Age of Assassins

by Rj Barker

  “You hope.”

  “I hope.”

  She bunched her hands into fists and for a moment I thought she was going to scream at me. Then she unbunched her fists and let out a breath. “What’s done is done, Girton. The queen will want to know what happened.”

  “Her son happened.”

  “Aydor?”

  “Yes, or maybe Tomas. The last attacker told me someone in the castle set this up. It is almost a mirror of the fiction Adran constructed to cover Kyril’s death.”

  “Give me details,” she said, and I reeled off an account of the attack and the events leading up to it. “Aydor or Tomas would make sense as no true assassin would do this. Half of Calfey is dead in attempt to accomplish it, and that requires the sort of callousness the blessed excel in.” She spat on the floor. “To sacrifice a village to kill one boy. Madness.”

  “It was not just for Rufra; the raiders must have planned to take cows as well. Tomas intercepted them before they could and they rode back to Calfey.”

  “They never planned to take cows, Girton. Your friend was the target.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Those raiders who headed back to Calfey chased by Tomas. Why would they do that?”

  “To collect their fellows.”

  “Their fellows who attacked a village, presumably as a decoy to draw the squires away from the cows? Why run towards more enemy if you knew they were there?”

  “I—”

  “Because they thought they were safe to do so, Girton. They thought they would be allowed to escape.”

  “Why would they think that?”

  “Because someone told them it was so.”

  “Aydor.”

  “Most likely.” She looked at the floor.

  “He wanted to kill the remaining villagers, said they were traitors.”

  “Probably worried there were bandits in among them who may give him away.”

  My hand went to the blade at my hip. “I will—”

  “Do nothing,” she said, grabbing my arm. “Nothing, do you understand? Aydor may have been responsible but he may not, Tomas is important too. And what do you think will happen to us if you confront Aydor? Or kill him?”

  There was a moment, a passing of time, where the muscles of my arm fought her grip, and then I relaxed and let go of my anger.

  “Very well,” I said. But I would not look at her, and I could tell it caused her pain.

  “If you would do something, Girton, try and find out why Aydor, or Tomas, would want your friend dead so desperately. That may lead us somewhere. And why did Nywulf allow himself to be split from his squires?”

  “He was called away, by Neander.”

  “Neander? But he is Rufra’s father—it makes no sense for him to help in such a scheme.”

  “Unless Rufra is an embarrassment to him, as a celibate priest.”

  “No. I have heard Neander joke about his lust for women with the queen. He has no shame.”

  “Master,” I hissed, “we should put an end this dynasty now. Aydor is a beast, his mother too. If we do not act there will be a thousand Calfeys across Maniyadoc.”

  “I cannot do that, Girton.”

  “Why?”

  “Because there are old debts in play here, debts that can never be repaid.”

  “Debts? What debts?”

  “Once, long ago—” her voice was barely audible “—a thankful girl found a rich merchant’s daughter on the edge of death. She dragged her to a healer even though the merchant’s daughter wanted nothing but Xus’s touch.”

  “So?” I said. “You saved Adran once. It does not make you responsible for her now.”

  “No, Girton,” whispered my master. She stood and lifted her tunic to show me the twisting, wiry scar that ran across her belly. “It was Adran that was born thankful, not I.” I did not know what to say, and she did not give me time to reply. Instead she grabbed my shoulders, spun me round and pushed me towards the hole where there had once been a door. “Now go to your friend. Leave me to consider if there is any way out of this castle which doesn’t involve us ending up in the swillers’ yard.”

  I walked away, but what she had said preyed on me. The thought of my master being beholden to the queen, and worse, to hear her speak openly about being young, helpless and on the point of death sent an almost physical shock through me. She was strong and she always had been strong. To find out she had been as weak and fallible as any other human was to have the rock my world was built on crack down the centre.

