That seemed to complete the advertisements; the runes faded away, leaving him staring at a blank stone wall. “Hello, Valder,” a familiar voice called from behind. He turned.
He was in a library; the walls of rough gray stone were mostly hidden by shelves of books and scrolls. The ceiling was coffered wood, the floor polished flags. In the center of the chamber stood a large oaken table, and sitting atop the table was a handsome young man in his late teens, wearing military tunic and kilt but no breastplate or helmet. His curly black hair was in disarray, his eyes bright, and a broad grin covered his face. Valder recognized him immediately as his former bunkmate, Tandellin Landin’s son.
“They told me you were still alive, but I wanted to see for myself,” Tandellin said.
Valder grinned back. “And they told me that you were still alive, and I figured I had best leave well enough alone. What’s this spell costing you?”
“Oh, not all that much; Sharassin’s a friend of mine. All I had to do was buy her the ingredients and provide her with a few vials of blood — but one of the ingredients was a pan of beaten silver, so you better appreciate this!”
“Oh, I do!” Valder hastened to reply. “How long do we have?”
Tandellin shrugged. “I’m not sure — I think until you wake up.”
“Plenty of time, then — I just went to sleep.” He hesitated. “At least, I think I just went to sleep, but you know how dreams are.”
“Well, let’s not waste it, then. Tell me what happened — we all thought the northerners got you when they first came charging down out of the woods at us.”
Valder related his adventures, glad to be able to do so at his own speed and without being completely serious about everything. Even though he had told the story several times, this was the first chance he had had to tell it to a friend rather than an interrogator.
When he had finished he asked, “And what about you?”
“Oh, I was just sitting in camp when the attack came. At first I was out there with my bow and sword, like everybody else, but, when we saw that we didn’t stand a chance, Captain Lorret sent half a dozen men south to see if we could find reinforcements. He picked the youngest, I suppose because he thought we could run fastest — I was the last one he chose, and he told me to head straight for General Gor’s fortress. I did — and I’m still here, because I was too tired to go back out and fight after I got here. I was up on the ramparts with a bow when the enemy finally got this far, though; don’t think I hit anything. And I may have been spending some time with wizards, but I haven’t gotten my sword enchanted — just my heart. Or maybe somewhere lower down. You’ll have to see Sharassin some time; she’s really... well, you’ll have to see her.”
Valder laughed. Even though it was only a dream, it felt good; he had not laughed much in recent months. It was indescribably good to know that someone, somewhere, still cared about him. He had lost contact with his family years earlier, and friends had come and gone; of them all, only Tandellin had taken the trouble to find him again.
He asked after other friends and was dismayed by how many had died or vanished. After that, the conversation rambled on, largely taken up with the gossip of the Fortress.
Tandellin was making a lewd suggestion as to why General Gor hadn’t yet married when Valder suddenly felt himself seized and shaken. The library walls wavered and dimmed around him. “I must be waking up,” he called. “Stay in touch!” Then Tandellin and the library were gone, and he was lying on his cot in General Karannin’s camp, looking up at two hard-faced guardsmen, their features eerily lighted by a single shaded lantern.
He glanced around the tent. Radler and Korl were watching silently from their beds; Tesra slept on, oblivious.
“Come on,” one of the guardsmen demanded, in a voice like stone scraping stone.
Valder made a vague noise of agreement and rolled off the cot onto his feet, somehow managing not to snag Wirikidor on anything. He started to smooth down his hair and adjust his clothing, but the guardsmen politely convinced him not to bother by grabbing his arms and moving him gently but irresistibly out of the tent.
Valder went along without further argument or delay. Apparently, he thought, he was about to find out what special duty had been chosen for him.
The guardsmen said nothing further but merely escorted him to an undistinguished tent near the dragon pens. They thrust him inside and then vanished into the night.
Inside he found himself facing two men, a tall, brown-haired officer and a short, pale man in civilian attire but wearing a sword on his belt like a soldier.
“I’m Captain Endarim,” the officer said. “You’re Valder of Kardoret?”
Valder acknowledged his identity.
“Good. I think we’ve figured out what to do with you.”
No answer seemed to be called for, so Valder said nothing. He looked politely interested and glanced at the other man, inviting an introduction. None came.
“Darrend and the rest have explained something of the workings of your sword to me,” the officer said. “They have also sworn, under oath to a good theurgist, that they have no chance of duplicating it. That means that you’re unique and a resource not to be wasted.” He rose up onto his toes for a moment, then dropped back, as if emphasizing his point.
“Yes, sir,” Valder answered noncommittally. He did not particularly care to be called a resource. This was a rude contrast to his warming magical chat with Tandellin.
“We’ve been giving the matter considerable thought as to how best to employ you. Putting you in open combat seems wasteful. You would need to be constantly sheathing and unsheathing your sword to be really effective, and you might get yourself killed in between.”
“Yes, sir,” Valder said again, noting to himself that this pompous captain seemed to be unaware of the semi-immortality the sword theoretically provided. Even if he could not be killed, however, he had no desire to be cut up, so the point was essentially correct.
