been told sad tales and sorrowful in my time, and this was one, but I’ve never known it to help a man to hear me say, ah, the shame of it; oh, the pity.
I looked long at him through the haze of low-hanging smoke from Baird Taverner’s badly drafting hearth, thinking about how he’d joined the Dark Queen’s army with a war cry in his throat and his heart turning to stone.
He said to me, there in the Swan and Dagger, that he would like to have killed the big man who enslaved him, but though he plotted and planned, he had no chance.
“Instead, I survived, fighting with the army, becoming as strong
and ruthless as any soldier.”
I poured out the last of the ale, sharing it between us, all the while thinking that the killing you do in war is hard work for a man, worse work for a boy. He did it, though, that skinny boy who saw his family die on the plains of Estwilde, for among the slave’s duties was the obligation to defend his master in battle. He did that war-work well, learning the art of killing in hopes he’d get to use it in a better cause, to kill the man who’d murdered his family. He was an apt student. Soon they began to name him Killer Griff. Maybe it was then he thought he’d lost his soul, killed it in the killing, all the while yearning to work a particular murder. His yearning was never sated. In time he and his master parted, swept away from each other by the terrible tide of war that overwhelmed the High Clerist’s Tower in those rending days at the end of the Summer of Chaos.
“Ash Guth was his name,” Griff said. “He must have changed it, after. I’ve searched hard and never heard so much as a word about him since the war ended. Not from that day till this have I seen sign of him.” He looked down at the table, then up at me. “Not outside of nightmare.”
There must have been a lot of those, I thought as he turned his dark eyes on me and I heard his ghosts howling. Ah, not the ghosts of all those he’d killed in his time. Never them. I knew it now, I saw it: These were his ghosts, his phantom kin peering out from his eyes.
“I’ve got him now,” Griff said, tracing death runes in the spilled ale. “Got him sweet and sure, and there’s no way I’ll lose him again.”
Like a cold finger at the back of my neck came the memory of the nickname I’d heard only once: Griff Unsouled. He looked like that, sitting there, his arms in the ale-slop, like something animate but with no spirit. I thought, once, for only a moment, that it was too bad for Mistress Haugh to be leading her father’s death right to him, but then I decided that was no matter to concern me. There isn’t a killing I do or help at that isn’t worked for gain. This one would serve that end just fine. Besides, would you deny that Griff Rees had this killing coming to him?
If anyone had asked me, I’d have picked a different horse for Olwynn to ride than her dancy little red mare. For that matter, I’d have advised she ride no horse at all but that she and Griff take the Haven Road walking, as I did. It’s a good road in good seasons, broad enough for three riders to go abreast, but lately storm rains had washed away the sides, leaving it narrow and soft at the edges. The red mare hated those soft sides, and she always found herself slopping around there. Olwynn, riding with Cae in a sling and close to her breast, did her best to keep the mare going straight down the firm middle, but the mare was contrary-minded as any mule, veering right and left and shying each time she felt the yielding edge of the road. Two hours out of Long Ridge, the mare had slipped three times and twice threatened to throw her rider- infant and all-into the road. Whatever hopeful idea we’d had of how far we’d get that day lay in ruins.
“Slit the damned horse’s throat,” Griff growled the fourth time the mare went slipping off the road. It was the first thing he’d said since we took to the Haven Road, and he didn’t say more than that. He rode ahead, dark and quiet. Me, I was left with the mare and the girl, trying to get them back onto the road again, dodging hooves and teeth all the way while Cae set up a long, howling wail.
The Dwarf of Darken Wood, that’s what Griff names me, and maybe you wonder why I spend so much time in that place. There are many reasons. One is the silence.
Olwynn held the child close, whispering soft sounds that were not words, when the mare clucked her head to start kicking. I moved fast and punched the beast hard between the eyes just as her head came down. I did some harm to my fist and none to the mare, but I got her attention. She let me lead her up out of the mud and onto the road again.
“Thank you,” Olwynn said, her voice low and shaking as she took the reins from me. “I–I’m not so good with horses. My husband, though. .” She let the thought go, rocking her baby. “Well, thank your for your help, Broc.” She said it sweetly, no smile upon her lips but the light of one in her quiet eyes.
“Come on!” Griff called, his pied gelding restless. “We’d like to get at least a mile up the road before nightfall, eh?”
We made good time after that. The mare seemed be weary of contrariness now and enjoyed the chance to trot in the brisk morning. I ran ahead of the riders, jogging along the road, checking right and left, my pack a comfortable weight on my back, Reaper on my hip, near to hand.
It’s not a good place to be, Darken Wood on the Haven Road. All the pretty stories you hear of dryads singing in the glades, the tragic tales of the ghosts in Spirit Forest, even the brave legends of centaurs over in the western part of the wood-these are true. When you’re going into Darken Wood from the Haven Road round near Solace and Long Ridge, though, you’d be a fool to worry about specters and dryads and centaurs. What you find there are bandits and outlaws hiding in the aspen woods, men exiled from home and kin by law or, like me, by choice. You’d be a witling to go in there without weapons and the skill to use them.
