The Assassin King

4

By inexplicable happenchance, at the moment Rath came ashore, the man who had once carried the reviled name that the hunter was seeking was within a few score miles. That man was staring in silent contempt at the rosy brown stone edifice of a small keep known as Haguefort, observing a reunion that made him unconsciously desire to expectorate in the same disgust as was conveyed by what used to be his name. Ysk. Since the time when that name had been contemptuously conferred upon him, the man had borne several other titles as well. In long-ago days he had been cleansed of Ysk by a wise and highly skilled Namer, a man trained in the science of vibration and its manipulation. The Namer had called him sim-ply the Brother, for Ysk was, he said, brother to all, but akin to none. It was a name that gave him power by which he could have come to be a great healer, but instead he chose the oppo- site side of the coin, passing his time in the trade of a solitary assassin. A less-skilled practitioner of that same science had re- I named him decades later, and now that he ruled over a mountainous kingdom of Firbolg, the same race of monstrous beings that had long ago given him the title Ysk, he was known by many dreaded and silly appellations: The Glowering Eye, The Earth Swallower, The Merciless, The Night Man. He had narrowly escaped becoming the owner of the most respected traditional title given to chieftains and warlords among the Bolg tribes, which translated roughly as The Supremely Flatulent, by virtue of the fact that he could not be described as such, or by any other title tied to the senses. In the dark caverns and tunnels of Ylorc, he was never seen or heard, and certainly never smelt, unless he wished to be. Now, at this point in his history, he was known as Achmed the Snake, king of the Firbolg. The name given to him at birth had vanished from history, and from all but the deepest vaults of his memory. He had only given voice to it once in almost two thousand years, and had spoken it softly, in the depths of the Earth, to the Namer who had given him his current appellation. He watched that woman now being led up the steps of the rosy brown keep, shaky from recent childbirth and the sting of the late-winter wind, and exhaled deeply. He turned to his Sergeant-Major, an enormous half-breed who had been his constant companion for most of his life. “No one is watching. If we leave now, they won’t know we’re missing until we’re already home.” The Sergeant-Major shook his head, hiding a smile. “Nope, sir, ’twouldn’t be right,” he said, trying to sound serious. “OF Ashe asked us to wait ’ere so we could brief ’im on what happened in the forest. We ain’t supposed ta talk about it ’til we meet in council to keep the mem’ries fresh.” He pointed in the direction of two young people, the Duke and Duchess of Navarne, who were holding a squalling bundle. “But if we’re talkin’ fresh, Oi say we ’ave a bite ta eat while we’re waitin’. Sound good ta you?” Achmed smiled slightly. “You’re suggesting we eat Rhapsody’s baby?”

“Yeah. Why not?” The Firbolg king’s smile faded as the guards from the keep arrived to take him to his solitary chamber. “Because there’s not enough to share,” he said within plain earshot of the soldiers. “You’re right, as always, sir,” Grunthor called out amiably as Achmed was led away. “ ’Ow about you just let me bite off the ’ead, an’ you can ’ave the rest?” The Firbolg king shook his head. “No,” he said without turning around. “It’s related to Ashe, so it probably tastes like mutton. You know how much I hate mutton.” The chambermaid who had taken the baby from the children let out a little gasp of horror and scurried away from the two monstrous men. The young duke, his nine-year-old sister, and the keep’s guards, long accustomed to the two of them, however, didn’t raise an eyebrow. When the Lord Cymrian had first commanded that all present be ushered to separate rooms and kept in silence until their meeting, most of the others had scowled. Each of the people who would be summoned in what Lord Gwydion had promised would be a short time hence had urgent business to discuss, terrible findings to report, and all were frustrated at the delay. All, that is, except for Sergeant-Major Grunthor, the giant Bolg commander, who nodded acceptance at the order and quietly followed the nervous human servant to his room. Once the door was closed, the Sergeant quickly surveyed the surroundings and, finding them to be acceptable, set about the task of cleaning his personal arsenal. In much the same way that some men collected drinking flagons or hunting trophies or concubines, Grunthor collected bladed weapons. He was, in fact, even more enamored of his assortment of blades than most other collectors, as each was the center of an interesting story, a memory of bloody conquest made sweeter in the reflection of steel. When his schedule allowed him the time, the giant Bolg commander, half Firbolg, half Bengard, and seven and a half feet of muscle beneath skin the color of old bruises, would shrug off the bandolier he always wore across his back and spread the weapons he had chosen to garner out on a table or his bunk, where he would polish them lovingly, often humming a battle cadence, off-key, under his breath as he did. He had taken the time to name each of them, and therefore felt a personal affinity with it, mementoes of the old world where life had been simpler, if not easier. He was humming to himself now as he unstrapped the massive bandolier, the creak of