Stephen Deas - The King's assassin

‘You should go back, Berren.’

Berren started shovelling the contents of yet another old privy onto the back of a wagon. He was up to his knees in excrement and slime when he saw that Syannis had stopped and was standing over him.

‘I’m sorry,’ Syannis said again. ‘But that’s all. That’s all I have for you. If that’s not good enough then get on a ship and leave.’

‘You should have told me,’ Berren said, his voice dull. ‘You should have let me help you. You should have let me be a part of it.’

‘And you should have stayed where you were put, listened to what you were told and done what you were asked.’

Berren glared at him. ‘Would you?’

‘No. No, I doubt that I would.’

‘Well then.’ Berren climbed out of his hole and stood face to face with the thief-taker. His hands and his shoes and his trousers were covered in filth. Somehow, Syannis didn’t seem to be nearly as dirty as he should be. ‘Still shouldn’t have.’ He grabbed Syannis’s shirt and pulled hard, throwing him into the privy. Then he looked down at his old master, up to his knees in shit, hands covered in filth and a face covered in outrage. He laughed, even as there were tears rolling down his cheeks. ‘I can’t forget her. I just can’t.’

‘Boy!’ Syannis looked ready to explode.

‘Not something that’s supposed to happen to a king’s son, eh?’ Berren barked a bitter laugh. ‘Where I grew up you could be stabbed in the street for a few pieces of copper. Life is cheaper than gold or silver and worth more than both. Nothing changes, wherever I go. And I’m not your boy any more.’ Syannis opened his mouth to speak, but before any words could come out, Berren threw a bucket at him. ‘This is what you wanted,’ he said. ‘Now dig, bastard prince.’

The thief-taker stared up at him. The anger in his face slowly changed and he started to laugh. ‘You’re a whoreson, Berren, you truly are.’

‘It does seem likely.’ Berren shrugged.

‘You want to play it like this? Fine.’ Syannis picked up a handful of filth and threw it. Berren ducked and it sailed past his face. The thief-taker started to climb out. ‘You’re going back in that hole, boy. One way or another.’

Berren picked up a spade and held it like an axe. ‘You and who’s army, king’s bastard?’

Syannis was still laughing, but there was a glint in his eye of the old anger, that dangerous look just before he took someone’s head off. This time Berren knew exactly how he felt, but halfway out of the pit, Syannis stopped. He pointed.

‘Maybe that one.’

Berren followed the thief-taker’s finger. Through the maze of tents, a posse of soldiers were weaving their way towards the castle. They weren’t wearing the purple of the king’s guard, the green of the men from Kalda, or the brown and black of the Mountain Panther.

‘Come on! Help me out!’ Syannis thrust a hand towards Berren. Berren pulled him out of the pit and then followed as Syannis ran to the palisade. They climbed up, ignoring the shouts of nearby soldiers. Down in the harbour two fat-bellied ships that hadn’t been there in the morning now wallowed in the water. If he squinted, Berren thought he could see longboats inching their way towards the shore.

‘Oi!’ There was an angry shout from below and behind them. ‘You two!’ A soldier was staring up, waving his fist. ‘What do you think you’re doing up there? Get down and get back to work!’

Berren hurried down and ran back towards the privies with Syannis hot behind him, hoping the soldier would ignore them, but he followed. ‘We were just-’ started the thief-taker, but the soldier stopped him with a glare.

‘I don’t care what you was just — you want to work, you work!’ He pointed at a patch of clear ground. ‘A new one. There. When you’ve done that, this one needs filling in and that one needs digging out. Looks like there’s going to be a lot of work for you two today, and you’d better put your backs into it if you don’t want to go home hungry.’

‘Ain’t you got enough shit holes?’ Berren laughed.

The soldier snorted. ‘Got another company shipping in, haven’t we?’ The sneer in his words was clear. Not his company. He snatched up a shovel and tossed it at Berren. ‘Dig, you oik! I’ll be watching you.’

Berren dug, and Syannis too. They looked up now and then, watching what was happening. The castle yard grew busier. More tents sprouted up. New soldiers began to arrive, these ones in grey with a black sword, point down, emblazoned on their tunics. Now and then Berren caught sight of an archer or two, with longbows as tall as a man slung over their shoulders. They walked tall and proud, with a swagger as though they expected everyone else to move aside for them. Later in the afternoon came an even more startling sight. Six men armoured in shining metal plates came striding by. Even the king’s guard stopped what they were doing to stare.

‘The Black Swords!’ whispered Syannis. ‘All of them!’

Berren shrugged.

‘That’s nearly a thousand men. They usually split into separate companies and fight in two or three places at once. They’ve got archers and a few men in that Dominion armour. Everyone else is afraid of them.’ He whistled softly and then grinned. ‘Talon must really have put the wind up Meridian. Good.’

‘Huh.’ To Berren the men in their metal skins looked slow and clumsy. Difficult for a man with a spear or a short sword to find a way through it all maybe, but what did that matter if you could simply stand back and throw rocks at them? He shrugged and went back to his digging. Maybe no one had enough rocks to wear them down?

Once it was too dark to work, the sergeant who’d hired them sent them away, each with a penny and a burned end of bread. Berren wrapped his in cloth and put it inside his shirt for later, for when his hands weren’t encrusted with other people’s shit.

‘Tomorrow?’ asked Syannis, but the sergeant shook his head.

‘I seen you two slacking off. Lazy. Got no place for lazy men here. Piss off and be glad you got paid.’ He turned and left.

Outside the castle Syannis idly threw his crust of bread away. Berren shook his head. ‘Duke’s boy,’ he muttered.

‘What?’

‘You come from where I come from, you wouldn’t throw away perfectly good food, that’s what. Old habits die hard.’

‘I’m not eating like this!’ The thief-taker raised his hands, every bit as filthy as Berren’s.

‘That’s because you don’t know what hungry is.’ Berren shook his head and looked away. ‘Bet you never have. Not once.’ This could be where they went their separate ways. He’d done what needed to be done. Things would never be the same between them, but he’d said his piece now. The hole was still there inside him, but he didn’t need the thief-taker any more. The itch was gone. ‘It’s all right. I don’t want to fight. It’s just funny, that’s all.’ He turned and started to walk away. There weren’t going to be any goodbyes.

‘Talon says you fought well,’ said Syannis. ‘What was it like?’

‘Bloody,’ muttered Berren. The fight on the beach still troubled him. Not because he’d been scared, which he had, but because in the fragments he remembered the strongest impression was of how much he’d liked it. And because of what he’d done afterwards to the old woman with the knife, while the buzz of it was still hot inside his head. Troubled him a lot when he thought about it, so mostly he didn’t. ‘I was too busy staying alive to notice much else. I expect I’d have a very different idea if I’d been watching from a distance.’