unsteadily-brandishing cups and joints of meat. Some fought, and those around them paid no heed to their struggles, consumed by their own kinds of madness. One-an old, bearded man-was naked, and danced on the fringe of the flames, gabbling nonsensically, his body turning pink and raw as the heat raged at him. There was a dead man lying by one of the fires, his blood spread around his neck and shoulders. In one corner, close by Ragnor, a woman-one of his Shield-was hunched over the corpse of a hunting dog, pulling at it, flaying it.
Shadows swept and cavorted around the walls, flung there by the light of those exuberant fires: not just the soft-edged blurs of the churning host, but the starker, sharper darknesses cast by the huge antler trophies that hung everywhere. The assassin found the frenzied scene repellent. He had been brought up to another kind of life, one that could never condone such mad indulgence. And that upbringing came now to its purpose and goal. All his discipline could not wholly suppress the eagerness blossoming in his breast. This moment was what he was for; it was the sum of all his years. Though the bestial passions he saw expressed below him were not something he could share, there was passion of a sort within him. A yearning to be the deliverer of death, a longing-such as he had never felt before-to be the weapon by which fate delivered its judgement.
He rocked fractionally, testing the stability of his position. It was good enough. Still, he kept his movements slow and contained as he drew back the string of the crossbow. The smoke that pooled amidst the rafters of the hall was stinging his throat and eyes. His body wanted to sniff or cough, but he mastered the animal urges.
Below, Ragnor was shouting something at his Master of the Hall, who stood beside the throne, an island of morose solemnity amidst the sea of merriment. The old man did not appear to reply, but the High Thane laughed. The assassin eased one of his two bolts from the tiny flat quiver that he wore inside his black shirt, and nestled it into place on the bow. The weapon was not powerful, but Ragnor seldom wore chain at times such as this, so it need only punch the quarrel through cloth and hide and skin. It was more than capable of that. And once the bolt found its place in the High Thane’s flesh, it too was capable of doing what was needful. It was finely, savagely barbed, and would fight all attempts to free it from a wound. And it would foul that wound too, for a crust of excrement and soil and spittle was dried upon its point. Whether quickly or slowly, Ragnor oc Gyre would die.
The assassin had to lean a little to one side to gain the clear straight line to the High Thane that he desired. He made the adjustment cautiously, his hips and thighs and back tensing to keep him from overbalancing. His muscles were trained for such exertion, and he barely noticed the effort required. Slowly, he dipped his head to sight along the waiting bolt. Smoke rasped at his eyes and he winced. His vision blurred for a moment and he had to clench his eyes shut, squeezing tears out. The smoke was worse than he had expected. He blinked again and again, still holding his head quite still and steady down over the crossbow’s butt. His sight cleared.
He breathed out, whispering as he did so, “My feet are on the road. I go without fear.”
And the string cracked forward, and the barbed bolt flashed free from its shallow gutter.
And Ragnor oc Gyre leaned across towards his Master of the Hall, crying some jovial abuse at him.
And the crossbow bolt thumped into the throne, pinning the collar of Ragnor’s jerkin to the wolfskin and wood.
The assassin was already moving, turning back towards the hidden gap by which he had entered. He heard the howl of outrage, the roars of confusion and alarm, but did not look. He would not do so until he was poised on the brink of escape. If, in that moment, there seemed the time and opportunity for the second bolt, he would try again. If not, he would vanish out into the night and come again, elsewhere, tomorrow or the next day or the next, until the Gyre Blood was relieved of its Thane.
He reached through the smoke and the heat and the tears that filmed and dulled his eyes for a slanting beam to haul himself round. And almost missed the hold, his fingers slipping for a moment over flat wood. He swayed. His other arm came up to balance him, and the end of the crossbow it carried jarred against another timber. Jarred free. The crossbow fell, plunging down into the world of light and noise and anger below.
