Royal Assassin by Robin Hobb
“The white ship!” I choked. Fear sent a shudder through me that was almost like pain.
“What?” Burrich asked, startled. It was the first word he had spoken to me that day.
“The white ship!” I repeated, and pointed a hand.
“What? Where? That? That’s a fog bank. Our ships are coming into the harbor over there. ”
I looked. He was right. A fog bank, melting in the morning sun even as I watched. My terror receded like the ghost of mocking laughter. But the day seemed suddenly chillier, and the sun that had briefly parted the storm clouds a weak and watery thing. An evil cast lingered on the day, like a bad smell.
“Split your forces and deploy them now,” Burrich said quietly. “We don’t want our ships to meet any resistance as they come into shore. Quickly, now. Fitz. You’re to go with the force that attacks the Red-Ships. Be there when the Rurisk beaches, and let those on board know what we’ve decided. As quickly as those Red-Ships are cleaned out, we shall want all fighters to join us in containing the Outislanders. I wish there was a way to get word to Duke Kelvar of what we’re doing. I suppose he’ll see, soon enough. Well, let’s get going. ”
There was some milling about, some conferring between Kerf and Foxglove, but in a surprisingly short time I found myself riding behind Foxglove with a contingent of warriors. I had my sword, but what I really missed was the ax I had become so comfortable with over the summer.
Nothing was as tidy as was planned. We encountered Outislanders in the wreckage of the town, long before we reached the beach. They were moving back toward their ships and were hampered with a coffle of prisoners. We attacked the Raiders. Some stood and fought, and some abandoned their prisoners and ran before our horses. Our troops were soon scattered throughout the still-smoldering buildings and debris-scattered streets of Neatbay. Some of our force stayed to cut the ropes on the prisoners and help them as best they could. Foxglove swore at the delay, for the Raiders that had fled would warn the ship guards. Swiftly she split our force, leaving a handful of soldiers to help the battered townsfolk. The smells of dead bodies and rain on charred timbers brought back my memories of Forge with a vividness that almost unmanned me. There were bodies everywhere, far more than we had expected to find. Somewhere I sensed a wolf prowling through the ruins, and took comfort from him.
Page 208
Foxglove cursed us all with surprising skill, and then organized those she kept with her into a wedge. We swept down on the Red-Ships in time to see one being launched into the retreating tide. There was little we could do about that, but we were in time to prevent a second ship from getting off. We killed those ones with surprising alacrity. There were not many, only a skeleton rowing crew. We even managed to kill them before they could slay most of their captives who lay bound on the thwarts of the ships. We suspected that the ship that got off had been similarly laden. And hence, I surmised to myself, not initially planning to engage the Rurisk or any of the ships that now converged on the one that had eluded us.
But the Red-Ships had been outward bound with hostages. To where? To a ghost ship that only I had glimpsed? Even to think of the white ship brought a shudder over me and a pressure in my head like the beginning of pain. Perhaps they had intended to drown their hostages, or to Forge them, however that was done. I was not in a position to give it great thought then, but I saved the knowledge for Chade. Each of the three remaining beached ships had a contingent of warriors, and they fought as desperately as Burrich had predicted they would. One ship was set afire by an overzealous archer, but the others were taken intact.
We had secured all the ships by the time the Rurisk was beached. There was time now to lift my head and to look out over Neatbay. No sign of the white ship. Perhaps it had been only a cloud bank. Behind the Rurisk came the Constance, and behind them a flotilla of fishing vessels and even a couple of merchant ships. Most of them had to anchor out in the shallow harbor, but the men aboard them were ferried swiftly ashore. The warship crews waited for their captains to hear word of what went on, but those from the fishing vessels and merchant ships swept past us and headed directly for the besieged Keep.
