Assassin's Quest

No matter what I longed to do, no matter what I felt, I knew that first I would go to Verity. I promised myself that over and over and was finally able to drop off into a wary doze. I dreamed, but they were pale dreams, barely touched by the Skill, shifting and turning as if blown by the autumn winds. My mind seemed to have caught up and jumbled together thoughts of every person I missed. I dreamed of Chade taking tea with Patience and Lacey. He wore a robe of red silk patterned over with stars, cut in a very old style, and he smiled charmingly at the women over his cup and brought laughter even to Patience's eyes, although she looked strangely worn and weary. I then dreamed of Molly peeping out of a cottage door while Burrich stood outside it, pulling his cloak tight against the wind and telling her not to worry, he'd not be gone that long and any heavy chores could keep until he returned, that she should stay within doors and have only a care for herself. Even of Celerity did I dream, that she had taken shelter in the fabled Ice Caves of the Hungry Glacier in Bearns, and hid there with what troops she could still rally and many of her folk made homeless by the Raider wars. I dreamed she tended Faith, who lay suffering with a fever and a festering arrow wound in her belly. I dreamed finally of the Fool, his white face turned to ivory as he sat before a hearth and stared into the flames. There was no hope left in his face, and I felt that I was within the flames, looking deeply into his eyes. Somewhere nearby and yet not very near, Kettricken was weeping inconsolably. My dreams withered in my mind, and then I dreamed of wolves hunting, hunting, running down a buck, but they were wild wolves, and if my wolf was among them, he was theirs and mine no longer.

I awoke with a headache and a crick in my back from a stone I'd slept on. The sun had only begun to crack the sky, but I rose anyway, to go to a well and draw water for washing, and to drink as much as I could hold. Burrich had once told me that drinking a lot of water was a good way to stave off hunger. It was a theory I'd have to test today. I put an edge on my knife, considered shaving, then decided against it. Better to let my beard grow over the scar as swiftly as possible. I rubbed reluctantly at the coarse growth that already irritated me. I went back to where the others still slept.

They were just beginning to stir when a bulky little man appeared, to call shrilly that he would hire a man to help move his sheep from one pen to another. It was only a morning's work, if that, and most of the men shook their heads, wishing to remain where they might be hired for a drover's trip to Blue Lake. He almost pleaded, saying he must move the sheep through the city streets, hence he needed to get it done before the day's common traffic began. Finally, he offered to include breakfast, and I really think that was why I nodded to him and followed him. His name was Damon and he talked the whole time we walked, fluttering his hands about, explaining needlessly to me just how he wanted these sheep handled. They were good stock, very good stock, and he didn't want them injured or even flustered. Calmly, slowly, that was the best way to move sheep. I nodded wordlessly to his worrying and followed him to a pen far down the slaughter street.

It soon became apparent why he was so anxious to move his sheep. The next pen must have belonged to the luckless Hencil. A few sheep still baaed in that pen, but most of them were down, dead or dying of flux. The stench of their sickness added a new foul note to the other smells in the air. Some men were there, taking the skins off the dead animals to salvage what they could from the flock. They were making bloody, messy work of it, leaving the skinned dead animals right there in the pen with the dying ones. It reminded me in some gruesome way of a battlefield, with looters moving among the fallen. I turned my eyes from the sight and helped Damon bunch up his sheep.

Trying to use the Wit on sheep is almost a waste of time. They are flighty of thought. Even those ones who appear most placid are so because they have forgotten what they were thinking about. The worst of them are capable of an inordinate amount of wariness, becoming suspicious of the simplest act. The only way to deal with them is much as herd dogs do. Convince them they have had a good idea about where they wish to go, and encourage them in it. I amused myself briefly by considering how Nighteyes would have bunched up and moved these woolly fools, but my even thinking of a wolf caused a few of them to halt in their tracks suddenly and glance about wildly. I suggested to them they should follow the others before they were lost, and they started as if surprised at the notion, then crowded in amongst the rest of the sheep.