Fools Quest, Page 53

  Dawn grew stronger and I pushed Fleeter to a canter. The trail became a road as the morning passed. I rode through a small village without pause and on, past smallholdings and grain fields that dreamed of furrows beneath gently mounded snow. We trotted, we cantered, we trotted. Then more forest. Over a bridge we went, and now passed occasional travelers: a tinker with his painted wagon full of knives and scissors, a farmer and her sons riding mules and leading pack animals laden with earthy-smelling sacks of potatoes, and a young woman who scowled at me when I bid her “Good afternoon. ”

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  Dark thoughts of what Bee was enduring, how Dutiful would react to my disobedience, how angry Riddle would be, and Nettle on his behalf, besieged me. I tried to push them down. Elfbark brought sad memories to the front of my mind and rebuked me for stupidity and failures of all sorts. And in the next moment, the carris seed would make me believe I was invulnerable, and I would fantasize about killing all twenty Chalcedeans and sing aloud to Fleeter as we traveled on.

  Calm down. Caution. I could feel my heart beating in my chest, almost hear it in my ears.

  More forest. Trot, canter, trot. I stopped at a stream to let her water. How tired are you?

  Not at all.

  I have need of speed. You will let me know if you tire?

  I am Fleeter. I do not tire before my rider does.

  You will. And you must let me know.

  She snorted, and as soon as I was back in the saddle she pranced a few steps. I laughed and gave her a free head. For a short way she galloped, and then she dropped back into her easy, rocking canter.

  I entered a town of more substance, with an inn and a hostelry and three taverns. Folk were up and about now. On the outskirts I passed a rare shrine to Eda. The goddess slumbered under a mantle of white snow, her hands open on her lap. Someone had brushed her hands clean and filled them with millet. Small birds perched on her fingers and thumbs. And on we went, and the road became one of the king’s highways. I did not pause as I reviewed my mental map. This road went directly to Salter’s Deep. It was wide and open and direct, the shortest route.

  If I were fleeing the Six Duchies with captives and a troop of Chalcedean mercenaries, it was the last route I would take. The Fool’s words came back to me. He had insisted I would not be able to find them, that the only way to regain my daughter was to go directly to where they must be taking her. I took another pinch of the carris seed, crushed it between my teeth, and rode on. It was sweet in my mouth, a tangy, heady taste, and in a moment I felt the surge of both energy and clarity it always gave.

  The likeliest unlikeliest, the likeliest unlikeliest drummed in my head, the words keeping rhythm with Fleeter’s hooves. I could continue on this highway all the way to Salter’s Deep. If I saw nothing along the way, then I could join the Ringhill Guard and wait near the captured ship. Or once there I could work my way back along a less used route and hope to be lucky. Or investigate some of the back roads. I rode on. I passed one diverging road. The next one, I decided. I’d take the next one and follow it.

  I heard a sudden caw overhead. I looked up and saw a crow, wings spread, sliding down the sky toward me. Suddenly it was Motley and I braced myself for her to land. Instead she swept past me in a wide circle. “Red snow!” she called suddenly and clearly to me. “Red snow!”

  I watched her as she circled again and then veered away. I pulled Fleeter in. What did she mean? Did she want me to follow her? There was no road, only an open field and beyond it a sparse wood of birch and a few evergreens that soon thickened into true forest. I watched her as she glided away, then tilted her wings and beat them hard to come back to me. I stood in my stirrups. “Motley!” I called and offered her my forearm. Instead, she swept past me so low that Fleeter shied from her passage.

  “Stupid!” the crow shouted at me. “Stupid Fitz! Red snow. Red snow!”

  I reined Fleeter away from the road. We follow her, I told the horse.

  I don’t like her.

  We follow her, I insisted, and Fleeter conceded her will to mine. It was not pleasant for her. We left the packed and level road, pushed through a prickly hedgerow, and entered the farmer’s field. The snow here was untrodden, and the frozen ground uneven beneath the windblown snow. Our pace inevitably slowed just as I wished that we could gallop. But a lame horse would be even slower. I tried to contain my impatience.