The trained crews from the warships soon over took them, and by the time we reached the outer walls of the Keep, there was an attitude of cooperation, if not any real organization. The prisoners we had freed were weak from lack of food and water, but recovered quickly and were indispensable in giving us intimate knowledge of the outer earthworks. By afternoon, our siege of the besiegers was in place. With difficulty, Burrich persuaded all involved that at least one of our warships should remain fully manned and on alert, in the water. His premonition was proven correct the next morning, when two more Red-Ships sailed around the northern point of the bay. The Rurisk ran them off, but they fled too easily for us to take any satisfaction in it. All knew they would simply find an undefended village to raid farther up the coast. Several of the fishing vessels belatedly gave chase, though there was little chance of them catching the oared vessels of the Raiders.
By the second day of waiting, we were beginning to be bored and uncomfortable. The weather had turned foul again. The hard bread was starting to taste of mold, the dried fish was no longer completely dry. To cheer us, Duke Kelvar had added the Buck flag of the Six Duchies to his own pennon flying over Bayguard to acknowledge us. But like us, he had chosen a waiting strategy. The Outislanders were penned. They had not attempted to break out past us, nor to advance closer to the Keep. All was still and waiting.
“You don’t listen to warnings. You never have. ” Burrich spoke quietly to me.
Night had fallen. It was the first time since our arrival that we had had more than a few moments together. He sat on a log, his injured leg stretched straight in front of him. I crouched by the fire, trying to warm my hands. We were outside a temporary shelter set up for the Queen, tending a very smoky fire. Burrich had wanted her to settle in one of the few intact buildings left in Neatbay, but she had refused, insisting on staying close to her warriors. Her guard came and went freely, in her shelter and at her fire. Burrich frowned over their familiarity, but also approved her loyalty. “Your father, too, was like that,” he observed suddenly as two of Kettricken’s guard emerged from her shelter and went to relieve others still on watch.
“Didn’t take warnings?” I asked in surprise.
Burrich shook his head. “No. Always his soldiers, coming and going, at all hours. I’ve always wondered when he found the privacy to create you. ”
I must have looked shocked, for Burrich suddenly flushed as well. “Sorry. I’m tired and my leg is … uncomfortable. I wasn’t thinking what I was saying. ”
I found a smile unexpectedly. “It’s all right,” I said, and it was. When he had found out about Nighteyes, I was afraid he was going to banish me again. A jest, even a rough jest, was welcome. “You were saying about warnings?” I asked humbly.
He sighed. “You said it. We are as we are. And he said it. Sometimes they don’t give you a choice. They just bond to you. ”
Page 209
Somewhere off in the darkness, a dog howled. It was not really a dog. Burrich glared at me. “I can’t control him at all,” I admitted.
Nor I, you. Why should there be control, one of the other?
“Nor does he stay out of personal conversations,” I observed.
“Nor personal anything,” Burrich said flatly. He spoke in the voice of a man who knew.
“I thought you said you never used … it. ” Even out here, I would not say “the Wit” aloud.
“I don’t. No good comes of it. I will tell you plainly now what I’ve told you before. It … changes you. If you give in to it. If you live it. If you can’t shut it out, at least don’t seek after it. Don’t become—”
“Burrich?”
We both jumped. It was Foxglove, come quietly out of the darkness to stand on the other side of the fire. How much ha
“Yes? Is there a problem?”
She hunkered down in the darkness, lifted her red hands to the fire. She sighed. “I don’t know. How do I ask this? Are you aware she’s pregnant?”
Burrich and I exchanged glances. “Who?” he asked levelly.
“I’ve got two children of my own, you know. And most of her guard is women. She pukes every morning, and lives off raspberry-leaf tea. She can’t even look at the salt fish without retching. She shouldn’t be here, living like this. ” Foxglove nodded toward the tent.
Oh. The Vixen.
Shut up.
“She did not ask our advice,” Burrich said carefully.
“The situation here is under control. There is no reason she should not be sent back to Buckkeep,” Foxglove said calmly.
“I can’t imagine ‘sending her back’ to anywhere,” Burrich observed. “I think it would have to be a decision she reached on her own. ”
“You might suggest it to her,” Foxglove ventured.
“So might you,” Burrich countered. “You are captain of her guard. The concern is rightly yours. ”
“I haven’t been keeping watch outside her door each night,” Foxglove objected.
