Blood of Assassins

by RJ Baker

  She did not want me here. My master and Mastal would be happier with me gone. Aydor’s healer was like a hammer falling on a wedge, forcing us apart. I wondered if he acted for Aydor or simply out of selfishness because he wanted the reward for my master.

  “Go, Girton,” said my master. “Your friend needs you.”

  Hedgings take them. I left.

  Rufra greeted me in the stables, empty apart from him and I. He was leading Xus, who was letting out a constant low, rumbling, warning growl.

  “I readied your mount for you,” he said.

  “Do you still have all your fingers?”

  “What is a finger or two between friends.” He smiled and tied the reins to the hitching post in the centre of the stables then led me back into Xus’s stall. “I wanted to talk to you before you rode out.” The smile stayed but it became a faded and ghostly thing.

  “I suspected you were not only here to play groom, and also that you are about to tell me something I do not want to hear.”

  “Yes –” he put his hand on my arm “– but don’t smash your hobby doll before I dress it.”

  “Why does everyone keep acting as though I am unable to control my temper?”

  “Well,” said Rufra with a shrug, and the smile returned for real, “you are a little more caustic than the Girton who left for foreign lands.”

  “Only a little?”

  “No,” he said. “Actually a lot.” The silence between us felt uncomfortable. “Girton,” he said, “will you tell me about that?” He pointed at the warhammer but I do not think that was what he really wanted to speak about.

  I shrugged. “I took it from a man.”

  “What did you do out there in the world? You are not the boy who left here.”

  “I killed, Rufra. My master put us in among a Landsman patrol going to pacify the far borders. Ten Landsmen led by a man called Gosaile, about twenty mercenaries and a blood gibbet on a cart. I think Gosaile hated me from the moment he set eyes on me.” I tapped the hilt of the warhammer. “I begged my master to let us travel as entertainers but she would not. She said it was better to be among those who were armed, better for us to become comrades with them. Safer.” I kicked at a clod of dirt. “Comrades? They were barely human. Gosaile had led many raids into the borders, said they were a hotbed of magic. The villagers seemed aggressive, always meeting us with violence, and we fought for three years. Small armies at first, warbands – you know, twenty or thirty at most.”

  “It is a necessary job, Girton,” said Rufra gently. “You saw Grandon’s Souring, and you have seen the Great Western Souring.”

  “I never saw Gosaile do any form of test for magic, Rufra, not once.”

  “The Landsmen guard their secrets.’“

  “No, he made no attempt to. He laughed about it. And every village we found, defended or not, he killed them all. Men, women, the old, the children …”

  “He will have had a reason.” Rufra put his hand on my arm and I shrugged it off.

  “Of course, he always had a reason. A magic user was born here … We do not have the numbers to guard prisoners … We cannot leave those who hate us at our backs. He and his men would take the most attractive boys and girls and use them, then kill them too.”

  “But you did not?”

  “No, I did not take part in what they did,” I said quietly, “but I could not stop it either.”

  “He used the blood gibbet?”

  “He only used that the once.” I stared at the floor, and before Rufra could speak carried on; I did not want him probing me about that once. “After three years there were very few of us left. He used the mercenaries hard and most were dead. He said we should turn back. He agreed to pay my master and I and let us move on, but he had no wish to waste his money on a boy and a woman. He sent me to scout a village and sprang his trap there – ten Landsmen against me.”

  “It was not enough.” Rufra tried to smile.

  “No. It was not. And I took this from Gosaile.” I lifted the warhammer. “It is a weapon for an animal, and I carry it to remind me that I was an animal, no better than him.”

  “But you did the right thing, Girton,” he said. “You killed him.”

  “I should have done it a lot sooner.”

  “But you could not. His mercenaries and Landsmen would have ripped you apart.”

  “That is what my master says.”

  “You should listen to her.”

  “Listening to her had me end up with the Landsmen.”

  “She could not foresee that Gosaile would be a monster, Girton.”

