Cutter ducked under the attack, but not enough to avoid the steel kissing his back in a shallow cut. He ignored this wound as he had the first, bowling into the man with enough force to knock the air out of his opponent’s lungs, then lifted him up in the air before slamming him down on the ground. The snow was soft, but the man struck hard, and he was still stunned, trying to recover, when Cutter brought his boot down on his face. Once, twice, something crunching beneath it each time. On the third, the man stopped moving, his features all but unrecognizable.
Footsteps behind him, and he spun in time to catch the wrist of this latest attacker before his sword could cleave into his collarbone where it had been aimed. With a growl and a savage twist, the man’s wrist snapped, and he screamed, dropping his sword. Cutter scooped it from the ground and brought it around in a two-handed arc that struck the man in the back of his knee then passed through it, severing his leg in half. The man’s screams turned to tortured wails as he fell to the ground, blood fountaining from the stump of his leg and staining the snow a crimson that was almost black in the moonlight.
He turned to see that the final one had sprinted away, back in the direction of his forces, no doubt intending to get help, to tell them of this demon he and his companions had found in the driving snow. But demons were not so easily escaped, that Cutter knew, for he had more than his share. He knelt calmly beside the legless man, his screams now a low, pleading moan, and withdrew a hatchet from where it was sheathed at the man’s belt. Then he turned, watching the back of the fleeing man.
The driving snow and poor light did much to obscure his form, making of him a vague outline that could have been anyone, anyone at all. Cutter pivoted, bringing the hatchet back over his head and with a grunt, spun, letting it go. It struck the running man in the center of his back, the blade digging in, and the figure in the distance screamed as his back arced in pain, before collapsing.
The old him might have been pleased at this victory, but Cutter felt no pleasure, had not felt any in years. He felt only a need, the need which had driven him to Brighton in the first place, the need—ill-defined even to himself—which had made him always refuse the temptation to take his own life. He looked at the sword he still held, coated in blood, then he sighed and started after the final man.
The man was moving slowly, hobbling a few steps only to stumble and fall, shooting glances back each time which showed his terror even in the poor visibility. In a few minutes, Cutter was on him, staring down. He didn’t know what he felt, in that moment, knew only that it was not victorious. The man couldn’t find the strength to rise now and was busy scraping at the snow, dragging himself forward, fighting the inevitable as sure as every man did when his time came around. And that time, Cutter knew, always came around.
“Let it go,” Cutter said. “It’s done with now.”
The man didn’t listen, though, only continuing to drag himself forward, crying and whimpering, his words unintelligible, coated as they were in his own agony.
“You will die before you reach them,” Cutter said, trying again, “even if you were allowed to make the attempt. It is over. You can rest now.”
“P-please,” the man said turning awkwardly on his side to stare at Cutter with eyes as wide as the moon overhead. “Please. Y-you can save me.”
“No. I know nothing of saving. Only killing.”
“Oh gods. Gods help me.”
“Yes,” Cutter said, raising the sword overhead. “Gods help us both.”
CHAPTER SIX
Guilt always tastes better on a full stomach.
—Common saying of the Known Lands
Matt, or Matty as his mother called him, woke to the smell of meat cooking. It was a good, pleasant smell, familiar, too, and for a time he forgot the past day’s events, thought he was at his mother’s house once more, and the smell was that of her cooking. She had always loved to cook, his mother, before the sickness took her and robbed her of her strength. She had been great at it, too, and plenty of days had seen the villagers of Brighton making some excuse to come by around meal time. His mother had never turned them out, had only welcomed them before turning to him, offering him the smile she had always reserved for him and him alone. “Matty, look, it seems we’ll be having company for supper, how’s that?” she’d say.
He could hear her voice, even then, and he felt himself smiling in response. But then he opened his eyes—a job made more difficult than normal for all the frost accumulated on his face—and saw that the previous day’s events had not been some terrible dream after all. He lay in a bed roll, all of him covered in thick blankets save his face. Snow was falling all around him, and he turned to see that the smell he’d detected wasn’t his mother’s cooking after all but Cutter. The man’s massive back was to him as he tended the fire. Not his mother, then, and he was Matty no longer. He had always hated it when she’d called him that, always thought it had sounded like a kid’s name. Now, though, he thought he would do anything to hear her say it one more