Behind me, Olwynn’s little daughter cooed and sighed, the tiny sound drifting on the wind. Birds flitted over Solace Stream, kingfishers dived for a meal, finches and warblers came out from the wood to drink. A doe, wide-eyed and startled, leaped across the road and plunged into the darkness of trees. I stopped, listening to her run, and to the following silence as smaller creatures, fearing predators, swiftly ducked for cover. I waited until I heard the wood return to normal, heard the song of birds and the sigh of cold wind from the north, then went on.
The road no longer ran straight, for it had been cut out of the wood to parallel the wandering stream, and it became more narrow. I glanced back, then signaled to Griff that I was heading out of his sight, around the bend to see the way ahead. He gestured assent, and Olwynn spoke to him, her voice low. If she had asked after something, he gave no answer.
A dove among wolves, so I’d thought her the night before in the Swan and Dagger. Well, she was that, wasn’t she? A little dove homing with a deadly message for her father, aye. He could make a neat plan, Griff could.
I rounded the bend where, off to the east Solace Stream runs chattering and laughing out of Crystalmir Lake, and there I stopped, cursing to see a tangle of aspens fallen across the road. The rains of days before had filled up the lake so that the runoff swelled the racing stream past its banks. We’d have to leave the road and thread the verge of the wood where trees grew close together, their roots weaving snares for our feet. That red mare was going to enjoy this. I went closer to the pile, still cursing, trying to think how best to get the mare off the road and into the wood. The crisp sound of hooves at jog fell upon the silence. As if to protest, a jay cried in the wood, another echoed, and a third joined the racket. Some small creature rustled within the tangle of fallen trees, drawing my eye.
My heart lurched hard against my ribs as I saw a thing hidden from the casual glance. Every one of those trees had been taken with a wood axe, and every one of those raw new wounds told me the trees had been cut down in the night.
“Griff!” I shouted, running back, “heads up!”
The jays fell silent. The wind turned, carrying the near scent of sweat and horses. I rounded the bend and saw them, two riders abreast. Griff had his sword out, the steel shining in a fall of sunlight. Behind him, like a trap closing, came ten ragged figures, some human, some goblin. They made a half-circle across the road, catching us between them and the fallen trees.
“Back!” I shouted. “Behind you!”
An arrow hissed past my ear, and a second flashed past the eye of the red mare. The beast bolted. Olwynn screamed, flung over the mare’s back, Cae clutched to her breast as she fell onto the road. She lay there, helpless, the breath blasted from her as her child shrieked. Griff was off his horse and over her at once. To see him, you’d have thought he was protecting his own dear daughter, so fierce and fiery were his eyes now. He was protecting, all right. Not
Olwynn, no, but something more-his road to revenge.
I leaped past Griff, swinging Reaper hard, and took out the knees of a tall, thin goblin who fell screaming. He struggled, trying to gain his feet, and I saw that here was the rag-eared fellow who’d gone suddenly missing from the Swan. Reaper harvested, smashing that goblin’s skull to bloody bits.
Olwynn shouted, “Broc! Behind!”
I turned on my heel, Reaper already swinging. Bone crunched, someone howled in agony, and a stocky human fell to the ground.
Olwynn cried out again in wordless terror, and I jerked around in time to see her hunched over her wailing child, trying desperately to protect herself and her baby as two goblins rushed her. With her, they must be certain, lay the pouch full of steel coins their fellow had seen in the tavern.
With his wild, terrible war cry-ah, that cry the same as the first one he ever shouted-Griff leaped over Olwynn’s huddled body. His sword glinted as he plunged it into the gut of a goblin, the gleam quenched in red, red blood. Yet seven remained, five humans and two goblins, all of them certain of their skills, certain of the treasure they had come for.
I grabbed the mare’s reins as she dashed past and grabbed Olwynn’s pack from the saddle horn. Griff snatched his pied gelding and his own pack. One swift glance passed between us. With slaps and cries we sent the horses plunging into the knot of ambushers.
“Run!” I shouted, flinging Olwynn’s pack at her as Griff grabbed her wrist and yanked her to her feet. “No! Not ahead! The way is blocked! Into the wood!”
We scrambled off the side of the road, into Darken Wood, and none of us wasted time looking over our shoulders.
We ran, but not for long. The wood was sparse along the verge, but we soon found that beyond there it grew thick and close. Trees leaned together, brush clogged what clear spaces might have been, while roots reached up from the ground to trip us. Olwynn’s breathing came in gasps and sobs, ragged with effort and fear. Cae wailed constantly, her cries muffled against her mother’s breast but still loud enough to be followed. Shouts and curses echoed behind us as the bandits untangled themselves from the horses and plunged into the wood. One long keening cry rose up, someone discovering his dead.
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