He regaled her with stories he made up about a boyhood that never happened and a family that never existed.
Gradually, she told him quite a bit about her own youth and, one night, about why she came to Neraka. They were hunkered just inside the entrance to a small cave, watching the snow fall and the evening deepen.
“I was a chirurgeon,” she said, her voice and eyes soft. “The youngest and the most inexperienced of the Solam-nic Knights sent here. I was brought along as an assistant, really, for the two council members, as I am not the most skilled with a sword. Councilman Crandayl suffered from gout. I was there to aid him.” She paused and turned to stare at Shiv, again her eyes seeing something far beyond him and the darkening cave. “I was charging forward into the battle against the Dark Knights when I fell, slipped on the blood already thick on the ground. I struck my head and lost consciousness. When I awoke hours later I discovered that someone had fallen on top of me-Crandayl. He was dead. Everyone was dead. And the Dark Knights had taken me for dead, too. It took me three days to bury my brethren, nearly another day to bury the Dark Knights who had fallen.”
“And you left your armor there?” Sanford asked.
A nod. “I left my oath there, too.”
Shiv waited.
“I’m not a Solamnic Knight any longer. If I was, I wouldn’t be here.”
“I don’t understand.”
“A Solamnic Knight would have returned to the Order’s nearest outpost. I would have let them assign me to another unit.”
“Then why…?”
“Am I here? I’d rather wander these mountains helping people live than return to the Order and ride off to kill people. I hate fighting. I hate the regime and the mandates and the notion of always following orders. And maybe I hate the Knighthood because it fosters bloodshed.”
“The villagers think you’re a Solamnic Knight.”
She shrugged. “Better, perhaps, they think that than to know the truth-that I’m a deserter.”
“Maybe you’re still a Solamnic at heart. After all, the pendant…” Shiv gestured to where he knew the charm hung on the gold chain beneath her shirt. “You still wear a symbol of the Order of the Rose.”
“I wear a symbol of my guilt,” she corrected him. She paused and resumed studying the snow. “Get some sleep, Safford. Morning will come too soon.”
Morning did come too soon. Shiv knew Risana well enough by now, better than any of his previous targets. He knew she worked alone, that there had never been any contacts or fellow Knights supporting her cause. She had never encouraged a soul to leave the mountains and join the Solamnic Order. He could kill her and complete his assignment. It would be simple.
They were nearing a branch in the trail that led back to Telvan. There were places nearby to hide her body. A journey of seven or eight days and he could tell the Dark Knight commander that the contract was fulfilled. He could finally collect his pay.
“Aren’t you worried?” Shiv asked her, the fingers of his right hand brushing the handle of a knife. “Rish, aren’t you in the least little bit worried?”
“About…?”
“The Dark Knights. This is their land, after all. Aren’t you worried they’ll be hunting you? If you keep this up, healing people and ending plagues, they might try to do something to stop you.”
She shrugged. “Let them send someone, Safford. Let them send their very best assassins. I’ll stay here until my last breath.”
“Till your last breath,” Shiv whispered, staring at the trail ahead. “This way,” he said louder, stepping onto the trail toward Telvan and, for the moment, taking the lead.
Shiv didn’t hear the boots crunch on the snow ahead, or see the shadows stretch out from a spire along the path. If the sun hadn’t been shining so fiercely, he wouldn’t have caught the glint from their swords, which they stupidly hadn’t blackened. The glint was the only thing that alerted him.
“Rish!” he shouted as his hands tugged free the twin blades. He crouched as he heard the swoosh of steel behind him, Risana drawing her long sword.
“Safford, what is it? What-?”
Shiv darted forward just as the first assassin lunged into his path. He was a young man, full of muscle and energy and, fortunately, not terribly skilled. Shiv dropped below the swing of his short sword and drove one of his knives up into his belly. The second knife stabbed higher and punctured a lung. He twisted the blade for good measure.
Shiv stepped back and kicked the man down the mountain path. The young man struggled to stop his descent and managed to grab onto an embedded stone. Shiv turned his attention to the second figure. This one was older, well into middle age, and careful from experience. His eyes narrowed as he caught Shiv’s angry expression.
“Shiv.” The word was a hiss of remembrance. Then, much louder, “Shiv of Telvan!”
Shiv grimaced. He had seen this one in a Dark Knight camp last year, a mercenary who had the favor of the commander who had ordered Risana’s assassination. The man opened his mouth to say something else, but Shiv cut him off, hurling one of his knives and watching as the sharp, slender blade pierced the man’s throat.
So the Dark Knights have sent more assassins, Shiv thought. They are tired of waiting for me to finish her. They are in a great hurry to have this woman die.
There was a sudden clash of steel and Shiv whirled, shaken from his thoughts. Risana was battling her own foe, a third man whose weapon was blackened and whose presence Shiv had not sensed. Perhaps the two Shiv had dispatched had been sacrificial lambs, part of a ruse to distract the woman from the more dangerous killer.
“Who are you?” Risana demanded. She was trading blow for blow with the man. “What do you want with us?”
No answer.
The assassin was a professional, Shiv quickly understood, one who was merely gauging Risana’s strength and skill. The man was dressed like the first two, as a shepherd with ragged clothes, but his unlined and unweathered face made it clear he wasn’t native to the mountains.
“The contract is mine,” Shiv hissed, as he charged up the path, drawing his remaining knife and taking aim.
The man crouched and spun, catching Risana off guard and slicing at her abdomen, then continuing on past her and hurtling toward Shiv. Risana stumbled back as Shiv threw his knife. The blade lodged in his opponent’s shoulder.
“Saf-” Risana cried, as she regained her footing and darted forward.
Shiv’s opponent was quick, stabbing down and catching Shiv in the chest. Before the man could deliver a second blow, however, he was speared in the back. He made a gasping sound, then crumpled.
“Safford?”
Risana pushed the corpse away and knelt at Saf-ford’s side, putting her hands over the growing blossom of red on his chest.
“There might be others,” he managed to gasp. He felt himself growing weak. “Dying,” he said. “Leave me, Rish.”
Instead she stayed at his side all through the night and the following day, using herbs from her pouch, shielding him from the cold with her own body. When she was certain he would live, she carried him to a rocky overhang and wedged him into a crevice, using her cloak for a blanket. She then tended to burying the three assassins. The ground was so hard she had to fashion cairns.
“They were Dark Knights,” Shiv told her when she finally returned.
Risana shook her head. “No. Knights, even Dark Knights, would be wearing armor, something to identify themselves. And they wouldn’t be using short swords.”
“Agents of the Dark Knights then,” Shiv returned.
“I guess you would know.” Risana’s words made him aware of the chance she had taken, healing him and not leaving him for the wolves.
In Brighthollow Risana assisted with the birth of the mayor’s twin daughters. In the next three villages she saw to scattered cases of fever, helped bury individuals she could not heal, mended clothing and fences, and