“You’ve been trained in reconnaissance and have demonstrated over the past few months that you can take care of yourself and survive alone behind the enemy lines. You can, as I understand it, kill any man with ease and with great speed — that should allow you to deal with sentries. I’m told the sword provides a certain measure of protection, though I’m not clear on that. And you’re ideally suited to fighting individuals, rather than groups. It seems to us, therefore, that there is one job exactly right for a man with your talents. We want to send you after not just enemy soldiers, but the really important men among the enemy — generals, sorcerers, members of the government, and so forth. Each such man you remove is worth dozens, maybe hundreds, of enemy soldiers. Do you follow me?”
Valder followed him all too well. “You want me to be an assassin?”
“That’s an ugly word, but you do have the right idea.”
“I’m not sure...”
Endarim cut him off. “Before you go any further, let me say that the pay for such work is excellent. You would rate as a captain to start and go up from there. You would have no other duties; when not working, your time would be your own.”
“It’s not that,” Valder said. “I’m just not sure that I could do the job. I don’t know how to find these men you want me to kill, for example, and I really don’t like the idea of killing...”
“Of course you don’t like the idea of killing,” Endarim interrupted him. “But this is war, soldier. The more damage we do to the northerners, by whatever method, the less they’ll be able to do to us. If you can kill one enemy sorcerer, you might be saving the lives of a dozen or more of your own comrades in arms! As for the technical problems, our wizards will help you with those. We have used assassins before. Finding targets and delivering our men to the right area has never been very difficult. The problem has always been getting through the personal defenses and getting our man out alive — and your sword should make that part much easier.”
“I...”
“Listen, Valder
, we prefer to have volunteers for this sort of work, but you’re a special case. I can order you to take on assassination duty if I have to, because you are, without a doubt, one of the most promising candidates we’ve ever had, thanks to that sword, and we need a good assassin right now. We would prefer that you go willingly, because that would greatly improve your chances of survival, but we don’t insist on it. If you refuse an order, we may even resort to a geas.”
“Are you ordering me, then, sir?”
“No, I’m not — not yet, Listen, try it once and see what you think. If it’s that much worse than regular combat for you, maybe we can put you somewhere else — but that magic sword you’ve stumbled onto doesn’t entitle you to any more pampering than any other man in the Ethsharitic army, soldier, and, one way or another, you’re going to fight and you’re going to kill.”
“Yes, sir.” Valder was not happy, but he saw that his only options were obedience or desertion — and he was not a deserter. He knew, firsthand, that the northerners were ruthless and were out to destroy Ethshar. He loved his homeland and its people, even if he had never actually seen very much of either. All he knew was the army, since that was all he had seen since turning sixteen, and a healthy young man wasn’t welcome anywhere else. He had no choice. He liked to believe that there was always a way out of everything, but he could not see one here.
“Good,” the captain said. “Very good. I’ll have your formal orders drawn up tomorrow, and you’ll start drawing pay at your new rank.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And Valder — I wouldn’t tell anyone what you’re doing. It wouldn’t do any good for everyone to know we use assassins, and I’m sure it wouldn’t do you, personally, any good. It may seem dashing and romantic at first, but assassins are never really popular. They make people nervous.”
“Yes, sir.” Valder had wondered vaguely why he had been brought here in the middle of the night and now guessed that it was to maintain the secrecy of the assassination project.
“If anyone asks, you’re a wizard’s assistant now.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. You’ll start immediately. Kelder, here, will tell you what to do.” The captain waved at the civilian. Valder looked at him, openly curious now.
“Come on,” the man called Kelder said, speaking for the first time. He had a high, thin voice.
Valder looked him over. He was short, of medium build, with an unusually scraggly beard and mustache. His skin was unhealthily pale, his hair a nondescript brown and thinning. His clothes were of undistinguished cut and material, though better than peasants wore. The sword on his belt was standard military issue, very like Wirikidor in appearance.
After this brief appraisal, Valder glanced back at the captain, who was already turning his attention elsewhere, looking at a stack of papers on his cot. With a mental shrug, Valder turned and followed the civilian out of the tent.
They headed directly toward the back of the camp, past the dragon pens and the last few rows of tents and into camptown, where the vintners and whores, undaunted by the late hour, still plied their trades. The main camp was mostly dark, but here about half the tents were still brightly lighted, often with multicolored lanterns. Valder heard singing somewhere and nearly tripped over two soldiers lying semiconscious in the dirt, obviously very drunk.
Kelder led the way past the rowdiest area, past the bright lanterns and thinly clad women, almost to the edge of the circle of wives’ tents that served as a market. He ducked suddenly into a small tent, the abrupt change in course catching Valder by surprise. He started, then followed.
Once settled on the dirt floor of the little tent — there was no furniture nor room for any; a quilted mat served as a bed — Valder demanded, “Who in Hell are you, anyway?”