  The crow flew away from me, into the shelter of the trees. We moved steadily toward where she had vanished. A short time later she looped back to us, then circled away again. This time she seemed content that we were following her and called no insults.

  And there we intersected a trail: not a road, merely an open space that left the field and wound into the scant forest. Perhaps a woodcutter had made it. It could be a cattle-track that led to water. I looked back along it. Had it been used recently? It was hard to say. Were there deeper hollows under the blown and polished snow? We turned and followed it.

  When we reached the outskirts of the birch forest, I saw what I could not have seen from the road. The white horse had seemed but another mound of snow in the distance. I did not see the fallen rider until I was almost beside the fur-clad body. And only the crow, looking down from above, could have seen the trail of melted red-and-pink snow that led back into the forest.

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  The horse was clearly dead, its eyes open and frost outlining the whiskers on its muzzle and coating its out-thrust tongue. Droplets of blood had frozen around its mouth. An arrow stood out of its chest, just behind its foreleg. A good lung shot but not one that had penetrated both lungs. I knew that if I cut the animal open, I would find its body cavity full of blood. There was no saddle on the horse, only a halter. The rider had fled in haste, perhaps. I pulled in Fleeter despite her distaste for the scene and dismounted. The body that lay beyond the horse was too large to be Bee, I told myself as I floundered through the snow toward it. The hair that showed beneath the white fur cap was the right color, but it could not be Bee, it could not, and when I reached her and turned her over, it was not. The pale youngster I revealed was as dead as her horse. The front of her furs was scarlet. Probably an arrow, one that had gone right through her. And she was a White or at least a part-White. She had lived for a short time after she’d fallen facedown in the snow. Frost had formed heavily around her mouth from her last breaths, and her cloudy blue eyes looked at me through ice. I let her fall back into the snow.

  I could not get my breath for the shuddering of my heart. “Bee. Where are you?” My words were not even a whisper for I had no air to push them. I wanted to run back down the blood-trail shouting her name. I wanted to mount Fleeter and gallop there as swiftly as possible. I wanted to use my Skill to scream to the sky that I needed help, that I needed everyone in the Six Duchies to come and help me save my child, but I forced myself to stand, sweating and trembling, and do nothing until that fit of reckless urgency had passed. Then I went to my horse.

  But as I lifted my foot for the stirrup, Fleeter sank to her front knees. Tired. So tired. She shuddered down, her hind legs folding under her. So tired.

  Fleeter! Dismay choked me. I should never have trusted her to know when she was wearied. Carris seed filled one with energy, until it left the user exhausted. Don’t lie down in the snow. Up. Up, my girl. Come on. Come on.

  She rolled her eyes at me and for a moment I feared she would drop her head. Then with a shudder and a heave, she stood. I led her slowly from the trail to a stand of evergreens. Under them, the snow was shallower. Stay here and rest. I will be back.

  You are leaving me here?

  I must. But only for a time. I’ll be back for you.

  I don’t understand.

  Just rest. I’ll be back. Stay here. Please. Then I closed my mind to her. I’d never ridden a horse to exhaustion. The shame I felt was overwhelming. And useless. I was doing what I had to do. I took
from my saddle-packs items that I thought I might need. I shut my heart to Bee. I did not recall Molly or wonder what she would have said, thought, or done. I put the Fool and all his warnings and advice from my mind, and set aside the man that Burrich had hoped I would become. I cut Holder Badgerlock from my heart and banished Prince FitzChivalry to the shadows where he had lived for so many years. I squared my shoulders and closed my heart.

  There was another person in the depths of me. Chade’s boy. I took a breath and summoned those memories. I recalled in full that which Chade had shaped me to be. I was an assassin with a mission. I would kill them all, as effectively and efficiently as possible, without remorse or emotion. This was a task to do coldly and perfectly. As I had killed the Bridgemore twins when I was fourteen, as I had killed Hoofer Webling when I was fifteen. I could not remember the name of the innkeeper I had poisoned. Knowing his name had not been part of that task.

