Assassin’s Quest. Robin Hobb

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      Not much to begin this venture with. I was facing a long overland journey to Tradeford. I had to survive that before I could plan how to get past Regal’s guards and Skill coterie and kill him. I considered carefully. It was not yet the height of summer. There was time to gather herbs and dry them, time to smoke fish and meat for travelling rations. I needn’t go hungry. For now, I had clothing and the other basics. But eventually I’d need some coin. I had told Chade and Burrich that I could make my own way, on my skills with animals and scribing skills. Perhaps those abilities could get me as far as Tradeford.

      It might have been easier if I could have remained FitzChivalry. I knew boatmen who plied the river trade, and I could have worked my passage to Tradeford. But that FitzChivalry had died. He couldn’t very well go looking for work at the docks. I could not even visit the docks, for fear of being recognized. I lifted my hand to my face, recalling what Burrich’s looking glass had shown me. A streak of white in my hair to remind me where Regal’s soldiers had laid my scalp open. I fingered the new configuration of my nose. There was also a fine seam down my right cheek under my eye, where Regal’s fist had split my face. No one would remember a Fitz that bore these scars. I would let my beard grow. And if I shaved my hair back from my brow as the scribes did, that might be enough change to put off the casual glance. But I would not deliberately venture among those who had known me.

      I’d be afoot. I’d never made an extended journey on foot.

      Why can’t we just stay right here? A sleepy inquiry from Nighteyes. Fish in the creek, game in the woods behind the hut. What more do we need? Why must we go?

      I must. I must do this to be a man again.

      You truly believe you wish to be a man again? I sensed his disbelief but also his acceptance that I would try. He stretched lazily without getting up, spreading wide the toes of his forepaws. Where are we going?

      Tradeford. Where Regal is. A far journey up the river.

       Are there wolves there?

      Not in the city itself, I am sure. But there are wolves in Farrow. There are wolves in Buck still, too. Just not around here.

      Save we two, he pointed out. And added, I should like to find wolves where we go.

      Then he sprawled over and went back to sleep. That was part of what it meant to be a wolf, I reflected. He would worry no more until we left. Then he would simply follow me and trust his survival to our abilities.

      But I had become too much a man again to do as he did. I began to gather provisions the very next day. Despite Nighteyes’ protest, I hunted for more than we needed to eat each day. And when we were successful, I did not let him gorge, but jerked some of the meat, and smoked some of it. I had enough leather skill from Burrich’s perpetual harness mending to make myself soft boots for the summer. I greased my old boots well and set them aside for winter use.

      During the days, while Nighteyes dozed in the sun, I gathered my herbs. Some were the common medicinal herbs I wished to have on hand: willowbark for fever, raspberry root for cough, plantain for infection, nettle for congestion, and the like. Others were not so wholesome. I made a small cedar box and filled it. I gathered and stored the poisons as Chade had taught me: water-hemlock, deathcap mushroom, nightshade, elderberry pith, baneberry and heartseize. I chose as best I could, for ones that were tasteless and odourless, for ones that could be rendered as fine powders and clear liquids. Also I harvested elfbark, the powerful stimulant Chade had used to help Verity survive his sessions of Skilling.

      Regal would be surrounded and protected by his coterie. Will was the one that I most feared, but I would underestimate none of them. I had known Burl as a big husky boy and Carrod had been something of a dandy with the girls. But those days were long past. I had seen what Skill use had made of Will. It had been long since I had made contact with either Carrod or Burl, and I would make no assumptions about them. They were all trained in the Skill, and though my natural talent had once seemed much stronger than theirs, I had found out the hard way that they knew ways of using the Skill that not even Verity had understood. If I were Skill attacked by them, and survived, I would need the elfbark to restore myself.

      I made a second case, large enough to hold my poison box, but otherwise designed like a scribe’s case, to thus create the guise of a wandering scribe. The case would proclaim me as that to the chance acquaintance. Quills for pens I obtained from a nesting goose we ambushed. Some of the powders for pigments I could make, and I fashioned bone tubes and stoppers to hold them. Nighteyes grudgingly furnished me hair for coarse brushes. Finer brushes I attempted with rabbit hair, but with only partial satisfaction. It was very discouraging. A proper scribe was expected by folk to have the inks, brushes and pens of his trade. I reluctantly concluded that Patience had been right when she told me I wrote a fine hand, but could not claim the skills of a full scribe. I hoped my supplies would suffice for any work I might pick up on the way to Tradeford.

      There came a time when I knew I was as well provisioned as I could be and that I should leave soon, to have the summer weather for travelling. I was eager for revenge, and yet strangely reluctant to leave this cabin and life. For the first time that I could recall, I arose from sleep when I awoke naturally, and ate when I was hungry. I had no tasks save those I set myself. Surely it would not hurt if I took a bit of time to recover my physical health. Although the bruises of my dungeon time had long faded, and the only external signs of my injuries were scars, I still felt oddly stiff some mornings. Occasionally, my body would shock me with a twinge when I leaped after something, or turned my head too quickly. A particularly strenuous hunt would leave me trembling and dreading a seizure. It would be wiser, I decided, to be fully healed before I departed.

      So we lingered a time. The days were warm, the hunting was good. As the days slipped by, I made peace with my body. I was not the physically hardened warrior I had been the summer before, but I could keep pace with Nighteyes through a night’s hunting. When I sprang to make a kill, my actions were quick and sure. My body healed, and I set behind me the pains of the past, acknowledging them, but not dwelling on them. The nightmares that had plagued me were shed like the last remnants of Nighteyes’ winter coat. I had never known a life so simple. I had finally made peace with myself.

      No peace lasts long. A dream came to wake me. Nighteyes and I arose before dawn, hunted, and together killed a brace of fat rabbits. This particular hillside was riddled with their warrens, and catching enough to fill ourselves had degenerated quickly to a silly game of leaping and digging. It was past dawn before we left off our play. We flung ourselves down in dappling birch shade, fed again from our kills and drowsed off. Something, perhaps the uneven sunlight on my closed eyelids, had plunged me into a dream.

      I was back in Buckkeep. In the old watchroom, I sprawled on a cold stone floor in the centre of a circle of hard-eyed men. The floor beneath my cheek was sticky-slick with cooling blood. As I panted open-mouthed, the smell and the taste of it combined to fill my senses. They were coming for me again, not just the man with the leather-gloved fists, but Will, elusive invisible Will, slipping silently past my walls to creep into my mind. ‘Please, wait, please,’ I begged them. ‘Stop, I beg you. I am nothing you need fear or hate. I’m only a wolf. Just a wolf, no threat to you. I’ll do you no harm, only let me be gone. I’m nothing to you. I’ll never trouble you again. I’m only a wolf.’ I lifted my muzzle to the sky and howled.

      My own howling woke me.

      I rolled to my hands and knees, shook myself all over and then came to my feet. A dream, I told myself. Only a dream. Fear and shame washed over me, dirtying me in their passage. In my dream I had pleaded for mercy as I had not in reality. I told myself I was no craven. Was I? It seemed I could still smell СКАЧАТЬ