The Stiehl Assassin

by Terry Brooks

  He nodded glumly. “Maybe.” He glanced over. “You’re awfully cheerful about all this. Why is that?”

  She hunched her shoulders and smiled. “I’m with you. And I get to be with you for a while longer. That makes me happy.”

  “Ajin…”

  “Do me a favor, Dar Leah,” she interrupted quickly. “Just let me believe what I want. Let me believe you will come around to my way of thinking. Let me believe the stars will align. Between my dismissal from the Skaar army and my father’s loss of trust in me, I’ve had all the disappointments I can take just now. Don’t add to them.”

  He studied her a moment and made a quick assessment. “All right.”

  “Just until things get a little better.”

  He nodded again, hesitated, and gave her a smile. “See? I’m being cheerful.”

  She laughed, and then she leaned in suddenly and kissed him on the lips. “I like you so much better this way.”

  He surprised himself by kissing her back. When he broke the kiss, she grabbed the front of his tunic and pulled him back, deepening the kiss.

  Well, now you’ve started something, he thought. And you were firmly against this very thing just five minutes ago. But he allowed the kiss to continue anyway. She was leaning into him now; he could feel her upper body pressing against his as the kiss stretched on. What in the world is wrong with you?

  Suddenly she stopped and froze. By then his eyes were closed, but he could feel her go stiff and draw back. His eyes snapped open, but she reached up quickly to hold his head still. “Don’t move.”

  Don’t move. Words you never wanted to hear. “What’s wrong?” he asked, keeping his voice low and even.

  “Stand up. Slowly. Don’t do anything else. Just keep looking at me and follow my lead.”

  Her brilliant-blue eyes were shadowed by a starkness he found impossible to describe, the light emanating from them so cold and hard-edged that it suggested winter had found a new home. He stood slowly, letting her guide him as he did so, allowing her to use her strength to keep him completely under her control.

  “Walk toward me,” she whispered. She began backing away from him, pulling him after her. “That’s it. One step at a time. Slowly, slowly.”

  It was all he could do to keep from looking over his shoulder to see what was there, but he managed it. Ajin held on to him firmly as they inched toward a patch of shadows provided by a stand of huge conifers.

  “Just a little farther now, just a little…”

  A massive roar broke the silence—a throated rumble of such power that the ground and the tree limbs all shook from it.

  “Run!” she cried, turning at once and racing away.

  Dar was quick to follow, sprinting after her as if his life depended on it.

  And risking a quick look behind him, he saw that it did.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  WHAT IS THAT THING?

  That was Darcon Leah’s first thought as he caught a glimpse of the monster thundering toward them. His second was an instant, absolute certainty they were not going to outrun it.

  Inexplicably fast for something that size, it was bearing down on them with such speed there was no possibility it wouldn’t catch them before they were out of the valley. For while they were forced to struggle across the rutted terrain—gullies and ruts, ridges and undergrowth, fallen trees and mud holes at every step—the beast chasing them simply ran through, over, or across these obstacles as if they didn’t matter. And why should they, given that their pursuer was the biggest living creature the Blade had ever seen? Bigger, even, than anything he had ever heard described.

  “Faster!” Ajin screamed.

  The beast was impossibly huge—at least twenty feet high and almost as wide—a juggernaut with a mottled gray-and-black hide, loose folds layered about the neck and haunches to a thickness of almost a foot. Four short, powerful legs the size of tree stumps propelled a barrel-shaped body that rippled with muscle. Its head was a direct extension of its body, giving it the appearance of a battering ram. Its tiny ears jutted from just behind small, piggish eyes, but it was the eight-foot horn growing out of the forward portion of its immense snout and curving upward like a ship’s prow that suggested the amount of damage it could inflict.

  If it did not trample them to death first.

  It had to weigh an unfathomable amount, yet it carried that weight as if it were negligible. Everything about it was like a nightmare brought to life, but there was no mistaking the reality as it thundered closer, its earth-shaking footfalls smashing everything in its path. Its small, squinting eyes were fixed on them, yet it didn’t seem to Dar that those almost minuscule orbs were capable of distinguishing them from any other creature. Whatever it was, it was simply responding to instinct. It saw them as prey or intruders, and in either case they were something to be destroyed.

  Then, abruptly, Dar went down, tripped by a hidden root or protrusion of some sort. Ajin turned back to help him, but he was on his feet again before she could reach him, and they were fleeing once more. The beast, however, never slowed, and it was almost on top of them. They were running full-out, but the Blade could tell that it wasn’t enough. They were close to the entrance to the valley, but no matter how hard he tried to make himself believe otherwise, they were not going to outrun it.

  Having accepted the inevitable, he yelled over to Ajin, “Keep running!”

  Then he wheeled back to face the beast, pulling free the Sword of Leah. With both hands gripping what must have seemed like a toothpick to the monster bearing down on him, he gave the battle cry that had served his family for more than a thousand years. “Leah, Leah!”

  The juggernaut thundered closer, unimpressed.

