A knife went into my side.
I set my teeth harder and held on, snarling around my mouthful. Other dogs had awakened and were barking, the horses were stamping in their stalls. Boy, boy, I called for help. I felt him with me, but he didn’t come. The intruder kicked me, but I wouldn’t let go. Burrich lay in the straw and I smelled his blood. He did not move. I snarled around the mouthful. I heard old Vixen flinging herself against the door upstairs, trying vainly to get to her master. Again and then again the knife plunged into me. I cried out to my boy a last time, and then I could no longer hold on. I was flung off the kicking leg, to strike the side of a stall. I was drowning, blood in my mouth and nostrils. Running feet. Pain in the dark. I hitched closer to Burrich. I pushed my nose under his hand. He did not move. Voices and light coming, coming, coming. . .
I awoke on a dark hillside, gripping my stick so tightly my hands were numb. Not for a moment did I think it a dream. I couldn’t stop feeling the knife between my ribs and tasting the blood in my mouth. Like the refrain of a ghastly song, the memories came again and again, the draft of cold air, the knife, the boot, the taste of my enemy’s blood in my mouth, and the taste of my own. I struggled to make sense of what Smithy had seen. Someone had been at the top of Burrich’s stairs, waiting for him. Someone with a knife. And Burrich had fallen, and Smithy had smelled blood. . . .
I stood and gathered my things. Thin and faint was Smithy’s warm little presence in my mind. Weak, but there. I quested carefully, and then stopped when I felt how much it cost him to acknowledge me. Still. Be still. I’m coming. I was cold and my knees shook beneath me, but sweat was slick on my back. Not once did I question what I must do. I strode down the hill to the dirt road. It was a little trade road, a peddlers’ track, and I knew that if I followed it, it must intersect eventually with the coast road. I would follow it, I would find the coast road, I would get myself home. And if Eda favored me, I would be in time to help Smithy. And Burrich.
I strode, refusing to let myself run. A steady march would carry me farther faster than a mad sprint through the dark. The night was clear, the trail straight. I considered, once, that I was putting an end to any chance of proving I could Skill. All I had put into it, time, effort, pain, all wasted. But there was no way I could have sat down and waited another full day for Galen to try to reach me. To open my mind to Galen’s possible Skill touch, I would have had to clear it of Smithy’s tenuous thread. I would not. When it was all put in the balances, the Skill was far outweighed by Smithy. And Burrich.
Why Burrich? I wondered. Who could hate him enough to ambush him? And right outside his own quarters. As clearly as if I were reporting to Chade, I began to assemble my facts. Someone who knew him well enough to know where he lived; that ruled out some chance offense committed in a Buckkeep Town tavern. Someone who had brought a knife; that ruled out someone who just wanted to give him a beating. The knife had been sharp, and the wielder had known how to use it. I winced again from the memory.
Those were the facts. Cautiously, I began to build assumptions upon them. Someone who knew Burrich’s habits had a serious grievance against him, serious enough to kill over. My steps slowed suddenly. Why hadn’t Smithy been aware of the man up there waiting? Why hadn’t Vixen been barking through the door? Slipping past dogs in their own territory bespoke someone well practiced at stealth.
Galen.
No. I only wanted it to be Galen. I refused to leap to the conclusion. Physically, Galen was no match for Burrich and he knew it. Not even with a knife, in the dark, with Burrich half-drunk and surprised. No. Galen might want to, but he wouldn’t do it. Not himself.
Would he send another? I pondered it, and decided I didn’t know. Think some more. Burrich was not a patient man. Galen was the most recent enemy he’d made, but not the only one. Over and over I restacked my facts, trying to reach a solid conclusion. But there simply wasn’t enough to build on.
Eventually I came to a stream and drank sparingly: Then I walked again. The woods grew thicker, and the moon was mostly obscured by the trees lining the road. I didn’t turn back. I pushed on, until my trail flowed into the coast road like a stream feeding a river. I followed it south, and the wider highway gleamed like silver in the moonlight.
I walked and pondered the night away. As the first creeping tendrils of dawn began to put colors back into the landscape, I felt incredibly weary, but no less driven. My worry was a burden I couldn’t put down. I clutched at the thin thread of warmth that told me Smithy was still alive, and wondered about Burrich. I had no way of knowing how badly he’d been injured. Smithy had smelled his blood, so the knife had scored at least once. And the fall down the staircase? I tried to set the worry aside. I had never considered that Burrich could be injured in such a way, let alone what I would feel about it. I could come up with no name for the feeling. just hollow, I thought to myself. Hollow. And weary.
I ate a bit as I walked and refilled my water skin from a stream. Midmorning clouded up and rained on me for a bit, only to clear as abruptly by early afternoon. I strode on. I had expected to find some sort of traffic on the coast road, but saw nothing. By late afternoon, the coast road had veered close to the cliffs. I could look across a small cove and down onto what had been Forge. The peacefulness of it was chilling. No smoke rose from the cottages, no boats rode in the harbor. I knew my road would take me right through it. I did not relish the idea, but the warm thread of Smithy’s life tugged me on.
I lifted my head to the scuff of feet against stone. Only the reflexes of Hod’s long training saved me. I came about, staff at the ready, and swept around me in a defensive circle that cracked the jaw of the one that was behind me. The others fell back. Three others. All Forged, empty as stone. The one I had struck was rolling and yelling on the ground. No one paid him any mind except me. I dealt him another quick jolt to his back. He yelled louder and thrashed about. Even in that situation, my action surprised me. I knew it was wise to make sure a disabled enemy stayed disabled, but I knew I could never have kicked at a howling dog as I did at that man. But fighting these Forged ones was like fighting ghosts. I felt no presence from any of them; I had no sense of the pain I’d dealt the injured man, no echoes of his anger or fear. It was like slamming a door, violence without a victim, as I cracked him again, to be sure he would not snatch at me as I leaped over him to a clear space in the road.
I danced my staff around me, keeping the others at bay. They looked ragged and hungry, but I still felt they could outrun me if I fled. I was already tired, and they were like starving wolves. They’d pursue me until I dropped. One reached too close and I struck him a glancing blow to the wrist. He dropped a rusty fish knife and clutched his hand to his heart, shrieking over it. Again, the other two paid no mind to the injured one. I danced back.
“What do you want?” I demanded of them.
“What do you have?” one of them said. His voice was rusty and hesitant, as if long unused, and his words lacked any inflection. He moved slowly around me, in a wide circle that kept me turning. Dead men talking, I thought to myself, and couldn’t stop the thought from echoing through my mind.
“Nothing,” I panted, jabbing to keep one from moving any closer. “I don’t have anything for you. No money, no food, nothing. I lost all my things, back down the road.”
“Nothing,” said the other, and for the first time I realized she had been a woman, once. Now she was this empty malevolent puppet, whose dull eyes suddenly lit with avarice as she said, “Cloak. I want your cloak.”