leather and steel fittings a nice percussive accent to the tune, a pleasantly gory folk song he had learned from his Bengard mother about the pillaging of a desert town. The first blade he pulled forth was both the longest and shortest weapon he owned, the tip of a polearm he had affectionately named Sal, short for Salutations. Sal was double-sided, a traditional spear point with a hatchet head on one side, missing the wooden shaft. Grunthor held the tip up to the light of the hearth fire in his chamber, enjoying the way it illuminated the long-dried blood in the channeled grooves chiseled into the weapon by time and wear. “ ’Allo, lit’le fella,” he murmured fondly. “Gotta get ya a aew pole soon—sorry to ’ave left it go so long.” The next blade to receive his attention was The Old Bitch, a spiny, serrated short sword named for a hairy-legged harlot he had been fond of in the old world. “Now, now, darlin’, no bitin’,” he murmured, carefully oiling the viciously sharp edges. “Usta say the same thing ta yer namesake, all them years ago. Course, she didn’t have no teeth, unlike yerself.” With infinite care he tended to the needs of each blade, repairing the leather bindings, polishing the steel, speaking in a low and gentle voice as he babied the weapon, almost as if he were speaking to a young child. Had the sight of him sharpening the edges of swords, filing the points of awls, or adjusting the metal scourges of his bullwhip not been so innately threatening, it would have made an amusing tableau to anyone brave or foolish enough to interrupt him. One by one, each item in his collection was patiently restored to its best possible shape, the Sergeant taking equal satisfaction in the task and me review of the memories. Finally he came to one last weapon, something he had been told by a First Generation Cymrian was called a triatine. It was a triple blade composed of three thin sides, smelted together at the core, each edge razor-sharp. It was clear to Grunthor that in addition to working well as a slashing weapon, one with length and sharpness enough to maintain distance from an opponent, it also could serve to remove a major core of flesh and muscle should it be applied, triangular tip first, with enough force, even more if twisted properly. This was the last weapon to be added to his collection in the old world, one that Achmed had removed from a dead soldier pursuing Rhapsody, and the only weapon he owned mat he had never used. Cleaning and tending to his weapons helped Grunthor organize his thoughts. He had been unable to find a moment in the course of his journey to Haguefort from the forest of Gwyn-wood in which he could speak to his king and best friend alone. Achmed had been utterly silent all the way home in the carriage that bore them, along with Rhapsody, her husband and newborn son, to this keep of rosy brown stone that was the duchy seat of Navarne. This place had been the first in which the three of them, minus Ashe, had found a true and unencumbered welcome in this new world, the Wyrmlands, this place to which they had run from the other side of Time.

It was very clear to Grunthor that war was brewing. Whether with traditional forces, or those beyond the realm of his experience, or both, he was ready, eager, in fact, to see combat, to test hiss mettle again, after so long of being out of practice as a field commander. Unlike Rhapsody, who longed for peace when it w as unrealistic, and Achmed, who never believed in the possibility of peace, Grunthor found peace to be a nuisance, a time when weapons got rusty or not kept at the ready, when soldiers let their guard down, or trained without fear as an incentive. His mother’s Bengard race had long ago accepted the concept of constant war, invented and internal if necessary, as the best possible state of existence, because it meant a heightened sense of awareness, a sense of shared sacrifice. And, of course, fun. As he oiled the little short sword he had named Lucy, a crooked grin came over his swarthy face, allowing a meticulously polished tusk to protrude from below his bulbous lip. Lucy was the sword he had given to Rhapsody so that he could teach her, centuries ago, to handle a blade. She had become a credit to him as an instructor, and wielded a historic weapon of her own now, but the image that was still dearest to his heart was of her, shorter than himself by the length of his arm and only possessing a third of his mass, holding back from attacking him with too much force in their earliest training sessions. He could have crushed her like a cricket without dirtying his boot much, but instead he had come to respect her, to appreciate her and her talents, if never really understand her. His grin faded as he remembered the more recent sight of her, pale and gray from loss of blood and the internal ravages of bearing a wyrmkin child a few days ago, the offspring of her husband, a man who had dragon’s blood running in his veins. She and Achmed had emerged from the ossified corpse of her father-in-law, Llauron, a manipulative man Grunthor had never trusted when he was in human form, and whose transformation into the ethereal existence of the dragon state had done nothing to change that opinion. Even Llauron’s death, which Achmed had indicated had saved them both from the rampage of the dragon Anwyn, was, as far as the Sergeant-Major was concerned, not a tragedy. It was the least the old man could do. Seeing her in the forest, wan and bloodless, as she disappeared into her husband’s carriage, from which she did not emerge