Heroes And Fools totfa-2

by Margaret Weis

  Squalling, she writhed in Griff’s arms, waving her fists. Jays flew up from the trees, fleeing her storm. The child’s wailing echoed all around us, and nothing Griff did to calm her made a difference. He walked for a while with her in his arms, then for a while holding her against his shoulder. Nothing stilled her, though her cries, at first piercing, eventually became weaker, more piteous than those first demanding yells.

  “We’re going to have to feed her soon, Griff.”

  “Feed her what?” He said that the way most men do when a child is on hand and the mother isn’t, surprised to have to bustle around looking for food. He shifted the child from his right shoulder to his left, scowling. “I don’t see any goats or cows around here.”

  “Water, maybe.” I took the leather bottle from my belt. “It’ll fill her belly anyway.”

  We tried to trickle some into her mouth. That didn’t work. Griff wet his finger for her to suck. That didn’t work either. Then I soaked a twist of cloth, and she took it with a gleeful cry. The wind picked up a little, blowing chill. Griff hunched over the child, lending body warmth.

  His scarred face close to hers, he whispered, “Ah, now, ah, now, there, that’s all right. Take some more. That’s right-”

  It was strange to see him at that work, to watch those hands I’d known only as killer’s hands holding Cae so tenderly. As I watched, ghosts stared out at me from his dark eyes. One of those ghosts in life, I remembered, had been a young brother, a boy still in the cradle that day the Dark Queen’s army fell upon a lone little farmhouse out there in Esrwilde. They say in Thorbardin that lessons learned early linger long. Well, perhaps that’s true, and the boy Griff must have learned one or two gentle lessons before the hard schooling came rampaging.

  “Come on,” I said when it seemed Cae had taken all she would. “We have some ground to cover before night.”

  We made good time after that, but a darker silence attended us now as we went down through the aspen wood. The sky grew heavy overhead, and clouds moved in from the east, changing the sun’s gold disk to dull silver. The trees, the earth, the strengthening wind itself smelled of rain. All this I saw, and none of it, it seemed, did Griff note. Up hill and down, across streams and on trails thin as shadows, he listened to ghosts whose rest was a long time coming. His gentle mother, his father, his sister, and his baby brother — all these cried their deaths to Griff as he went walking with the grandchild of their murderer in his arms.

  They did something to him, those voices, and they had more power over him now than they used to have. Through the darkening day I saw it: They changed him, they hollowed him, and it seemed to me, as I led him along the secret paths of Darken Wood, that Griff was actually losing flesh, growing white and stark and starved. Griff Unsouled, spirit-killed and animate, he went like Death, walking down to Haven with ghosts shouting in his head and an infant resting trustfully in his arms.

  Trustfully, aye, and she grew quieter by degrees, sleeping sometimes, more often simply lying still, exhausted. When she did rouse, her hungry cries were but whimpers. By the middle of the afternoon the whimpering turned to silence. For the first time I wondered, would the child survive the trip to Haven? Griff wondered, too. I saw him check on her often. No gentle word did he speak now, no soft, whispered comfort remembered from another time. He looked at her with hard eyes and cold, assuring himself that his little passport to vengeance still lived.

  Wind picked up, whirling leaves down from the trees, rattling in the brush. Leaden clouds hung lower till you could see them clinging round the hills like ragged shawls on the shoulders of old ladies.

  “Keep going,” Griff said, shifting Cae in his arms, tucking her warmly beneath his cloak.

  He said that as the first fat drops of rain pattered on fragile leaves.

  “No.” I made my voice hard enough to tell him I wouldn’t be gainsaid. “Now we stop. Haven isn’t going anywhere before tomorrow.”

  I led him and the baby and all the ghosts aside from the trail, across a small stream, and round the back of a small hill. There the wind broke, whining around the rising ground, and there I found an overhang of stone, lone outrider of the hills we’d left behind. Griff put the infant down on a clear patch beneath the overhang. She stirred a little, but there wasn’t much strength in her for crying.

  I peered out into the darkening day. “I’m going to find us some supper. See if you can find enough dry wood to get a fire started.”

