Unbound (33 page)

Gryl drifted toward the camp, his steps silent in the gloom, his only resistance the cloying spider webs chaotically weaved within the tall grass. He brushed them aside, his target just a few short yards ahead.

The caravan was little more than a dozen wagons turned into a loose circle, one lone coach parked conspicuously in the middle of the rest. All wore the signs of their miles, tattered and patched canvas pulled over warped frames, the material more brown than white. No insignia announced their trade to the world, but there was no mistaking the cages set upon a trio of the hardier wagons, tarps tied so tightly as to define the bars. Shades of rusty orange stained the cloth with checkerboard lines.

Twice the number of men were clustered about the wheels of the center wagon, wrapped in blankets and threadbare cloaks. Emberstones crackled in a small pit beside them, casting wisps of shadows, the light of the stones reaching no farther than the first of the sleeping men. Gryl listened to their muffled symphony of snores and shallow, steady breaths as he stepped over the hitch between the nearest wagons and moved into the circle. He’d heard tale of Rathe’s confidence but to leave one’s camp without sentries, even in the peaceful foothills of Jiorn, was foolishness tantamount to recklessness.

Gryl inched his way onto the wagon in the center, its rear flaps threaded with gold, the only marking setting it apart from the rest. The priest Delvin—Gryl’s one true friend and confidant in Shytan—told him as much as he slid the coin across Gryl’s palm, whispering of the slave traders who’d ridden through Caesins just a week before. He had said there was a Xenius among the captives, one of a rare breed of beings whose magic could be tapped to perform miracles, their magic gifted to another. If this rumor were true, Rathe deserved far more than Gryl intended, but death would have to do.

He worked at the ties with one hand, his dagger clasped in the other, and peeled the flap open just wide enough for him to slip inside. Darkness greeted him yet it held no secrets from his eyes. A smattering of sturdy chests filled the left side of the wagon. Heavy padlocks secured their iron clasps, no doubt protecting Rathe’s sordid earnings. Above them, dangling from the ribs of the wagon, hung a variety of chain leashes, hooked collars swinging at their ends. They stunk of copper and shame, and Gryl pulled his gaze away before his anger got the best of him, letting his eyes settle on the lump of worthless flesh that lay on the floor beneath a stained down quilt.

A worn boot jutted from under the near end of the covers and a wild mop of dirty brown hair splayed out across the wagon’s floor at the other. He could see the barest of fluctuations at the covers, even breaths sounding in the dark.
Rathe sleeps well for a bastard.
He didn’t so much as twitch while Gryl considered his fate. He felt his purse growing lighter as his blade closed upon its target. Retribution had come.
Poison or clean steel?
He thought of the company of men outside and left his envenomed dagger in its sheath at his boot. Swiftness would be his friend here, the lingering torture of the poison a delay he could not afford.
Besides, dead was dead.

He seized the quilt, pressing it downward to hold his target in place, and sunk his knife into the mop of unruly hair. The blade slid through bone and brain and struck the wooden floor of the wagon with the barest of
thumps
. Gryl let a smile play across his lips. He’d have to deal with the others soon enough if he wanted to free their captives, but he’d earned his coin with Rathe, however merciful he’d been. All that was left was to collect his proof. Gryl peeled back the cover, and he felt his face flush. His smile withered.

Instead of retribution revealed beneath the quilt, he found the body of a boy still years from manhood despite his fair size. Bile filled the back of Gryl’s throat, and he swallowed it back. The boy spasmed in his death throes, foam spilling from his mouth, but he didn’t make a sound. His eyes spoke volumes of his silence. Though they were open wide, they stared into the distance, but not with the coming of death. A haze soured the blue of them until the edges faded to gray, focus lost in the swirl. The boy had been drugged to keep him still. Gryl had murdered one of the poor souls he’d come to save.

The heat of shame threatened to overwhelm him, and sweat beaded his brow as another realization struck home.
Rathe had known he was coming.
He cursed under his breath and yanked his blade free as a sullen
twang
sounded outside.

Something ripped through the canvas cover of the wagon and punched him in the shoulder, slamming him into the collection of chests at his back. His head struck a corner and his eyes filled with swaying will-o’-the-wisps. The wagon shook with the impact but the frame held, allowing Gryl to regain his balance. He dropped to his knees and pulled a chest in front of him, wood scraping against wood, as his vision cleared. His head pounded despite the metal of his skullcap. The shuffle of booted feet reached his ringing ears. The wagon was surrounded.

