Assassin 3 - Royal Assassin Read Online Free PDF

watched, two ships broke out of the
mists and emerged into the sleeping harbor. I forgot what I could
or could not do. They were sleek and trim, those ships, and though
they were black under the moonlight, I knew their keels were red.
Red-Ship Raiders from the Outislands. The ships moved like knives
through the wavelets, cutting their way clear of the fog, slicing
into the protected water of the harbor like a thin blade slicing
into a pig's belly. The oars moved silently, in perfect unison,
oarlocks muffled with rags. They came alongside the docks as boldly
as honest merchants come to trade. From the first boat, a sailor
leaped lightly, carrying a line to make fast to a piling. An
oarsman fended her off the dock until the aft line was thrown and
made fast as well. All so calmly, so blatantly. The second ship was
following their example. The dreaded Red-Ships had come into town,
bold as gulls, and tied up at their victims home dock.
    No sentry cried out. No watchman blew a horn, or
threw a torch onto a waiting heap of pitchpine to kindle a signal
fire. I looked for them, and instantly found them. Heads on chests,
they were idling at their posts. Good woolen homespun had gone from
gray to red sopping up the blood of their slit throats. Their
killers had come quietly, overland, sure of each sentry post, to
silence every watcher. No one would warn the sleeping
town.
    There had not been that many sentries. There was
not much to this little town, scarce enough to deserve a dot on the
map. The town had counted on the humbleness of its possessions to
shelter it from raids such as this. Good wool they grew there, and
they spun a fine yarn, it was true. They harvested and smoked the
salmon that came right up their river, and the apples here were
tiny but sweet, and they made a good wine. There was a fine clam
beach to the west of town. These were the riches of Siltbay, and if
they were not great, they were enough to make life treasured by
those who lived here. Surely, though, they were not worth coming
after with a torch and a blade. What sane man would think a keg of
apple wine or a rack of smoked salmon worth a raider's
time?
    But these were Red-Ships, and they did not come
to raid for wealth or treasures. They were not after prize breeding
cattle or even women for wives or boys for galley slaves. The
wool-fat sheep would be mutilated and slaughtered, the smoked
salmon trampled underfoot, the warehouses of fleeces and wines
torched. They would take hostages, yes, but only to Forge them. The
Forge magic would leave them less than human, bereft of all
emotions and any but the most basic thoughts. The Raiders would not
keep these hostages, but would abandon them here, to work their
debilitating anguish upon those who had loved them and called them
kin. Stripped of every human sensitivity, Forged ones would scour
their homeland as pitilessly as wolverines. This setting of our own
kin to prey upon us as Forged ones was the Outislanders' cruelest
weapon. This I already knew as I watched. I had seen the aftermath
of other raids.
    I watched the tide of death rise to inundate the
little town. The Outislander pirates leaped from the ship to the
docks and flowed up into the village. They trickled silently up the
streets in bands of twos and threes, as deadly as poison unfurling
in wine. Some few paused to search the other vessels tied to the
dock. Most of the boats were small open dories, but there were two
larger fishing vessels and one trader. Their crews met swift death.
Their frantic struggles were as pathetic as fowl flapping and
squawking when a weasel gets into the chicken house. They called
out to me with voices full of blood. The thick fog gulped their
cries greedily. It made the death of a sailor no more than the
keening of a seabird. Afterward, the boats were torched,
carelessly, with no thought to their value as spoils. These Raiders
took no real booty. Perhaps a handful of coins if easily found, or
a necklace from the body of one