  I had a pocketful of snares and the notion that a warm broth of whatever I caught and killed might go down Cae’s throat easier than water. When I looked behind me, I saw Griff standing over her, the child a little bit of life at his feet. His eyes were almost gone in blackness, the planes of his face carved away by shadows.

  He was sitting before a hot, high fire when I returned, Cae in his arms. He had nothing to say when I showed him the rabbits I’d snared, and he didn’t eat what I skinned and cooked. Not until we had a good broth of the leavings did he unbend and rouse himself. The child must be fed, and he went at that work as he had before, soaking a twist of cloth and tempting her to take it.

  For all he tried, Cae didn’t take the food. She’d been a day and a night without her mother, without the rich milk she needed. I knew it looking at her: Nothing we’d concoct would help her. I knew it, but Griff didn’t, or he wouldn’t admit it. He kept at her, teasing the cloth to her lips. No word did he speak, though, and not the smallest bit of tenderness did I see from him. All that, it seemed, he’d spent in the afternoon. He had only the single-minded need to see her fed, and she wouldn’t feed.

  I believed, as I rolled myself in my cloak to sleep, that Olwynn Haugh’s little daughter would soon join her mother in whatever land of the dead folk travel to when all the warring and striving is done. She’d go and leave Griff with no way to his revenge and me no path to those steel coins that would keep me warm and in dwarf spirit through winter.

  Damn, I thought, falling asleep. Damn me if easy money isn’t the hardest to earn.

  Cae didn’t go to join anyone, though; she held tight to her little strand of life. I saw it was so when the night had flown and gray morning hung low in mist. Griff stood just beneath the stony overhang, and he turned when he heard me up. Cae lay in his arms, covered in folds of his green wool cloak. Killer Griff, Griff Unsouled, looked around at me, empty-eyed, his scarred pale face written in lines of hatred sharp as knives.

  “How’s the child?”

  He shifted the baby in his arms, and if I didn’t know better I’d have thought it was a sack of rags he held, so limp was the child now. Coldly, he said, “I’ll have my vengeance. Let’s go.”

  We went, and no other word did he say all the way down to Haven.

  You find a man in a city the same way you find a man in the wood. You track him. In Haven, Olwynn Haugh’s father wasn’t so hard to track. We found his trail all over the city, that double-eagle stamped on ale kegs and wine barrels and on the flanks of barges. He was a rich man, a well-known importer, and only one question, dropped in the right tavern at the right moment, found him for us. His name was Egil Adare, and he lived on the hill, his house overlooking the city and the harbor where his barges brought in goods from all over Abanasinia, even from beyond. Sight of his ring opened the door of that fine house for us. Sight of his grandchild sent the servant scurrying, an old woman looking over her shoulder and clucking like a hen as she led us through the grand house, up winding stairs and down breezy corridors.

  They live well, the merchants of Haven, and I saw in every room I glimpsed that this one, this Egil Adare, lived like a king. Griff saw it too, his eye alighting on golden statuary, silken hangings, rich velvet draperies. He saw, and he said nothing, only followed the servant, Cae in his arms. Like grim Death he went stalking, and like Death, white and hollow, he stood outside the door of his enemy, waiting as the servant knocked, then entered.

  “Griff,” I said, “I’ll wait-”

  — outside to guard the d
oor, to find a way out of this mazy mansion once the killing was done. He gave me no chance to say so.

  “Come with me,” he said. To me, but looking at Cae all the while.

  The door, shut by the servant, opened again. Griff lifted Cae to his shoulder. Her little head lolled, her thumb fell from her mouth. She whimpered faintly, then stilled.

  Griff stepped before me into the chamber, a counting room where the largest piece of furniture was a broad desk upon which ink wells gleamed like jewels and quills marched in perfect alignment, the merchant’s little soldiers. No sign of the merchant himself did we see, but his double-eagle, those two heads in opposition, glared at us from every panel, from the hanging behind his desk, even from the thick blue and gold carpet underfoot. Griff’s shoulders twitched, just a little, to see those sigils, but he never lost his stride. Boots tracking mud across the richly woven carpet, he made a little thing of the distance between him and the desk.