“Not what you were expecting now, was it, Assassin?” a voice rang out, roughened by a lifetime on the road, campfire and trail dust. “I’m thinking not.” Grim laughter resounded.

Gryl said nothing, his fingers playing about the shaft of the crossbow bolt embedded in his upper arm. The leather of his armor had slowed it just enough that the quarrel hadn’t struck bone.
Lucky thing that.
He ripped it free of his shoulder without so much as a whimper—his mistress having long ago bled the well of his agony dry—and tossed the bolt away. His guilt, however, would not be so easily cast aside.

A moment later, another bolt flew through the canvas above, only to tear its way out through the back.

“Don’t be shy,” the voice went on. “I know you’re in there. The spiders warned me you were coming.” The man laughed.

Gryl glanced at his legs to see the shimmer of webs still clinging to him. He ran his hand across them and watched as they flickered, tiny, almost invisible sparks lighting up at his touch. He knew then why Rathe hadn’t needed guards; he’d set a ward about the caravan and Gryl had traipsed right through it.
Who’s the fool now?

“Come on, Assassin. I didn’t spend good coin to bring you here for you to hide away like some child behind his mother’s skirts,” he said, the smile obvious in his voice. “Isn’t it funny what a priest will believe when it comes to his little pet mystics? A few choice whispers and here you are, though you have your tussle with Korbitt to thank for giving me the idea. Brilliant work there, I have to say.”

Gryl let out a weary sigh at the slaver’s admission and loosed his second sword. The trap was sprung, no point in pretending otherwise.

“To what purpose, Rathe?” he asked. “Is your preference to die with your eyes open, or do you simply enjoy instigating a challenge you can’t win?”

The slaver chuckled. “You’ve mistaken me for prey. I’ve hunted your kind since your hooded masters loosed you among us.” There was a rattle of chain, and Gryl reached out with his broadsword and sliced a narrow slit in the canvas so he could see his would-be killer as he spoke. “Mementos of six of your brethren adorn my throat, but seven seems a more agreeable number to me.”

A wooden chest between him and another crossbow bolt, Gryl glanced out at Althun Rathe. He saw the slaver amidst his men, holding a thick silver necklace out before him. Slabs of shriveled and blackened meat dangled from it like giant, salted leeches. Gryl’s eyes narrowed in his efforts to identify what the man held up. His breath caught in his lungs with recognition.

There on the chain, hooked as clearly as bait, were six withered tongues.

“Do you see them, Prodigy?” Rathe called out. “I’d offer up their names as proof, but I have to be honest. I never asked. You’ll just have to take my word for who these silent lumps once belonged to.”

Gryl stared at the dark-eyed slaver as he returned his grisly necklace to its place beneath his leathern breastplate. Clean-shaven, his long hair pulled back into a tail behind his head, the man looked nothing of the hunter he claimed to be, short and frail-looking, thin almost to the point of being emaciated. His face was smooth and without a hint of scars, an unlikely visage for one claiming to have murdered six of Gryl’s kind. Though he had no sentimentality toward the other Prodigies beyond their mutual suffering at the hands of the Seers, Gryl knew each to be as efficient as himself in the arts of war. They would have left their mark on Rathe were his words true. Gryl most assuredly would.

“Then, by all means, come and collect another if you’ve the appetite.”

“I’ve that and more, Avan scum.” Rathe grinned, teeth gleaming in the night. “Draw him out,” he said to his men, and Gryl felt a cold chill settle in the pit of his stomach.

A burst of light and the acrid scent of flaring pitch told him what was coming even before the canvas erupted into flames. The temperature soared in a heartbeat. Tendrils of fire reached for him through the blistering roof like raking claws, ash and cinders cavorting in some infernal dance. The air grew heavy, and black smoke nipped at his throat with every breath. Rathe had planned his ambush well, but the man had no sense of what Gryl had survived in order to gain his freedom. A little smoke and flame was nothing.

Gryl grabbed one of the chests—not surprised to notice it was empty—and hefted it above his head so that the burning canvas rested against its painted surface. He held his breath, hoping there would be no more bolts shot into the wagon, and waited for the chest to catch fire. The moment it did, he pulled back and hurled it with all of his might. It struck the wooden ribs of the wagon, weakened by the flames, and crashed through, tearing the canvas from the frame and taking the chest with it. It flew into the circle like a burning star fallen from the firmament.

