Fool's Quest - Страница 64

“No!” Chade forbade me breathlessly. “My kill.” Never before had my old mentor sounded so much like my wolf. I took a respectful two steps back and without remorse dispatched the fourth guardsman and then went to the captain’s aid.

He was dying and he knew it. I didn’t try to move him. I went down on my knees and leaned on my hand to look in his face. He could barely focus on me. He tried to lick his lips, then said, “Not traitor. Not me. Not the rest of my boys. My Rousters.”

I thought he was finished. “I’ll tell Lord Chade,” I assured him.

“That son of a mangy bitch,” he said, anger lending him strength. “Leave their bodies … on the gibbet. That dung-eating bastard Crafty. Led them astray. My boys. Mine.”

“The others won’t be punished,” I promised him, but knew I lied. The reputation of the Rousters, never sterling, would be dirtied. No one would want to join that guard company, and the other guardsmen would avoid them at table. But it was what I could say, and he closed his eyes and let go of life.

I went back to Chade. He knelt by Crafty. The man was not dead. He was unconscious from being choked, and Chade was hamstringing him. He’d pushed the man facedown, pulled up the legs of his trousers, and cut the big tendons behind his knees. As I watched, he trussed the man’s wrists behind his back with a length of cord he materialized from his sleeve. Then with a grunt, he rolled Crafty onto his back. With those tendons cut, Crafty wasn’t going to stand, run, or fight. Chade was pale and breathing hard as he settled back on his haunches. I didn’t tell him to finish the man or ask him his intent. Assassins have a code of their own. Bee was at stake as well as Shun, and if this man’s attempt on us had to do with her abduction, then whatever we had to do to extract his information was acceptable.

Crafty was drawing deeper breaths, a scratchy sound. His eyelids fluttered, then opened. He gasped loudly and then looked up at us, me standing and Chade kneeling beside him with a bloody knife. Chade didn’t wait for him to speak. He set his knife to the hollow of the man’s throat.

“Who paid you? How much? What was your mission?” Chade spoke the words as if he were counting aloud.

Crafty didn’t answer immediately. I observed the standing stone. My roan stood at a distance, watching me closely. The other horses had bunched together, confused and taking comfort in her company. I suspect Chade did something with his knife because Crafty gasped high. I muffled my Wit so as not to share what he felt. I heard him struggle and then demand, “What did you do to my legs, you bastard?”

Chade spoke again. “Who paid you? How much? What was your mission?”

“Don’t know his name! He wouldn’t say!” The man was breathless with pain. “What did you do to my legs?” He tried to sit up, but Chade pushed him roughly back. I eyed the old man critically. He was still bleeding, the red melting the snow beside him. Soon, I’d have to intervene, if only to bandage him.

“What did he tell you to do? How much did he offer you to do it?”

“Kill you. Five gold for me, and two for any man who helped. He came to us in a tavern in Buckkeep. Actually, he came to the captain, but he cursed him and said no. Is he dead? Captain Stout?”

I couldn’t tell if it was fear or regret in his voice.

“Only me?” Chade asked him.

“Kill you. Kill you slow if we could, but kill you and bring back your hand. To prove it.”

“When?” I interrupted Chade’s questioning. “When did you get this job?”

He rolled his eyes to look at me. “In Buckkeep. Before we left. Right after we got word that we were leaving, that we would miss Winterfest to come out here. No one was happy about that.”

I spoke. “It’s not connected, Chade. Whoever bribed them had no way of knowing you’d be here: He’d have been hoping they could somehow kill you at Buckkeep. Bee and Shun were taken the same day they were bribed. And why send these traitors if they already had a force on its way here? It’s two different things. Kill him and let me see to your side.”

Chade shot me a look that silenced me. “What did he look like, the man who offered the money?”

“My legs hurt so bad, I can’t think. I want a healer before I talk any more. Sweet Eda!” He lifted his head a short way and then let it fall back in the snow. “You killed everyone? All four of them?”

“What did he look like?” Chade was relentless. The man was bleeding to death. Chade and I knew it, but Crafty seemed unaware of it.

“A tall man, but not thin. Tall, but with a stomach like a barrel. Just a Buckman, like any other. I don’t know. It was an easy deal. Bring the hand with your ring on it, the innkeeper at the Bawdy Trout gives us the money. When you showed up, it was like the gods handed you to us. So damned easy. If the captain had said yes, you’d be a dead man, and him, too.”

