“Oh, not all that much; Sharassin’s a friend of mine. All I had to do was buy her the ingredients and provide her with a few vials of blood — but one of the ingredients was a pan of beaten silver, so you better appreciate this!”
“Oh, I do!” Valder hastened to reply. “How long do we have?”
Tandellin shrugged. “I’m not sure — I think until you wake up.”
“Plenty of time, then — I just went to sleep.” He hesitated. “At least, I think I just went to sleep, but you know how dreams are.”
“Well, let’s not waste it, then. Tell me what happened — we all thought the northerners got you when they first came charging down out of the woods at us.”
Valder related his adventures, glad to be able to do so at his own speed and without being completely serious about everything. Even though he had told the story several times, this was the first chance he had had to tell it to a friend rather than an interrogator.
When he had finished he asked, “And what about you?”
“Oh, I was just sitting in camp when the attack came. At first I was out there with my bow and sword, like everybody else, but, when we saw that we didn’t stand a chance, Captain Lorret sent half a dozen men south to see if we could find reinforcements. He picked the youngest, I suppose because he thought we could run fastest — I was the last one he chose, and he told me to head straight for General Gor’s fortress. I did — and I’m still here, because I was too tired to go back out and fight after I got here. I was up on the ramparts with a bow when the enemy finally got this far, though; don’t think I hit anything. And I may have been spending some time with wizards, but I haven’t gotten my sword enchanted — just my heart. Or maybe somewhere lower down. You’ll have to see Sharassin some time; she’s really... well, you’ll have to see her.”
Valder laughed. Even though it was only a dream, it felt good; he had not laughed much in recent months. It was indescribably good to know that someone, somewhere, still cared about him. He had lost contact with his family years earlier, and friends had come and gone; of them all, only Tandellin had taken the trouble to find him again.
He asked after other friends and was dismayed by how many had died or vanished. After that, the conversation rambled on, largely taken up with the gossip of the Fortress.
Tandellin was making a lewd suggestion as to why General Gor hadn’t yet married when Valder suddenly felt himself seized and shaken. The library walls wavered and dimmed around him. “I must be waking up,” he called. “Stay in touch!” Then Tandellin and the library were gone, and he was lying on his cot in General Karannin’s camp, looking up at two hard-faced guardsmen, their features eerily lighted by a single shaded lantern.
He glanced around the tent. Radler and Korl were watching silently from their beds; Tesra slept on, oblivious.
“Come on,” one of the guardsmen demanded, in a voice like stone scraping stone.
Valder made a vague noise of agreement and rolled off the cot onto his feet, somehow managing not to snag Wirikidor on anything. He started to smooth down his hair and adjust his clothing, but the guardsmen politely convinced him not to bother by grabbing his arms and moving him gently but irresistibly out of the tent.
Valder went along without further argument or delay. Apparently, he thought, he was about to find out what special duty had been chosen for him.
The guardsmen said nothing further but merely escorted him to an undistinguished tent near the dragon pens. They thrust him inside and then vanished into the night.
Inside he found himself facing two men, a tall, brown-haired officer and a short, pale man in civilian attire but wearing a sword on his belt like a soldier.
“I’m Captain Endarim,” the officer said. “You’re Valder of Kardoret?”
Valder acknowledged his identity.
“Good. I think we’ve figured out what to do with you.”
No answer seemed to be called for, so Valder said nothing. He looked politely interested and glanced at the other man, inviting an introduction. None came.
“Darrend and the rest have explained something of the workings of your sword to me,” the officer said. “They have also sworn, under oath to a good theurgist, that they have no chance of duplicating it. That means that you’re unique and a resource not to be wasted.” He rose up onto his toes for a moment, then dropped back, as if emphasizing his point.
“Yes, sir,” Valder answered noncommittally. He did not particularly care to be called a resource. This was a rude contrast to his warming magical chat with Tandellin.
“We’ve been giving the matter considerable thought as to how best to employ you. Putting you in open combat seems wasteful. You would need to be constantly sheathing and unsheathing your sword to be really effective, and you might get yourself killed in between.”
“Yes, sir,” Valder said again, noting to himself that this pompous captain seemed to be unaware of the semi-immortality the sword theoretically provided. Even if he could not be killed, however, he had no desire to be cut up, so the point was essentially correct.
“You’ve been trained in reconnaissance and have demonstrated over the past few months that you can take care of yourself and survive alone behind the enemy lines. You can, as I understand it, kill any man with ease and with great speed — that should allow you to deal with sentries. I’m told the sword provides a certain measure of protection, though I’m not clear on that. And you’re ideally suited to fighting individuals, rather than groups. It seems to us, therefore, that there is one job exactly right for a man with your talents. We want to send you after not just enemy soldiers, but the really important men among the enemy — generals, sorcerers, members of the government, and so forth. Each such man you remove is worth dozens, maybe hundreds, of enemy soldiers. Do you follow me?”
Valder followed him all too well. “You want me to be an assassin?”
“That’s an ugly word, but you do have the right idea.”
“I’m not sure...”
Endarim cut him off. “Before you go any further, let me say that the pay for such work is excellent. You would rate as a captain to start and go up from there. You would have no other duties; when not working, your time would be your own.”
“It’s not that,” Valder said. “I’m just not sure that I could do the job. I don’t know how to find these men you want me to kill, for example, and I really don’t like the idea of killing...”
“Of course you don’t like the idea of killing,” Endarim interrupted him. “But this is war, soldier. The more damage we do to the northerners, by whatever method, the less they’ll be able to do to us. If you can kill one enemy sorcerer, you might be saving the lives of a dozen or more of your own comrades in arms! As for the technical problems, our wizards will help you with those. We have used assassins before. Finding targets and delivering our men to the right area has never been very difficult. The problem has always been getting through the personal defenses and getting our man out alive — and your sword should make that part much easier.”
“I...”
“Listen, Valder, we prefer to have volunteers for this sort of work, but you’re a special case. I can order you to take on assassination duty if I have to, because you are, without a doubt, one of the most promising candidates we’ve ever had, thanks to that sword, and we need a good assassin right now. We would prefer that you go willingly, because that would greatly improve your chances of survival, but we don’t insist on it. If you refuse an order, we may even resort to a geas.”
“Are you ordering me, then, sir?”
“No, I’m not — not yet, Listen, try it once and see what you think. If it’s that much worse than regular combat for you, maybe we can put you somewhere else — but that magic sword you’ve stumbled onto doesn’t entitle you to any more pampering than any other man in the Ethsharitic army, soldier, and, one way or another, you’re going to fight and you’re going to kill.”
“Yes, sir.” Valder was not happy, but he saw that his only options were obedience or desertion — and he was not a deserter. He knew, firsthand, that the northerners were ruthless and were out to destroy Ethshar. He loved his homeland and its people, even if he had never actually seen very much of either. All he knew was the army, since that was all he had seen since turning sixteen, and a healthy young man wasn’t welcome anywhere else. He had no choice. He liked to believe that there was always a way out of everything, but he could not see one here.