  “It is hard, Rufra. I had hoped to find my place and some peace here, but …”

  “You have a place here, Girton.” He drew his longsword from the scabbard enough to show me the shining blade, twin to my stabsword. “Brothers, remember?”

  I nodded but all I wanted to do was change the conversation.

  “I spoke with Areth last night, Rufra.”

  “Oh,” he said, and let the sword fall back.

  “She walks the night market listening for mention of your son.”

  “I know.”

  “Perhaps if you were with her more she would not.”

  He glared at me, and I felt like a stranger trespassing on ground sacred to others.

  “She wants to talk,” he said quietly, turning away from me and leaning against the side of the stall. “She always wants to talk.”

  “She needs to. Maybe you need to also?”

  He let out a snort of false laughter. “You swing from lost and angry to mother hen in a heartbeat, Girton. Can we talk of something else, please?”

  “She thinks Arnlath was poisoned.”

  “I know. That is one of the things she wants to talk about.” There was an ugly undercurrent in his voice.

  “Do you think your son may have been poisoned?”

  “No.” There was no movement in that word, no room for doubt or any invitation to further conversation. Nonetheless, I have never been one to take a hint, no matter how unsubtle.

  “I have heard his symptoms and how he died, Rufra. Speaking as an assassin—”

  “I do not ask you speak as an assassin, Girton.” Cold words.

  “He was your heir. It would suit Tomas, or Aydor, to—”

  “No assassins work in the Tired Lands while there is war.”

  “You cannot be sure.”

  “I am.” There was a hardness in his voice I had never heard before. “I am sure, Girton.”

  “Even if the true assassins will not work, there are always people who will kill for money, Rufra.”

  “Tomas would not have my son poisoned. He believes himself a king if nothing else. An agreement was made.”

  “Rufra, you cannot think that all kings are like you. Do you forget the sewer that was Maniyadoc before you took it? Tomas would happily—”

  “No!” he roared, taking two stiff-legged steps towards me with his fists bunched at his sides. Xus growled and pulled on his reins but could not free himself. “Tomas is a king! We will not have this conversation.”

  I met his anger with anger.

  “Being a king does not stop a man being a murderer.”

  Rufra’s hands flashed out and he grabbed me by the loose collar of my armour and pulled me across the stable. Surprised, I stepped badly on my club foot and a lance of pain ran up through my leg. I grabbed Rufra’s collar, the sharp enamel edges digging into my hands. A black fire flared in my mind and I bit on my tongue, using the pain to extinguish it. I expected more shouting, even violence, but it did not come; instead he whispered to me, his face no more than a hand’s breadth from my own, and I saw his anger was not true anger, not true fury, it was desperation. Tears ran down his face.

  “If I believe Tomas or Neander had my son killed, Girton, then I will have them both taken alive, whatever the price in blood and bodies. I will chain Tomas and cripple him and make him my pet. Do you understand? He will live a long life, and every day of it will b
e spent discovering new ways to endure the pain I will visit on him. I will take Neander’s fingers, toes, eyes, tongue and cock and keep him alive and broken in a cell, Girton. I will never forgive and will visit such atrocities on those responsible that in turn their families and the priesthood will never forgive me. And the war will never stop. There will be nothing left in Maniyadoc and the Long Tides but pain and vengeance, and that cannot be who I am. It cannot be my legacy.” His eyes searched my face as if I were a mirror and he looked to see in me what burned in him. He would not find it. My path was already a dark one and I could see no light for me. “Do you understand? That cannot be who I am. Not if I am to create anything lasting in the Tired Lands.” His grip loosened and he looked almost surprised that he had been holding on to me so violently. When he spoke again it was in a broken whisper. He shook. “Help me, Girton. Be my friend and help me be the best man I can be. That is what I need from you, that is what I need you here for. I need your friendship more than I need your blade.”

  My own anger and shame was still there, writhing black along the scars on my chest, but Rufra’s naked pain and his control of it made me feel like a spoiled child.

  “I will be your friend.” I let go of his armour, it had cut lines into my palms. “But as your friend I ask one thing of you.”

  “One?” An edge in his voice, something dangerous.

