Assassin's Quest

The ravine was getting narrower and deeper. Vines and brambles and brush grew from the steepening sides and dangled down. I suspected I walked on top of a winter-frozen stream. I began to look for a way out of it. Behind me the hounds were yelping again, baying out to one another that they had the true trail now, follow the wolf, the wolf, the wolf. I knew then with certainty that Nighteyes had shown himself to them once more and was deliberately drawing them away from me. Run, boy, run! He flung the thought to me, uncaring that the hounds would hear him. There was a wild merriment to him, a hysterical silliness to his thought. It reminded me of the night I had chased Justin through the halls of Buckkeep, to slaughter him in the Great Hall before all the guests at Regal's King-in-Waiting ceremony. Nighteyes was in a frenzy that had carried him past worrying over his own survival. I plunged on, my heart in my throat for him, fighting the tears that pricked the corners of my eyes.

The ravine ended. Before me was a glistening cascade of ice, a memorial to the mountain stream that cut this canyon during the summer months. The ice hung in long, rippled icicles down the face of a rocky crack in the mountain, gleaming with a faint sheen of moving water still. The snow at its base was crystalline. I halted, suspecting a deep pool, one I might unwittingly find under a layer of too-thin ice. I lifted my eyes. The walls here were mostly undercut and overgrown. In other places, bare slabs of rock showed through the drapery of snow. Runty saplings and twiggy brush grew in a scattering, leaning out to catch the sunlight from above. None of it looked promising for a climb. I turned to double back on my trail and, heard a single howl rise and fall. Neither hound nor wolf, it could only be the mongrel dog. Something in the certainty of his cry convinced me he was on my trail. I heard a man shout encouragement and the dog yelped again, closer. I turned to the wall of the ravine and started to climb. I heard the man halloo to the others, calling and whistling for them to follow him, he had a man's tracks here, never mind the wolf, it was just a Wit-trick. In the distance the hounds suddenly took up a different yelping. In that moment, I knew that Regal had finally found what he had sought. A Witted one to hunt me. Old Blood had been bought.

I jumped and caught at a sapling leaning out from the wall of the ravine. I hauled myself up, got my feet on it, balanced, and reached for another above me. When I put my weight on it, its roots tore loose from the rocky soil. I fell, but managed to catch myself on the first tree again. Up again, I told myself fiercely. I stood on it, and heard it crack under my weight. I reached up to grab handfuls of twiggy brush leaning down from the undercut bank. I tried to go up quickly, to not let my weight hang from any sapling or bush for more than a few moments. Handfuls of twigs broke off in my grip, tufts of old grasses pulled free, and I found myself scrabbling along the lip of the ravine but not getting any higher. I heard a shout below me and against my will I glanced back and down. A man and dog were in the clearing below. As the mongrel bayed up at me, the man was nocking an arrow to his bow. I hung helpless above them, as easy a shot as a man could wish.

"Please," I heard myself gasp, and then heard the tiny unmistakable sound of a bowstring being released. I felt it hit me, a fist in the back, one of Regal's old tricks from my childhood, and then a deeper, hotter pain inside me. One of my hands had let go. I had not commanded it to, it had simply come unhooked from its grip. I swung from my right hand. I could hear, so clearly, the yelping of the dog as it smelled my blood. I could hear the rustle of the man's garment as he drew another arrow from his quiver.

Pain bit again, deep into my right wrist. I cried out as my fingers let go. In a reflex of terror, my legs scrabbled fiercely against the yielding brush that dangled over the undercut bank. And somehow I was rising, my face brushing crusty snow. I found my left arm and made vague swimming motions with it. Get your legs up! Nighteyes snapped at me. He made not a sound, for his teeth were set firmly in the sleeve and flesh of my right arm as he dragged me up. The chance at living rejuvenated me. I kicked wildly and then felt solid ground under my belly. I clawed my way forward, trying to ignore the pain that centered in my back, but spread out from there in red waves. If I had not seen the man loose an arrow, I would have believed I had a pole as thick as a wagon axle sticking out of my back.

Get up, get up! We have to run.