“Perhaps you should have,” Burrich said, then tempered it with a “Now that you know. ”
Foxglove looked into the fire. “Perhaps I should. So. The question is, who escorts her back to Buckkeep?”
“All of her personal guard, of course. A Queen should travel with no less. ”
Somewhere off in the darkness there was a sudden outcry. I sprang to my feet.
“Stand fast!” Burrich snapped at me. “Wait for word. Don’t rush off until you know what is happening!”
In a moment Whistle of the Queen’s guard reached our fire. She stood before Foxglove to report. “Two-pronged attack. At the breach just below the south tower, they tried to break out. And some got through at—”
An arrow swept through her and carried off forever whatever she had begun to tell us. Outislanders were suddenly upon us, more of them than my mind could grasp, and all converging on the Queen’s tent. “To the Queen!” I shouted, and had the slim comfort of hearing my cry taken up farther down the line. Three guards rushed out of the tent to put their backs to its flimsy walls while Burrich and I stood our ground in front of it. I found my sword in my hand, and from the corner of my eye saw firelight run red up the edge of Burrich’s. The Queen appeared suddenly in the door of the tent.
“Don’t guard me!” she rebuked us. “Get to where the fighting is. ”
“It’s here, my lady,” Burrich grunted and stepped forward suddenly to take off the arm of a man who had ventured too close.
I remember those words clearly and I remember seeing Burrich take that stride. It is the last coherent memory I have of that night. After that, all was shouting and blood, metal and fire. Waves of emotions pounded against me as all around me soldiers and Raiders fought to the death. Early on, someone set fire to the tent. Its towering blaze lit the battle scene like a stage. I remember seeing Kettricken, robe looped up and knotted, fighting bare-legged and barefoot on the frozen ground. She held her ridiculously long Mountain sword in a twohanded grip. Her grace made a deadly dance of the battle that would have distracted me at any other time.
Outislanders continued to appear. At one point I was sure I heard Verity shouting commands, but could not make sense of any of them. Nighteyes appeared from time to time, fighting always at the edge of the light, a low sudden weight of fur and teeth, hamstringing with a slash, adding his weight to change a Raider’s charge to a stumble. Burrich and Foxglove fought back-to-back at one point when things were going poorly for us. I was part of the circle that protected the Queen. At least, I thought I was, until I realized she was actually fighting beside me.
Page 210
At some time I dropped my sword to snatch up a fallen Raider’s ax. I picked my blade up the next day from the frozen ground, crusted with mud and blood. But at the moment I did not even hesitate to discard Verity’s gift for a more savagely effective weapon. While we were fighting there was only the now to consider. When at last the tide of the battle turned, I did not consider the wisdom of it, but pursued and hunted scattered enemy through the night-black fire-stinking wreckage of Neatbay village.
Here, indeed, Nighteyes and I hunted very well together. I stood toe to toe with my final kill, ax against ax, while Nighteyes snarled and savaged his way past a smaller man’s sword. He finished his but seconds before I dropped my man.
That final slaughtering held for me a wild and savage joy. I did not know where Nighteyes left off and I began; only that we had won and we both still lived. Afterward we went to find water together. We drank deep from a communal well’s bucket, and I laved the blood from my hands and face. Then we sank down and put our backs to the brick well to watch the sun rise beyond the thick ground mist. Nighteyes leaned warm against me, and we did not even think.
I suppose I dozed a bit, for I was jostled alert as he quickly left me. I looked up to see what had startled him, only to discover a frightened Neatbay girl staring at me. The early sun struck glints off her red hair. A bucket was in her hand. I stood and grinned, lifting my ax in greeting, but she sheered off like a frightened rabbit among the ruined buildings. I stretched, then made my way back through the trailing fog to where the Queen’s tent had been. As I walked, images of last night’s wolf hunting came back to me. The memories were too sharp, too red and black, and I pushed them down deep in my mind. Was this what Burrich had meant by his warning?