The chest crashed among the men, flinging fire and splintered wood in every direction as they scattered, but Gryl wasted no time admiring his efforts. He turned and slipped through the wooden supports on the opposite side of the wagon and leaped into the night. Only when his boots struck the ground, his blades at the ready, did he take a breath. The cool air was a balm to his scorched throat, but Rathe’s men offered him no respite. They were on him without hesitation.

Gryl expected no less.

The first ended his days with a sneer plastered across his lips, Gryl’s sword speared through his eye and sunk deep into his skull before the man even registered it. His body swayed to music no one could hear after the blade was yanked loose, his body fooled into thinking it still lived. Gryl turned from the still-walking corpse and dodged a quarrel that whistled past his back. The crossbowman grunted and reached for another bolt on instinct rather than his steel. The move cost him his life. A vicious thrust found his groin before his fingers settled at his quiver. He opened his mouth to scream and Gryl filled it with his dagger, sliding it in until it struck spine, then twisting it sideways to rip it loose from the man’s face. The slaver fell away to the sound of clashing steel, his companions having closed upon Gryl.

It did little good.

Raised to kill since birth to the exception of all other endeavors—his early castration assuring he would have no loves other than the blade—Gryl was a hurricane among the thatch huts that were Rathe’s men. The scent of copper clung to the air as blood rained down in warm tempests, lifeless bodies toppling in a macabre ballet. Men screamed and died and more took their place until there were none left to do so. Gryl stood in the ruin after the last blow had fallen and let the crimson drip from his blades, the remnants of the slaver crew pattering to the grass, a pitiful epitaph to their efforts.

But he was not yet done. Rathe still lived.

Gryl circled the wagon, its fiery demise lighting a path through the carnage. Over the crackling hisses and pops of the fire, he heard the mutterings of Rathe’s captives for the first time, their voices given wind with terror, drifting to him across the circle.

“Quite the display, Assassin.”

The children went silent at hearing their master speak, their hopes dashed at the sound.

Gryl drew to a halt as Rathe stepped from the shadows. The slaver was not alone. Held before him was a young girl, no older than eight. The orchid of her wide eyes stood out against her pale and frightened face, her Xenius lineage on full display. Her pure white hair hung over the blade that rested on her collar bones, doing nothing to lessen its menace. Rathe stood behind her, one hand clasped at the scruff of her neck, offering up the grin of the victor.

“Is this the prize you’ve come to wrest from my hands, Prodigy?” He shook the girl as he would an errant puppy. “Seems hardly worth losing your life over.”

Teeth bared, Gryl met Rathe’s gaze over the girl’s trembling shoulder. “And yet it’s you who hides behind a child rather than cross steel,” he said. “Perhaps you’re not as certain of your skills as you boasted.”

The slaver’s grin widened, threatening to eclipse the fire. “Or perhaps I’m everything I claim and then some. Only one way for us to be certain.”

Before Gryl could say another word, Rathe sunk his sword into the girl’s neck, his smile never wavering. She went to scream but there was only the whisper of her life’s blood spewing from her throat. Gryl’s stomach knotted, nearly doubling him over in his disgust. The Xenius girl saw none of his discomfort. She squirmed, frantic to draw breath, clawing at her wound with reddening hands, but Rathe had no further use for her. He threw her behind him like discarded trash before stepping forward to meet Gryl.

“Now there’s nothing to stay your hand.”

The mercy Gryl had aspired to earlier fled the reins without a fight. Two children were dead this night, one by his own hand, and no amount of vengeance would return them to this realm. It would, however, bring grim satisfaction to see Rathe suffer something other than a quick death.

Rather than charge, Gryl knocked his skullcap from his head to reveal the patchwork of scars beneath. He slashed at the straps holding his leather vest and tore it away so his disfigured torso gleamed bare in the firelight. His blood warmed as he drew upon the sorceries etched into his skin. Worms of agonies past gathered sentience, his scars coming to life, slithering serpents beneath his puckered flesh. He glared at Rathe, willing his magic to pluck the man’s foul deeds from his soul, but no ghosts stirred the air between them. Only the void answered his call, emptiness bringing his spell to naught.