So he positioned himself as well as he could, and as quickly as he could, but his best target was one of the cutthroats restraining the young woman, not their leader. His knife struck true.
From then on he lost track of what became of the young woman. In the pandemonium she disappeared and he had other things to worry about. His foes weren’t like the pirates he met in the woods—these were disciplined warriors. He could tell by the way they carried themselves and guarded the encampment and how immediately they sprang to once the alarm went up, all the while retaining order.
Unfortunately there were quite a lot of them. All the throwing knives in the world would not help him now. He ran into the brush, hoping to disappear into the night without breaking a leg on the uneven ground, but they pinpointed him like hounds after a fox and came howling after him.
He crashed through shrubs and branches, leaped from boulder to boulder and only his excellent balance saved him from a disastrous fall. And still they came rushing headlong after him.
Cold, wet drops pricked his skin, and at first he thought it was raining, then he saw the graying of the night. Snow.
As he descended the side of the small mountain, he realized he would never reach Goss in time. He’d have to turn and fight. He had made a mess of his “rescue”—a mess from the very beginning. He only hoped the young woman could escape while he provided a distraction.
Finally he stopped running, skidded to a stop. He drew his rapier and parrying dagger, took a deep breath, and turned around to face his fate. If he was destined to be sent to the hells this night, he was sure it was as he deserved, but he wouldn’t go down without taking as many of the cutthroats with him as he could.
The silhouettes of the men surged toward him through the dark and he saw the barest of gleaming light on their weapons. Their movement changed the pattern of the falling snow, made it swirl back into itself. He felt only stillness, could hear the snowflakes landing on his shoulders, his head, the branches of nearby trees.
When the cutthroats reached him, they almost plowed right into him. Perhaps he stood so still they thought him a tree. To his pleasure, the plainshield led them—the plainshield who had betrayed him, had betrayed Morry. He’d overheard the men call him Sarge.
“So here is the lady’s hero,” Sarge said. “You’re too late—someone else already rescued her.” He and his men laughed.
“A testament to your competency, I surmise,” Amberhill said in a mild tone.
Sarge growled and raised his sword.
“We’ve business, you and I,” Amberhill continued.
“That right? Do I know you?”
Amberhill dropped the purse of gold at Sarge’s feet. The clinking of coins was unmistakable.
“What’s this about?” Sarge asked.
The wind kicked up, making new patterns in the flurries, sending them this way and that, blowing the hair away from Amberhill’s face.
“It is,” he said, “the price of your death.”
Sarge backed a step and the men behind him grumbled.
“Kill ’im, Sarge!” one cried.
“Silence!”
Amberhill sensed Sarge’s disquiet, could see it in his stance and hear it in his voice.
“You speak in riddles,” Sarge said. “Maybe you are some madman, but it doesn’t matter, for you will be wolf fodder shortly.” His men laughed at this.
When they quieted, Amberhill said, “You cannot kill a man twice.”
“You are mad. You speak nonsense.”
“No,” Amberhill said, a lightness filling him, a sense of not fearing death, “I am the Raven Mask.”
“But he’s—”
Before Sarge could say the word “dead,” Amberhill knocked his sword from his hand and even as it clattered on the rocks, Sarge collapsed to the ground with his throat slashed open. Amberhill’s nostrils flared with the scent of blood.
“Pity,” Amberhill told the corpse. “I’d hoped to feed you those coins.”
The other men backed off, a few crying out. They turned tail and fled in terror back the way they’d come.
Amberhill was aghast. “Huh. Guess they weren’t as tough as I feared. Not that I’m complaining, of course.”
He turned and almost fell from his rock. Gleaming sword blades bristled out of the dark, carried by shadows that passed by him in silence. Only the snow powdering their heads and shoulders, and the glint of their eyes, revealed they were living beings.
His legs weakened beneath him and he sat beside the corpse that was steadily accumulating snow and shuddered. None of the shadows stopped to speak to him, or even acknowledged his existence. They were on a mission and Sarge’s men were as good as dead already.
FIGHTING THE HEAVENS
Karigan staggered through the gray, swirling cloud she was caught in. She could not say where she was, or where she was going. She just kept trudging on.
She put her hand to her throbbing head and groaned. Blood loss and the abuses to her body weakened her, and the use of her special ability did not help. “I’ve got to sit,” she told Beryl, and she dropped to the ground where she was, not caring about the snow. Beryl sat beside her and said nothing, and Karigan held onto her arm as much to keep them both faded out as to remain grounded.
The black stallion awaited her on the plains. He lay on the ground with his legs tucked beneath him, but now the grasses were covered in snow. A storm was reflected in his eyes, a turmoil of snow squalls warring in shifting winds.