Assassin’s Quest. Робин Хобб

that man’s stables. Neko died, just a day after he started to sicken. I was able to save two of his mares. Keeping them alive kept me from killing myself. But afterwards, I lost all spirit. I was good for nothing, save drinking. Besides, there were scarcely enough animals left in that stable to warrant calling it such. So I was let go. Eventually, to become a soldier again, this time for a young prince named Chivalry. He’d come to Rippon to settle a boundary dispute between the Shoaks and Rippon Duchies. I don’t know why his sergeant took me on. These were crack troops, his personal guard. I had run out of money and been painfully sober for three days. I didn’t meet their standards as a man, let alone as a soldier. In the first month I was with Chivalry, I was up before him for discipline twice. For fighting. Like a dog, or a stallion, I thought it was the only way to establish position with the others.

      ‘The first time I was hauled before the Prince, bloody and struggling still, I was shocked to see we were of an age. Almost all his troops were older than I; I had expected to confront a middle-aged man. I stood there before him and I met his eyes. And something like recognition passed between us. As if we each saw … what we might have been in different circumstances. It did not make him go easy on me. I lost my pay and earned extra duties. Everyone expected Chivalry to discharge me the second time. I stood before him, ready to hate him, and he just looked at me. He cocked his head as a dog will when it hears something far off. He docked my pay and gave me more duties. But he kept me. Everyone had told me I’d be discharged. Now they all expected me to desert. I can’t say why I didn’t. Why soldier for no pay and extra duties?’

      Burrich cleared his throat again. I heard him shoulder deeper into his bed. For a time he was silent. He went on again at last, almost unwillingly. ‘The third time they dragged me in, it was for brawling in a tavern. The City Guard hauled me before him, still bloody, still drunk, still wanting to fight. By then my fellow guards wanted nothing more to do with me. My sergeant was disgusted, I’d made no friends among the common soldiers. So the City Guard had me in custody. And they told Chivalry I’d knocked two men out and held off five others with a stave until the Guard came to tip the odds their way.

      ‘Chivalry dismissed the Guards, with a purse to pay for damages to the tavern-keeper. He sat behind his table, some half-finished writing before him, and looked me up and down. Then he stood up without a word and pushed his table back to a corner of the room. He took off his shirt and picked up a pike from the corner. I thought he intended to beat me to death. Instead, he threw me another pike. And he said, “All right, show me how you held off five men.” And lit into me.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I was tired, and half drunk. But I wouldn’t quit. Finally, he got in a lucky one. Laid me out cold.

      ‘When I woke up, the dog had a master again. Of a different sort. I know you’ve heard people say Chivalry was cold and stiff and correct to a fault. He wasn’t. He was what he believed a man should be. More than that. It was what he believed a man should want to be. He took a thieving, unkempt scoundrel and …’ He faltered, sighed suddenly. ‘He had me up before dawn the next day. Weapons practice till neither of us could stand. I’d never had any formal training at it before. They’d just handed me a pike and sent me out to fight. He drilled me, and taught me sword. He’d never liked the axe, but I did. So he taught me what he knew of it, and arranged for me to learn it from a man who knew its strategies. Then the rest of the day, he’d have me at his heels. Like a dog, as you say. I don’t know why. Maybe he was lonely for someone his own age. Maybe he missed Verity. Maybe … I don’t know.

      ‘He taught me numbers first, then reading. He put me in charge of his horse. Then his hounds and hawk. Then in general charge of the pack beasts and wagon animals. But it wasn’t just work he taught me. Cleanliness. Honesty. He put a value on what my mother and grandmother had tried to instil in me so long ago. He showed them to me as a man’s values, not just manners for inside a woman’s house. He taught me to be a man, not a beast in a man’s shape. He made me see it was more than rules, it was a way of being. A life, rather than a living.’

      He stopped talking. I heard him get up. He went to the table and picked up the bottle of elderberry wine that Chade had left. I watched him as he turned it several times in his hands. Then he set it down. He sat down on one of the chairs and stared into the fire.

      ‘Chade said I should leave you tomorrow,’ he said quietly. He looked down at me. ‘I think he’s right.’

      I sat up and looked up at him. The dwindling light of the fire made a shadowy landscape of his face. I could not read his eyes.

      ‘Chade says you have been my boy too long. Chade’s boy, Verity’s boy, even Patience’s boy. That we kept you a boy and looked after you too much. He believes that when a man’s decisions came to you, you made them as a boy. Impulsively. Intending to be right, intending to be good. But intentions are not good enough.’

      ‘Sending me out to kill people was keeping me a boy?’ I asked incredulously.

      ‘Did you listen to me at all? I killed people as a boy. It didn’t make me a man. Nor you.’

      ‘So what am I to do?’ I asked sarcastically. ‘Go looking for a prince to educate me?’

      ‘There. You see? A boy’s reply. You don’t understand, so you get angry. And venomous. You ask me that question but you already know you won’t like my answer.’

      ‘Which is?’

      ‘It might be to tell you that you could do worse than to go looking for a prince. But I’m not going to tell you what to do. Chade has advised me not to. And I think he is right. But not because I think you make your decisions as a boy would. No more than I did at your age. I think you decide as an animal would. Always in the now, with never a thought for tomorrow, or what you recall from yesterday. I know you know what I’m speaking of. You stopped living as a wolf because I forced you to. Now I must leave you alone, for you to find out if you want to live as a wolf or a man.’

      He met my gaze. There was too much understanding in his eyes. It frightened me to think that he might actually know what I was facing. I denied that possibility, pushed it aside entirely. I turned a shoulder to him, almost hoping my anger would come back. But Burrich sat silently.

      Finally I looked up at him. He was staring into the fire. It took me a long time to swallow my pride and ask, ‘So, what are you going to do?’

      ‘I told you. I’m leaving tomorrow.’

      Harder still to ask the next question. ‘Where will you go?’

      He cleared his throat and looked uncomfortable. ‘I’ve a friend. She’s alone. She could use a man’s strength about her place. Her roof needs mending, and there’s planting to do. I’ll go there, for a time.’

      ‘She?’ I dared to ask, raising an eyebrow.

      His voice was flat. ‘Nothing like that. A friend. You would probably say that I’ve found someone else to look after. Perhaps I have. Perhaps it’s time to give that where it is truly needed.’

      I looked into the fire, now. ‘Burrich. I truly needed you. You brought me back from the edge, back to being a man.’

      He snorted. ‘If I’d done right by you in the first place, you’d never have gone to the edge.’

      ‘No. I’d have gone to my grave instead.’

      ‘Would you? Regal would have had no charges of Wit magic to bring against you.’

      ‘He’d have found some excuse to kill me. Or just opportunity. He doesn’t really need an excuse to do what he wants.’

      ‘Perhaps. Perhaps not.’

      We sat watching the fire die. I reached up to my ear, fumbled with the catch on the earring. ‘I want to give this back to you.’

      ‘I would prefer that you kept it. Wore it.’ It was almost a request. It felt odd.

      ‘I don’t deserve whatever it is that this earring symbolizes to you. I haven’t earned it, I have no right to it.’

      ‘What it symbolizes to me is not something that