The Assassin King (3 page)

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 pleasur-able. 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.”

Near the border of the provinces of Navarne and Bethany

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 dis-tance 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 noth-ing 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, trans-mitting 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 w onder 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.

Haguefort, Navarne

Gwydion Navarne was pacing the thick carpet outside the Great Hall, awaiting his turn to be called into the room. That this was his first council since becoming fully invested as duke on his seventeenth birthday a few months before weighed heavily on his mind as he strode up and down upon the heavy fibers woven into a tapestry that told the history of his family. With each step he unconsciously traced the lineage of the tuatha Navarne, from its Cymrian progenitor, a First-Generationer named Hague who had been Lord Gwylliam the Visionary's best friend, to the ascendancy of his own late father. Stephen Navarne, who in his youth had been the best friend of Ashe, the current Lord Cymrian, Gwydion's own namesake, godfather, and guardian. The rich colors of the plaite threads—forest-green and crimson, deep blue, royal purrple and gold—told a melancholy story that was fitting in its mood. Over and over as he walked in circles he silently repeated what he had seen in the harbors and outposts of Sorbold, the great nation of threatening mountains and windswept deserts to the south of Roland, struggling to keep the facts and figures straight in his mind.

Seventy-five three-masted cutters, he thought to himself running down his list again in anticipation of the discussion that would sooner or later come about. Sixty three-masted schooners, at least four score heavy barges, all in the south-western port of Ghant, all in the course of one day's time. All carrying slaves, thousands of them, perhaps the contents of ten or more entire villages, probably bound for the salt mines of Nicosi or the sweltering ironworks of Keltar. Gwydion had been unable to fully quell the racing of his heart since the moment he had witnessed the unloading of the human cargo a few weeks before. Compassion and outrage at the sight had quickly been joined by fear; a little sleepy harbor town teeming with soldiers and longshoremen, mountain guards and human chattel, had been enough to convince his companion that the war for which Sorbold was preparing would be greater in scope than anything the Known World had ever seen. Given that his companion at that moment had been Anborn ap Gwylliam, the Lord Marshal of the first Cymrian empire and perhaps the greatest military mind that had ever existed on the Middle Continent, Gwydion had been quickly and nau-seatingly convinced, especially since Anborn had engineered the previous war to be described as such. The heavy carpet beneath his feet bulged up into a ridge from where he had unconsciously worn a groove. Gwydion smoothed it down with his feet, pushing the bump to the edges, arriving at the fringe at the same moment that the doors to the Great Hall banged open with urgency.