Assassin’s Quest. Робин Хобб

wordless cries and then panting gasps that flung droplets of blood with the sounds. His hands seized my right calf and tried to jerk my leg from under me. I simply put more weight on the blade. I longed to pull the sword out and kill him quickly, but he was so strong I did not dare release him. Honey ended him finally, bringing the end of her staff down in a smashing drive to the centre of his face. The man’s sudden stillness was as much a mercy to me as to him. I found the strength to pull the sword out of him, then staggered backwards to sit down suddenly in the road.

      My vision dimmed and cleared and dimmed again. Piper’s screams of pain might have been the distant crying of seabirds. Suddenly there was too much of everything and I was everywhere. Up in the woods, I licked at my shoulder, a laying aside of dense fur with my tongue, a careful probing of the slash as I coated it with saliva. And yet I sat in the sun on the road, smelling dust and blood and excrement as the slain man’s bowels loosened. I felt every blow I had taken and dealt, the exertion as well as the jolting damage from the club’s impact. The savage way I had killed suddenly had a different connotation to me. I knew what it was to feel the kind of pain that I had inflicted. I knew what they had felt, down and struggling without hope, with death as their only escape from more pain. My mind vibrated between the extremes of killer and victim. I was both.

      And alone. More alone than I had ever been. Always before, at a time like this, there had been someone for me. Shipmates at the end of a battle, or Burrich coming to patch me up and drag me home, and a home waiting for me, with Patience to come and fuss over me, or Chade and Verity to remonstrate with me to be more careful of myself. Molly arriving with the quiet and the darkness to touch me softly. This time the battle was over, and I was alive, but no one save the wolf cared. I loved him, but suddenly I knew that I longed for a human touch as well. The separation from those who had cared about me was more than I could bear. Had I been truly a wolf, I would have lifted my nose to the sky and howled. As it was, I reached out, in a way I cannot describe. Not the Wit, not the Skill, but some unholy blending of the two, a terrible questing for someone, anywhere, who might care to know I was alive.

      Almost, I felt something. Did Burrich, perhaps, somewhere lift up his head and look about the field he worked in, did he for an instant smell blood and dust instead of the rich earth he turned up to harvest the root crops? Did Molly straighten up from her laundering and set her hands to her aching back and look about, wondering at a sudden pang of desolation? Did I tug at Verity’s weary consciousness, distract Patience for a moment or two from sorting her herbs on the drying trays, set Chade to frowning as he set a scroll aside? Like a moth battering against a window, I rattled myself against their consciousnesses. I longed to feel the affection I had taken for granted. Almost, I thought, I reached them, only to fall back exhausted into myself, sitting alone in the dust of the road, with the blood of three men spattered on me.

      She kicked dirt on me.

      I lifted my eyes. At first Honey was a dark silhouette against the westering sun. Then I blinked and saw the look of disgust and fury on her face. Her clothes were torn, her hair draggled about her face. ‘You ran away!’ she accused me. I felt how much she despised my cowardice. ‘You ran away, and left him to break Piper’s arm and club my father down and try to rape me. What kind of a man are you? What kind of a man can do a thing like that?’

      There were a thousand answers to that, and none. The emptiness inside me assured me that nothing would be solved by speaking to her. Instead I pushed myself to my feet. She stared after me as I walked back down the road to where I had dropped my pack. It seemed like hours since I had kicked it clear of my feet. I picked it up and carried it back to where Josh sat in the dust beside Piper and tried to comfort her. Pragmatic Honey had opened their packs. Josh’s harp was a tangle of wood bits and string. Piper would play no pipes until her arm healed weeks from now. It was as it was, and I did what I could do about it.

      And that was nothing, save build a fire by the side of the road, and fetch water from the river and set it to boiling. I sorted out the herbs that would calm Piper and soften the pain of her arm. I found dry straight sticks and shaved them flat for splinting. And up on the hillside in the woods behind me? It hurts, my brother, but it did not go deep. Still, it pulls open when I try to walk. And thorns, I am thick with thorns like flies on carrion.

      I shall come to you now and pick out every one.

      No. I can take care of this myself. See to those others. He paused. My brother. We should have run away.

      Why was it so hard to go to Honey and ask quietly if she had cloth we could tear to bind the splinting to Piper’s arm? She did not deign to reply to me, but blind Josh mutely handed me the soft fabric that had once wrapped his harp. Honey despised me, Josh seemed numbed with shock, and Piper was so lost in her own pain she scarcely noticed me. But somehow I got them to move over beside the fire. I walked Piper over there, my arm around her and my free hand supporting her injured arm. I got her seated, and then gave her first the tea I had brewed. I spoke more to Harper Josh than to her when I said, ‘I can draw the bone straight, and splint it. I’ve had to do as much before for men hurt in battle. But I do not claim to be a healer. When we get to the next town, it may have to be set again.’

      He nodded slowly. We both knew there was no real alternative. So he knelt behind Piper and held her by the shoulders, and Honey gripped her upper arm firmly. I set my teeth against the pain she felt and firmly drew her forearm straight. She screamed, of course, for no mere tea could deaden that sort of pain completely. But she also forced herself not to struggle. Tears coursed down her cheeks and her breath came raggedly as I splinted and bound her arm. I showed her how to carry it partially inside her vest to support the weight and steady it against movement. Then I gave her another mug of the tea and turned to Josh.

      He had taken a blow to the head, and it had dazed him for a moment, but not knocked him out. There was swelling, and he winced at my touch, but the flesh had not split. I washed it with cool water, and told him the tea might ease him as well. He thanked me, and somehow I felt shamed by it. Then I looked up to where Honey watched me with cat’s eyes across the small fire.

      ‘Were you hurt?’ I asked her quietly.

      ‘There’s a knot on my shin the size of a plum where he hit me. And he left claw marks down my neck and breasts trying to get at me. But I can care for my hurts myself, thank you all the same … Cob. Small thanks to you I am alive at all.’

      ‘Honey.’ Josh spoke in a dangerously low voice. There was as much weariness in it as anger.

      ‘He ran away, Father. He felled his man and then he turned and ran. If he had helped us then, none of this would have happened. Not Piper’s broken arm, nor your smashed harp. He ran away.’

      ‘But he came back. Let us not imagine what would have happened if he had not. Perhaps we took some injuries, but you can still thank him that you are alive.’

      ‘I thank him for nothing,’ she said bitterly. ‘One moment of courage, and he could have saved our livelihood. What have we now? A harper with no harp, and a piper who cannot lift her arm to hold her instrument.’

      I rose and walked away from them. I was suddenly too weary to hear her out, and much too discouraged to explain myself at all. Instead I dragged the two bodies from the road, and pulled them onto the sward on the river side. In the failing light, I re-entered the woods, and sought out Nighteyes. He had already cared for his own injuries better than I could. I dragged my fingers through his coat, dusting thorns and bits of blackberry tangle from it. For a short time I sat next to him. He lay down and put his head on my knee and I scratched his ears. It was all the communication we needed. Then I got up, found the third body, gripped him by the shoulders, and dragged him down out of the woods to join the other two. Without compunction, I went through their pockets and pouches. Two of them yielded but a handful of small coins, but the one with the sword had had twelve silver bits in his pouch. I took his pouch and added the other coins to it. I also took his battered sword belt and sheath, and picked up the sword from the road. Then I busied myself until the darkness was complete in picking up river stones and piling them around and finally on top of the bodies. When I had finished, I went down to the river’s edge and laved my hands and arms and splashed water up onto my face. I took off my shirt and rinsed