Assassin's Apprentice

We did. We left by the side entrance, and the bay was tethered right outside. Sooty didn't much care for him, but she minded her manners. I sensed Chade's impatience, but he kept the horses to an easy pace until we had left the cobbled streets of Neatbay behind us. Once the lights of the houses were behind us, we put our horses to an easy canter. Chade led, and I wondered at how well he rode, and how effortlessly he selected paths in the dark. Sooty did not like this swift traveling by night. If it had not been for a moon nearly at the full, I don't think I could have persuaded her to keep up with the bay.

I will never forget that night ride. Not because it was a wild gallop to the rescue, but because it was not. Chade guided us and used the horses as if they were game pieces on a board. He did not play swiftly, but to win. And so there were times when we walked the horses to breathe them, and places on the trail where we dismounted and led them to get them safely past treacherous places.

As morning grayed the sky we stopped to eat provisions from Chade's saddlebags. We were on a hilltop so thickly treed that the sky was barely glimpsed overhead. I could hear the ocean, and smell it, but could catch no sight of it. Our trail had become a sinuous path, little more than a deer run, through these woods. Now that we were still, I could hear and smell the life all around us. Birds called, and I heard the movement of small animals in the underbrush and in the branches overhead. Chade had stretched, then sank down to sit on deep moss with his back against a tree. He drank deeply from a water skin and then more briefly from a brandy flask. He looked tired, and the daylight exposed his age more cruelly than lamplight ever had. I wondered if he would last through the ride or collapse.

"I'll be fine," he said when he caught me watching him. "I've had to do more arduous duty than this, and on less sleep. Besides, we'll have a good five or six hours of rest on the boat, if the crossing is smooth. So there's no need to be longing after sleep. Let's go, boy."

About two hours later our path diverged, and again we 'took the more obscure branching. Before long I was all but lying on Sooty's neck to escape the low sweeps of the branches. It was muggy under the trees and we were blessed with multitudes of tiny stinging flies that tortured the horses and crept into my clothes to find flesh to feast on. So thick were they that when I finally mustered the courage to ask Chade if we had gone astray, I near choked on the ones that rushed into my mouth.

By midday we emerged onto a windswept hillside that was more open. Once more I saw the ocean. The wind cooled the sweating horses and swept the insects away. It was a great pleasure simply to sit upright in the saddle again. The trail was wide enough that I could ride abreast of Chade. The livid spots stood out starkly against his pale skin; he looked more bloodless than the Fool. Dark circles underscored his eyes. He caught me watching him and frowned.

"Report to me, instead of staring at me like a simpleton," he ordered me tersely, and so I did.

It was hard to watch the trail and his face at the same time, but the second time he snorted, I glanced over at him to find wry amusement on his face. I finished my report and he shook his head.

"Luck. Same luck your father had. Your kitchen diplomacy may be enough to turn the situation around, if that is all there is to it. The little gossip I heard agreed. Well. Kelvar was a good duke before this, and it sounds like all that happened was a young bride going to his head." He sighed suddenly. "Still, it's bad, with Verity there to rebuke a man for not minding his towers, and Verity himself with a raid on a Buckkeep Town. Damn! There's so much we don't know. How did the Raiders get past our towers without being spotted? How did they know that Verity was away from Buckkeep at Neatbay? Or did they know? Was it luck for them? And what does that strange ultimatum mean? Is it a threat, or a mockery?" For a moment we rode silently.