Assassin's Quest

"Don't thank me, for I wasn't making an offer, but a request. I'm blind, man, or close enough. Certainly you've noticed that. Noticed, too, that my companions are comely young women, though from the way Honey's nipped at you, I fancy you've smiled more at Piper than at her."

"Father!" indignantly from Honey, but Josh plowed on doggedly.

"I was not offering you the protection of our numbers, but asking you to consider offering your right arm to us. We're not rich folk; we've no coin to hire guards. And yet we must travel the roads, Forged ones or no."

Josh's fogged eyes met mine unerringly. Honey looked aside, lips folded tightly, while Piper openly watched me, a pleading look on her face. Forged ones. Pinned down, fists falling on me. I looked down at the tabletop. "I'm not much for fighting," I told him bluntly.

"At least you would see what you were swinging at," he replied stubbornly. "And you'd certainly see them coming before I did. Look, you're going the same direction we are. Would it be that hard for you to walk by day for a few days rather than by night?"

"Father, don't beg him!" Honey rebuked him.

"I'd rather beg him to walk with us, then beg Forged ones to let you go unharmed!" he said harshly. He turned his face back to me as he added, "We met some Forged ones, a couple of weeks back. The girls had the sense to run when I shouted at them to do so, when I could not keep up with them any longer. But we lost our food to them, and they damaged my harp, and … " "And they beat him," Honey said quietly. "And so we have vowed, Piper and I, that the next time we will not run from them, no matter how many. Not if it means leaving Papa." All the playful teasing and mockery had gone out of her voice. I knew she meant what she said.

I will be delayed, I sighed to Nighteyes. Wait for me, watch for me, follow me unseen.

"I will travel with you," I conceded. I cannot say I made the offer willingly. "Though I am not a man who does well at fighting."

"As if we couldn't tell that from his face," Honey observed in an aside to Piper. The mockery was back in her voice, but I doubted that she knew how deeply her words cut me.

"My thanks are all I have to pay you with, Cob." Josh reached across the table for me, and I gripped hands with him in the ancient sign of a bargain settled. He grinned suddenly, his relief plain. "So take my thanks, and a share of whatever we're offered as minstrels. We've not enough coin for a room, but the innkeeper has offered us shelter in his barn. Not like it used to be, when a minstrel got a room and a meal for the asking. But at least the barn has a door that shuts between us and the night. And the innman here has a good heart; he won't begrudge extending shelter to you if I tell him you're traveling with us as a guard."

"It will be more shelter than I've known for many a night," I told him, attempting to be gracious. My heart had sunk into a cold place in the pit of my belly.

What have you got yourself into now? Nighteyes wondered. As did I.

CHAPTER FIVE. Confrontations

WHAT IS THE Wit? Some would say it is a perversion, a twisted indulgence of spirit by which men gain knowledge of the lives and tongues of the beasts, eventually to become little more than beasts themselves. My study of it and its practitioners has led me to a different conclusion, however. The lest seems to be a form of mind linking, usually with a particular animal, which opens a way for the understanding of that animal's thoughts and feelings. It does not, as some have claimed, give men the tongues of the birds and beasts. A Witted one does have an awareness of life all across its wide spectrum, including humans and even some of the mightier and more ancient of trees. But a Witted one cannot randomly engage a chance animal in "conversation. " He can sense an animal's nearby presence, and perhaps know if the animal is wary or hostile or curious. But it does not give one command over the beasts of the land and the birds of the sky as some fanciful tales would have us believe. What the Wit may be is a man's acceptance of the beast nature within himself, and hence an awareness of the element of humanity that every animal carries within it as well. The legendary loyalty that a bonded animal feels for his Witted one is not at all the same as what a loyal beast gives its master. Rather it is a reflection of the loyalty that the Witted one has pledged to his animal companion, like for like.