Assassin’s Quest

Once we had avoided Turlake and the surrounding towns we swung north again to strike the Vin River. It was as different from the Buck River as a cow is from a stallion. Grey and placid, it slid along between open fields, wallowing back and forth in its wide gravelly channel. On our side of the river, there was a trail that more or less paralleled the water, but most of the traffic on it were goats and cattle. We could always hear when a herd or flock was being moved, and we easily avoided them. The Vin was not as navigable a river as the Buck, being shallower and given to shifting sandbars, but there was some boat trade on it. On the Tilth side of the Vin, there was a well-used road, and frequent villages and even towns. We saw barges being drawn upstream by mule teams along some stretches; I surmised that such cargo would have to be portaged past the shallows. Settlements on our side of the river seemed limited to ferry landings and infrequent trading posts for the nomadic herders. These might offer an inn, a few shops and a handful of houses clinging to the outskirts, but not much more than that. Nighteyes and I avoided them. The few villages we encountered on our side of the river were deserted at this time of year.

The nomadic herders, tent dwellers during the hotter months, pastured their herds on the central plains now, moving sedately from waterhole to waterhole across the rich grazing lands. Grass grew in the village streets and up the sides of the sod houses. There was a peace to these abandoned towns, and yet the emptiness still reminded me of a raided village. We never lingered close to one.

We both grew leaner and stronger. I wore through my shoes and had to patch them with rawhide. I wore my trousers off at the cuff and hemmed them up about my calves. I grew tired of washing my shirt so often; the blood of the Forged ones and our kills had left the front and the cuffs of it mottled brown. It was as mended and tattered as a beggar’s shirt, and the uneven colour made it only more pathetic. I bundled it into my pack one day and went shirtless. The days were mild enough that I did not miss it, and during the cooler nights we were on the move and my body made its own warmth. The sun baked me almost as dark as my wolf. Physically, I felt good. I was not as strong as I had been when I was pulling an oar and fighting, nor as muscled. But I felt healthy and limber and lean. I could trot all night beside a wolf and not be wearied. I was a quick and stealthy animal, and I proved over and over to myself my ability to survive. I regained a great deal of the confidence that Regal had destroyed. Not that my body had forgiven and forgotten all that Regal had done to it, but I had adapted to its twinges and scars. Almost, I had put the dungeon behind me. I did not let my dark goal overshadow those golden days. Nighteyes and I travelled, hunted, slept and travelled again. It was all so simple and good that I forgot to value it. Until I lost it.

We had come down to the river as evening darkened, intending to drink well before beginning our night’s travel. But as we drew near, Nighteyes had suddenly frozen, dropping his belly to the earth while canting his ears forward. I followed his example, and then even my dull nose caught an unfamiliar scent. What and where? I asked him.

I saw them before he could reply. Tiny deer, stepping daintily along on their way down to water. They were not much taller than Nighteyes, and instead of antlers, they had goat-like spiralling horns that shone glossy black in the full moon’s light. I knew of such creatures only from an old bestiary that Chade had, and I could not remember what they were properly called.

Food? Nighteyes suggested succinctly, and I immediately concurred. The trail they were following would bring them within a leap and a spring of us. Nighteyes and I held our positions, waiting. The deer came closer, a dozen of them, hurrying and careless now as they scented the cool water. We let the one in the lead pass, waiting to spring on the main body of the herd where they were most closely bunched. But just as Nighteyes gathered himself with a quiver to jump, a long wavering howl slid down the night.

Nighteyes sat up, an anxious whine bursting from him. The deer scattered in an explosion of hooves and horns, fleeing us even though we were both too distracted to pursue them. Our meal became suddenly a distant light thunder. I looked after them in dismay, but Nighteyes did not even seem to notice.