  “Talk to Areth, Rufra. She does not blame you. Tell her what you have told me.” He bowed his head but I was sure there was a nod there. “And no matter what, do not keep Tomas as a pet; that would be worse than you having a dog.” He looked up, almost a smile on his face. “You know how much I hate dogs.”

  And he laughed, not true laughter, a sad bruised laughter that made me wonder if we would ever be friends the way we had been once before. But at least he laughed, and I swore if I could not be a good man for myself I would be one for Rufra. I would hold in my anger and my hatreds and try my best to obey his wishes.

  My new oath was to be tested almost straight away.

  When I joined Nywulf and his Riders I found out what Rufra had been meaning to tell me and had forgotten in his anger:

  Aydor would lead us to Gwyre.

  Chapter 19

  Sparse trees dotted the landscape and the setting sun was a red ball gilding their tops with a blush as we approached Gwyre. Imploring shadows stretched stick hands towards us and we rode on regardless, ignoring the stinking herds of hogs that shadowed us. I understood Rufra’s desire to protect people but could not help thinking it was a decision based on emotion rather than strategy, and that it was not a wise move.

  Gwyre was an old village, one of the few places in Maniyadoc built of stone rather than mud and thatch, and from a distance it looked like the jutting teeth of a blackened and discarded jawbone against the skyline. Boros told me it wasn’t much more than one street. It had once been a small fort and the houses had been built against the curtain wall, in many places the houses had grown higher than the wall which formed their backs. It held a strategic position, topping a low hill and commanding a swathe of land sown with crops. It made Rufra’s desire to garrison the place a little more sensible, if only a little. Hedgescare statues stood in twisted poses, rags blowing in the breeze where they were not plastered down by the insistent drizzle. Huge triangular barns thrust into the skyline – there had been more of them once but many had been burned and only blackened timbers remained, leaning as if caught mid-fall by an invisible hand. Far to the right of the village was a wood of pines that made it look like the land had been pierced from beneath by barbed spears.

  “The gates are shut,” shouted Boros from the front of the column. I rode a few mounts back from Aydor and Nywulf. Aydor I did not want to speak to, and Nywulf I felt betrayed by for dragging me along in the first place. I did not care that Rufra needed Aydor sweet, or that having the man who had once been king-in-waiting take his orders made him look good. Aydor could not be trusted and should not be here at all, never mind leading us.

  All in all it had been an uncomfortable ride, partly because I was unused to riding as cavalry – Xus disliked the large shield slung over his rump and refused to find a steady rhythm to his trot so the saddle had rubbed my thighs raw – but mostly because I had been forced to listen to Aydor chat with the men and women around me like they were old friends. I had ridden with Cearis for a little while, but she had tired of my sullen silence and gone back to join the priest Darvin, who also accompanied us.

  “Aydor, stay here and command the column if you will,” said Nywulf. If riding with Aydor stuck in his throat the way it should have he did a good job of hiding it. “Boros, Girton, ride forward with me.” He glanced towards the wood on the horizon and clicked his mount forward. “Quickly now.”

  I let Xus follow Nywulf’s mount and then had to rein him back as he tried to lead. He let out a low growl when I pulled on the reins and then lowered his antlers in response to the smell of blood. Now I was nearer to the gates of Gwyre I could see why Nywulf had stopped the column.

  “We have ridden into a trap,” I said.

  “Aye,” said Nywulf, “but it remains to be seen how much of one.”

  The wall around Gwyre was as high as a man and half again between the tall, narrow houses that overtopped it. The outside had been plastered with a sandy-coloured render which was flaking away in places to expose hefty rocks beneath. The village’s wooden gates were firmly shut and nailed to them was a man, his arms and legs splayed out in a star shape and his stomach slit so his entrails could be looped around a spear stuck in the ground in front of the gates. Blood had run down the gates from where his hands and feet had been nailed to the wood, and black streaks marked the pale pine.

  “He died hard,” I said.

  “It looks like my brother’s work,” said Boros. He sounded pleased as he slid off his mount, drawing his sword and cutting the rope of the dead man’s entrails. He plucked the spear and its gruesome decoration from the ground and threw it to one side.

