Роберт Асприн - Forever After

“This I believe,” breathed Gar as he erased the smile from his face.

“There you are, Gar. You have the amulet.” Rango, having retreated to Rissa’s side, spoke cordially, as if no distance separated them. “You are determined to be off immediately?”

“The value of immediacy has fallen of recent, my lord. Were it not for this ceremony, I would already be in the heart of the Wastes, on my way to Gelfait. Spido has been kind enough to gather horses and supplies, but were he not with me, I would need neither. If you will permit me to leave him behind, I can be there and back again to report to you myself on the success of my quest.”

Rango shook his head ruefully. “Did not the demands of rulership prevent me from granting your request, you would be unfettered in an instant. Alas, I am trapped, for Spotty and Jancy have already embarked with their sorcellets accompanying them. Were I to permit you or Domino to travel without them, our other companions would wonder why we doubted their ability to complete their quests unmonitored. And you especially, my friend, should appreciate the suspicions and protests I have already fought in entrusting Anachron to you.”

“I know — a leopard cannot change his spots.” Gar glanced at Domino, wondering at the omen of her name and what it might stand for. “I shall protest no more, my lord, and only did so in the hopes of serving you more efficiently.”

“I shall settle for faithful service, Gar, as faithful service as you rendered me at Bardu Defile.”

Gar shivered, a barely perceptible tremor that would not have raised ripples in a goblet of wine, were he holding one, but a shiver nonetheless. Lying in the Defile, beneath men he had slain, beside comrades he could not save, he had at last been prepared to go from being Death’s agent to Death’s client. Yet, before he could succumb, Rango had appeared and tapped the healing power of Anachron. At that point, with searing sunbeams sealing his wounds, Gar Quithnick was reborn from sworn enemy of Lord Kalaran to being a servant to Prince Rango.

“Even if this mission demands the sacrifice of my life, it will be done.” Gar bowed to his Prince and the Princess, then tossed Domino a salute and walked away from those he considered friends. As he left the Temple he glanced once at the dark opening to the crypt in which Kalaran’s skull lay, and for a second he thought it would be better to carry the skull away than Anachron. But his mission called, and that thought vanished into the long, deep dark of his soul where it would haunt him for the rest of his life.

Gar narrowed his eyes as he stepped from the Temple into sunlight. He felt the heat of the day immediately against his somber black clothing. It might have warmed another, but Gar had already begun to steel himself against the hellish heats of the waste, so it went unnoticed. Instead he concentrated on the silhouette of a rider leading three other horses, and of the two men malevolently staring in his own direction.

“Spido, remain there,” Gar looked away from his mounted aide and nodded first to one of the men, and then to the other. “Nothing you have been paid is worth your trying to kill me.”

The two of them looked enough alike to have been father and son. “You paid us,” shouted the younger of them. “My uncle and I are all that remains of families you slew, traitor! You have deprived us of our lives, now we will destroy you.”

“Obliged to be a completist.” Gar leaped from the Temple’s steps to the flat of the courtyard. He landed heavily and loudly on his feet, but neither of the two farmers rushing in at him realized he had Dragon Stomped their long shadows. Letting his leap flow into a crouch, he slid forward into the Grand Monitor form. He posted the uncle up on his left elbow, then snapped his forearm up to let the Velvet Palm Strike reunite the man with his family.

Jumping up and tucking himself into a double backflip, Gar spun safely above the nephew’s backhanded sword slash. Lighting on the ground as delicately as a rose petal falling from a blossom, Gar flicked his right hand out. His index finger darted in and out, twice and twice again, in the Dragonfly Pulse Strike. Hitting once over each carotid artery and jugular vein, it created a pressure wave that ruptured the boy’s cranial capillary system.

At Spido’s side before the boy staggered out his last step and collapsed, Gar looked up at his sorcellet. The youth’s gape-jawed look of astonishment confirmed something the assassin had assumed about his aide, but he did not give voice to his suspicion. Instead he swung himself up into the saddle and nodded slightly. “Is there something you wish to comment, Spido?”

“You killed them just like that!” The youth snapped his fingers and shook his head. “Bip, bip, just like that.”

“That is what an assassin does, you know.”

“Well, yes, of course I know that. I was at Armbruss, wasn’t I? But I mean, tap, tap, and they’re dead.”

Gar reined his horse around, loathing the surrender of his mobility to the bloated, heavy-hooved beast between his legs. “They knew what they were about.”

Spido rode up beside Gar, with the two mightily laden packhorses falling in line behind. “I’m not sure they did know what they were doing, sir. They’d have been more evenly matched against a stalk of wheat than you.”

“Pity the farmer who mistakes me for a stalk of wheat then. At least they are with their families.” Gar turned quickly toward Spido but the youth, who had turned to stare back at the bodies, did not notice. “Spido, what of your family?”

“Not so much different than them, I reckon.” The chunky youth shrugged as they rode toward Caltus’s west gate. “My dad ran off and we think he died in the war, of course, though you didn’t kill him. My mum and my uncle still live in Torfay, up in the mountains, a bit south of where Gelfait is supposed to be.”

Gar nodded as a crossbowman stepped from an alley farther down the road. The man triggered his bow and Gar snatched the poorly aimed missile from the air, for fear it would hit any of a number of people who were peeking at him through drawn curtains or shuttered windows. The assassin hurled it back at his assailant, with all of the disdain of a professional for the efforts of an amateur, ensuring that though the man would limp for the rest of his life, he would not breed.

Spido blanched a bit at the soprano curses echoing from the alley. “Being a master of hingu is dangerous, eh?”

“The hingu-shanshao lives in Death’s Shadow, so he learns to take comfort there.” Gar yawned. “Surely you remember the Third Precept.”

“Of course, but things in practice are so much more, ah, real, than in theory, eh?”

“Ah, you rebuke me with the Fourth of the Thirteen Truths.” Gar arched an eyebrow at Spido, which made the younger man blush and convinced a swordsman to remain in the shadows beyond him. “You learned much at Armbruss. I trust you enjoyed your time there?”

“Very much, sir.”

Their conversation lapsed as they reached Westgate. Rango’s soldiers hurried to clear the way for Gar. Their shouting spooked one horse, which would not have been bad were it not attached to a cart filled with pickle casks. Green gherkins bounced up off dark cobblestones like tubular frogs, while dill spears fell in a phallic avalanche over bystanders.

Emulating the elan with which Gar had plucked the quarrel from the air, Spido arrested a large sweet pickle in midflight. He held it aloft triumphantly, but the gesture’s majesty failed as two more pickles pummeled him and nearly unhorsed him. In revenge, Spido bit the head off his captive and crunched it with great gusto.