  I thought of all the assignments I had banished from my thoughts as soon as they were accomplished, the quiet work I had never allowed to be a part of my memories or image of myself. I summoned them back now and allowed them in. I recalled now the times I had followed Chade through darkness, or acted alone at his behest. Once Chade had cautioned me that assassins such as we were did not ask one another about their kills, did not flaunt them or record them. I recalled not scores, but dozens of assignments. King Shrewd had not been a callous or murderous king. Chade and I had been his weapons of last resort, the solution applied when all others had failed. The twins had been rapists and unusually cruel ones. Twice they had stood before his judgment throne, received punishment, and promised repentance. But their father was unable or unwilling to keep them in check, and so my king had sent me out, reluctantly, as he might send a huntsman to put down mad dogs. I never knew what Hoofer had done, or why the innkeeper had to die. I had been given a task and I did it, silently and well, without judgment, and then walked away, setting all thoughts about them aside.

  Assassins did not share those grim little triumphs. But we kept them, and I did not doubt that Chade sometimes did as I did now. I thought I knew now why he had cautioned me to set those memories aside. When you are fourteen and you cut the throat of a man of twenty-three, it seems a contest between equals. But two score and some years later, when a man looks back, he sees a boy killing a youngster who was foolish enough to get drunk in the wrong tavern and take a dark pathway home. I told myself that such insights did not destroy the finesse of what I had done. As I told my horse to stand and stay, as I pulled my hood up and laced my sleeves tight to my forearms, I counted my kills and recalled that this was something I could truly do well. This was, as the Fool had reminded me, something I was good at.

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  I did not walk back over the blood-trail the girl and the horse had left. I moved through the trees, keeping the wallowed and red-spattered trail in sight, but never coming too close to it. I let my mind consider only exactly what I knew. This girl was part of the force that had taken Bee. She and the horse had been shot, most likely as they fled in haste. They had been dead long enough for frost to form. I felt a small lift of my heart. One less person to confront, one less person to kill. Perhaps the Ringhill Guard had already engaged with the Chalcedeans. The quiet of the forest told me that battle was over. Perhaps Bee and Shine were already safe. I regretted the elfbark now. Something had transpired, and Dutiful would know of it by Skill or messenger bird. If I were not deadened to the Skill, doubtless I’d know, too. I’d outfoxed myself. I had one choice. Follow the blood-trail back. I scowled as I reflected that a lung-shot animal does not often run far. Either the battle was over and all combatants had departed the scene, or something was very odd.

  Until I knew, I would be cautious. I moved quietly and irregularly along the trail. The eye is drawn to motion, especially repeated motion. I stepped softly, I paused, I waited. I breathed quietly, taking in air through my nose, trying to scent smoke or other signs of a camp. I heard the distant caw of a crow. Another. Then I saw her, flying low through the forest. Motley spotted me almost instantly and alighted on a tree branch over my head. I fervently hoped she would not betray me as I continued my measured stalk along the horse’s trail.

  I heard soft wind in the trees, the occasional fall of snow from branches and distant birdcalls. And then the normal hush of a forest in winter was cracked by more bird noises. The hoarse croak of a disturbed raven, followed by the squawking of crows. My own crow now landed on my shoulder as lightly as a friend’s hand. “Red snow,” she said again, but quietly. “Carrion. ”

  I thought I knew what I would find, but I did not drop my caution. Instead I moved on. I crossed tracks of other horses. They had plowed through the snow, running between trees and in some places crashing through brush. At least one of them had been bleeding. I did not turn aside for any of them. My first goal was to find where the escaping animals had come from, and perhaps what they had been fleeing. I continued my ghosting walk.

