Vaelin, fighting to keep his heart steady, shifted his gaze to the sack, noting the roundness of its contents and the dark wet stain on the lower half. A sudden, overpowering chill of realisation gripped him, fearing he would faint as the forest swayed around him and he fought down a gasp of horror, the sound undoubtedly an invite for a quick death.
“Lemme see,” the whiner said, moving into view for the first time. He was short, wiry with pointed features and a wispy beard on his bony chin. His left arm was cradled in his right, a bloodied bandage leaking continually through his spidery fingers. “Gotta be him. Has to be.” He sounded desperate. “You ‘eard what the other one said.”
Other one? Vaelin strained to hear more, still sickened but his heart steadied by a growing anger.
“He gave me the shivers, he did,” the stocky man responded with a shudder. “Wouldn’t’ve trusted him if he’d told me the sky was blue.” He squinted at the sack again then reached inside, extracting the contents, holding it up by the hair, dripping, turning it to examine the slack, distorted features. Vaelin would have vomited again if there was anything left in his stomach. Mikehl! They killed Mikehl.
“Could be him,” the stocky man mused. “Death’ll change a face for sure. Just don’t see much’ve a family resemblance.”
“Brak would know. Said he’d seen the boy before.” The whiner moved out of the firelight again. “Where is he anyway? Should’ve been here by now.”
“Yeh,” the stocky man agreed returning his trophy to the sack. “Don’t think he’s gonna.”
Whiner was silent for a moment before muttering, “Little Order shits.”
Brak…So he had a name. He wondered briefly if anyone would wear a mourning locket for Brak, if his widow or mother or brother would offer thanks for his life and the goodness and wisdom he had left behind. But as Brak was an assassin, a killer waiting in the woods to murder children, he doubted it. No one would weep for Brak… as no one would weep for these two. His fist tightened on the bow, bringing it up to draw a bead on the stocky man’s throat. He would kill this one and wound the other, an arrow in the leg or the stomach would do it, then he would make him talk, then he would kill him too. For Mikehl.
Something growled in the forest, something hidden, something deadly.
Vaelin whirled, drawing the bow - too late, knocked flat by a hard mass of muscle, his bow gone from his hand. He scrabbled for his knife, instinctively kicking out as he did so, hitting nothing. There were screams as he surged to his feet, screams of pain and terror, something wet lashed across his face, stinging his eyes. He staggered, tasting the iron sting of blood, wiping frantically at his eyes, blearily focusing on the now silent camp, seeing two yellow eyes gleaming in the firelight above a red stained muzzle. The eyes met his, blinked once and the wolf was gone.
Random thoughts tumbled through his mind. It tracked me…You’re beautiful… Followed me here to kill these men… Beautiful wolf… They killed Mikehl… No family resemblance…
STOP THAT!
He forced discipline on the torrent of thought, dragging air into his lungs, calming down enough to move closer to the camp. The stocky man lay on his back, hands reaching towards a throat that was no longer there, his face frozen in fear. The whiner had managed to run a few strides before being cut down. His head was twisted at a sharp angle to his shoulders. From the stench staining the air around him it was clear his fear had mastered him at the end. There was no sign of the wolf, just the whisper of undergrowth moving in the wind.
Reluctantly he turned to the sack still lying at the stocky man’s feet. What do I do for Mikehl?
“Mikehl’s dead,” Vaelin told Master Sollis, water dripping from his face. It had started to rain a few miles back and he was drenched as he laboured up the hill towards the gate, exhaustion and the shock of the events in the forest combining to leave him numb and incapable of more than the most basic words. “Assassins in the forest.”
Sollis reached out to steady him as he swayed, his legs suddenly feeling too weak to keep him upright. “How many?”
“Three. That I saw. Dead too.” He handed Sollis the fletching he had cut from his arrow.
Sollis asked Master Hutril to watch the gate and led Vaelin inside. Instead of taking him to the boys’ room in the north tower he led him to his own quarters, a small room in the south wall bastion. He built up the fire and told Vaelin to strip off his wet clothes, giving him a blanket to warm himself while fire began to lick at the logs in the hearth.
“Now,” he said, handing Vaelin a mug of warmed milk. “Tell me what happened. Everything you can remember. Leave nothing out.”
So he told him of the wolf and the man he had killed and the whiner and the stocky man… and Mikehl.
“Where is it?”
“Master?”
“Mikehl’s… remains.”