Assassin's Apprentice

And on we went, down a hillside so steep that I felt Sooty’s muscles bunch as she leaned back on her haunches and more than half slid her way down.

Dawn was graying the sky before I smelled the sea again. And it was still early when we crested a rise and looked down on the little village of Forge. It was a poor place in some ways; the anchorage was good only on certain tides. The rest of the time the ships had to anchor farther out and let small craft ply back and forth between them and shore. About all that Forge had to keep it on the map was iron ore. I had not expected to see a bustling city. But neither was I prepared for the rising tendrils of smoke from blackened open-roofed buildings. Somewhere an unmilked cow was lowing. A few scuttled boats were just off the shore, their masts sticking up like dead trees.

Morning looked down on empty streets. “Where are the people?” I wondered aloud.

“Dead, taken hostage, or hiding in the woods still.” There was a tightness in Chade’s voice that drew my eyes to his face. I was amazed at the pain I saw there. He saw me staring at him and shrugged mutely. “The feeling that these folk belong to you, that their disaster is your failure . . . it will come to you as you grow. It goes with the blood.” He left me to ponder that as he nudged his weary mount into a walk. We threaded our way down the hill and into the town.

Going more slowly seemed to be the only caution Chade was taking. There were two of us, weaponless, on tired horses, riding into a town where . . .

“The ship’s gone, boy. A raiding ship doesn’t move without a full complement of rowers. Not in the current off this piece of coast. Which is another wonder. How did they know our tides and currents well enough to raid here? Why raid here at all? To carry off iron ore? Easier by far for them to pirate it off a trading ship. It doesn’t make sense, boy. No sense at all.”

Dew had settled heavily the night before. There was a rising stench in the town, of burned wet homes. Here and there a few still smoldered. In front of some, possessions were strewn out into the street, but I did not know if the inhabitants had tried to save some of their goods, or if the raiders had begun to carry things off and then changed their minds. A saltbox without a lid, several yards of green woolen goods, a shoe, a broken chair: the litter spoke mutely but eloquently of all that was homely and safe broken forever and trampled in the mud. A grim horror settled on me.

“We’re too late,” Chade said softly. He reined his horse in and Sooty stopped beside him.

“What?” I asked stupidly, jolted from my thoughts.

“The hostages. They returned them.”

“Where?”

Chade looked at me incredulously, as if I were insane or very stupid. “There. In the ruins of that building.”

It is difficult to explain what happened to me in the next moment of my life. So much occurred, all at once. I lifted my eyes to see a group of people, all ages and sexes, within the burned-out shell of some kind of store. They were muttering among themselves as they scavenged in it. They were bedraggled, but seemed unconcerned by it. As I watched, two women picked up the same kettle at once, a large kettle, and then proceeded to slap at one another, each attempting to drive off the other and claim the loot. They reminded me of a couple of crows fighting over a cheese rind. They squawked and slapped and called one another vile names as they tugged at the opposing handles. The other folk paid them no mind, but went on with their own looting.

This was very strange behavior for village folk. Always I had heard of how after a raid, village folk banded together, cleaning out and making habitable what buildings were left standing, and then helping one another salvage cherished possessions, sharing and making do until cottages could be rebuilt, and store buildings replaced. But these folk seemed completely careless that they had lost nearly everything and that family and friends had died in the raid. Instead, they had gathered to fight over what little was left.

This realization was horrifying enough to behold.

But I couldn’t feel them either.

I hadn’t seen or heard them until Chade pointed them out. I would have ridden right past them. And the other momentous thing that happened to me at that point was that I realized I was different from everyone else I knew. Imagine a seeing child growing up in a blind village, where no one else even suspects the possibility of such a sense. The child would have no words for colors, or for degrees of light. The others would have no conception of the way in which the child perceived the world. So it was in that moment as we sat our horses and stared at the folk. For Chade wondered out loud, misery in his voice, “What is wrong with them? What’s gotten into them?”