except to enter the keep of Haguefort, had left him feeling unsettled, a state to which he was not accustomed. With a vicious snap of a leather bandolier binding, Grunthor resolved to make certain he had a moment to assess her condition and speak with her before they parted again. He was putting away his weapons when a knock came at the door. True to his word, Ashe had kept the waiting brief. Grunthor placed the bandolier over his shoulder and made his way down the hall behind the guards to what he hoped would be a fruitful planning for a massive military adventure. He found it impossible to repress humming a cheerful tune at the prospect. While Grunthor was cleaning his weapons, the Bolg king was instead using his time in wait to observe a small flock of castle swallows, winterbirds that nested year round in the crags and crevices of Haguefort’s high walls, and to muse over old losses. The chirping of the birds seemed brighter in tone as they wafted higher on the wind, their calls to one another tickling the sensitive nerve endings in Achmed’s scalp. That in and of itself was not unusual; virtually anything that lived or moved registered its vibrations somewhere in the Bolg king’s skin. The web of veins and nerves that scored every inch of his body surface was the major factor in his ability to sense prey when he was hunting, and to be irritated by everything else when he was not. But what Achmed was noticing as he listened to the birdcalls was that one particular musical interval, a high trill that was repeated every eight heartbeats, seemed to nullify the irritation of all the other birdsong against his skin, drowning the pinpricks in a soothing buzz that actually felt almost pleasurable. He recognized the sensation. It was the same feeling he experienced most of the time when he was around Rhapsody. Achmed exhaled slowly. There was the irony; though he was consistently perturbed at the choices the Lady Cymrian had made over the millennium and a half he had known her, as irritating as her openhearted, empty-headed idealism was to him. there was an innate musical vibration about her that soothed the constant torment that life visited upon his every waking and sleeping moment. As soon as the thought came into his head, the door opened, Rhapsody came into the room; Achmed knew without looking because the ache in his skin was suddenly abated, quelled by the musical vibration she brought with her wherever she went. He did not turn even as she came to the window. “Where’s the screaming thing?” he asked, watching the swallows fly in formation over the balcony railing, banking on the warm updrafts. “I thought it had been cemented permanently to your breast.”

Rhapsody chuckled. “His father has him,” she said, coming alongside him to follow his gaze as the birds flew over the keep’s tower again and out of sight. “And really, for a newborn. he’s very quiet. But perhaps your race is quieter in its infancy, as in all other stages of life. Don’t Dhracian babies ever cry when they are hungry or cold? Or do they just communicate their needs silently, the way an entire colony of adults can?” Achmed shrugged. “I’ve no idea,” he said flatly. “I was raised by Bolg, not Dhracians, if you recall. I have no more knowledge of Dhracian infants than you do.” He finally turned to look at her and winced at what he saw. One of the fairest aspects of her face had always been the color palette; her rosy skin set off the emerald-green of her eyes, framed by golden hair that caught the light in a room. Achmed, who had known her before her transformation from spirited street trollop to serene lady of the Alliance, knew that while some of her famous beauty was instilled in her by the power of the elemental fire she had once absorbed, much of it had been in her all along, even in the bad old days on the long-dead Island of Serendair half a world away. Now, as he looked at her, he saw a very different woman. Rhapsody’s normally sun-kissed skin was pale as porcelain, her eyes a dimmer shade of green, like spring grass instead of the normal verdant hue of a forest in summer. Her glistening hair had lost a little of its shine, and the tips of her fingernails and the whites of her eyes seemed bloodless. She looked tired and spent, a reasonable appearance for someone who had just survived a difficult childbirth and the near-death experience that followed it. “I thought your husband requested us all to remain silent,” he said, turning back to the window. “He did.” Rhapsody came closer and slid her small hand into his. “And I will respect that request after I thank you, once again, for saving my life, and that of my child. We can speak more later, but I cannot let another moment pass with-out telling you how grateful I am that you are my friend, in spite of whatever hateful things I may have said to you in the past. I hope you will forgive me for them.” Achmed did not look at her, but merely nodded and continued to stare out the window. Rhapsody watched him in silence, but he never met her glance again, just followed the patterns of the swallows on the warm winter wind. Finally, when the silence became heavy, she squeezed his hand and left the room, taking the comforting music of the vibrations she emitted with her, along with what was left of Achmed’s modestly good mood. When he could no longer hear the distant echo of her footsteps on the polished marble floor of the hallway beyond his door, he gave voice to what, in another lifetime, he would have said aloud to her. “I can feel the very world unraveling.”