“I’m called Kelder,” the other replied. “No parentage, no birthplace, no eponym — just Kelder. I’m a spy.” He smiled, as if he had just made a joke. Valder stared at him uncertainly, not sure whether he was joking or not.
“Seriously,” the little man went on, “I’m a spy. In fact, I’m in charge of espionage for this entire front, which, unfortunately, doesn’t mean much, because we haven’t got any espionage to speak of here. General Gor sent me to fix that, and I happened to arrive in time to hear about you and your sword. You may be interested to know that we have seven wizards and two witches searching for your mysterious hermit with all the magic at their disposal, and a relay of theurgists praying for information about him. We take this very seriously. A scouting party will be sent up the coast to look for him, as well. So far we haven’t found anything, but a wizard who can casually throw around eighth-order spells is worth a little effort. We don’t have very many of them. Whether we find him or not, though, we have you and Wirikidor.”
Valder could think of nothing to say; he stared at the man in the dimness; the only light was what seeped through the tent’s canvas.
“I suppose you’re feeling overwhelmed by all this. You’ve gone from being an ordinary scout to an unimportant bit of coastline to being involved in all sorts of strange things, tangled up with wizards and spies and assassins. Life can be like that. I’d like to give you time to sort it all out, but I’m afraid we can’t spare any. I’m to train you, and then you’ll start work. Ten days from now, with any luck, you’ll kill the Northern Empire’s chief sorcerer on the western front.”
Valder started to protest.
“Let me rephrase that,” Kelder said. “Within the next ten days you’ll give Wirikidor the opportunity to kill the enemy’s chief sorcerer on the western front.” He smiled. “You’re going to be very useful, Valder.”
Valder was not at all sure of that, but he did not argue.
If assassination proved unbearable, he could botch it, and they would reassign him. He found it impossible to believe that he was going to kill any sorcerers, Nine nights later, as he stood over the body of a dead sorcerer, he still found it hard to believe.
CHAPTER 15
His first five assassinations were made in fairly quick succession, at two- or three-day intervals; each time Kelder told him how to find and identify his target, each time a wizard or two got him into the general area, and each time he managed to get in and out without serious injury. Two of the five were sorcerers; he was never told just who the other three were.
Wirikidor disposed of all of them in short order, in addition to dealing with assorted guards and other interference. Valder had been pleasantly surprised to discover that sorcerers died as easily as anybody else, once the blade reached them; he had expected them to be at least as bad as the shatra had been, reaching for the sword or doing other eerie, discomforting things after they should have been dead. His fears proved unfounded; sorcerers folded up and died just like anybody else when their throats were cut.
This was not to say he had no trouble; one sorcerer had had an ugly metal talisman that spat magical fire at him and gashed his left arm rather badly. Valder had brought the talisman back with him after killing the man but turned it over to Darrend for study and never saw it again.
After the fifth mission, he was left alone for a full sixnight, giving him time to recover — and time to think.
At midevening of the sixth day he lay sprawled on his cot, staring at the dark canvas overhead. His left arm still ached dully where the sorcerous wound had been, despite a prompt and mostly effective healing spell; that ache combined with the lingering effects of an inadequate dinner washed down with oushka made it difficult to concentrate.
It had not been good oushka, either; Valder suspected it was made locally and was quite certain it was watered. Watered oushka was replacing wine as the standard tipple, because wine was becoming impossibly expensive, due to short supply.
Several supplies were running low, which was why his dinner had been rather skimpy. The army was relying ever more heavily on forage rather than proper supply caravans, and grasslands and forests did not provide very much in the way of forage. Sustenance spells w
ere being left intact when men came in from patrol in order to save food — and because fewer wizards were available to renew them when the men were sent out again.
In fact, it seemed to Valder that every resource was being stretched thin. The magical assistance provided for his assassinations varied from night to night, according to what was available, and there was no longer a single witch in the entire camp. He had heard from his tentmates that entire regiments were going into battle with no magical support at all. No more troops were coming up from the rear, and the camp had been stripped, leaving Valder wondering whether any replacements were being sent to the front. He was not sure what had become of the men and material, but they did seem to be far less plentiful than in times past.
Could it be, he asked himself through a thin haze of pain and alcohol, that the war really was drawing to a close? It didn’t seem possible — yet it didn’t seem possible that the army could stretch itself much further, either.
What would happen, he wondered, if the war did end? What would become of him? What did he want to do with his life? What did one do with a life that might last forever if he could avoid drawing his sword?
Valder supposed that one did very much the same thing one did with any life. No one ever knew how long he would live, after all; Valder did not know how long he would live — merely that the rules were different for him.
But then, what did he want to do with himself, whether for a normal span or all eternity?
He knew what he did not want. He did not want to kill anybody else. Counting the various guards and others, as well as his intended targets, and adding in the four he had killed before reaching camp, he had drawn Wirikidor seventeen times, and seventeen men had died on its blade. That was too many. If peace actually came, he did not intend to draw Wirikidor again.
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