Just as he was pondering this, there was a knock at his ballroom door and Claudir stepped inside to announce that “Lady Arya Venkyr and her companions” waited without.
Intrigued, fighting the muddiness in his head, he waved for the steward to show her in.
“Uncle, I must protest,” said the knight as she stormed in. Her appearance was stunning in her silvery armor, aided in no small part by the flush of anger. The other Knights in Silver who were her companions walked in as well, clad in their armor and bearing their weapons. So she had decided she could not come alone, eh? Greyt frowned.
“I went to speak to Captain Unddreth about his encounter in the Moonwood,” Arya said, “and I was turned away—not by the Watch, but by your guards.”
Greyt waved his hand through the air. “So?” he asked, his head rocking woozily.
“He’s fairly tipsy,” Derst observed quietly to Bars.
“Done in by Moradin’s hammer,” the paladin agreed.
Arya seemed not to notice. “I really must be able to continue my investigation into the disappearances of the couriers, and anything related to Walker could help to—”
“Didn’t I tell you to leave that alone?” interrupted Greyt. He rose from his chair and pulled himself up to face her.
“He smells terrible,” Bars murmured to the roguish knight.
“Like you did last night, after spilling that venison stew all over your tunic,” replied Derst under his breath.
Brows arching, Bars gave an almost imperceptible nod.
Arya screwed up her face in distaste at Greyt’s foul breath. “Excuse me, Uncle, but I am on an assignment from Silvery-moon to investigate the disappearances—”
“What’s this preoccupation with Walker all of a sudden?” asked Greyt, cutting her off. Arya’s companions looked at each other. “It almost sounds like you’re infatuated with him.” Her mouth dropped open. “Ah yes, dark and mysterious … is he handsome? A thrilling lover?”
“Well, that was uncalled for,” Derst said with a frown. “Aye, Bars … Bars?”
Though he did not speak, it was clear that Bars agreed, for he flushed, stepped forward, and dropped his hands to the maces at his belt.
Greyt saw this and his face skewed up in a crooked smile. “Oh, a hero, eh?” He pushed his slim chest out and stepped right up to the hulking paladin, a man nearly twice his size. The Lord Singer stood a step higher, so their eyes were almost level.
Bars refused to back down before him, and Greyt laughed in his face. “The gallant knight stands to defend his beleaguered lady, the way all the stories and ballads tell; all flowery, all heroic … all lies.”
“Take back what you said,” Bars said. Greyt flashed a mocking smile in the paladin’s face but did nothing of the sort. “I won’t ask again.”
“Very well,” Greyt said with a shrug. “I take it back, then.”
Bars gave him a long, measured look—one that the Lord Singer answered with a gaze of haughty disdain—and backed away. The Lord Singer grinned, put a finger to his forehead, and broke down in a laughing fit.
“Heroism,” he cackled.
“Please, uncle,” Arya said. “You are drunk.”
“Yes, yes I am,” the Lord Singer replied with a dazed smile.
Then he lunged forward and seized Arya before either of the other knights could react. He pulled her face to his and went for her lips.
He ended up on the ground clutching at his groin where Arya had kneed him.
“G-get away from me!” stammered Arya.
The Lord Singer, nearly unconscious from drink and pain, was in no position to argue. The three knights hurried out the door, Bars trying to convince Derst that it was all right because the knave was drunk, Arya casting her step-uncle warning glances, and Derst exclaiming at the top of his lungs that they had both taken leave of their senses. Meanwhile, Greyt, face flushed and brows knitted with fury, struggled to growl at them.
Arya Venkyr would regret this, step-niece or no.
CHAPTER 9
28 Tarsakh
As storm clouds rolled overhead and the residual light from the setting sun faded, Walker made his way back to Quaervarr with a heavy heart and a head full of worries. His sword felt leaden in its scabbard and his clothes similarly weighty because of the light rain. As he had expected, the ghost druid had been nowhere to be found in the grove, but he had still felt her presence, watching him. And, as always when he felt her eyes upon his back, the ghost of Tarm Thardeyn was nowhere to be found.