Mouth open, Nighteyes made sounds between a howl and a keen, his jaws quivering and working as if he strove to remember how to speak. The jolt I had felt from him at the wolf’s distant howl had made my heart leap in my chest. If my own mother had suddenly called out to me from the night, the shock could not have been greater. Answering howls and barks erupted from a gentle rise to the north of us. The first wolf joined in with them. Nighteyes’ head swivelled back and forth as he whined low in his throat. Abruptly he threw back his head and let out a jagged howl of his own. Sudden stillness followed his declaration, then the pack on the rise gave tongue again, not a hunting cry, but an announcement of themselves.

Nighteyes gave me a quick apologetic look, and left. In disbelief I watched him race off toward the ridge. After an instant of astonishment, I leaped to my feet and followed. He was already a substantial distance ahead of me, but when he became aware of me, he slowed, and then rounded to face me.

I must go alone, he told me earnestly. Wait for me here. He whirled about to resume his journey.

Panic struck me. Wait! You can’t go alone. They are not pack. We’re intruders, they’ll attack you. Better not to go at all.

I must! he repeated. There was no mistaking his determination. He trotted off.

I ran after him. Nighteyes, please! I was suddenly terrified for him, for what he was charging into so obsessedly.

He paused and looked back at me, his eyes meeting mine in what was a very long stare for a wolf. You understand. You know you do. Now is the time for you to trust as I have trusted. This is something I must do. And I must do it alone.

And if you do not come back? I asked in sudden desperation.

You came back from your visit into that town. And I shall come back to you. Continue to travel along the river. I shall find you. Go on, now. Go back.

I stopped trotting after him. He kept going. Be careful! I flung the plea after him, my own form of howling into the night. Then I stood and watched him trot away from me, the powerful muscles rippling under his deep fur, his tail held out straight in determination. It took every bit of strength I had to refrain from crying out to him to come back, to plead with him not to leave me alone. I stood alone, breathing hard from running, and watched him dwindle in the distance. He was so intent on his seeking that I felt closed out and set aside. For the first time I experienced the resentment and jealousy that he had felt during my sessions with Verity, or when I had been with Molly and had commanded him to stay away from my thoughts.

This was his first adult contact with his own kind. I understood his need to seek them out and see what they were, even if they attacked him and drove him away. It was right. But all the fears I had for him whined at me to run after him, to be by his side in case he were attacked, to be at least within striking distance if he should need me.

But he had asked me not to.

No. He had told me not to. Told me, exerting the same privilege of self that I had exerted with him. I felt it wrenched my heart sideways in my chest to turn away from him and walk back toward the river. I felt suddenly half blind. He was not trotting beside and ahead of me, relaying his information to supplement what my own duller senses delivered to me. Instead, I could sense him in the distance. I felt the thrilling of anticipation, fear and curiosity that trembled through him. He was too intent on his own life at the moment to share with me. Suddenly I wondered if this was akin to what Verity had felt, when I was out on the Rurisk, harrying the Raiders while he had to sit in his tower and be content with whatever information he could glean from me. I had reported much more fully to him, had made a conscious effort to keep up a stream of information to him. Still, he must have felt something of this wrenching exclusion that now sickened me.

I reached the riverbank. I halted there, to sit down and wait for him. He had said he would come back. I stared out over the darkness of the moving water. My life felt small inside me. Slowly I turned to look upstream. All inclination to hunt had fled with Nighteyes.

I sat and waited for a long time. Finally I got up and moved on through the night, paying scant attention to myself and my surroundings. I walked silently on the sandy riverbank, accompanied by the hushing of the waters.

Somewhere, Nighteyes scented other wolves, scented them clean and strong, well enough to know how many and what sexes they were. Somewhere he showed himself to them, not threatening, not entering their company, but simply announcing to them that he was there. For a time they watched him. The big male of the pack advanced and urinated on a tussock of grass. He then scratched deep furrows with the claws on his hind feet as he kicked dirt at it. A female stood and stretched and yawned, and then sat, staring green-eyed up at him. Two half-grown cubs stopped chewing one another long enough to consider him. One started toward him, but a low rumble from his mother brought him hastening back. He went back to chewing at his littermate. And Nighteyes sat down, a settling on the haunches that showed he meant no harm and let them look at him. A skinny young female gave half a hesitant whine, then broke it off with a sneeze.

