Assassin’s Quest. Робин Хобб

woke up from the dream, disoriented and bemused. Burrich had often made shoes for me when I was small but I could not recall that he had ever apologized for swearing in my presence, though he had rapped me often enough when I was a boy if I had dared to use such language in his. Ridiculous. I pushed the dream aside, but sleep had fled with it.

      Around me, when I quested out softly, were only the muzzy dreams of the sleeping animals. All were at peace save me. Thoughts of Chade came to niggle and worry at me. He was an old man in many ways. When King Shrewd had lived, he had seen to all Chade’s needs, so that his assassin might live in security. Chade had seldom ventured forth from his concealed room, save to do his ‘quiet work’. Now he was out on his own, doing El knew what, and with Regal’s troops in pursuit of him. I rubbed vainly at my aching forehead. Worrying was useless, but I could not seem to stop.

      I heard four light foot scuffs, followed by a thud, as someone climbed down from the loft and skipped the last step on the ladder. Probably one of the women headed for the backhouse. But a moment later I heard Honey’s voice whisper, ‘Cob?’

      ‘What is it?’ I asked unwillingly.

      She turned toward my voice, and I heard her approach in the darkness. My time with the wolf had sharpened my senses. Some little moonlight leaked in at a badly-shuttered window. I picked out her shape in the darkness. ‘Over here,’ I told her when she hesitated, and saw her startle at how close my voice was. She groped her way to my corner, and then hesitantly sat down in the straw beside me.

      ‘I daren’t go back to sleep,’ she explained. ‘Nightmares.’

      ‘I know how that is,’ I told her, surprised at how much sympathy I felt. ‘When, if you close your eyes, you tumble right back into them.’

      ‘Exactly,’ she said, and fell silent, waiting.

      But I had nothing more to say, and so sat silent in the darkness.

      ‘What kind of nightmares do you have?’ she asked me quietly.

      ‘Bad ones,’ I said drily. I had no wish to summon them by speaking of them.

      ‘I dream Forged ones are chasing me, but my legs have turned to water and I cannot run. But I keep trying and trying as they come closer and closer.’

      ‘Uhm.’ I agreed. Better than dreaming of being beaten and beaten and beaten … I reined my mind away from that.

      ‘It’s a lonely thing, to wake up in the night and be afraid.’

       I think she wants to mate with you. Will they accept you into their pack so easily?

      ‘What?’ I asked, startled, but it was the girl who replied, not Nighteyes.

      ‘I said, it’s lonely to awake at night and be afraid. One longs for a way to feel safe. Protected.’

      ‘I know of nothing that can stand between a person and the dreams that come at night,’ I said stiffly. Abruptly I wanted her to go away.

      ‘Sometimes a little gentleness can,’ she said softly. She reached over and patted my hand. Without intending to, I snatched it away.

      ‘Are you shy, prentice-boy?’ she asked coyly.

      ‘I lost someone I cared for,’ I said bluntly. ‘I’ve no heart to put another in her place.’

      ‘I see.’ She rose abruptly, shaking straw from her skirts. ‘Well. I’m sorry to have disturbed you.’ She sounded insulted, not sorry.

      She turned and groped her way back to the loft ladder. I knew I had offended her. I did not feel it was my fault. She went up the steps slowly, and I thought she expected me to call her back. I didn’t. I wished I had not come to town.

       That makes two of us. The hunting is poor, this close to all these men. Will you be much longer?

      I fear I must travel with them for a few days, at least as far as the next town.

       You would not mate her, she is not pack. Why must you do these things?

      I did not try to form it into words for him. All I could convey was a sense of duty, and he could not grasp how my loyalty to Verity bound me to help these travellers on the road. They were my people because they were my king’s. Even I found the connection so tenuous as to be ridiculous, but there it was. I would see them safely to the next town.

      I slept again that night, but not well. It was as if my words with Honey had opened the door to my nightmares. No sooner had I dipped down into sleep than I experienced a sense that I was being watched. I cowered low inside my cell, praying that I could not be seen, keeping as still as I possibly could. My own eyes were clenched tight shut, like a child who believes that if he cannot see, he cannot be seen. But the eyes that sought me had a gaze I could feel; I could sense Will looking for me as if I were hiding under a blanket and hands were patting at it. He was that close. The fear was so intense that it choked me. I could not breathe, I could not move. In a panic, I went out of myself, sideways, slipping into someone else’s fear, someone else’s nightmare.

      I crouched behind a barrel of pickled fish in old man Hook’s store. Outside, the darkness was splintered by the rising flames and shrieks of the captured or dying. I knew I should get out. The Red Ship Raiders were certain to loot and torch the store. It was not a good place to hide. But there was no good place to hide, and I was only eleven, and my legs were shaking beneath me so that I doubted I could stand, let alone run. Somewhere out there was Master Hook. When the first cries arose, he had grabbed his old sword down and rushed out the door. ‘Watch the store, Chad!’ he had called after him, as if he were just going next door to hobnob with the baker. At first I had been happy to obey him. The uproar was far down the town, downhill by the bay, and the store seemed safe and strong around me.

      But that had been an hour ago. Now the wind from the harbour carried the taint of smoke, and the night was no longer dark, but a terrible torch-lit twilight. The flames and the screams were coming closer. Master Hook had not come back.

      Get out, I told the boy in whose body I hid. Get out, run away, run as far and as fast as you can. Save yourself. He did not hear me.

      I crawled toward the door that still swung open and wide as Master Hook had left it. I peered out of it. A man ran past in the street and I cowered back. But he was probably a townsman, not a Raider, for he ran without looking back, with no other thought than to get as far away as he could. Mouth dry, I forced myself to my feet, clinging to the door jamb. I looked down on the town and harbour. Half the town was aflame. The mild summer night was choked with smoke and ash rising on the hot wind off the flames. Ships were burning in the harbour. In the light from the flames, I could see figures darting, fleeing and hiding from the Raiders who strode almost unchallenged through the town.

      Someone came about the corner of the potter’s store at the end of the street. He was carrying a lantern and walking so casually I felt a sudden surge of relief. Surely if he could be so calm, then the tide of the battle must be turning. I half rose from my crouch, only to cringe back as he blithely swung the oil lantern against the wooden storefront. The splashing oil ignited as the lamp broke, and fire raced gaily up the tinder-dry wood. I shrank back from the light of the leaping flames. I knew with a sudden certainty that there was no safety to be gained by hiding, that my only hope was in fleeing, and that I should have done it as soon as the alarms sounded. The resolution gave me a small measure of courage, enough that I leaped to my feet and dashed out and around the corner of the store.

      For an instant, I was aware of myself as Fitz. I do not think the boy could sense me. This was not my Skilling out but his reaching to me with some rudimentary Skill sense of his own. I could not control his body at all, but I was locked into his experience. I was riding this boy and hearing his thoughts and sharing his perceptions just as Verity had once ridden me. But I had no time to consider how I was doing it, nor why I had been so abruptly joined to this stranger. For as Chad darted into the safety of the shadows, he was snatched back suddenly by a rough hand on his collar. For a brief moment he was paralysed with fear, and we looked up into