  When I came to the edge of what had been their campsite, I stood still. I looked carefully at everything I could see before I moved again. I studied the fallen tents and the burnt-out fires. There were bodies, some in soldier’s harness and some in white furs. The crows and three ravens that had come to clean the bones made no difference between them. A busy fox looked up, studied my stillness for a time, and then went back to tugging at a man’s hand, trying to pull a meaty forearm free. Two crows on the corpse’s belly made small protests as the fox’s efforts disturbed their probing beaks. The softer tissue of the man’s face was already gone. The merciful cold kept the stench of death at bay. I judged at least a dayhad passed since this carnage had been wrought.

  Unlikely to be the Ringhill Guard. The timing was off, and they would have burned the bodies. Who, then? Oh, Bee.

  Pacing slowly, the crow still on my shoulder, I circled the camp. Three sleighs, incongruously gaudy and elaborate, had been deserted. Frost dimmed their scarlet sides. I kept a mental tally of the bodies. Four in white. Five. Six soldiers. Seven. Eight soldiers. Six Whites. I examined the disappointment welling in me. I’d wanted to kill them myself.

  I saw no sign of a body of Bee’s size, no corpse with Shine’s lush hair. I circled the entire camp. Nine dead soldiers. Eleven dead Whites. The dead Whites were scattered. Six of the dead mercenaries were in pairs, as if they had fought and killed each other. I scowled. This was definitely not the work of the Ringhill Guard. I moved on. Three dead horses, a white one and two brown ones. Two white tents collapsed on themselves. Three smaller tents. Three brown horses on a picket line. One lifted his head and watched me. I lofted the crow from my shoulder. “Go quietly,” I told her, and she did. The horse’s eyes followed the bird’s flight as I slipped behind one of the white tents.

  I approached the first white tent from behind. My Wit told me that it held no living creature. Crouching, I used my knife to slice an opening. Inside, I saw tousled blankets and sleeping furs. And a body. She was lying on her back, her spread legs making plain her fate. Her hair looked gray in the dimness. Not Shine. Twelve dead Whites. Her throat had been cut; black blood matted her long pale hair. Something had gone badly wrong in this camp. And Bee had been in the midst of it. I withdrew and went to the next white tent.

  This one had not fallen as badly. Again, I quested toward it and sensed no life within it. My knife made a purring sound as it sliced the canvas. I cut a cross in the fabric and peeled it wide to let in light. No one. Only empty blankets and furs. A waterskin. Someone’s comb, a heavy sock, a discarded hat. A scent. Not Bee’s. Bee had very little scent. No, this was Shine’s, a fading trace of one of the heavy fragrances she favored. Sweat masked it, but there was enough to know that she had been there. I enlarged the slash and crept into the tent. The scent was strongest in the corner, and on the furs next to hers I caught the faintest whiff of Bee’s elusive scent. I picked up a blanket, held it to my face, and inhaled her. Bee. And the smel
l of sickness. My child was ill.

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  Captive. Ill. And gone. The coldhearted assassin in me warred with the panicked father. And suddenly they merged, and any doubts I had felt about what I could or must do to get Bee back vanished forever. Anything. That was what I could do to regain my child. Anything.

  I heard sounds outside the tent. I froze, breathing silently. Then I edged back out of the tent to where I could see the campsite. A Chalcedean soldier had just tumbled some pieces of firewood down next to the burnt-out campfire nearest one of the smaller tents. He was leaning on a sword. As I watched, he went down on one knee with a groan. His other leg, bandaged stiff, hampered him as he sank down to stir the ashes. He leaned forward to blow on them. After a moment, a tiny trickle of smoke rewarded him.

  He broke bits from the wood he had brought and fed his fire. When he bent forward to blow on it, his hair dangled down in a fat blond braid. He muttered a curse as he drew it away from the flame and tucked it into his hat.

  There was a sudden stirring from the other tent. An old man, his graying hair wild around the edges of his woolen hat, emerged. He moved stiffly. “You! Hogen! Make food for me. ”

  The man building the fire did not respond. It was not that he ignored the man. It was as if he had not heard him. Deafened somehow? What had happened here?

  The old man shouted, and his voice rose to an infuriated screech on the words, “Pay attention to me! Hogen! Cook up some hot food for me. Where are the others? Answer me!”