Read The Queen of Thieves: The Line of Kings Trilogy Book Three Online
Authors: Craig R. Saunders,Craig Saunders
People mourned in many different
ways, thought Asram. He had seen them all. Some raged and smashed the things
they held dear. Some removed all trace of those they had lost so that they
would not be reminded any more than they must. People swore revenge on killers
and accidents and disease and even the Gods.
Rena did none of
this. She turned to stone.
Asram could only
imagine her terrible pain. She had lost her husband and now her mother. She
only had eyes for her babe on the journey north, and few words for Asram.
But he knew many ways
to grieve, and perhaps the worst was to turn the pain inside. Asram was perhaps
not a smart man, but he was wise enough in the ways of life and death. He tried
to draw her out, to lance the wounds and let her grieve in the open, but she
was cold toward him, as cold as the snow that settled upon their shoulders on
the long walk.
Winter was in full
bluster as they travelled. When the snows did not fall, the days were cold
enough to frost Asram's beard.
The babe, for his
part, did not complain at the cold. Perhaps he was the best off of the three of
them, swaddled most of the day at Rena's breast. He was a good child - quiet,
perhaps...maybe too quiet. Maybe even at such a young age the child understood
tragedy. Asram did not know. Who knew what babes thought?
The rode was long and
hard on a grieving mother and a toddling child. In the heart of winter,
struggling on through fresh snowfall. They could have rode, but witches did not
ride. Witches walked. Asram knew this. Some things were set in stone. Dragons
breathed fire. Hath'Ku'Atches lived in lightning. A witch did not ride.
Witches were a
strange breed, as far as Asram could gather. He couldn't say he'd known that
many. The two that he did know - Rena and The Queen, too...although he wasn't too
sure
what
the Queen was...did not go in for showy displays of power. And
yet, the Queen aside, for she did seem somehow apart, Rena was stoic, never
complaining...Asram thought perhaps she had some inner strength. He knew she
would need to be strong on the journey north. It was a long road, and they were
beset by the weather and bandits and assassins, too.
Asram watched the
young woman from the corner of his blue, twinkling eyes when he could. Other
times he scanned the road they travelled - the wilds, he supposed. He dare not
take her along the road for fear of unknown travellers and more assassins that
he was sure would be hunting them. An enemy as mighty as the Hierarchy, whom he
knew little of, but enough to feel a healthy dose of fear, would surely have
more than a few assassins at their beck and call.
Avoiding the road was
wise, perhaps, stupid, perhaps, because these were no normal assassins. Asram
and Rena soon discovered their folly on the long path through the fields and
across the streams toward Haven and respite from the road. They found out
their assumptions about safety off the road were wrong as they came to a stream
with a man standing the other side. But like the assassins before, he was no
man. He was a Hierarch.
*
The Hierarch facing them wore a
short bow across his back and a sword at his hip. He also wore a malicious grin
across his alien face, tempered with surprise - he was as shocked to find Rena
and Asram across the stream as they were to find another Hierarch on Sturma.
And one out of the way in the wilds, as though hunting far and wide...yet how
could he have found them?
Questions for another
day. Another moment.
For Asram, time
slowed. A man of his age should not be able to move so fast, but Asram was
accustomed to living. It was a habit hard learned.
His initial surprise
lasted but a moment.
With a grunt, Asram
was moving. Despite Asram's speed and skills, the Hierarch was faster still
than Asram, but the alien creature had three targets and chose the wrong one. He
should have shot down Asram first, because Asram was the sole threat. But then,
maybe he just wasn't very good with the bow. Instead of taking Asram Fell
cleanly with his arrow and allowing him time to murder the child and his mother,
his arrow passed the warrior's ear and took Rena in the shoulder.
Asram had his bow in
hand. An arrow, nocked. Loosed, and the arrow took the Hierarch through the
creature's left hand. The Hierarch dropped his own bow. He could do nothing
else, his left hand now useless.