He could see the narrow black void that marked his escape route, and darted towards it. He could smell the cold, fresh night air beyond, could imagine the freedom of the open black sky above his head. And crossbow bolts were flying up, like a flurry of answers to the challenge he had dispatched downwards. They smacked splinters from the wooden lattice through which he moved. They would not find him, he was sure. Already he was consumed by the sour sense of failure, but still he did not doubt he would live to serve the creed another day.
Until one bolt out of the flock that swarmed up towards him impaled his trailing hand, nailing it to a beam. Through the very centre of the back of his hand it went, and buried itself deep in the wood. He gasped, not in pain but in surprise. And in frustration, for he needed that hand as he swung forward. He stared through bleary eyes at the very place he would be reaching for with it. He could see, indistinctly, the saw marks in the flat face of the timber. He blinked, and overbalanced, and fell.
His arm wrenched at his shoulder joint as his entire weight was abruptly hung from that single impaled hand. It held only for an instant, then the bolt tore out from his flesh, ripping itself free between two fingers. He tipped backwards as he fell, gazing up into the darkness of the roof. An outstretched antler of one the trophies on the wall stabbed into his thigh, and gouged down the back of his leg to his knee, tumbling him in the air. He plummeted head down, a host of snarling faces rushing up to greet him from below.
“What were you thinking?”
Theor had his hands half-raised, poised as if arrested in the midst of some violent movement. He could not tear his gaze away from them. His eyes took in the aged, slack hide that his skin had become, the terrible impotence of these limbs that once, surely, must have felt capable and powerful. The fury that was in him was in them too, seething and burning in the palms and the fingers. And it was such a pathetic thing, that fury. It was empty, powerless to change anything. Powerless even, he felt, to express itself honestly.
“What were you thinking?” he cried again at Avenn.
The First of the Hunt glared at him. He suddenly imagined himself seizing her by the throat, crushing and crushing the contemptuous, arrogant life out of her with these same trembling hands. He imagined her slumping to her knees, gasping for breath that would not come.
Slowly he lowered his hands. It would not happen like that, of course. He was a feeble old man, a boat drifting broken-ruddered amidst rocks and storms. She was of the Hunt. Fierce, strong. And certain of her purpose. Her faith.
“I did what the times, the circumstances, the creed, seemed to called for,” Avenn said.
Not even a semblance of deference in her any more. She would not deign to make the most passing pretence at submission to the Lore’s authority. Theor could only shake his head.
“He was feasting,” Avenn snarled. “Feasting? In times such as these? Celebrating what? The fact that we’ve made ourselves his subjects. The fact that he can steal a hundred orphans from the Battle merely by demanding it. The fact that he can kill Hunt Inkallim without fear of redress, without us raising a hand or a blade to prevent him. The fact that we lack the will to pursue this grand, this glorious enterprise that has been begun through to its utmost conclusion. The fact that we falter.”
Oh, the fire that burned in her was bright. Theor could remember when such sacred fervour raised him up just as it now did Avenn. It had not been so very long ago, yet it felt an age. It felt as if those righteous sentiments and certainties had dwelt in the heart of an entirely different person. Someone else. Someone who had not been prey to the doubts and the sickening fears that now ate away at him.
“This sudden caution that cripples you is unwarranted, First,” snarled Avenn. She was striding up and down on the reed matting that covered the floor. This was a chamber meant for peaceful contemplation. Theor had brought her here for the sake of privacy and discretion.
“But you goad the High Thane into striking out against us,” he muttered, that rage that had briefly so animated him leaching away. It was unsustainable. “Ragnor’s temper already runs hot as a fever. He’s been walking upon the brink of unreason for days. Now…”
He hung his head.
“I regret nothing,” Avenn said. “Fate will dispose things as it sees fit. I came to tell you of this only out of courtesy.”
“But you came too late. You come to me in the morning to tell me of something done the night before. That is not courtesy but contempt.”
“You know how things stand now,” Avenn muttered unapologetically. “I have given fate the chance to make its choice. To move forward.”
Theor could have wept, and he did not know why, beyond the certainty that there was a terrible wrongness