  “Is this Rufra’s spy, Nywulf?” I said, gesturing at the corpse. “The one Tomas would never suspect?”

  He nodded.

  “Hallan ap Bessit,” he said quietly as he watched Boros pull the nails from the gate, letting the body fall. “Gwyre!” he shouted. “I am Nywulf, come from King Rufra.” He glanced towards the distant pinewood and I followed his gaze, sure I saw movement there. “Open your gates, Gwyre!” No answer. “Open your gates!” he shouted again. I heard a mount behind us and turned. Darvin had brought his animal up.

  “I can talk to them …” the priest began.

  Nywulf shook his head, too angry for diplomacy.

  “Open your gates,” he shouted, “or I will send a man over the wall to open them for you!”

  “Go away.” The voice that replied was barely audible.

  “Talk to me properly,” said Nywulf, no longer shouting though he spoke loudly enough for his voice to carry. “Let me see you.”

  A man in his forties or fifties appeared on the thin bridge above the gate.

  “If you send a man over the wall our archers will shoot him.”

  “We have been sent by King Rufra to help you.”

  “If we let you in,” said the man, “they will do to us what they did to him.” He pointed at the tortured corpse on the ground. “It took him a day to die.”

  “And you did not help him?” said Boros.

  “They would not let us,” the man said. He looked on the edge of panic. “The Nonmen would not let us.”

  “Did Chirol lead them?” said Boros, stepping forward.

  “Yes.”

  “You watched this man die.” He pointed at the corpse. “And you did nothing?” shouted Boros. “You could at least have cut him down.”

  “We were scared, there are women and children in here. We are farmers and …”

  “You could have been heroes!” shouted Boros. Darvin walked his mount forward.

  “Peace, Boros,” he said, raising an arm,
the purple rags of his robe swinging to and fro. Nywulf glanced at the distant wood again. Dust was rising, and I estimated whoever was causing it would be here within the hour, sooner if they rode. “What is your name?” Darvin asked the man. When he spoke I realised how quiet it was. No lizards trilled, no grasses hissed in the breeze. The only sound was the faint cawing of the black birds of Xus drifting across in the still air from where they spiralled above the wood.

  “I am Ossowin. I lead the people of Gwyre.”

  “Talk to Nywulf, Ossowin,” said Darvin. “The Nonmen are a symptom of our sickness. They are in the grip of a hedge-hunger that will never be sated. You must know that.”

  Ossowin looked lost and frightened. His eyes moved from Darvin to Nywulf but he found no comfort in the eyes of either man.

  “Has my king ever done you wrong, Ossowin?” said Nywulf gently. “Has he ever short-changed you on the price of your crops, ever stolen from you or hurt your people?”

  “No, and I respect Blessed Rufra truly, Nywulf.”

  “Then let us in, you old coward,” said Boros conversationally.

  “Quiet!” Nywulf roared in the voice I knew well from the squireyard at Maniyadoc, and Boros seemed to shrink in on himself. “I am sorry, Ossowin. Boros has only ever been a soldier, and he has a score to settle with the Boarlord. He does not understand what it is to have a family to protect. Look to the wood. What do you see?” He pointed to the growing dust cloud.

  “Men,” Ossowin said. I could hear the fear, strong in his voice. “Men are approaching.”

  “Not just men, Ossowin; it is the Nonmen,” said Nywulf, “and they come for us, but we are on mounts and they are on foot. What do you think they will do, Ossowin, when they get here only to find we have ridden away?”

  Ossowin stared down at us.

  “They …” he began. “They will follow you,” he said, but I knew he didn’t believe it.

  “No, Ossowin,” said Nywulf, who sounded tired. “They will take out their anger on you and your village. Your archers and your walls will not hold them. Your children and your men and your women will become the playthings of the Boarlord, and those few that escape will be prey for the herds.” He stared at the ruined corpse of Hallan. “We are a hundred armed and trained men and women, Ossowin, and Rufra marches behind us, half a day away at most.”