Asram did not spare a
thought for where the Hierarch's first arrow had gone, though in some distant
part of him he'd heard Rena's grunt of pain. Time enough for worry later.
Unlike the Hierarch, the warrior knew his priorities. His next arrow thudded
into the Hierarch's knee, felling him. The assassin, now with two arrows
jutting from his flesh, still did not cry out in pain.
Asram wasted no time.
He ran, splashing through the stream, knife in one hand and bow still clenched
tight in the other. Just because he did not see another threat in the instant
he scanned the wilds, did not mean that further threat was not present.
Dripping water from
his deerskin trousers, Asram knelt above the Hierarch and placed the blade in
his left hand at the assassin's throat.
'Wait!' shouted Rena.
Her voice was strained from the pain of an arrow in her shoulder. The arrow had
missed the baby's head by mere inches. Asram increased the pressure with his
blade. Maybe her heard her. Maybe he didn't. He fully intended to slit the
assassin's throat, and then he would give it no more thought.
'Asram, do not kill
that man!' she commanded as he finally flicked a glance in her direction.
He gave a brief nod.
He put all of his weight on the Hierarch, holding him down. The Hierarch spat
at Asram and laughed, but Asram did not fall for the ruse. Had he shifted his
weight to wipe off the vile fluid, the assassin would have bucked him off. Asram
knew plenty of tricks himself. He grinned back at the assassin while Rena waded
across the stream toward them.
Blood ran over Tarn's
exposed face. Rena did not notice, so intent on reaching the Hierarch was she.
When she stood before him, Asram noted that she had a glazed look in her eye.
He did not understand for a moment. Then he realised. It was a dull, deadened
kind of hatred that swam behind her eyes, like oil on water.
'Give me your knife,'
she told Asram. Asram felt her cold, but she was his master on the journey, and
he could not deny her.
'Tell me how many
hunt us,' she said, leaning over the prostrate creature.
It laughed again, a
sickening kind of laugh that had naught to do with humour. 'I will tell you
nothing,' it said. 'You cannot threaten me.'
'You will tell me
nothing?' she said.
'Nothing. Never. My
master is more fearful than some chit of a mother with a babe on her tit.'
'Then what use are
you to me?' she said, and drew the dagger across the creature's throat. Blood
sprayed over Asram and Rena and the child, too.
Bathed in blood
,
thought Fell, but did not say anything. He merely wiped the blood and spit from
his face, and pushed himself free of the dead thing on the ground.
Cold,
thought
Asram,
cold.
But then he would have done exactly the same thing,
wouldn't he? The thought suddenly made him look at her in a new light. Perhaps
she wasn't merely cold. Perhaps she was just becoming a survivor. Like him.
It was a harsh, hard
thought. It was a harsh world, though, wasn't it? Was she any less or more of a
murderer than him?
He found himself
wondering.
Together, they washed
in the stream. If Asram Fell had ever thought Rena was not hard enough for the
road, he thought her weaker than himself no longer. She was capable of
fighting, perhaps, not just magic. A partner on the road, maybe, rather than a
simple charge and liege lady to order him about.
Maybe they could use
each other. It would, he thought, certainly make the road easier.
He wondered, and
looked at the young witch in a new light.
*
He already knew, of course, that
she was a hard woman, but she was so young to be so harsh, so accomplished a
murderer. For he had no doubt that what she had just done was murder.
The Hierarch would
have had to die,
he reminded himself.
Did it make any
difference how he died, or by whose hand?
Asram wasn't sure why
he felt so uneasy about the way that the young girl had killed the creature.
Ultimately, given the chance, the Hierarch would have happily tortured them
all, babe, too. Of that Asram had no doubt.
He had no choice but
to set aside his thoughts. It was a matter for another day, he told himself.
Instead of pointless introspection he set about the business of a battle done -
tending the wounded.
He scanned the
countryside constantly while he and Rena washed the blood from themselves in
the freezing stream water. He watched the land with hunter's eyes, well tuned
to the subtleties of the bush. He found nothing untoward. Assured that they
were safe for the time being, he turned his full attention back to his charges.