Any other man may have feared Gylther’yel’s retribution, but Walker thought little of this course of events. This was simply the way of things with his teacher, the only mother he had ever known: a mother who neither loved nor forgave.
Elves’ memories were long and their scorn hot, she often said to him, and after fifteen years he knew it was the truth. But there was nothing he could do about it, so Walker focused on the task at hand—slaying the third and last of Greyt’s henchmen.
At least Walker thought that the giant of a man they called Bilgren was the third attacker—he would not know until he faced the barbarian, until he could feel that same soul of hatred he had sensed that night fifteen years before.
In keeping with his thoughts, the rain strengthened from a dreary drizzle to a gloomy downpour.
Eluding the grim-faced guards at the sole gate of Quaervarr was not a problem. Though they were sharp-eyed and suspicious, clutching their silver-headed spears tightly, visibility was reduced to almost nothing in the rain. Walker slipped through the shadows, hidden in his heavy cloak, within a sword’s length of the guards.
A shadow in the rain, he made his way up the empty main street. Few townsfolk came out on a good night, fewer when it rained so heavily. Walker did not need his eyes to navigate the town, for he had walked its streets many times before, unseen and unknown by the townsfolk.
As the street opened up into the main plaza, the rain let up for a moment, and Walker lifted his head. He could see the lamplights bright in the windows of Greyt’s manor. He could see faces inside those windows and the shadowy silhouettes of moving figures, but he did not think much on them. He knew that he would be inside that place soon enough.
He turned north and started down the road toward the oldest part of town, through the original shadowtop gates, where the first settlers had set up camp in what would become Quaervarr. Townsfolk claimed that the additional settlers carried a shade of cowardice because they had stayed south, close to the Silverymoon road, where help could come the fastest. It made for a tiny difference, but the northern Old District carried more of a frontier feel.
Bilgren’s house, a stout former tavern the barbarian had bought for its ale store and wine cellar, squatted dankly a few buildings down the road next to an unmanned merchant wagon filled with goods in bundles. The entire place seemed worn and abused, even at this distance. The second floor balcony had half-collapsed from mildew and rot and most of the windows were boarded up. The building might have seemed condemned but for the thick iron door set in the front. Carved with roaring tigers, the door represented Bilgren’s measure of his own strength—local legend said the barbarian had carried the several hundred pound door single-handedly from the smiths of his homeland, hundreds of miles distant.
Lost in his thoughts, Walker was completely surprised when a hand reached out of an alley, seized him by the shoulder, and yanked him from the hazy night into pitch darkness.
Walker recovered enough from the surprise to draw his shatterspike in the blink of an eye and slash up and across at his unseen attacker. The hand released his shoulder and the dark figure leaped back, but Walker did not let up. He followed, his blade thrusting up and down, then slashing right to left. The first thrust the attacker managed to dodge and the second scraped off hard steel, as of armor. The high slash slammed against a hastily raised shield, a parry that barely managed to block it. The shield did not resist the sword’s cut directly, but instead let the slash continue, straig
ht into the wall of a nearby building, where the shield held it.
Releasing the sword, Walker lunged forward and shouldered his opponent, who was already off balance, against the wall of the nearby building. A long sword came up, held in the attacker’s other hand, and Walker immediately stepped inside its reach, putting his shoulder against the upper right arm, and held his opponent against the cracked timber wall with his body. The overhang stopped the rain from falling on Walker’s head, but the darkness obscured his attacker’s face.
“Stop—” he started to say, but a flash of lightning overhead lit the alley for the barest of instants and bathed his opponent’s face in light.
It was the auburn-haired woman, the one he had happened across in the alley, saved from an unknown assailant, then confronted in Torlic’s house, all within a short amount of time.