  I shut the door, paneled oak and heavy, firmly behind us and stood with my back to it. Cradled in Griff’s arms lay Cae, unseen beneath the green cloak, hidden. Cradled in mine lay Reaper, not hidden. The tapestry behind the desk stirred. A hand pushed it aside, and Egil Adare stepped into his counting room.

  He looked more like a vulture than an eagle, that merchant, his hooked nose a beak, his ropy neck long, and his hooded eyes restless and watching everything, judging whether he saw predator or prey. I could see that he had been a big man, that his hands, now gnarled and swollen in the joints of every finger, had once been broad and strong. Where I come from they’d say those hands had been hammer-fisted.

  Griff kept still as a breathless night, head up, eyes cold. Thus he stood, straight and proud before the man who had murdered his kin. In him his ghosts howled, keening their death agonies, then falling-suddenly! — silent. So it had been in every nightmare that owned him, waking and sleeping. Now he stood before the shaper of those nightmares, waiting to be recognized. He wanted to see shock in those muddy, brown eyes, surprise and then fear. The old man gave him nothing.

  “I am Egil Adare,” the merchant said, shifting his glance so he looked at neither Griff or me, but at some point in the distance between us. He put a hand beneath his desk, sliding open a drawer. A small leather pouch sat in there, fat and full. We were meant to see it, as beggars are meant to see a hand reach into a pocket, withdrawing the few coppers that will send them on their way. “I am told you have news of my daughter.”

  Griff’s heart must have pounded like drums in him, but no one could know it by looking at him. He stepped forward, letting his cloak fall open. Cae never moved, not when the green wool, sliding, brushed her pale cheek, not when Griff set her gently upon the broad desk and placed her exactly between Egil and himself. She whimpered a little then, moving her hands, turning her head. She was looking for Griff, the source of all the warmth and care she’d known these two days past, but he wasn’t paying any attention to her now.

  “Here is the news,” he said to Egil Adare, his voice rough and hard. “Your daughter is dead. This,” he indicated Cae, “this is all that is left of her.”

  The merchant’s face went ashen. He stepped to the desk, eyes on the child lying so still and silent.

  In the instant, Griff’s sword flashed out. “Hold,” he said. “Ash Guth, you hold right there.”

  Ash Guth, Griff said, speaking the name he’d known so long ago. Like a man turned to stone, the merchant held. His thin lips parted. In his eyes sprang a light, recognition. Soft, unbelieving, he said, “You? Is it you?” His eyes narrowed, and he drew himself up, all his thin bones. “How did you find me? I thought you were-”

  Griff’s laughter rang like blades, one against another. “You thought I was dead? Did you think you were the only one to survive the Dark Queen’s assault on the High Clerist’s Tower? Well, you see you’re not the only one, and if you have forgotten me, I haven’t forgotten you.” He lifted his sword so the light coming in through the window glinted all along the edges. “Or the debt you owe me.”

  The old man shuddered, understanding at once what I had yet a moment to grasp. “You-you killed my Olwynn?” He looked at me, then swiftly back to Griff. “You killed her?”

  Griff smiled, as a wolf smiles. He said neither yes or no, but he knew which conclusion the old man would draw.

  Tears sprang in the merchant’s eyes. “Olwynn,” he whispered, imagining every horror. “Oh, my child. . ”

  Upon the desk Cae stirred again. Her lips parted, trembling with hunger and great weariness. She saw Griff standing above her, and she knew him. She lifted her hand, just a little, and touched the edge of the blade. Blood sprang, one drop, from her finger. In Griff’s eyes a wan light gleamed, pale like the phosphorous you see over swamps where dead things lie rotting.

  My blood ran cold in me as I understood how deep was the vengeance he planned, a deeper one than I’d reckoned on. He was going to make Egil pay his debt with more than his own death. Your father’s precious treasure, so he’d named Olwynn and her child. In bloody coin would he extract his debt, doing to Egil what had been done to him, for if others had killed Olwynn before he could, still he had her child. This dark a deed even he hadn’t done in all his long years of killing. Still, it wasn’t my vengeance, and not my place to trim it. I do what I’m paid to do.

