Head down, just keep on walking, keep moving nobody will bother me. I keep my head down and continue down the badly cobbled cart path towards the small town. Normally I wouldn’t be this close to people, but I am running dangerously low on food and need more leather for thicker boots. Winter is coming up fast and my worn ones won’t do me much good. I can only hope that my visit doesn’t draw too much attention, like it did in Arden. I don’t have time to evade the town watch and lose trackers again; I must get to My Lord as quickly as possible.
Get into town, find a trader or store, get what I need and get out. No small talk. No lingering. No inns. No taverns. As much as the restrictions hurt, especially that last one, they were necessary. Shopkeepers and traders don’t remember much about nobodies who don’t buy much, this I know. Tavern keepers and inn owners tend to remember much more than they have any right to and for the right price they will tell anyone everything they want to know, this I learned the hard way. I wasn’t sure if this town was actually large enough to have store or trader, if it doesn’t I will have to take what I need from the surrounding farms and leave town as quickly as possible. I hate stealing; it makes me feel horrid, odd considering my chosen occupation, but true none the less.
The path winds between the fields, coming within shouting distance of each home. Most likely a remnant of the Years of War, when runners would be sent to all the towns to call the men to war to protect some lord or another, usually one the people had never heard of. But went to war they did, I was never really sure why. It was a rougher world back then, now we have the Justice who rules over all of Finsted equally. All the lords are united under him and are submissive to his rule, or that’s what we are told. United or not, the wars are over. Now the lords have more refined ways of dealing with their little disagreements. That is if one considers poisoning and assassins refined.
“Hello.” An even voice connected to an admirable amount of unruly black curls startles me from my thoughts. Glancing up the small rise to my left I discover that atop the short wall there is face under all those curls. A small, round face with an unusually large mouth and what I believe is normally described as a “button” nose. Button and curls aside, it is the eyes that cause me to pause. Grey. This boy has grey eyes. Not only are they grey but they are big and wise, wise much beyond the fourteen years of this slim boy. It was clear he hadn’t been trained; his eyes didn’t narrow at the sight of me. To be untrained with grey eyes indicated that this boy had potential, great potential.
In that moment my plans changed, My Lord would understand my delay if I succeeded in convincing the boy to come with me. Involving his parents would only endanger the boy’s potential, it had to be his choice to follow when I left town. This meant I had to stay in town long enough to give him a taste, just a few tricks to show him what he is clearly capable of. My thoughts raced as I attempted to construct a believable story for my presence in the town, details of Lord Rison’s death will have reached this far by now and the people will be wary of any strangers in town. Being the man responsible for Lord Rison’s death, wary town’s people are something I want to avoid. Settling upon the idea of working my way north to visit my brother, I focused once again on the boy and noticed that I had been staring, for quite a long time.
“Hello,” I rasp my voice rough from disuse. The roughness doesn’t appear to startle the boy, if anything it intrigues him. He cocks his head to the side and squints his eyes at me while he studies my features. I can’t look like much, after nine weeks living mostly in the woods and running from various town patrols nobody really looks that great. His eyes flick from here to there along my body, never resting in one spot for too long. A small frown pulls at the corners of his lips and wrinkles his forehead, he is clearly not impressed. I straighten to my full height, the little that it is, and attempt to smooth out my travel worn clothes.
“That’s not really helping much.” He tells me raising a single eyebrow. I glare quickly at him, which elicits a small smile and a bark of laughter. Sighing, I run my hand through my closely cropped hair as I nod in agreement. Smiling broadly now he sticks out his hand, “Name’s Pell, pleasure to meet you, mate. How about coming up to the house for lunch? I’m sure ma won’t mind much and the store will still be open by the time you get into town. The store is why you are here, right? Mr….?”
“Finebeck, Cob Finebeck. Please call me Cob. And actually I was hoping to find some work here for the winter.” Shaking his hand I hope he can’t read the shock easily on my face. Without thinking I had told him my real name, a name I hadn’t said aloud in almost five years. Why did it come out now?
“Well Cob it is then,” the slight tilt of his head indicates that he can clearly see the shock but isn’t sure why it is there. This kid not only has potential he has talent, raw unshaped talent. He could be one of the greats if I can only get him to buy into it. This kid, this Pell, is just what My Lord needs. He could tip the whole thing in our favor.
