right, I heard a smothered laugh. Even as I turned towards it, trying to peer through the gloom of the forest, a voice spoke from my left, closer than the laugh had been.
‘Where’s your wolf, Tom Badgerlock?’
Both mockery and challenge were in the words. Behind me, I heard claws on gravel, a larger animal, a dog perhaps, but when I spun about, the creature had melted back into the darkness. I turned again to the sound of muffled laughter. At least three men, I told myself, and two Wit-beasts. I tried to think only of the logistics of this immediate fight, and nothing beyond it. I would consider the full implications of this encounter later. I drew deep slow breaths, waiting for them. I opened my senses fully to the night, pushing away a sudden longing not just for Nighteyes’ keener perception but for the comforting sensation of my wolf watching my back. This time I heard the scuttle as the smaller beast approached. I kicked at it, more wildly than I had intended, but caught it only a glancing blow. It was gone again.
‘I’ll kill it!’ I warned the crouching night, but only mocking laughter met my threat. Then, I shamed myself, shouting furiously, ‘What do you want of me? Leave me alone!’
They let the echoes of that childish question and plea be carried off by the wind. The terrible silence that followed was the shadow of my aloneness.
‘Where is your wolf, Tom Badgerlock?’ a voice called, and this time it was a woman’s, melodic with suppressed laughter. ‘Do you miss him, renegade?’
The fear that had been flowing with my blood turned suddenly to the ice of fury. I would stand here and I would kill them all and leave their entrails smoking on the road. My fist that had been clenched on my knife haft suddenly loosened, and a relaxed readiness spread through me. Poised, I waited for them. It would come as a sudden rush from all directions, the animals coming in low, and the people attacking high, with weapons. I had only the knife. I’d have to wait until they were close. If I ran, I knew they’d take me from behind. Better to wait and force them to come to me. Then I would kill them, kill them all.
I truly don’t know how long I stood there. That sort of readiness can make time stand still or run swift as wind. I heard a dawn bird call, and then another answered it, and still I waited. When light began to stain the night sky, I drew a deeper breath. I took a long look around myself, peering into the trees, but saw nothing. The only movement was the high flight of small birds as they flitted through the branches and the silver fall of the raindrops they shook loose. My stalkers were gone. The little creature that had snapped at me had left no trace of his passage on the wet stone of the road. The larger animal that had crossed behind me had left a single print in the mud at the road’s edge. A small dog. And that was all.
I turned and resumed my walk up to Buckkeep Castle. As I strode along, I began to tremble, not with fear, but with the tension that was now leaving me, and the fury that replaced it.
What had they wanted? To scare me. To make me aware of them, to let me know that they knew what I was and where I denned. Well, they had done that, and more. I forced my thoughts into order and tried to coldly assess the full threat they presented. I extended it beyond myself. Did they know about Jinna? Had they followed me from her door, and if so, did they know about Hap as well?
I cursed my own stupidity and carelessness. How could I have ever imagined the Piebalds would leave me alone? The Piebalds knew that Lord Golden came from Buckkeep, and that his servant Tom Badgerlock was Witted. They knew Tom Badgerlock had lopped off Laudwine’s arm and stolen their prince-hostage from them. The Piebalds would want revenge. They could have it as easily as posting one of their cowardly scrolls, denouncing me as practising the Wit, the despised beast magic. I would be hanged, quartered and burned for it. Had I supposed that Buckkeep Town or Castle would keep me safe from them?
I should have known that this would happen. Once I plunged back into Buckkeep’s court and politics and intrigue, I had become vulnerable to all the plotting and schemes that power attracted. I had known this would happen, I admitted bitterly. And for some fifteen years that knowledge had kept me away from Buckkeep. Only Chade and his plea for help in recovering Prince Dutiful had lured me back. Cold reality seeped through me now. There were only two courses open to me. I either had to sever all ties and flee, as I had once before, or I had to plunge fully into the swirling intrigue that had always been the Farseer court at Buckkeep. If I stayed, I would have to start thinking like an assassin again, always aware of the risks and threats to myself, and how they affected those around me.
Then I wrenched my thoughts into a more truthful path. I’d have to be an assassin again, not just think like one. I’d have to be ready to kill when I encountered people that threatened my prince or me. For there was no avoiding the connection: those who came to taunt Tom Badgerlock about his Wit and the death of his wolf were folk who also knew that Prince Dutiful shared their despised beast magic. It was their handle on the Prince, the lever they would use not just to end the persecution of those with the Wit, but to gain power for themselves. It was no help to me that my sympathies were, in part, with them. In my own life, I had suffered from the taint of being Witted. I had no desire to see anyone else labour under that burden. If they had not presented such a threat to my prince, I might have sided with them.
My furious striding carried me up to the sentries at the gate to Buckkeep. There was a guardhouse there, and from within came the sound of men’s voices and the clatter of soldiers at food. One, a lad of about twenty, lounged by the door, bread and cheese in one hand and a mug of morning beer in the other. He glanced up at me, and then, mouth full, nodded me through the gates. I halted, anger coursing through me like a poison.
‘Do you know who I am?’ I demanded of him.
He startled, then peered at me more closely. Obviously he was afraid he had offended some minor noble, but a glance at my clothing reassured him.
‘You’re a servant in the Keep. Aren’t you?’
‘Whose servant?’ I demanded. Foolishness, to call attention to myself this way, and yet I could not stop the words. Had others come this way before me last night, were they inside the keep even now? Had a careless sentry admitted folk bent on killing the Prince? It all seemed too possible.
‘Well … I don’t know!’ the boy sputtered. He drew himself up straight, but still had to look up to glare at me. ‘How am I supposed to know that? Why should I care?’
‘Because, you damned fool, you are guarding the main entrance to Buckkeep Castle. Your queen and your prince depend on you to be alert, and to keep their enemies from walking in. That is why you are here. Isn’t it?’
‘Well. I—’ The boy shook his head in angry frustration, then turned suddenly to the door of the guardhouse. ‘Kespin! Can you come out here?’
Kespin was a taller man, and older. He moved like a swordsman, and his eyes were keen above his grizzled beard. They appraised me as a threat and dismissed me. ‘What’s the problem here?’ he asked us both. His voice was not a warning, but an assurance that he could deal with either of us as we deserved.
The sentry waved his beer mug at me. ‘He’s angry because I don’t know whose servant he is.’
‘What?’
‘I’m Lord Golden’s servant,’ I clarified. ‘And I’m concerned that the sentries on this gate seem to do no more than watch folk go in and out of the keep. I’ve been walking in and out of Buckkeep Castle for over a fortnight now, and I’ve never been challenged once. It doesn’t seem right to me. A score of years ago, when I visited, the sentries on duty here took their task seriously. There was a time when …’
‘There