After a time, most of the wolves got up and set out purposefully together. Hunting. The skinny female stayed with the cubs, watching over them as the others left. Nighteyes hesitated, then followed the pack at a discreet distance. From time to time, one of the wolves would glance back at him. The lead male stopped frequently to urinate and then scuff at the ground with his back legs.

As for me, I walked on by the river, watching the night age around me. The moon performed her slow passage of the night sky. I took dry meat from my pack and chewed it as I walked, stopping once to drink the chalky water. The river had swung toward me in its gravelly bed. I was forced to forsake the shore and walk on a tussocky bank above it. As dawn created a horizon, I cast about for a place to sleep. I settled for a slightly higher rise on the bank and curled up small amidst the coarse grasses. I would be invisible unless someone almost stepped on me. It was as safe a spot as any.

I felt very alone.

I did not sleep well. A part of me sat watching other wolves, still from a distance. They were as aware of me as I was of them. They had not accepted me, but neither had they driven me off. I had not gone so close as to force them to decide about me. I had watched them kill a buck, of a kind of deer I did not know. It seemed small to feed all of them. I was hungry, but not so hungry that I needed to hunt yet. My curiosity about this pack was a more pressing hunger. I sat and watched them as they sprawled in sleep.

My dreams moved away from Nighteyes. Again I felt the disjointed knowledge that I was dreaming, but was powerless to awaken. Something summoned me, tugging at me with a terrible urgency. I answered that summons, reluctant but unable to refuse. I found another day somewhere, and the sickeningly familiar smoke and screams rising together into the blue sky by the ocean. Another town in Bearns was fighting and falling to the Raiders. Once more I was claimed as witness. On that night, and almost every night to follow, the war with the Red Ships was forced back on me.

That battle, and each of the ones that followed are etched somewhere on my heart, in relentless detail. Scent and sound and touch, I lived them all. Something in me listened, and each time I slept, it dragged me mercilessly to where Six Duchies folk fought and died for their homes. I was to experience more of the fall of Bearns than any one who actually lived in that Duchy. For from day to day, whenever I tried to sleep, I might at any time find myself called to witness. I knew no logic for it. Perhaps the penchant for the Skill slept in many folk of the Six Duchies and faced with death and pain they cried out to Verity and me with voices they did not know they possessed. More than once, I sensed my king likewise stalking the nightmare-wracked towns, though never again did I see him so plainly as I had that first time. Later, I would recall that once I had dream-shared a time with King Shrewd when he was similarly called to witness the fall of Siltbay. I have wondered since how often he was tormented by witnessing the raids on towns he was powerless to protect.

Some part of me knew that I slept by the Vin River, far from this rampaging battle, surrounded by tall river grass and swept by a clean wind. It did not seem important. What mattered was the sudden reality of the ongoing battles the Six Duchies faced against the Raiders. This nameless little village in Bearns was probably not of great strategic importance, but it was falling as I watched, one more brick crumbling out of a wall. Once the Raiders possessed the Bearns coast, the Six Duchies would never be freed of them. And they were taking that coast, town by town, hamlet by hamlet, while the erstwhile King sheltered in Tradeford. The reality of our struggle against the Red Ships had been imminent and pressing when I had pulled an oar on the Rurisk. Over the past few months, insulated and isolated from the war, I had allowed myself to forget the folk who lived that conflict every day. I had been as unfeeling as Regal.

I finally awoke as evening began to steal the colours from the river and plain. I did not feel I had rested, and yet it was a relief to awaken. I sat up, looked about myself. Nighteyes had not returned to me. I quested briefly toward him. My brother, he acknowledged me, but I sensed he was annoyed at my intrusion. He was watching the two cubs tumble each other about. I pulled my mind back to myself wearily. The contrast between our two lives was suddenly too great even to consider. The Red Ship Raiders, the Forgings and Regal’s treacheries, even my plan to kill Regal were suddenly nasty human things I had foisted off on the wolf. What right was there in letting such ugliness shape his life? He was where he was supposed to be.