Lost in my thoughts of glory and achievement I didn’t notice Pell straighten from where he was leaning on the wall before me and wander down a ways to a gate. “Cob? Cob!” he calls, holding the gate open, “Lunch?”
“Oh. Sorry, that would be great.” Ducking my head to hide my slightly flushed cheeks I join him at the gate. Pausing to glace at him I notice that he is older than I had guessed, nearer to seventeen or eighteen than my original guess of fourteen. I must be getting old, either that or my skills are a little rusty after nine weeks on the run. Either way if I can get Pell to follow along and learn the craft then I can get old and rusty, it won’t matter. The look of bemusement on his face tells me that I have spent too much time staring at him again and I quickly drop my eyes and trudge up the small incline and through the gate.
I hear him chuckling softly and turn to find him shaking his head with a small smile on his face as he closes the gate. I was about to question as to what he thought was funny when he grasped my arm and led me away. “Come on, this way. If we don’t hurry the twins will eat it all and then we will have to make do with cold leftovers from breakfast.”
Much later that night I find myself sitting on the bed in the other half of Pell’s family’s loft. After telling me several stories of the twins on the way to the house and talking his mother into feeding another male without any prior notice he then tucked into his own meal and left me at the mercy of his mother’s questioning gaze. I attempted to eat the wonderful stew as I answered her questions and explained my fabricated story to the family. The only pause I had was when his father asked my age, it had been so long since I had even thought of my age as something that mattered I had to do the math. I was shocked to discover that I was not much older than Pell, nineteen and turning twenty this winter. With a grin one of the twins had confirmed my suspicion by declaring that Pell and I could be long lost twins born a year apart, what with our eyes and all. Pell was eighteen and hadn’t been snatched up by one of the nearer lords yet, how had he avoided detection? I was four when I was recruited to be trained, my eyes didn’t even change until last year.
After lunch was finished I negotiated staying on as an extra hand through the winter, Pell’s father was getting along in years and he wasn’t able to help much with the morning chores or any heavy lifting. Sealing the contract with some warm apple pie I was ushered out of the house with the rest of the males to start on afternoon and evening chores. The work was hard and seemed never ending, but when we were finished we were all treated to another filling meal and then I was ordered to bathe. Pell’s mother said she was pleased that I was willing to help around the farm and keep her husband from killing himself but unless I bathed I would be sleeping in the barn where my smell wouldn’t offend anyone, except maybe the pigs. I happily agreed.
The next few months continued in much the same manner. I helped with chores and was rewarded with meals and a place to sleep, so long as I bathed often enough to keep the smell away. Pell and I became good friends I dreaded breaking into the things I needed to tell him. About me, about him, about what he could do, about what I can do and have already done. I didn’t want to ruin this family, I had become close to them. I didn’t want to lose them.
I found other ways of letting him know something was different about me. I would silently walk into the barn with bales of hay, catch things that the twins had dropped at the last minute, light candles without flint, taste my meals for poison, make my knives appear and disappear seemingly without effort. These and other things drew attention to my skills and soon Pell was watching me constantly out of the corner of his eye and evaluating the things I did. Shortly after I began showing off I walked into the barn to discover Pell mimicking my knife skills. I stood silently behind and watched him, Pell has talent. With no training he managed to reproduce my sleight of hand seven out of ten times, a feat that took me four months of rigorous training with harsh punishments upon failure. Within days of honing his knife skills Pell makes noticeable improvements in silent walking. By simply observing Pell had managed to cover nearly nine months of training on his own. Pell was very talented and left alone he might have figured it all out on his own, but now that he knew I was like him he wouldn’t be able to resist the desire to know more.
I knew it was only a matter of time until he approached me about the things he had noticed, any normal man would just write it off thinking that their vision must be going. But Pell was no normal man, Pell was far from normal and he was starting to notice this about himself as well. I figured it would only be a few more days until Pell approached me when things came to a head.
It was the Winter Festival, a day of celebration and cheer, winter was half over and spring was on its way in. I had nearly forgotten about the business with Lord Rison and had certainly forgotten about the fact that I was on the run from his son’s personal guard for his murder. I had become comfortable in my life with Pell and his family and had let down my guard. “Letting down your guard is the first step to ending up dead,” that is what my teachers had always told me. In this case it was the beginning of the end of the life I had grown to love.