  He caught a flicker of movement on his right. Ajin was there, sword gripped in both hands, refusing to take the small chance for escape he had offered. He was not surprised. He had never really expected her to abandon him, but he felt a surge of affection upon witnessing the proof of it. She was Ajin d’Amphere, and she would rather die than run.

  But then with no more than twenty yards separating them, the charging beast rumbled suddenly to a halt, snorting and grumbling as it swung its massive head from side to side. In the ensuing silence, Dar heard a shrill whistle echo through the trees and off the slopes of the valley. It sounded and died away, then sounded again. The beast nodded twice—as if in response, as if the whistle was meant for it—and then turned away and began eating, pulling up huge tufts of grasses and small plants. Dar could hear the sound of its teeth as it masticated the greenery, paying them no attention at all.

  The Blade was still catching his breath when Ajin grabbed his arm and pointed into the trees.

  High up in a huge, gnarled old tree, a tiny figure stood silhouetted against the horizon. Garbed in loose-fitting clothes that rippled with a breeze Dar could not feel from where he stood, the figure seemed too small and inadequate to control a creature of this size.

  Ajin leaned in, her grip tightening. “It’s a boy. It’s just a boy.”

  Dar, whose eyes still could not determine the truth of this, nodded anyway. Ajin’s vision was better than his own. He stood with her for long seconds as the boy looked down on them. Then one arm rose and pointed toward the entrance to the valley. When they didn’t immediately respond, the arm lifted again in a sharp jerking motion, repeating the previous motion with emphasis. The message was clear. Go! Leave now! Back the way you came!

  The monster was peacefully chewing the grasses nearby, but it was still too close for comfort.

  “Let’s get away from here,” he whispered, and they began backing away in the direction indicated, eyes on the beast. It showed no interest in them now, continuing to eat. When Dar glanced back to the tree where he had seen the boy watching them, he was gone. In a matter of a few minutes they were passing out of the valley and into less rugged terrain that led
back through forested slopes and down to the beach where the Behemoth was moored.

  * * *

  —

  Rocan Arneas sat silently as the Blade and the Skaar princess related their wild tale about an impossibly large beast and its boy companion, wondering if perhaps the two had experienced a shared hallucination. A creature the size of the one they were describing simply did not exist. How would it have gotten to this ocean island? How could it sustain itself? How could it be controlled—as this one apparently was—by a mere boy? There were so many absences of logic in their story that he could hardly count them.

  “Well, I find it hard to believe,” he ventured, when they had finished.

  “I told you he would say that,” Ajin d’Amphere announced with clear satisfaction the minute the words were out of his mouth.

  Dar Leah shrugged. “You can believe us or not, Rocan, but this is what we saw and that is what happened. The question you have to decide, as nominal leader of this expedition, is how much attention are you going to pay to what we’ve told you?”

  The Rover hesitated. “Do you think this beast might decide to come out here? Clearly it feels compelled to protect the valley, but do you think it might attack us?”

  The Blade shook his head. “It didn’t show any interest in us after the boy gestured for us to go. I think the valley is its home, and he was warning us away. Beyond that, it didn’t care about us.”

  Rocan nodded. “I’ll put a watch on the valley entrance, so we’ll have some warning if it turns out you are wrong. And let’s keep this among the three of us for now. No sense in saying anything to the others. They don’t need the distraction. Now tell me the rest of what you found.”

  While they were doing so, the Rover was thinking that they should move quickly to complete whatever repairs the Behemoth required and make a speedy departure. Maybe what he was hearing was an exaggeration. But he believed they had seen something, and anything even remotely close to the size of the beast they had described was to be avoided.

  He felt a chill go up his neck as he pictured the creature the two had described ramming into the Behemoth and Annabelle in the mistaken belief she was a threat…

  When their conversation was over, he sent men south along the beach to see what lay in that direction. The beach north ended at a headland so huge that it effectively blocked any passage by land. He didn’t think any threat would come by sea, either. The waves surrounding the headland were huge and the possibility of riptides strong. He spent a few minutes cursing their luck in encountering the storm that had forced them so far off course, and then went back to supervising the work being done on their transport.

  The remainder of the day passed swiftly, and by nightfall repairs were pretty much complete. The hull was patched up, the damaged parse tubes on the port aft side replaced along with their diapson crystals, a fresh aft mast fashioned from a hardwood trunk cut down not far away and hauled back through the woods by means of ropes and pulleys and strong men to where it could be hoisted at sunrise and set in place. The rest of the damage did not affect their ability to fly, so at that point they would be ready to set out anew.

  They sat around a cooking fire afterward, preparing dinner and talking, watching the darkness settle in and the stars come out. Rocan found himself glancing toward the valley time and again, seeking any sign of movement. He had placed a guard beyond the perimeter of the camp and close to the entrance as a precaution, but somehow that didn’t reassure him much. The silence beyond the firelight, where the members of the company talked in quiet voices, was deep and unbroken. He walked to the edge of the light several times and looked out into the darkness. He would have thought there would be night sounds of some sort, but he heard nothing.

  When the others began rolling up in their blankets and drifting off, he sat up, listening. He knew he would not get much in the way of sleep this night.