“You—” began his next question, but it cut off in a grunt as pain exploded up his leg from where she had stomped hard on his foot. He staggered back and a knee met his midsection. Walker doubled over, the air stolen from his lungs, but managed to reach up for his sword, still stuck in the wall.
The woman made no move to attack, but she kept her sword up as she stepped away from the wall. “A less honorable woman would have put that knee between your legs,” she observed casually as she wiped a lock of auburn hair out of her face with her sword arm.
Walker managed to right himself, holding himself up against the opposite wall until his stomach cramp disappeared, and his eyes adjusted to the darkness.
The knight saw that he was vertical again and smiled. “Now—”
Whatever the knight had been about to say became a startled gasp as she leaped back, barely avoiding a silvery blade through the ribs as Walker lunged. She slapped the sword away and fell back into a defensive stance, shield up and ready.
That was fortunate—for her—because Walker’s second slash came not a breath later, slamming into her shield with bone-numbing force. The fine steel held, though the keen shatterspike left a wide notch in its surface.
The knight attempted to swing back, but Walker parried the sword out to his left, spun toward her, dropped the shatterspike, grabbed her wrist, and rolled along her arm, coiling up to her sword hand all in one smooth movement, holding her blade away from him. Then he punched her stomach hard with his off hand and slammed his palm against her sword hand, knocking the sword from numbed fingers. Uncoiling once more, he slammed her back against the wall, and held the point of a knife to her throat—a knife that he had slipped from his left sleeve.
In the space of a breath, he stood, back to her front, her right hand in his, holding her against the wood.
Walker hissed in her ear. “Now—”
She twisted her hand and pulled a dagger from his right wrist sheath. Walker’s eyes widened, but the surprise did not stop his reflex. With his free hand, he slapped the blade away.
“Well, that’s out of the way,” she said, half jokingly, as the knife fell to the ground.
“What?”
“You don’t understand,” the woman said. “I’m not here to fight you—”
“Then why are you here?” Walker demanded, so harshly that the knight flinched.
Then, as though she had steeled herself with the same icy resolve that ran through Walker’s veins, the knight’s face went calm.
“Are we through interrupting each other?” she asked slowly and levelly.
“Are we?” Walker kept his voice calm.
“What kind of answer is that?” asked the knight. “Obviously, I’m in no position to surprise you with an attack, so it’s really a matter of whether you—” Walker was impassive as he held the knife to her throat. The knight swallowed. “Right, well, let’s assume that’s a ‘yes.’ In that case, I’ll tell you why I’m here.”
“Indeed.”
Though his rasp was chilling, the knight, unafraid, was staring into his sapphire eyes, a gaze that made him uncharacteristically uncomfortable. It was not a sensation he was used to. Fortunately, her eyes were drawn to a silver gleam on his finger—the wolf’s head ring. Walker shifted his stance, pulling her attention from the ring.
“Will you do something for me?” she asked after a moment.
“Perhaps,” replied Walker.
The knight lifted her chin, heedless of the blade poised there. “Allow me to speak without attacking?”
Walker’s face was impassive.
“My name is Arya Venkyr of Everlund, Knight of Silverymoon,” she said.
“Men call me Walker,” said the man in black.
“I know,” said Arya. “I have seen you before—”
“And?” Walker hissed, forcing her back to the former subject.
“I’m here on assignment to investigate the disappearances of half a dozen couriers—”
“Couriers?” asked Walker, unfamiliar with the term. He spoke Elvish more often than Common.
“Messengers,” said Arya. “They have vanished over the last few tendays—”
“Then why are you here?” came the interruption.
Arya’s brow wrinkled. “The couriers, they—”
“No, why here—why follow me?” corrected Walker. “I know nothing of your couriers.”
“You do know something,” she said. “Something that will help in my invest—”
“I know nothing of your couriers,” repeated Walker.