  Outside in the hallway voices murmured, one servant to another. I tightened my grip on Reaper’s haft. Any moment a servant could knock at the door, the old man could cry out.

  “Griff, if you’re going to do this-”

  He turned, snarling, “Shut up!”

  Just as he moved, the merchant reached for the child on the desk. He stopped still in his tracks as the tip of Griff’s sword touched his breast, then traveled higher to his throat, the drop of Cae’s blood glittering on the steel like a tiny ruby. Swiftly, the tip dropped again, resting at the infant’s throat.

  “You killed.my mother,” Griff said to Ash Guth who’d renamed himself Egil Adare. He leaped, like a panther pouncing, and snatched the old man by the shirtfront, dragging him around to the front of the desk. “Her name was Murran. You killed my sister, and her name was Bezel. My father’s name was Calan, and you killed him even as he kneeled to beg for the life of his infant son. That infant’s name was Jareth, and he screamed all the killings through until at last-” his eyes never leaving the old man’s. Griff lifted his sword, the tip dancing over Cae’s throat “-until at last there was only silence.”

  Egil Adare fell to his knees, cowering. “My grandchild,” he sobbed. He reached a trembling hand to Griff, then let it fall. “Oh, Olwynn’s daughter. .”

  Cae whimpered, and then she wailed, crying with more strength than I thought she had in her hungry little body. Her eyes, blue as springtime skies, turned to Griff, widening as she recognized him.

  Him, though, he stood there, his steel like silver in the failing light of the day. He looked down at the child, she his weapon of vengeance, her death to be put against those of his kin in a dark healing. He smiled like rictus.

  “Please,” the old man sobbed, as surely Calan Rees must once have begged. Tears poured down, and it looked as if his face were melting. “Please, oh, gods, please don’t kill the child. .” He bent down, he did, and pressed his forehead to Griff’s dusty boots, wetting them with weeping. “My grandchild. Oh, my grandchild. .”

  “My brother,” Griff snarled. Rage ran like fire now burning everywhere through him. “My mother, and my sister, and my father-my soul! You stole them all from me, you bastard!”

  My soul, he said, catching all his dead in those two words, all his grief, all the years of nightmare, and all the killing he had himself done, one death after another, each in some way meant to echo those first deaths or to still the echoes of them.

  Griff’s hand tightened on the sword grip. His knuckles whitened as Cae smiled up at him. She lifted her hand, touching the steel again. She found her voice, and she made that cooing sound babies make. I hadn’t heard it fr
om her since last she lay against her mother’s breast.

  “Spare the child,” Egil moaned.

  Griff kicked him away. Like a beaten dog, he came crawling back. Whispering, wheedling, the most powerful merchant in Haven abased himself like a beggar. “You want to kill me. I know it. I see it. Do it! Do it, but spare the child!”

  He rose to his knees, he tore the shirt from his breast, baring himself to the sword, pale skin tight over protruding ribs.

  Griff stood still as stone, barely breathing. The old man’s sobbing sounded like the pulse of a faraway sea.

  Then it too fell still. Once again I heard footsteps pass the door, voices murmuring. Whispered one woman to another, “He’ll be wanting his supper soon. D’ye think those two’ll be staying?”

  “Griff,” I said, warning. “Are you going to do this, or aren’t you?”

  Like fire, his eyes, and he spat, “Take it easy. You’ll get your pay.”

  Egil Adare, cringing on the blue and gold carpet, looked up at me, his eyes overflowing with tears. Ah, but he’d heard something, that canny merchant, he’d heard talk of pay.

  “Listen,” he said, only to me. “I can pay you anything you want. Stop him!”

  I laughed, and I turned from him. I didn’t get to be this old by double-dealing. All I wanted was for this dark work to be done. It seemed to me I could hear every voice in the house now, all of them creeping closer.

  In the light from the window Griff’s sword shone, bright and clear. He lifted it high, glinting over the tiny body of the child he’d carried out of Darken Wood. Were the ghosts howling? Oh, aye, they were screaming in him.