As little as I liked it, the task I had set myself was mine alone.

I tried to let go of him. Still, the stubborn spark remained. He had said he would come back to me. I resolved that if he did, it must be his own decision. I would not summon him to me. I arose, and pressed on. I told myself that if Nighteyes decided to rejoin me, he could overtake me easily. There is nothing like a wolf’s trot for devouring the miles. And it was not as if I were travelling swiftly without him. I very much missed his night vision. I came to a place where the riverbank dropped down to become little better than a swamp. I could not decide at first whether to press through it or to try to go around it. I knew it could stretch for miles. At length I decided to stay as close to the open river as I could. I spent a miserable night, swishing through bulrushes and cattails, stumbling over their tangled roots, my feet wet more often than not, and bedevilled by enthusiastic midges.

What kind of a moron, I asked myself, tried to walk through an unfamiliar swamp in the dark? Serve me right if I found a bog-hole and drowned in it. Above me were only the stars, around me the unchanging walls of cattails. To my right I caught glimpses of the wide, dark river. I kept moving upstream. Dawn found me still slogging along. Tiny single-leaved plants with trailing roots coated my leggings and shoes and my chest was welted with insect bites. I ate dried meat as I walked. There was no place to rest, so I walked on. Resolving to take some good from this place, I gathered some cattail root-stocks as I trudged. It was past midday before the river began to have a real bank again, and I pushed myself on for another hour beyond that to get away from the midges and mosquitoes. Then I washed the greenish swamp slime and mud off my leggings, shoes and skin before flinging myself down to sleep.

Somewhere, Nighteyes stood still and unthreatening as the skinny female came closer to him. As she came closer, he dropped to his belly, rolled over on his side, then curled onto his back and exposed his throat. She came closer, a single step at a time. Then she stopped suddenly, sat down and considered him. He whined lightly. She put her ears back suddenly, bared all her teeth in a snarl, then whirled and dashed away. After a time Nighteyes got up, and went to hunt for meadow mice. He seemed pleased.

Again, as his presence drifted away from me, I was summoned back to Bearns. Another village was burning.

I awoke discouraged. Instead of pushing on, I kindled a small fire of driftwood. I boiled water in my kettle to cook the root-stocks while I cut some of my dried meat into chunks. I stewed the dried meat with the starchy root-stocks and added a bit of my precious store of salt and some wild greens. Unfortunately the chalky taste of the river predominated. Belly full, I shook out my winter cloak, rolled up in it as protection against the night insects and drowsed off again.

Nighteyes and the lead wolf stood looking at one another. They were far enough apart that there was no challenge in it, but Nighteyes kept his tail down. The lead wolf was rangier than Nighteyes and his coat was black. Not so well fed, he bore the scars of both fights and hunts. He carried himself confidently. Nighteyes did not move. After a time the other wolf walked a short way, cocked his leg on a tuft of grass and urinated. He scuffed his front feet in the grass, then walked off without a backward glance. Nighteyes sat down and was still, considering.

The next morning I arose and continued on my way. Nighteyes had left me two days ago. Only two days. Yet it seemed very long to me that I had been alone. And how, I wondered, did Nighteyes measure our separation? Not by days and nights. He had gone to find out a thing, and when he had found it out, then his time to be away from me would be over and he would come back to me. But what, really, had he gone to find out? What it was like to be a wolf among wolves, a member of a pack? If they accepted him, what then? Would he run with them for a day, a week, a season? How long would it take for me to fade from his mind into one of his endless yesterdays?

Why should he want to return to me, if this pack would accept him?