“How do I know you’re telling the truth?” asked Arya. Walker turned the knife he held to her throat. “Well, I suppose I’ll have to take your word—”
“Indeed,” said Walker.
Then he took the blade away from her throat, though he made no move to release her. He did not even realize he was still holding her until she tilted her head, examining his face.
“It was you, wasn’t it?” she said excitedly, as though making a discovery. “You saved me. You’re not as old as I thought—you can’t have seen many more winters than me. Why do you wear your collar so high? What are you hiding?”
Not answering any of her questions, Walker released her and stepped away, toward his fallen sword. She stood there for a heartbeat, massaging her stung wrist. Then, as though remembering something, she clutched the trailing edge of his cloak and stayed him.
“You’re going after one of Greyt’s friends, Bilgren,” Arya said, holding him back.
Walker shrugged, as if to concede the possibility.
Arya continued. “Turn back. Knowing my … knowing him, it’s probably a trap.”
Walker smiled. “It matters not,” he said. He turned. “If you knew how I am committed, you would not stop me.” He pulled his cloak out of her grasp and stalked away.
“Wait!” Arya shouted, not knowing why. She had almost let him fade away into the shadows, but something within wouldn’t let her.
He turned, showing no emotion at all in his face, but she could tell he was confused.
The rush of words burst out of her faster than her mind could hold it back. “I wanted to thank you for saving me the other night.”
Walker’s expression did not change, but Arya could feel something shift. That had startled him. He stood still for a moment, gazing at her, and she felt none of his bitter, icy resolve burning at her. Instead, he seemed almost a simple man gazing at her through the darkness.
“You are welcome,” Walker said quietly. He turned, bent low to retrieve the weapon, then headed back toward the street. Then he paused and looked back.
“What is it?” Arya asked, knitting her brows in confusion.
“I apologize for frightening you,” said Walker. “You were in no danger.” His voice was soft, almost gentle.
It is the curse of quick words—when one shouldn’t respond, they come, and when one needs to speak, they are mysteriously absent. When Arya could not form a reply, Walker bowed his head and turned to go.
Arya blinked. What a quandary this man seemed: a creature of darkness, with vengeance burning in his eyes, and yet he had saved her. Arya felt the same
conflicting duality as she looked upon him. On the one hand, his cold stare frightened her, and the rage she had seen in his eyes sent chills down her spine. But on the other, he intrigued her, taking her beyond her initial curiosity. And something told her that he hid much behind those blue eyes, beneath that black cloak….
That thought made her blush, but she hadn’t meant it that way. Too much time around Derst, perhaps.
Now, Arya realized with a start, Walker was going back into the shadows, but slowly. There was more he wanted to say, she could sense, but he did not have the words. Something about the way he carried himself and the way he moved set her heart to racing.
“Stop!” said Arya without meaning to. She realized she’d stopped him a third time.
Walker turned back, and his eyes appraised her. “You possess courage,” he said.
It sounded almost mocking, and Arya puffed out her chest. “Why do you say that?”
Walker may have smiled behind his high collar. “You do not fear me.”
“Should I?”
Walker’s gaze was her only answer.
Arya felt her defiant spirit flaring, and a retort came to mind. Her mouth was moving first, though, before she even considered what was to come out.
“Evil holds no terror for me,” said Arya, baiting him.
“Then you should feel terror indeed, for I hold no evil for you,” said Walker. “Only vengeance for my foes.”
“Vengeance is evil,” she argued.
“Vengeance is beyond good and evil,” replied Walker.
They were silent for a long moment. Then, leaving it on that cryptic note, Walker turned and walked away.
Arya made to follow him but stopped, a thought having occurred to her. She reached in her pocket and fingered the gold amulet she had accidentally taken from Greyt’s manor. She ran the other way down the alley.
Wiping rainwater from his nose, Walker pushed Arya’s warning out of his mind as he approached Bilgren’s house, though he kept his hand on his sword.
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