  I tried to see Rufra but the healers’ servants would not let me in. They would only tell me that he seemed well and no permanent damage was done before shooing me away, saying he needed to rest. At a loss, I let my feet take me where they would. First I wandered around the castle, listening while the water clock tolled off half-hours and hoping that Rufra would leave his room and I could see him. When it became obvious he would not I slowly made my way out of the castle. I could not shake an uncomfortable sick feeling within me that I had made a terrible mistake in the wood, but what else could I have done?

  Eventually, I found myself in the townyard. I could not get near Festival because of the cows coming into the courtyard, and I swear it was not by design but I found myself at the stables. I could not tell Drusl why I felt so terrible, but maybe her presence would assuage the dull pain clinging to me.

  I heard screaming.

  I ran.

  Chapter 21

  There is a very particular noise a human makes when confronted with unexpected death. A certain constriction of the throat made by the animal buried deep within us when it is forced to confront its own mortality.

  It is a sound I know well.

  I ran for the stables as fast as my lopsided run allowed, coughing my way through the dust thrown up by cows, my feet sliding on slippery cow shit as I called out Drusl’s name. Others were running too. I saw Heamus, his scratched armour jingling as he ran, and although the old Landsman had two good feet to my one he was no match for the speed and strength of youth.

  I entered the stables first.

  The air was thick with the scents of pepper and honey. Drusl stood in the middle of the clear area between the stalls, rooted to the spot and with her hands over her face like a statue of Adallada mourning her consort, Dallad. About ten paces in front of her lay Leiss, dead. His clothes lay open and an ugly black welt ran along his flesh from shoulder to hip. The walls of the stable block pulsed in time with my heart. Then Drusl was in my arms and pushing her face into the place between my ear and my shoulder. Hot tears ran down my neck.

  “He’s dead, Girton,” she sobbed. “Leiss is dead.”

  “What happened?” Before she could reply Heamus interrupted. His words barely more than a grey whisper.

  “Dead gods in their graves beneath the water, it is the black whip.” Drusl must have felt my body stiffen against her. The black whip was a weapon of sorcerers and at its mention Drusl sobbed harder into my neck. I heard Heamus roaring at the people gathering outside the stable, “Away, all of you! Get away! Someone bring the queen’s guard!” The huge doors were shut and we were lit only by the amber sunlight filtering through the panes of crystal set into the roof far above. Gentle arms separated us and then Heamus was stooping so he could look into Drusl’s eyes. He took a rag from beneath his armour and gently wiped her face, reminding me of a doting father. He moved strangely slowly. “Drusl,” he said, “did you see who did this? If you saw who did this, you must tell me. Did they leave through the back?” He spoke slowly, emphasising each word to break through her shock. “Do you hear my words, girl? You must tell Girton and I what you saw. Did Leiss’s attacker leave through the back?”

  She nodded slowly and wiped more tears away with her arm. “I was in a stall with Bal, telling it its companion would not return. When I came out, Leiss was shouting at … shouting at someone stood at the far end. Near the door to the dung presses. Then he—Leiss, I mean—was dead and the one who
did it ran away.”

  “Did you see his face or was he cowled?” said Heamus.

  “Yes,” she stuttered, “he was cowled.”

  “Girton!” shouted Heamus. “Why are you still here? Did you not hear the girl? Leiss’s killer went out the back. Follow him, boy!”

  “Yes,” I said. Then I was running, the door to the tackle room flying open from a hard push. I climbed the dung press to get to the high windows, action clearing my mind.

  From the top of the press I could see the sorcerer had chosen a perfect place for his murder. The spilled mount urine from the presses masked any sign of magic, so there was no telltale ring of death to show it had been used. Outside the window the bales of hay provided a convenient way down. My heart thumped in my chest as I descended. Every time I dropped a level I expected the black whip to reach out and wrap its sharp coils around me. As I neared the ground my heart froze. A cowled figure slipped into one of the many arched doorways cut into the townwall. I had explored the area around the stables in my free time and knew that the inner wall had collapsed and, though it looked like it should be filled with rooms, few of the doorways in this area led anywhere. Most were nothing but short tunnels ending in rubble and fallen blocks. I made my way carefully down the last few bales, all the time keeping the door the sorcerer had gone into in sight. My blades were back in my room and I had nothing more than my eating knife to use as a weapon. However, if I could remain unseen then even a small knife, coupled with the element of surprise, may be enough.