“Tell me about his teeth.”

“I’m not saying nothing more until you take me to a healer. I’m getting cold, so cold. What did you do to my legs?”

Chade set the tip of his knife to the man’s nostril. “Talk to me, or I cut your nose,” he said coldly. He inserted the blade up the man’s nostril until he felt the edge of it.

Crafty’s eyes went very wide. “His tooth, one of the front ones, was gray. Is that what you meant?

Chade nodded to himself. “Did he mention a girl?”

“The girl you stole. Yah. Said if we found her with you, we could have her. Or if we could make you tell us where she was. Said she’d make a good whore. Aaaaah!”

The nose is sensitive. Very sensitive. Chade had always maintained it was as good a target for torment as a man’s genitals—or better. Not only is there pain, but disfiguring a man’s face will affect him for the rest of his life. Crafty was writhing in the snow, one of his nostrils sliced open and bleeding profusely. He began to weep. Abruptly, I wanted this to be over.

“He said it.” The blood and the pain of his sliced nose thickened his voice. “Not me. And no one even saw the girl, so no one did her. Eda, help me!” He called on the goddess, as I doubted he’d ever done before, and snorted wildly, spraying blood.

I was fairly certain this was all about Shun, and Chade’s vendetta with her stepfather, but I would be certain. “Did he mention a little girl?” I demanded of him. “A child?”

He halted his thrashing and stared up at me. “A little girl? No. Gods, we’re not monsters!”

“Liar,” Chade said. Crafty had thrashed away from him. Chade hitched himself closer, and very slowly, almost gently, drew his blade across the man’s throat. Crafty’s eyes flew wide open in the sudden knowledge that he was dead. His mouth worked but the sounds were not words. Cutting a man’s throat isn’t an instant death for him, but it’s a certain one. Chade knew that. So did Crafty. He was still moving when Chade said to me, “Give me a hand up.”

I held my hand out to him. “All of that to confirm what you already knew?”

“I got a bit extra. The name of the inn.” He took my hand. His was slippery with blood. I stooped, slid my arm around him, and pulled him upright. He grunted with pain as he came to his feet. “It wasn’t about information, Fitz. It was payback. For Captain Stout. Treachery deserves great pain.” He made a bad sound. I stood very still until he could catch his breath. “And daring to think he could try to kill me.”

My bared hand felt the warmth of the blood on his clothing. “I’ll sit you down and catch a horse. There’s a healer in—”

“The stone,” Chade said decisively. “Better healers in Buckkeep.”

Nettle once compared having the Skill to having a sense of smell. One does not mean to intrude on people any more than one wants to sniff someone, but in proximity, you sense the smell of someone. Or Skill tells you of his pain. In this case, the Wit that told me Chade was a creature in desperate need of healing. And he was right. The best healers would be in Buckkeep. I reached out to Nettle. We were attacked. Chade is injured. Coming through the stones in a few moments. Please have a healer ready to tend him. He’s taken a sword wound to his side.

We knew of the attack. And then you both blocked us out! What is going on? Were they Bee’s kidnappers? Have you found her, is she safe? Anger and frantic questions that I had no time for.

No Bee. We are coming through the stones. Our attackers are dead. I’ll explain when I get there.

This time the block I threw up against the Skill was deliberate. King Verity had always complained that whenever I became fully engaged in battle or any dangerous activity, I blocked my Skill. Evidently Chade did the same. Interesting. But not as compelling as the blood that had now soaked my hand and sleeve, nor my own blood that was still dripping down my brow and gumming up my eyes.

Master?

Go back to where you had oats today. Get the others to follow you if you can. But go back and be safe there.

Go with you.

No.

I closed my Wit to her. The roan was a beautiful horse, shimmering with spirit and intelligence. She was reaching for me strongly, seeking a bond I could not allow. I had no time to be that important to any creature, not until I had regained my little girl. And perhaps not then. I sensed the horse’s confusion and disappointment. I could not let it touch my heart. Nothing could touch my heart until Bee was safe again.

“The stone,” I told Chade. He nodded, saving his breath. The snow was deep and the path to the stone only partially broken. I waded side-on in the deep snow, letting Chade benefit from the path I made. He moved his legs, but I was taking most of his weight. My shoulder reminded me of the slice on the tip of it. We reached the stone with Chade leaning heavily on me. “Catch your breath for a minute,” I suggested. He managed to shake his head.