Without thought for my safety I accompanied Pell and the family into town for the celebrations of the day. Pell and I had broken off from the rest of the family and were meandering through town square when I caught a flash of something odd out of the corner of my eye. Pulling Pell into a nearby side street I crouched down to find the source of my unease.
“Cob what is go-“ I cut Pell off with a glare over my shoulder then returned to my vigil. I had seen something that I recognized, and coat of arms or a sigil. Something that turned my blood to ice and made my heart pound faster, something that I knew was bad. Keeping my eyes on the square, sweeping from side to side in a steady motion, I reached behind me and pulled Pell down into a crouch.
Eyes still scanning the square I leaned back so Pell could hear me, “There is something here, or someone. From my past. Something bad, I am not sure exactly what it is bu-,“ my throat closed as I caught sight of what it was that spooked me. The Rison coat of arms on a blood red cloak, a cloak that was clasped about the shoulders of a rather large, extremely angry man, a man who was looking directly at me. The look in his eyes could only be described as pure hatred, a look of pure hatred for what he considered to be pure evil.
Leaping to my feet I grabbed Pell’s arm as I spun about and headed in the other direction, gasping “RUN!”
“COB FINEBECK!” the rather large man roared as he began to pursue me. Sparing a glance over my shoulder I watched as his comrades, spurred into action by his growls as he attempted to race through the throng of people, came to his aid and joined him in chasing me. I counted twelve men, twelve large well-armed men. Turning blindly down streets I led Pell away from Rison’s men and, through extreme luck or some instinctive magic, back to the crowded square.
Turning to Pell I hurriedly inform him that I have to be going now and that he shouldn’t follow me. I tell him that if he is caught by those men he is free to tell them whatever he wishes, that it is only important that he live whatever the cost to me. Ignoring the shock and hurt on his face I become the weapon I was trained to be and melt back into the crowd, seeming to disappear right before his eyes.
I do the only thing I can and leave the town. Without any supplies or any of my possessions I turn northwards and resume my trek back to My Lord. I use the skills that had been hounded into me for all those years, use them to confuse my trail and lay many false trails, placing traps along all of them. I walk for what seems like years but is surely only a few days, always heading northwards towards My Lord.
Late one evening, one of the few that I have managed to get a fire to light, I hear someone approaching me. Thinking it is just another traveler coming to share in the warmth I don’t hide or run, perhaps they would be willing to share some food. In the midst of my thoughts I notice something strange about the gait of the stranger coming towards me; it is barely even hearable, nearly silent. My breath catches in my throat with the hope that it might just be him, that maybe Pell followed me after all. I make no move to turn my head towards the light sounds, just as they seem to almost be upon me they stop. I force myself to stare at the fire and draw one of my many knives slowly with little visible movement.
“What made you think running off in the middle of winter with nothing was a good idea?”
“Pell,” I breathe turning towards his voice.
“Hello Cob,” he returns steeping into the light and moving to sit next to me. “I have a lot of questions that you WILL be answering before I give you any of this junk that I have hauled for the last two weeks to return to you.” I just stare at him and smile as he removes the several bags he has draped around his body. He hands me a blanket and some sturdier shoes as he stares at me hard.
“What do you want to know?” I ask my voice raspy with disuse and lack of water.
“You know what I want,” he hands me a canteen. I gulp greedily as I formulate the words to tell him everything. I return the empty canteen to him and stare into the fire, trying to make sense of my rushing thoughts. Pell doesn’t push me, but he also doesn’t back down.
“There is a rare type of human called a Lispin. It means “grey eyed one”, for reasons no one can comprehend the Lispin are especially good at killing. They excel at causing death in all its forms. I am a Lispin. Those men were after me because I killed Lord Rison by the command of My Lord. Pell, you are Lispin.” I deliver this speech to the flames. Only once I have told Pell what he is do I look up expecting to see disgust. Instead I am shocked to see acceptance and, to my greater astonishment, relief. Pell is not surprised. He gestures for me to continue and for once in my life I tell someone the truth of my life, the full truth.
The night is spent with Pell asking and me answering. Pell asks anything that comes to mind and I answer everything I can to the best of my abilities. When morning comes I ask Pell what he plans to do, he smiles. “This Lord of yours seems like a fair and just man. Do you think he would need the employ of a Lispin in training?” I nod with a smile and lead the way north. I shall return to My Lord much later than expected, but with a friend for myself and a gift for My Lord.
Head down I keep on walking. I can only hope My Lord is not angry.
