Four and Twenty Blackbirds

In the end, they were interrupted by the unexpected arrival of one of the men. The fellow entered the shop without either of them hearing him, and blundered right into what must have seemed like a scene out of the Church's tales of Hellfire.

He didn't have long to appreciate it, however. As he stood there, mouth stupidly agape, Rand leapt for him, both blood-smeared hands outstretched and reaching for his throat.

A moment later, the man was on his knees at Rand's feet, making gurgling noises as Rand throttled the life out of him. The mage's hands were locked about the fellow's throat so tightly that although his victim clawed frantically at the fingers, there wasn't a chance of budging him.

Orm watched in detached fascination. Rand didn't let up until the man's face was black, his tongue protruding from his mouth, and his eyes bulging, froglike, out of their sockets. Then the mage released his grip, knuckles crackling, and the body dropped to the floor with an audiblethud.

Orm coughed, and Rand turned; he hardly recognized the mage, his face was so distorted with a rage and hunger far beyond anything Orm could even imagine. For one moment, Orm was actually shocked. He had never dreamed that there was this kind of emotion locked within the mage.

He is far more dangerous than I thought.

Then Rand's expression changed, all in a moment, and it was so bland and smooth that Orm wondered if what he had seen had been a trick of the light.

No. I don't think so. I saw it, and that's my warning. But I'd better pretend I didn't see it.

'Why didn't you use the knife on him?' Orm asked, mildly.

Rand sneered. 'He wasn't worth it,' the mage said. 'Now, let's get these husks into hiding, before any of the rest come back unexpectedly.'

Orm had already made provision for this night's work; in the alley behind the shop was a handcart, the kind the rag-and-bone men used to hold their gleanings. He and Rand wrapped the bodies in sheets of rags, then carried the bodies out to the cart, which easily held four with room for a pile of rags atop them. The alley might have been in a city of the dead; there was no sound other than their heavy breathing, their grunts of effort, thethuds as they heaved the bodies into the cart, and the squeaking and rattling of the cart itself. When they finished loading the cart, they went back into the shop and spent a few moments throwing all the books, paper, and printing supplies to the floor, then dumping out the cans of ink on top of it all. When the rest of the group returned, it would look as if some enemy had come in and ransacked the shop. They might assume it was Duke Arden's people, or the constables. If they did, they would probably flee without ever reporting anything to anyone. No one would ever know what had gone on here, which made Orm perfectly happy.

By the time they were done, the place not only looked as if it had been ransacked, it looked as if several people had worked with great malice to destroy everything here. They glanced around for a moment, and Rand nodded with satisfaction at the extent of the damage. Then, throwing shabby, patched cloaks over their own clothing, they each took a handle of the cart and trundled it openly out into the street. There, they were completely ignored even by a passing constable, for who would ever look at a refuse-collector? The cart was well balanced and light, but it was still dreadfully difficult to pull when fully loaded. As it rumbled and squeaked, Orm laid aside his concern with being stopped, and just concentrated on getting the cart back to the boathouse.

Orm was thoroughly fatigued by the time they reached the haven of the boathouse, though Rand seemed perfectly capable of hauling the cart halfway to Birnam if need be. Orm wondered about that; wondered if the last kill didn't have something to do with this unusual energy.

Or perhaps it was simply because Rand got so much exercise in the form of the Black Bird that he was far stronger than Orm would have supposed.

With the cart inside the boathouse doors and the doors themselves closed, Orm took up the second stage of the night's work. Not too surprisingly, Rand now abdicated in the further work to be done, leaving it all to Orm. Orm suspected that the only reason he had helped in loading and pulling the cart was to get the bodies cleared out before anyone else came back—he was able to handle one intruder, but a pack of them would have been too much even for a mage. But now that they were safely in hiding—well, it would all be on Orm's shoulders.

And if Ormdidn't take certain precautions, he could be tied to the kills as easily as Rand. The bodies needed to be immersed in running water for at least an hour to cleanse them of all of the magical traces of Rand's power—and, incidentally, of Orm's touch. That was the easy part; Orm tied ropes around them and lowered them into a hole he'd chopped in the ice. There they would remain for the requisite time, and in the meantime, he and Rand changed their clothing, cleaned up, and threw the clothing, weighted by an old stone anchor, into the hole.

When the hour was up, they both hauled the bodies out of the water and stacked the now-rigid corpses in a corner, throwing an aged tarpaulin over them, just in case. They'd be frozen stiff by morning, and easier to handle. By then, false-dawn lightened the eastern horizon, and Orm was so weary he would have been perfectly prepared to share the boathouse with their four 'guests.' He and Rand made their way back home together, like a pair of late-night carousers; Orm was too tired to even think and too numbly cold to care. He fell straight into bed and slept around the clock.