All of the stealthy arcane knowledge Chade had given me, all of Hod’s brutally elegant strategies for fighting two or more opponents went to the wind. For as the first two stepped into my range, I felt the tiny warmth that was Smithy ebbing in my grasp. “Smithy!” I whispered, a desperate plea that he somehow stay with me. I all but saw a tail tip stir in a last effort at a wag. Then the thread snapped and the spark blinked out. I was alone.
A black flood of strength surged through me like a madness. I stepped out, thrust the end of my staff deep into a man’s face, drew it quickly back, and continued a swing that went through the woman’s lower jaw. Plain wood sheared the lower half of her face away, so forceful was my blow. I whacked her again as she fell, and it was like hitting a netted shark with a fish bat. The third drove into me solidly, thinking, I suppose, to be inside my staff’s range. I didn’t care. I dropped my stick and grappled with him. He was bony and he stank. I drove him onto his back, and his expelled breath in my face stank of carrion. Fingers and teeth I tore at him, as far from human as he was. They had kept me from Smithy as he was dying. I did not care what I did to him so long as it hurt him. He reciprocated. I dragged his face along the cobbles, I pushed my thumb into an eye. He sank his teeth into my wrist and clawed my cheek bloody. And when at last he ceased to fight against my strangling grip, I dragged him to the seawall and threw his body down onto the rocks.
I stood panting, my fists still clenched. I glared toward the Raiders, daring them to come, but the night was still, save for the waves and wind and the soft gargling of the woman as she died. Either the Raiders had not heard, or they were too concerned with their own stealth to investigate sounds in the night. I waited in the wind for someone to care enough to come and kill me. Nothing stirred. An emptiness washed through me, supplanting my madness. So much death in one night, and so little significance, save to me.
I left the other broken bodies atop the crumbling seawall for the waves and the gulls to dispose of. I walked away from them. I had felt nothing from them when I killed them. No fear, no anger, no pain, not even despair. They had been things. And as I began my long walk back to Buckkeep, I finally felt nothing from within myself. Perhaps, I thought, Forging is a contagion and I have caught it now. I could not bring myself to care.
Little of that journey stands out in my mind now. I walked all the way, cold, tired, and hungry. I encountered no more Forged ones, and the few other travelers I saw on that stretch of road were no more anxious than I to speak to a stranger. I thought only of getting back to Buckkeep.
And Burrich. I reached Buckkeep two days into the Springfest celebration. The guards at the gate tried to stop me at first. I looked at them.
“It’s the Fitz,” one gasped. “It was said you were dead.”
“Shut up,” barked the other. He was Gage, long known to me, and he said quickly, “Burrich’s been hurt. He’s up to the infirmary, boy.”
I nodded and walked past them.
In all my years at Buckkeep, I had never been to the infirmary. Burrich and no one else had always treated my childhood illnesses and mishaps. But I knew where it was. I walked unseeing through the knots and gatherings of merrymakers, and suddenly felt as if I were six years old and come to Buckkeep for the very first time. I had hung on to Burrich’s belt. All that long way from Moonseye, with his leg torn and bandaged. But not once had he put me on another’s horse, or entrusted my care to another. I pushed myself through the people with their bells and flowers and sweet cakes to reach the inner keep. Behind the barracks was a separate building of whitewashed stone. There was no one there, and I walked unchallenged through the antechamber and into the room beyond.