  I hugged the outer wall to make my body as flat as I could while I inched towards the doorway in the wall. Every moment I expected the sorcerer to appear and strike me down but I quickly found myself against the lip of shaped stones that framed the doorway.

  My breathing seemed impossibly loud and gave me an idea. Silence was usually my ally, but not here. Now my best hope was to make a lot of noise and hope it surprised him enough to stop him doing whatever he did to rip magic out of the land.

  I raised my knife and, with a scream, threw myself around the corner. The knife came down. The cowled figure grabbed my wrist with one hand and my throat with the other then, using his hip, threw me to the ground. Before I had time to gather myself I was pinned down and my own knife was at my throat.

  “Girton,” said my master. I could hear amusement in her voice. “Have you forgotten everything I ever taught you?”

  “Master? I did not think it would be you.”

  “Obviously.” She loosened her grip on my throat and sat back on her haunches, offering me my knife. “Now what was that about?”

  “Leiss is dead—a line across his body that almost cut him in half.” I levered myself up to a sitting position and took the offered knife.

  “The black whip.”

  “Heamus said as much before he sent me off. Drusl said a cowled figure fled through the back of the stables and—”

  “And when you saw me, you thought you had caught this sorcerer?”

  “Aye.”

  “Well you were brave, if foolish, to attack.” She pulled her cowl off and let her hair free. “Best I make sure no one else makes your mistake.”

  “Will Heamus call the Landsmen in now? He is honour bound to—”

  “Heamus will not say a word,” she said quietly. “When a Landsman is too old to carry out his duties he is meant to spill his lifeblood into the sourlands. Heamus should be dead by all rights. They will overlook him as long as he is out of sight, but if they came here he’d be clapped in irons and taken to join the desolate.”

  “Oh,” I said, then added, “but why did he have those things in his drawer?” I suppressed a shudder at the thought of the symbols I had seen in his quarters.

  “Maybe they are just to remind him of what he was.”

  We sat quietly. Talk of magic was making me uncomfortable, which in turn was making me sullen and angry. Leiss’s death was a vivid reminder of what dwelt within me. And her.

  “Master,” I asked quietly, “why are you here and not guarding the queen?”

  “Are you suspicious of me, Girton?”

  “Never, Master.”

  “Never say never. You do not know what fate will bring.” She sounded terribly sad, and my anger became mixed with guilt. “And to answer your question, Adran gave me the afternoon off. She has locked herself in a room with her son and Neander. Celot guards them.” She balled up the material of her cowl. “As to why I am here, first I went to retrieve your climbing foot from the courtyard—I hid it under your bed. Then I came here to tell you so you did not panic when you could not find it, if you thought about looking for it. I thought it likely you were in the stables.” She smiled at me and I blushed. “However, as it seems we have had another death, perhaps I should take the opportunity to look around.”

  “Heamus will think it odd if a jest—”

  “No.” She dipped into the bag she carried and took from it one of the white masks used by priests’ acolytes. “Black robe, white mask. Heamus will accept my presence.” She slipped her cowl back on.

  “But what if the actual—”

  “Don’t worry. You go back through the window, and I will go round the front. And Girton?”

  “Yes, Master?”

  “Be careful of Heamus.”

  “Heamus? But why? I thought you had decided he was no longer a Landsman.”

  “Think about it.” She stood and wiped dirt from her black trousers.

  “He knows about magic?” I said.

  “Partly, but more than that. Heamus is trained to fight sorcerers and magic users. Why does he send Girton ap Gwynr, a boy he thinks is barely able to lift a sword without tripping over it, to chase a sorcerer?”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Oh indeed.”

