My soul, he said, catching all his dead in those two words, all his grief, all the years of nightmare, and all the killing he had himself done, one death after another, each in some way meant to echo those first deaths or to still the echoes of them.
Griff’s hand tightened on the sword grip. His knuckles whitened as Cae smiled up at him. She lifted her hand, touching the steel again. She found her voice, and she made that cooing sound babies make. I hadn’t heard it from her since last she lay against her mother’s breast.
“Spare the child,” Egil moaned.
Griff kicked him away. Like a beaten dog, he came crawling back. Whispering, wheedling, the most powerful merchant in Haven abased himself like a beggar. “You want to kill me. I know it. I see it. Do it! Do it, but spare the child!”
He rose to his knees, he tore the shirt from his breast, baring himself to the sword, pale skin tight over protruding ribs.
Griff stood still as stone, barely breathing. The old man’s sobbing sounded like the pulse of a faraway sea.
Then it too fell still. Once again I heard footsteps pass the door, voices murmuring. Whispered one woman to another, “He’ll be wanting his supper soon. D’ye think those two’ll be staying?”
“Griff,” I said, warning. “Are you going to do this, or aren’t you?”
Like fire, his eyes, and he spat, “Take it easy. You’ll get your pay.”
Egil Adare, cringing on the blue and gold carpet, looked up at me, his eyes overflowing with tears. Ah, but he’d heard something, that canny merchant, he’d heard talk of pay.
“Listen,” he said, only to me. “I can pay you anything you want. Stop him!”
I laughed, and I turned from him. I didn’t get to be this old by double-dealing. All I wanted was for this dark work to be done. It seemed to me I could hear every voice in the house now, all of them creeping closer.
In the light from the window Griff’s sword shone, bright and clear. He lifted it high, glinting over the tiny body of the child he’d carried out of Darken Wood. Were the ghosts howling? Oh, aye, they were screaming in him.
The old man flung himself forward, clinging to Griff’s legs, his forehead pressed to the knees of the man whose family he’d destroyed. “Don’t, please. I’ll give you everything I have!” He pulled back, his arms flung wide. “Take anything you see here!”
The sword hung, unmoving, over the silent child.
“Take anything!” Egil Adare cried, the wheedling whine back in his voice. “I’m a rich man! Spare my grandchild and I’ll give you jewels, I’ll give you all the steel you want!”
So he said, but the dearest thing Griff wanted this old man had long ago destroyed.
Griff’s hands tightened on the sword grip. His eyes grew strange and still when he saw his own scarred reflection in the polished blade. All his ghosts stared back at him, howling, the mother, the father, the sister. Ah, the infant brother screaming all the deaths.
“Anything,” Egil sobbed, his face white and dirty, running at the nose. “Anything, take everything. . ”
In the instant he said it, moaning his last plea, Griff did just that. He looked Egil Adare straight in the eye, and he took everything.
Now you have heard the truth of Griff Rees, who was stolen from his home in the days before the Second Cataclysm. He’d been a long time gone, on hard roads and cruel, by the time Olwynn Haugh came into the Swan and Dagger to open her little green velvet pouch and show him how much she could pay him for the safety of his company on her road home.
If Olwynn’s road didn’t bring her all the way home, it did lead Griff there. Soon after winter he took the north-running ways to Estwilde. I haven’t heard that he’s farming there, but they do say he’s settled near where his father’s farm used to be. That was a time ago, maybe eight years, or nine.
I haven’t seen him a day since then, but news travels, and the word that comes to me is good. Some of it says Killer Griff has found himself some peace, maybe even his soul.
Well, it’s always “maybe” when you’re talking about that kind of thing, peace and souls, but true enough it is they say that the little girl he’s raising up as his own, that one with the springtime blue eyes, is the smile on his lips and the light in his heart.
Noblesse Oblige
Paul B. Thompson
Mile after mile the winding trail ran, closed off from the sky by a dense arch of leafy branches. The first exuberant growth of spring had transformed the forest from a hall of barren trunks to a living cavern of green. Sunlight scarcely penetrated to the forest floor, leaving the horse and rider in perpetual shade.
Roder nodded in the saddle. The old charger, named Berry because of his red coat, had a gentle swaying gait that lulled his rider as surely as a summer hammock. Roder had been on the road since before dawn, and the excitement of his hasty departure had worn off after many miles of calm woodland.
He’d ridden out from Castle Camlargo, an outpost on the western edge of the great forest. On a scant hour’s notice Roder had been given an important dispatch by the commandant of the castle, Burnond Everride, to deliver to the neighboring stronghold at Fangoth. In between the two castles lay the vast forest, home of wild animals and even wilder outlaws.
Roder’s slack hand dropped the reins. Without a hand to guide him, Berry at once fell to cropping tender leaves from the branches encroaching on the narrow track. The sudden cessation of morion roused Roder like reveille.
“What? Huh?” His hands went to his head and found the heavy helmet perched there. His memory returned when he touched cold steel. His mission-the dispatch.
He checked the waxed leather case hanging from his shoulder. Lord Burnond’s seal was intact.
Since Berry was having a snack, Roder decided to get down and stretch his legs. He stooped to touch his toes, then arched his back, leaning against the weight of the sword strapped to his left hip. The sword was a potent reminder of the cause of his journey.
Outlaws. Half a dozen robber bands used the forest as their hideout, and their depredations were giving Lord Burnond fits. Most of the tiny Camlargo garrison was out chasing one gang or another, and when the time came to find a courier to take the commandant’s message to Fangoth, Roder was the only man left to carry out the delicate mission.
“The forest bandits refuse to acknowledge our sovereignty. Our last three messengers vanished in the wilderness without trace,” Burnond solemnly warned him. “Are you still willing to carry this dispatch to Lord Laobert?”
“I am, my lord,” Roder declared. “I shall not fail!”
What was that?
Somewhere ahead, screened by ferns and bracken, someone was shouting. Above the voice in distress came a more ominous sound-the clang of metal on metal. Even Berry noticed and stopped stripping the bushes. The old warhorse’s instincts were still strong. At the sounds of fighting he snorted, nodded his head, and began pawing the ground with a single heavy hoof.
“I hear it,” Roder said breathlessly. He tugged his brig-andine jacket into place and tightened the strap on his helmet. “Bandits!”
Berry was very tall, and it took some effort for Roder to get his foot in the stirrup and hoist himself onto the animal’s broad back. He wrapped the reins tightly around his left hand and thumped Berry’s flanks with his spurless heels. “Giddup!” The old warhorse couldn’t manage a gallop, but he stirred himself to a stately canter, straight down the path toward the sounds.
Once the horse was in motion, Roder wondered if he’d ever stop. Berry plowed on, paying no heed to low branches that threatened to sweep Roder out of the saddle. Leaves swatted his face, and limbs rang against the comb of his helmet. He shouted, “Whoa, Berry! Whoa!” but the warhorse would not stop until he’d delivered his Knight to the fray.