The soldiers had been following Velt the fruit monger on the road for a long time before he noticed them. Velt normally considered himself a fairly observant man but the late-winter wind had been stinging his eyes most of the day, and the roadways of eastern Navarne were hilly, winding through and around frozen haystacks and the hummocks that sculpted the wide, empty fields of this sparsely populated farmland. He did not really look behind him until he was out on the straight, flat stretch of thoroughfare past the village of Byrony, and by the time he did, he was well beyond any place where he could hide or make an excuse to pause in his journey. So when he noticed the dark mass approaching in the distance he clicked to his horse and slowed his pace, preparing to move off into the grass if necessary when they passed. Beads of sweat broke out on his wrinkled forehead that had been cool and dry in the late-morning sun; Velt did not know why, but suddenly he was nervous, more anxious to be home than he had been a moment before. Calm yourself, idiot, he thought to himself. You have nothing to fear from the soldiers of Roland. You’ve done nothing wrong. And yet the hair on the back of his neck was still standing on end, as if he were about to be caught smuggling stolen jew-els rather than transporting the load of winter apples he had been fortunate to obtain in Kylie’s Folly, a farming settlement in southern Bethany. As the ground beneath his wagon began to tremble, transmitting its vibrations through the buckboard on which he sat, Velt suddenly realized why he was nervous. Merchants had for the last several years been encouraged by the crown to join the routes of the guarded mail caravans that plied the trans-Orlandan thoroughfare, the roadway built in Cymrian times bisecting Roland from the western seacoast to the edge of the Manteids, the mountain range also known as the Teeth, in the east. While it was not illegal to have taken the shortcut Velt had chosen, he suspected he might be in for a dressing down by the approaching soldiers. He stole a glance over his shoulder and sighed miserably. The blue and silver colors of their regalia were visible now, confirming their allegiance to the Lord Cymrian. Velt willed himself to be calm and prepared for a tongue-lashing. It was not forthcoming. The crossbow bolt hit him squarely in the spine between his shoulder blades, just above the rib cage. At first Velt could not comprehend what had happened; he only knew that as he concentrated on keeping the horses steady he felt the wind go out of him, followed a second later by a numbness in his legs. Then there was nothing, no sensation in his lower body. He tried to turn, tried to twist, but succeeded only in throwing himself off balance and out of the wagon, narrowly missing becoming ensnared in the tack. In contrast to the loss of feeling in his lower extremities, the fruit monger could feel every pebble in the roadway that was impressed into his face, absorbed the shock, then the nausea as his nose was smashed to the ground below his limp body. He struggled to breathe as the roadway shook, his stunned miind a jumble of questions, but one overriding instinct warning him to remain still and feign death. He could hear the soldiers approach as well, a great thud-ding sound that mixed with the terrified pounding of his heart. He kept his eyes closed and tried not to move as the horsemen came nearer. It did not occur to him to beg sanctuary in the name of the Lord Cymrian, or to protest to a regiment that served a peaceable ruler for attacking a fruit merchant who was minding his own business. Velt was too much in shock to wonder anything but why this was happening to him. He continued to breathe shallowly, inhaling snowy dirt, as the cohort came upon him. Velt prayed that whatever end was about to come would be quick. By happenchance he had been at the Navarne winter carnival four years before and had survived a grisly assault by the soldiers of Sorbold on that festival, had hidden with his wife and children behind the keep’s wall while the carnage ensued over what seemed like hours. When it was over, he had joined those giving aid to the bloody victims lying in the pink snow, and witnessed many long agonies that ended in shuddering death. From that moment on Velt had prayed for a quick end when the time came. It appeared that time was upon him. He gritted his teeth as the horses’ hooves spattered him with gravel. He waited for them to stop, but the soldiers rode on as if oblivious to him. Finally, as the thunderous noise began to dim, Velt grew brave and opened one eye a crack. The cohort was almost out of sight, but he could see that the horses were gray mountain horses, rather than the standard bays and chestnuts most often seen in this part of the lowlands, or the roans preferred by the Lirin to the west. Freezing as his body was, Velt’s heart was suddenly colder. The last time he had seen such horses they were under the soldiers of Sorbold who were assaulting the winter carnival. The extremities of his body were going numb, and Velt’s mind was following. As the fog closed in, he looked up at the wagon looming above him. Could’ve at least taken the apples, he thought before the darkness took him. They’ll be withered and frozen by the time anyone finds them. As will I.