  I climbed back up the bales of hay, into the tackle room and down the giant dung presses. As I opened the door the fragrant atmosphere of the stable wrapped itself around me and the world moved infinitesimally more slowly, giving those within a grace they would not have had otherwise. My master entered swathed in black cloth that moved strangely around her, as if it had its own mind. Rather than an acolyte she had come as a wandering priest of Xus. As I walked to the front of the stable I thought it was amazing how well she aped the priest I had seen around the castle. Her mannerisms, her step—everything about her was the same. I began to speak in the Whisper-That-Flies-to-the-Ear.

  “Master—”

  She silenced me using a finger on my lips and her body to block me from the sight of those in the main room of the barn. Then she walked away with her head down while I realised, with a feeling like sinking into icy water, how stupid I had been to use magic right in front of an old Landsman. I told myself I hated magic but had used it without thinking. I had a sudden flash of images—blood gibbets and the desolate, the gruesome ends that awaited a magic user.

  The air shimmered. My skin became hot. A black sea shivered within.

  I threw up. One second I stood, the next I was on my knees, spitting up the contents of my stomach and grimacing at the sour taste of bile.

  “Do not worry, boy,” said Heamus. He clapped me on the back. “Yours is often the reaction to a great shock such as death. And to a death like this?” He helped me up gently, using my elbow. He seemed to be speaking to me from very far away and I had to fight not to shake him off because his hands dripped with blood—though as soon as I noticed the blood it began to fade away. “Magic is never pleasant to be around,” he said and then leaned in close. “Tell no one of this death, Girton,” he whispered, his words were blue and icy as they sank into my skin. “We will sort this out ourselves. Castles have fallen for less and there are those within Maniyadoc who would use this misfortune for their own ends.” I nodded, looking for all the world like I was shocked by the death of Leiss when instead I was disorientated by the way the world around me was throbbing. “Did you find anything outside the stables?”

  “No, Heamus,” I said. My voice was no louder than a bree
ze and it wound its way around Heamus like a vine. I glanced at the old Landsman’s hands. No blood. Why did I feel so strange?

  “Well, at least you tried, boy.”

  Behind Heamus my master was crouched over Leiss’s body. She plucked at his wound then stood and walked away, leaving a slowly fading after-image of a black-clad figure staring at Heamus from within a mocking mask. I watched all this through a haze as if the barn were full of woodsmoke. What was happening? I thought I had almost come to terms with the idea of magic but now, as my master stared at me from the door to the pressing room, I felt like I was coming apart.

  Then there was a human warmth. An unexpected touch. Fingers wormed themselves between mine to clasp my hand. I turned. Drusl, tear-stained and desperate.

  “Leiss did not deserve what happened,” she said, her voice hoarse, her eyes looking into a place past me and the walls of the stable. “He was not a good man, not really. Nor even a nice one, as I had believed. But he did not deserve to die this way.” Her misery was utter. It was often the way people reacted to death, with guilt. To be the one who survives is its own sort of curse. Her pain was a halo of green and blue.

  “Not your fault,” I stuttered out, and I wondered how long it would be before it was me who caused such misery. The sea within me was shifting again, swelling and growing. Images filled my mind—it became me who had murdered Leiss with the black whip and me who killed the land and the people around me with a wave of my hand. Then I was not thinking any more. Drusl was in my arms, and we were both sobbing: her for the death of a man she had never liked and me for the death of a boy I had never been.

  I do not know how long it was before we were separated. Not long, it felt like minutes at most. A slave stood by us. He stood in that patient way slaves do. Happy to stand waiting because it was the nearest he ever had to free time.

  “Girton ap Gwynr?” he asked.

  I nodded, wiping tears and mucus from my face. Night had crept in. Leiss’s body was gone, and the stable torches were being lit by another slave. It all seemed so very normal.