  * * *

  —

  Another who could not sleep was Shea Ohmsford. He had overheard everything Rocan, Dar, and Ajin had said about the boy and the creature in the valley. He was intrigued by the idea of another boy here in this remote, faraway place—especially one who could control such a monster. It was hard to explain, but in imagining what his life must be like he felt an immediate connection to this boy. The boy would be doing the best he could with limited resources. He would be self-reliant. He would have learned the survival skills he needed, and would by now feel comfortable living in this wilderness. It didn’t feel all that different from his own life—though the skills themselves would not be the same. It felt like they were kindred spirits, even without knowing each other.

  Finally, with sleep evading him and curiosity nudging him along, he rose and crept from the camp for the valley entrance.

  He didn’t have a plan, really. He didn’t know what he was going to do once he got that far. Going into the valley seemed foolish, but he hadn’t ruled it out entirely. Mostly, he just wanted to get close enough to satisfy his curiosity and maybe learn something about this boy.

  He bypassed the guard without effort—one of those very survival skills he had perfected in Varfleet. Once closer to the moonlit gap between the hills and ridgelines sheltering the valley, he slowed to a walk and then finally stopped, staring ahead. His eyesight had adjusted to the darkness, and he found that with the light of moon and stars he could see as well as if it were day. He stood where he was for a time, watching for anything that moved but seeing nothing. He did not feel threatened. He did not feel his safety was at risk.

  He took a deep breath. He had come this far. No reason that he couldn’t go a little bit farther

  So he did.

  He climbed the slope leading up to the valley entrance, keeping to the shadows so his profile would not be visible to the guard, edging his way along the side of the entrance where the moon and stars would not reveal him. He was wary as he went, listening to the silence, straining to hear even the smallest sound. But he was not afraid. He could not have said why, but he wasn’t. Everything seemed so peaceful that he could not imagine he was in any sort of danger.

  Later, when he was back in camp, he would wonder what he had been thinking.

  He had always relied on his instincts and they had never let him down, so he was more than a little shocked to suddenly find himself face-to-face with the other boy. How Shea had failed to detect his presence before getting this close to him was a mystery. But it had the effect of startling Shea sufficiently that, for a moment, he was speechless.

  The two of them stood facing each other, taking each other’s measure. What Shea noticed right away was that the boy was holding a short spear by its haft—in an unthreatening and obviously comfortable position—with the longest, sharpest blade he had ever seen. The boy was very dark-skinned, with his black hair woven into short braids and his face painted in parallel lines of white stripes. He wore loose-fitting robes cut short about the legs and arms and bound at the waist. Rings decorated his fingers and ears, and a necklace formed of black stones that glistened in the starlight hung about his neck.

  Shea wore ordinary seaman’s garb and looked far less exotic by comparison. A long knife was sheathed at his waist, and he was careful to avoid touching it.

  “What’s your name?” he asked finally.

  The other boy shook his head. Then he replied in a language Shea had never heard.

  They stared at each other some more. Finally Shea pointed to himself and said, “Shea.”

  He repeated the word twice more, and then he pointed to the boy and looked questioningly back at him.

  “Borshawk,” the boy said finally, touching his chest.

  Shea smiled and nodded, then tried to speak to him again. But as neither knew the other’s language, communication was limited. Shea tried to think of something more to say, then finally mimicked the creature Dar and Ajin had described, dropping down on all fours
and making a sudden rush to one side. Borshawk nodded and pointed into the valley and then back at himself.

  Then he gestured back the way Shea had come and made a brushing movement with both hands. Leave, he was saying. When Shea hesitated, he pointed again, and this time his expression was more insistent. Shea held up both hands in a warding gesture and took a step back, nodding. The anger disappeared from the other’s face.

  Shea started to go, then turned back again. He held out his hand to Borshawk and said, “Friends, you and me.”

  The other boy stared at him. Again, Shea pointed first to himself and then to Borshawk and said, “Friends.” He held out his hand once more.

  Borshawk nodded, took the hand in his own, and held on firmly. “Friends,” he repeated.

  And then he turned back toward the valley and was gone, leaving Shea to ponder what it all might mean.

  * * *

  —

  Shea had returned to his bed and fallen asleep while mulling over his encounter with Borshawk and wondering whom he should tell when the raiders attacked. Early-morning light was still only a faint strip along the eastern horizon, and the Rovers and their passengers were just climbing out of their blankets, yawning and blinking to come awake, when the warning shout went up from Rocan Arneas, who had been up most of the night and was scanning the skies for signs that would indicate what sort of weather was coming.

  His warning was followed almost instantly by a flurry of wild cries and piercing shrieks that broke the silence into a million little memories.

  Everyone was moving instantly, snatching up their weapons and charging toward the Behemoth to form a protective ring. Some few Rovers scrambled aboard to take up positions at the flash rips while the rest backed up against the hull of the great transport, taking advantage of the night shadows that still lingered.

  No one had even gotten a close look at the attackers yet, including Rocan, who was the only one among them who had seen the movement in the near darkness and realized what was happening. It was pandemonium for a few minutes as everyone tried to make sense of the flitting shadows overhead that were sweeping down in sudden plunges.