Even by the light of day, it was still difficult to understand all that had happened. The earth around the blackened remains of the Queen’s shelter was trampled into mud. Here the fighting had been heaviest. Here was where most of the enemy had fallen. Some bodies had been dragged aside and tumbled into a heap. Others still lay where they had fallen. I avoided looking at them. It is one thing to kill in fear and anger. It is another thing to consider one’s handiwork by the chill gray light of morning.
That the Outislanders had tried to break through our siege was understandable. They had, perhaps, had a chance of making it as far as their ships and reclaiming one or two of them. That the attack seemed to focus on the Queen’s tent was least comprehensible. Once clear of the earthworks, why had not they seized their chance for survival and headed for the beach?
“Perhaps,” observed Burrich, gritting his teeth as I probed the angry swelling on his leg, “they did not hope to escape at all. It is their Outislander way, to decide to die, and then to attempt to do as much damage before doing so. So they attacked here, hoping to kill our queen. ”
I had discovered Burrich, limping about the battleground. He did not say he had been looking for my body. His relief at seeing me was evidence enough of that.
“How did they know it was the Queen in that tent?” I pondered. “We flew no banners, we issued no challenges. How did they know she was here? There. Is that any better?” I checked the bandage for snugness.
“It’s dry and it’s clean and the wrapping seems to help the pain. I don’t suppose we can do much more than that. I suspect that whenever I work that leg hard, I’m going to have the swelling and heat in it. ” He spoke as dispassionately as if he discussed a horse’s bad leg. “At least it stayed closed. They did seem to make straight for the Queen’s tent, didn’t they?”
“Like bees to honey,” I observed tiredly. “The Queen is in Bayguard?”
“Of course. Everyone is. You should have heard the cheer when they opened the gates to us. Queen Kettricken walked in, her skirts still bundled to one side, her drawn blade still dripping. Duke Kelvar went down on his knees to kiss her hand. But Lady Grace looked at her, and said, ‘Oh, my dear, I shall have a bath drawn for you at once. ’”
“Now there is the stuff they make songs of,” I said, and we laughed. “But not all are up at the Keep. I saw a girl ju
“Well, up at the Keep they are rejoicing. There will be some who will have small heart for that. Foxglove was wrong. The folk of Neatbay did not yield easily before the Red-Ships. Many, many died before the Neatbay folk retreated to the Keep. ”
“Does anything strike you as odd about that?”
“That folk should defend themselves? No. It is—”
Page 211
“Does not it seem to you that there were too many Outislanders here? More than five ships’ worth?”
Burrich halted. He looked back to the scattered bodies. “Perhaps those other ships had left them here, and then gone out on patrol…. ”
“That is not their way. I suspect a larger ship, transporting a sizable force of men. ”
“Where?”
“Gone now. I think I glimpsed it, going into that fog bank. ”
We fell silent. Burrich showed me to where he had tethered Ruddy and Sooty and we rode together up to Bayguard. The great doors of the Keep stood wide open, and a combination of Buckkeep soldiers and Bayguard folk mingled there. We were greeted with a shout of welcome, and offered brimming cups of mead before we were even dismounted. Boys begged to take our horses for us, and to my surprise, Burrich let them. Within the hall was genuine rejoicing that would have put any of Regal’s revels to shame. All of Bayguard had been thrown open for us. Ewers and basins of warm scented water had been set out in the Great Hall for us to refresh ourselves, and tables were heavy with food, none of it hard bread or salt fish.
We remained three days at Neatbay. During this time our dead were buried, and the bodies of the Outislanders burned. Buckkeep soldiers and Queen’s guard fell in alongside the people of Neatbay to assist in the repairs to Bayguard’s fortifications and in salvaging what was left of Neatbay Town. I made a few quiet inquiries. I found that the watchtower signal had been lit as soon as the ships were sighted, but that the Red-Ships had made extinguishing it one of their first goals. What of their coterie member? I asked. Kelvar looked at me in surprise. Burl had been recalled weeks ago, for some essential duty inland. He had gone to Tradeford, Kelvar believed.