The Farseer Series Books 2 and 3: Royal Assassin, Assassin’s Quest. Robin Hobb
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than enough.
If I thought I had been one with the crew before, I was now engulfed in them. Emotions battered and thrust me forward. I will never know how much or which feelings were my own. They overwhelmed me, and FitzChivalry was lost in them. I became the emotions of the crew. Axe raised, roaring, I led the way. I had no desire for the position I had seized. Instead I was thrust forward by the crew’s extreme desire for someone to follow. I suddenly wanted to kill as many Raiders as I could, as fast as I could. I wanted my muscles to crack with each swing, I wanted to fling myself forward through a tide of dispossessed souls, to tread on the bodies of fallen Raiders. And I did.
I had heard legends of berserks. I had thought them animalistic brutes, powered by bloodlust, insensitive to the damage they wrought. Perhaps, instead, they were oversensitized, unable to defend their own minds from the emotions that rushed in to drive them, unable to heed the pain signals of their own bodies. I do not know.
I have heard tales of myself on that day. Even a song. I do not recall that I frothed and roared as I fought. But neither do I recall that I did not. Somewhere, within me, were both Verity and Nighteyes, but they too were drowned in the passions of those around me. I know I killed the first Raider that went down before our mad rush. I also know that I finished the last standing man, in a battle we fought axe to axe. The song says it was the master of the Red Ship vessel. I suppose it could have been. His leather surcoat was well made, and spattered with the blood of other men. I don’t recall another thing about him except how my axe crushed his helm deep into his skull, and how the blood gouted from beneath the metal as he sank to his knees.
So the battle ended, and defenders rushed forth to embrace our crew, to shout the victory and pound one another’s backs. The change was too much for me. I stood, leaning on my axe, and wondered where my strength had fled. The anger had abandoned me as suddenly as carris seed leaves an addict. I felt drained and disoriented, as if I had wakened from one dream into another. I could have dropped and slept amongst the bodies, so totally exhausted was I. It was Nonge, one of the Outislanders in the crew, who brought me water, and then walked me clear of the bodies so I could sit down to drink it. Then he waded back in among the carnage, to join in the looting. When he came back to me a while later, he held out to me a bloodied medallion. It was hammered gold, on a silver chain. A crescent moon. When I did not reach to take it from him, he looped it over the gory head of my axe. ‘It was Harek’s,’ he said, finding the Six Duchies words slowly. ‘You fought him well. He died well. He’d want you to have it. He was a good man, before the Korriks took his heart.’ I did not even ask him which one had been Harek. I did not want any of them to have names.
After a time, I began to feel alive again. I helped to clear the bodies from the door of the tower, and then from the battlefield. The Raiders we burned, the Six Duchies men we laid out and covered, for kin to claim. I remember odd things about that long afternoon. How a dead man’s heels leave a snaking trail in the sand when you drag him. How the young watchman with the dagger in him wasn’t quite dead when we went to gather him up. Not that he lasted long afterwards. He soon was just one more body to add to a row that was too long already.
We left our warriors with what was left of the tower guard, to help fill up the watches until more men could be sent out. We admired the vessel we’d captured. Verity would be pleased, I thought to myself. Another ship. A very well-made one. I knew all these things, but felt nothing about any of them. We returned to the Rurisk, where a pale Justin awaited us. In a numbed silence, we launched the Rurisk and took our places at the oars and headed back to Buckkeep.
We encountered other boats before we were halfway there. A hastily-organized flotilla of fishing vessels laden with soldiers hailed us. The King-in-Waiting had sent them, at Justin’s urgently Skilled behest. They seemed almost disappointed to find that the fighting was over, but our master assured them they would be welcomed at the tower. That, I think, was when I realized I could no longer sense Verity. And hadn’t for some time. I groped after Nighteyes immediately, as another man might grope after his purse. He was there. But distant. Exhausted, and awed. Never have I smelt so much blood, he told me. I agreed. I still stank of it.
Verity had been busy. We were scarcely off the Rurisk before there was another crew aboard to take her back to Antler Island tower. Watch soldiers and another crew of rowers set her heavy in the water. Verity’s prize would be tied up at his home dock by this night. Another open boat followed them, to bring our slain home. The master, the mate and Justin departed on provided horses to report directly to Verity. I felt only relief that I hadn’t been summoned also. Instead, I went with my crewmates. Faster than I would have thought possible, word of the battle and our prize spread through Buckkeep Town. There was not a tavern that was not anxious to pour us full of ale and hear our exploits. It was almost like a second battle frenzy, for wherever we went, folk ignited around us with savage satisfaction in what we had done. I felt drunk on the surging emotions of those around me long before the ale overwhelmed me. Not that I held back from that. I told few tales of what we had done, but my drinking more than made up for it. I threw up twice, once in an alley, and later in the street. I drank more to kill the taste of the vomit. Somewhere in the back of my mind, Nighteyes was frantic. Poison. That water is poisoned. I couldn’t frame a thought to reassure him.
Some time before morning, Burrich hauled me out of a tavern. He was stonily sober, and his eyes were anxious. In the street outside the tavern, he stopped by a dying torch in a street sconce. ‘There’s still blood on your face,’ he told me, and stood me up straight. He took out his handkerchief, dipped it in a rain barrel, and wiped my face as he had not since I was a child. I swayed under his touch. I looked into his eyes, and forced my gaze to focus.
‘I’ve killed before,’ I said helplessly. ‘Why is this so different? Why does it sicken me like this, afterward?’
‘Because it does,’ he said softly. He put an arm around my shoulders, and I was surprised we were of a height. The walk back to Buckkeep was steep. Very long. Very quiet. He sent me to the baths, and told me to go to bed afterwards.
I should have stayed in my own bed, but I had not the sense. Luckily the castle was abuzz, and one more drunk clambering up a staircase was not remarkable. Stupidly, I went to Molly’s room. She let me in. But when I tried to touch her, she pulled away from me. ‘You’re drunk,’ she told me, almost crying. ‘I told you, I promised myself to never kiss a drunk. Or be kissed by one.’
‘But I’m not drunk that way,’ I insisted.
‘There’s only one way to be drunk,’ she told me. And turned me out of her rooms, untouched.
By noon the next day, I knew how much I had hurt her by not coming straight to her to find comfort. I could understand what she felt. But I also knew that what I had carried that night was nothing to take home to someone you loved. I wanted to explain that to her. But a boy came running up to me, to tell me I was needed on the Rurisk, and right now. I gave him a penny for his troubles and watched him dash off with it. Once, I had been the boy earning the penny. I thought of Kerry. I tried to remember him as the boy with the penny in his hand, running at my side, but forever now he was the Forged one dead on a table. No one, I told myself, had been taken for Forging yesterday.
Then I headed down to the docks. On the way I stopped at the stable. I gave the crescent moon over into Burrich’s hands. ‘Keep this safe for me,’ I asked him. ‘And there will be a bit more, my crewshare from the raid. I want to have you hold it for me … what I make at doing this. It’s for Molly. So if ever I don’t come back, you be certain she gets it. She doesn’t like being a servant.’
I hadn’t spoken so plainly of her to Burrich in a long time. A line creased his brow, but he took the bloodied moon. ‘What would your father say to me?’ he wondered aloud as I turned wearily away from him.
‘I don’t know,’ I told him bluntly. ‘I never knew him. Only you.’
‘FitzChivalry.’
I turned back to him. Burrich met my eyes as he spoke. ‘I don’t know what he’d say to me. But I know I can say this for him, to you. I’m proud of you. It’s not the kind of work a man does that says he can be proud or not. It’s how