Robin Hobb - The Complete Farseer Trilogy

I danced my staff around me, keeping the others at bay. They looked ragged and hungry, but I still felt they could outrun me if I fled. I was already tired, and they were like starving wolves. They’d pursue me until I dropped. One reached too close and I struck him a glancing blow to the wrist. He dropped a rusty fish-knife and clutched his hand to his heart, shrieking over it. Again, the other two paid no attention to the injured one. I danced back.

‘What do you want?’ I demanded of them.

‘What do you have,’ one of them said. His voice was rusty and hesitant, as if long unused, and his words lacked any inflection. He moved slowly around me, in a wide circle that kept me turning. Dead men talking, I thought to myself, and couldn’t stop the thought from echoing through my mind.

‘Nothing,’ I panted, jabbing to keep one from moving any closer. ‘I don’t have anything for you. No money, no food, nothing. I lost all my things, back down the road.’

‘Nothing,’ said the other, and for the first time I realized she had been a woman, once. Now she was this empty malevolent puppet, whose dull eyes suddenly lit with avarice as she said, ‘Cloak. I want your cloak.’

She seemed pleased to have formulated this thought, and it made her careless enough to let me crack her on the shin. She glanced down at the injury as if puzzled, and then continued to limp after me.

‘Cloak,’ echoed the other. For a moment they glared at one another in dull realization of their rivalry. ‘Me. Mine,’ he added.

‘No. Kill you,’ she offered calmly. ‘Kill you, too,’ she reminded me, and came close again. I swung my staff at her, but she leaped back, and then made a snatch at it as it went by. I turned, just in time to whack the one whose wrist I had already damaged. Then I leaped past him and raced down the road. I ran awkwardly, holding onto my staff with one hand as I fought the fastening of my cloak with the other. At last it came undone and I let it fall from me as I continued to run. The rubberiness in my legs warned me that this was my last gambit. But a few moments later, they must have reached it, for I heard angry cries and screams as they quarrelled over it. I prayed it would be enough to occupy all four of them and kept running. There was a bend in the road, not much but enough to take me out of their sight. I continued to run and then trotted for as long as I could before daring to look back. The road shone wide and empty behind me. I pushed myself on, and when I saw a likely spot, I left the road.

I found a savagely nasty thicket of brambles and forced my way into the heart of it. Shaking and exhausted, I crouched down on my heels in the thick of the spiny bushes and strained my ears for any sound of pursuit. I took short sips from my water-skin, and tried to calm myself. I had no time for this delay; I had to get back to Buckkeep; but I dared not emerge.

It is still inconceivable to me that I fell asleep there, but I did.

I came awake gradually. Groggy, I felt sure I was recovering from a severe injury or long illness. My eyes were gummy, my mouth thick and sour. I forced my eyelids open and looked around me in bewilderment. The light was ebbing, and an overcast defeated the moon.

My exhaustion had been such that I had leaned over into the thorn bushes and slept despite a multitude of jabbing prickles. I extricated myself with much difficulty, leaving bits of cloth, hair and skin behind. I emerged from my hiding-place as cautiously as any hunted animal, not only questing as far as my sense would reach, but also snuffing the air and peering all about me. I knew that my questing would not reveal to me any Forged ones, and hoped that if any were nearby, the forest animals would have seen them and reacted. But all was quiet.

I cautiously emerged onto the road. It was wide and empty. I looked once at the sky, and then set out for Forge, staying close to the edge of the road, where the shadows of the trees were thickest. I tried to move both swiftly and silently, and did neither as well as I wanted. I had stopped thinking of anything except vigilance and my need to get back to Buckkeep. Smithy’s life was the barest tendril in my mind. I think the only emotion still active in me was the fear that kept me looking over my shoulder and scanning the woods to either side as I walked.

It was full dark when I arrived on the hillside overlooking Forge. For some time I stood looking down on it, seeking for any signs of life, then I forced myself to walk on. The wind had come up, and fitfully granted me moonlight. It was a treacherous boon, as much deceiver as revealer. It made shadows move at the corners of abandoned houses, and cast sudden reflections that glinted like knives from puddles in the street. But no one walked in Forge. The normal inhabitants had abandoned it not long after that fateful raid, and evidently the Forged ones had as well, once there were no more sources of food or comfort there. The town had never really rebuilt itself after the raid, and a long season of winter storms and tides had nearly completed what the Red Ships had begun. Only the harbour looked almost normal, save for the empty slips. The sea-walls still curved out into the bay like protective hands cupping the docks. But there was nothing left to protect.

I threaded my way through the desolation that was Forge. My skin prickled as I crept past sagging doors on splintered frames in half-burnt buildings. It was a relief to get away from the mouldy smell of the empty cottages and to stand on the wharves overlooking the water. The road went right down to the docks and curved along the cove. A shoulder of roughly-worked stone had once protected the road from the greedy sea, but a winter of tides and storms without the intervention of man was breaking it down. Stones were working loose, and the sea’s driftwood battering rams, abandoned now by the tide, cluttered the beach below. Once carts of iron ingots had been hauled down this road to waiting vessels. I walked along the sea-wall, and saw that what had appeared so permanent from the hill above would withstand perhaps one or two more winter seasons without maintenance before the sea reclaimed it.

Overhead, stars shone intermittently through scudding clouds. The evasive moon cloaked and revealed herself as well, occasionally granting me glimpses of the harbour. The shushing of the waves was like the breathing of a drugged giant. It was a night from a dream, and when I looked out over the water, the ghost of a Red Ship cut across the moonpath as it put into Forge harbour. Her hull was long and sleek, her masts bare of canvas as she came slipping into port. The red of her hull and prow was shiny as fresh-spilled blood, as if she cut through runnels of gore instead of saltwater. In the dead town behind me, no one raised a shout of warning.

I stood like a fool, limned on the sea-wall, shivering at the apparition, until the creak of oars and the silver of dripping water off an oar’s edge made the Red Ship real.

I flung myself flat to the causeway, then slithered off the smooth road surface into the boulders and driftwood cluttered along the sea-wall. I could not breathe for terror. All my blood was in my head, pounding, and no air was in my lungs. I had to set my head down between my arms and close my eyes to regain control of myself. By then the small sounds even a stealthy vessel must make came faint but distinct across the water to me. A man cleared his throat, an oar rattled in its lock, something heavy thudded to the deck. I waited for a shout or command to betray that I had been seen. But there was nothing. I lifted my head cautiously, peering through the whitened roots of a driftwood log. All was still save the ship coming closer and closer as the rowers brought her into harbour. Her oars rose and fell in near-silent unison.