Something woke Jimmy. The former thief’s senses were more attuned to changes in the night than were his companions’. He and Locklear were bunking in with Roald and Laurie. Arutha, Martin, and Baru slept across the narrow hall, in a room over the common room, and as the soft sound that had awakened him came from outside, Jimmy was certain it hadn’t roused the former Huntmaster of Crydee or the hillman. The young squire of the Prince’s court strained his hearing to its limit. Again came a sound in the night, a faint rustling. He quietly got up from his pallet on the floor, next to Locklear’s. Passing the sleeping forms of Roald and Laurie, he peered out the window between their beds.
In the darkness he caught a glimpse of movement, as if something or someone had just moved behind the barn. Jimmy wondered if he should wake the others but thought it would be foolish to raise alarm over nothing. He gathered up his own sword and quietly left the room.
His bare feet made no sound as he moved toward the stairs. At the landing atop the stairs another window opened on the front of the inn. Jimmy peeked through and in the gloom saw figures moving near the trees across the road. He counted it unlikely that anyone skulking out in the night was up to honest undertakings.
Jimmy hurried down the stairs and found the door unbolted. He puzzled at that, for he was near certain it had been bolted when they retired. Then Jimmy remembered the inn’s other guest. He spun about and saw the man was gone.
Jimmy moved to a window, pulling aside a peep slide in the shutters, and saw nothing. Silently he let himself out the door, and dodged along the front of the building, trusting the gloom of the night to mask him. He hurried to the place he had last seen movement.
Jimmy’s ability to walk quietly was hampered by having to negotiate the forest at night. While he had gained a little comfort in these environs from his journey with Arutha to Moraelin, he was still a city boy. He was forced to move slowly. Then he heard voices. Cautiously he approached the source of the conversation and saw a faint light.
He could begin to understand scraps of what was said, then he suddenly could see a half-dozen figures in a tiny clearing. The man in the brown cloak with the covered shield was speaking with a black armoured figure. Jimmy sucked in a chest full of air, to calm himself down. It was a Black Slayer. Four other moredhel stood quietly off to one side, three in the grey cloaks of the forest clans and one in the trousers and vest of the mountain clans. The man in brown was speaking. “ . . . nothing, I say. Bravos from the look of them, with a minstrel, but . . .”
The Black Slayer interrupted him. His voice was deep and seemed to come from some distance, echoing with an odd breathiness. The voice was disquietingly familiar to Jimmy. “You are not paid to think, human. You are paid to serve.” He punctuated that remark with a jabbing finger to the chest. “See that I remain pleased with your work and we shall continue this relationship. Displease me and suffer the consequences.” The brown-cloaked fellow looked the sort not easily frightened, a tough fighting man, but he only nodded. Jimmy understood, for the Black Slayers were worthy of fear. Murmandamus’s minions, even when dead, served him.
“You say there’s a singer and a boy?” Jimmy swallowed hard.
The man tossed back his cloak, revealing brown chain mail, and said, “Well, now that I think, you could more likely say there are two boys, but they’re almost man-sized.”
This brought the Black Slayer out of his reverie. “Two?”
The man nodded. “Might be brothers from the look of them. About a size, though their hair colour’s different. But they seem alike in some ways, like brothers do.”
“Moraelin. There was a boy there, but not two . . . Tell me, is there a Hadati among them?”
The man in brown shrugged. “Yes, but hillmen’re all over. This is Yabon.”
“This one would be from the northwest, near Lake of the Sky.” For a long moment there was only the sound of heavy breathing from behind the black helm as if the moredhel was lost in thought, or conversing with someone else. The Black Slayer hit his fist against his hand. “It could be them. Was there one who looked cunning, a slender warrior with dark hair almost to his shoulders, quick in his movements, clean shaven?”