The girl was bleeding
and the Hierarch's arrow jutted from her left shoulder. Blood flowed freely
down her dress and on the sling and babe, too. The babe she had set in the
snow. He wore simple fur clothes, tiny things for a winter babe. While Asram
tended Rena the child crawled around in the snows. Whenever his hands hit the
snow he giggled.
A son of a northman,
thought Asram with a grim smile.
The King, playing in
the snow. He almost laughed, but he had business and the child was not it, not
right now. Rena was still bleeding, though the arrow itself was stopping the
worst of it. When he removed the arrow she would bled more.
'Wait a moment,' he
told her. 'We'll get the arrow out. Got to be done now,' he said, with what he
hoped was a reassuring smile, though he was sure he still had a fair amount of
blood in his beard.
He left Rena for a
moment to take a look at the arrows that had spilled from the Hierarch's
quiver. The tips of the assassin's arrows were barbed. Asram took one arrow,
looked at it long and hard. He smelled it, then licked it, gingerly.
He detected no hint
of poison.
He was left two
choices - cut out the arrow, or push it through and snap off the point.
'My lady?' he asked,
turning back to Rena.
She seemed unaware of
what was going on. Breathing heavily, then, without warning, she pitched
forward. Asram managed to catch her before she fell onto the babe.
He laid her down. In
truth, it was remarkable that she had stayed on her feet for so long. Many a
man was laid low by lesser wounds, and the arrow was deep within the meat of
the girl witch.
At least this way his
work would be easier. He checked her eyes, which were unresponsive, then with a
grunt of effort shoved the arrow through her dress and coat both, out the other
side.
That woke her up just
fine.
*
The following days were harder on
Asram, perhaps, than Rena.
They paused by a
stream to take some chill water from beneath the ice forming above. Rena held
the babe the whole time. The babe bore his confinement without complaint.
She would not allow
Asram to handle the baby unless she absolutely had to, although doing so
obviously pained her. It was as though the closeness of the arrow to the babe,
the brush with death, had hardened her still more.
He did not know what
to do to mend the breach between them. Ordinarily he would not have cared, one
way of the other. Nothing had caused this coolness that she showed him, other
than grief. In no way had he hurt her - he'd saved her life twice, to date -
and yet she would barely speak to him. Rena stared off into the distance, as if
deep in thought. There were deep dark pits under her eyes, that looked almost
black. Her gaze, on the horizon, was largely unwavering. There was something
wrong with Rena, and as he thought back to those days, watching her wash her
hair, Asram wondered if perhaps she was broken, somehow.
He remembered a man
he had served with in border patrols, long ago, where he'd learned many of the
skills he used in his current calling.
The Draymar, Sturma's
aggressive neighbours, had captured the man. Tortured him. They took all the
tips of his fingers and thumbs, leaving him nearly crippled, but not quite. The
man had turned into a savage. That man - Asram misremembered his name - had
begun to collect thing...collect parts of his Drayman foes.
Asram himself had
left the borders behind and now served Queen and King...in name, perhaps, if
not in marriage. He did not know what had become of the man with a penchant for
body parts. He hoped he was dead. If he'd been an animal, someone would have
put him down. Maybe someone had.
Still, the man with
the mutilated fingers wasn't the worst man he'd ever served with. War,
violence, death - all served to mutilate a man's mind, if not his body.
Damn,
he
thought.
Maudlin today.
Rena's mood was seeping into his bones, like the
constant cold.
He didn't think the
woman Rena a savage. Or did he?
'Rena,' he said to
her back. 'We need to get moving.'
'I'm ready,' she
replied, no warmth in her voice. She turned and picked the babe up, wincing
from the pain in her wounded shoulder, but she did not complain.
Asram thought to
offer her aid, once again, but knew she would rebuff him.
He sighed, low, so
she would not hear.
'Then on,' he said.
'We'll be at Haven in a week at most. Best get going. It's a long road yet.'
All she did was nod,
and follow in his footsteps.
*