After a time, I allowed myself to realize I was as heartsore and hurt as if a human friend had snubbed me for the company of others. I wanted to howl, to quest out to Nighteyes with my loneliness for him. By an effort of will, I did not. He was not a pet dog, to be whistled to heel. He was a friend and we had travelled together for a time. What right did I have to ask him to give up a chance at a mate, at a true pack of his own, simply that he might be at my side? None at all, I told myself. None at all.

At noon I struck a trail that followed the bank. By late afternoon I had passed several small farmsteads. Melons and grain predominated. A network of ditches carried river-water inland to the crops. The sod houses were set well back from the river’s edge, probably to avoid flooding. I had been barked at by dogs, and honked at by flocks of fat white geese, but had seen no folk close enough to hail. The trail had widened to a road, with cart-tracks.

The sun was beating on my back and head from a clear blue sky. High above me, I heard the shrill ki of a hawk. I glanced up at him, wings open and still as he rode the sky. He gave cry again, folded his wings and plummeted toward me. Doubtless, he dived on some small rodent in one of the fields. I watched him come at me, and only at the last moment realized I was truly his target. I flung up an arm to shield my face just as he opened his wings. I felt the wind of his braking. For a bird his size, he landed quite lightly on my upflung arm. His talons clenched painfully in my flesh.

My first thought was that he was a trained bird gone feral, who had seen me and somehow decided to return to man. A scrap of leather dangling from one of his legs might be the remainder of jesses. He sat blinking on my arm, a magnificent bird in every way. I held him out from me to have a better look at him. The leather on his leg secured a tiny scroll of parchment. ‘Can I have a look at that?’ I asked him aloud. He turned his head to my voice and one gleaming eye stared at me. It was Sleet.

Old Blood.

I could make no more of his thoughts than that, but it was enough.

I had never been much good with the birds at Buckkeep. Burrich had finally bid me leave them alone, for my presence always agitated them. Nevertheless, I quested gently toward his flame-bright mind. He seemed quiet. I managed to tug the tiny scroll loose. The hawk shifted on my arm, digging his talons into fresh flesh. Then, without warning, he lifted his wings and launched away from me into the air. He spiralled up, beating heavily to gain altitude, cried once more his high ki, ki, and went sliding off down the sky. I was left with blood trickling down my arm where his talons had scored my flesh, and one ringing ear from the beating of his wings as he launched. I glanced at the punctures in my arm. Then curiosity made me turn to the tiny scroll. Pigeons carried messages, not hawks.

The handwriting was in an old style, tiny, thin and spidery. The brightness of the sun made it even harder to read. I sat down at the edge of the road and shaded it with my hand to study it. The first words almost stilled my heart. ‘Old Blood greets Old Blood.’

The rest was harder to puzzle out. The scroll was tattered, the spellings quaint, the words as few as would suffice. The warning was from Holly, though I suspected Rolf had penned it. King Regal actively hunted down Old Blood now. To those he captured, he offered coins if they would help find a wolf – man pair. They suspected Nighteyes and I were the ones he wanted. Regal threatened death to those who refused. There was a little more, something about giving my scent to others of Old Blood and asking that they aid me as they could. The rest of the scroll was too tattered to read. I tucked the scroll into my belt. The bright day seemed edged with darkness now. So Will had told Regal I yet lived. And Regal feared me enough to set these wheels in motion. Perhaps it was as well that Nighteyes and I had parted company for a time.

As twilight fell, I ascended a small rise on the riverbank. Ahead of me, tucked into a bend of the river, were a few lights. Probably another trading post or a ferry dock to allow farmers and herders easy passage across the river. I watched the lights as I walked toward them. Ahead there would be hot food, and people, and shelter for the night. I could stop and have a word with the folk there if I wished. I still had a few coins to call my own. No wolf at my heels to excite questions, no Nighteyes lurking outside hoping no dogs would pick up his scent. No one to worry about except myself. Well, maybe I would. Maybe I’d stop and have a glass and a bit of talk. Maybe I’d learn how much farther it was to Tradeford, and hear some gossip of what went on there. It was time I began formulating a real plan as to how I would deal with Regal.