“Good,” the captain said. “Very good. I’ll have your formal orders drawn up tomorrow, and you’ll start drawing pay at your new rank.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And Valder — I wouldn’t tell anyone what you’re doing. It wouldn’t do any good for everyone to know we use assassins, and I’m sure it wouldn’t do you, personally, any good. It may seem dashing and romantic at first, but assassins are never really popular. They make people nervous.”
“Yes, sir.” Valder had wondered vaguely why he had been brought here in the middle of the night and now guessed that it was to maintain the secrecy of the assassination project.
“If anyone asks, you’re a wizard’s assistant now.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. You’ll start immediately. Kelder, here, will tell you what to do.” The captain waved at the civilian. Valder looked at him, openly curious now.
“Come on,” the man called Kelder said, speaking for the first time. He had a high, thin voice.
Valder looked him over. He was short, of medium build, with an unusually scraggly beard and mustache. His skin was unhealthily pale, his hair a nondescript brown and thinning. His clothes were of undistinguished cut and material, though better than peasants wore. The sword on his belt was standard military issue, very like Wirikidor in appearance.
After this brief appraisal, Valder glanced back at the captain, who was already turning his attention elsewhere, looking at a stack of papers on his cot. With a mental shrug, Valder turned and followed the civilian out of the tent.
They headed directly toward the back of the camp, past the dragon pens and the last few rows of tents and into camptown, where the vintners and whores, undaunted by the late hour, still plied their trades. The main camp was mostly dark, but here about half the tents were still brightly lighted, often with multicolored lanterns. Valder heard singing somewhere and nearly tripped over two soldiers lying semiconscious in the dirt, obviously very drunk.
Kelder led the way past the rowdiest area, past the bright lanterns and thinly clad women, almost to the edge of the circle of wives’ tents that served as a market. He ducked suddenly into a small tent, the abrupt change in course catching Valder by surprise. He started, then followed.
Once settled on the dirt floor of the little tent — there was no furniture nor room for any; a quilted mat served as a bed — Valder demanded, “Who in Hell are you, anyway?”
“I’m called Kelder,” the other replied. “No parentage, no birthplace, no eponym — just Kelder. I’m a spy.” He smiled, as if he had just made a joke. Valder stared at him uncertainly, not sure whether he was joking or not.
“Seriously,” the little man went on, “I’m a spy. In fact, I’m in charge of espionage for this entire front, which, unfortunately, doesn’t mean much, because we haven’t got any espionage to speak of here. General Gor sent me to fix that, and I happened to arrive in time to hear about you and your sword. You may be interested to know that we have seven wizards and two witches searching for your mysterious hermit with all the magic at their disposal, and a relay of theurgists praying for information about him. We take this very seriously. A scouting party will be sent up the coast to look for him, as well. So far we haven’t found anything, but a wizard who can casually throw around eighth-order spells is worth a little effort. We don’t have very many of them. Whether we find him or not, though, we have you and Wirikidor.”
Valder could think of nothing to say; he stared at the man in the dimness; the only light was what seeped through the tent’s canvas.
“I suppose you’re feeling overwhelmed by all this. You’ve gone from being an ordinary scout to an unimportant bit of coastline to being involved in all sorts of strange things, tangled up with wizards and spies and assassins. Life can be like that. I’d like to give you time to sort it all out, but I’m afraid we can’t spare any. I’m to train you, and then you’ll start work. Ten days from now, with any luck, you’ll kill the Northern Empire’s chief sorcerer on the western front.”
Valder started to protest.
“Let me rephrase that,” Kelder said. “Within the next ten days you’ll give Wirikidor the opportunity to kill the enemy’s chief sorcerer on the western front.” He smiled. “You’re going to be very useful, Valder.”
Valder was not at all sure of that, but he did not argue.
If assassination proved unbearable, he could botch it, and they would reassign him. He found it impossible to believe that he was going to kill any sorcerers, Nine nights later, as he stood over the body of a dead sorcerer, he still found it hard to believe.
CHAPTER 15
His first five assassinations were made in fairly quick succession, at two- or three-day intervals; each time Kelder told him how to find and identify his target, each time a wizard or two got him into the general area, and each time he managed to get in and out without serious injury. Two of the five were sorcerers; he was never told just who the other three were.
Wirikidor disposed of all of them in short order, in addition to dealing with assorted guards and other interference. Valder had been pleasantly surprised to discover that sorcerers died as easily as anybody else, once the blade reached them; he had expected them to be at least as bad as the shatra had been, reaching for the sword or doing other eerie, discomforting things after they should have been dead. His fears proved unfounded; sorcerers folded up and died just like anybody else when their throats were cut.
This was not to say he had no trouble; one sorcerer had had an ugly metal talisman that spat magical fire at him and gashed his left arm rather badly. Valder had brought the talisman back with him after killing the man but turned it over to Darrend for study and never saw it again.
After the fifth mission, he was left alone for a full sixnight, giving him time to recover — and time to think.
At midevening of the sixth day he lay sprawled on his cot, staring at the dark canvas overhead. His left arm still ached dully where the sorcerous wound had been, despite a prompt and mostly effective healing spell; that ache combined with the lingering effects of an inadequate dinner washed down with oushka made it difficult to concentrate.
It had not been good oushka, either; Valder suspected it was made locally and was quite certain it was watered. Watered oushka was replacing wine as the standard tipple, because wine was becoming impossibly expensive, due to short supply.
Several supplies were running low, which was why his dinner had been rather skimpy. The army was relying ever more heavily on forage rather than proper supply caravans, and grasslands and forests did not provide very much in the way of forage. Sustenance spells were being left intact when men came in from patrol in order to save food — and because fewer wizards were available to renew them when the men were sent out again.
In fact, it seemed to Valder that every resource was being stretched thin. The magical assistance provided for his assassinations varied from night to night, according to what was available, and there was no longer a single witch in the entire camp. He had heard from his tentmates that entire regiments were going into battle with no magical support at all. No more troops were coming up from the rear, and the camp had been stripped, leaving Valder wondering whether any replacements were being sent to the front. He was not sure what had become of the men and material, but they did seem to be far less plentiful than in times past.
Could it be, he asked himself through a thin haze of pain and alcohol, that the war really was drawing to a close? It didn’t seem possible — yet it didn’t seem possible that the army could stretch itself much further, either.
What would happen, he wondered, if the war did end? What would become of him? What did he want to do with his life? What did one do with a life that might last forever if he could avoid drawing his sword?
Valder supposed that one did very much the same thing one did with any life. No one ever knew how long he would live, after all; Valder did not know how long he would live — merely that the rules were different for him.
