Page 10 (1/2)

It was the faintest sound, little more than a rustle of cloth, but to Vaelin it was a shout He darted fro the shaft in a singleback into cover, rewarded with a short grunt of pained surprise

He lingered for the briefest second Stay or flee? The co, the dark ee But he knew he couldn’t The Order doesn’t run, Sollis had said

He peered out froull-fletched shaft of his arrow sticking upright from the carpet of ferns about fifteen yards away He notched another arrow and approached in a low crouch, eyes scanning constantly for other ene

The reen trews and tunic, he had an ash bow clutched in his hand with a crow feathered shaft notched in the string, a sword strapped across his back, a knife in his boot and Vaelin’s arrow in his throat He was quite dead Stepping closer Vaelin saw the growing patch of blood spreading out fro vein, Vaelin realised And I thought I was a poor archer

He laughed, high and shrill, then convulsed and vo uncontrollably

It was a few h for him to think clearly This man, this dead man, had tried to kill him Why? He had never seen hi he had found an easy victim in a lone boy

He forced hi the quality of his boots and the stitching on his clothes He hesitated then lifted the deadIt was a bowh palers Thiswith the bow Vaelin doubted any outlaould be so practised, or so well dressed

A sudden, sickening thought popped into his head: Is it part of the test?

For a moment he was almost convinced What better way to weed out the chaff? Seed the forest with assassins and see who survived Think of all the gold coins they’d save But so himself to believe it The Order was brutal but not murderous

Then why?

He shook his head It was ahere Where there was one there could be et back to the Order House and ask Master Sollis for guidance… If he lived that long He got shakily to his feet, spitting the last dregs of gorge fro whether to take his sword or his knife but deciding it would be a mistake For soe of the killing which led hi the arrow fro the shaft fro off the fletching with his hunting knife, the gull feathers were a clear signal that the ht a fresh bout of nausea at the grinding sensation of the arrow as he grasped it and the wet, sucking sound it made as he sawed at the shaft It was done quickly but see and backed away fro his boots on the soil to erase any tracks, before turning and resus felt leaden and he stumbled several ti stride learned through round The slack, lifeless features of the dead e away, suppressing it ruthlessly He tried to kill rieve for a man ould seek to murder a boy But he found he couldn’t deafen himself to the words his mother had once shouted at his father: Your stench of blood sickens ht seemed to fall in an instant, probably because he dreaded it He found hi in every shadow, more than once he leapt for shelter from assassins which turned out to be a bushes or tree stumps when he looked closer He had rested only once since killing the assassin, a brief, feverish sip of water behind the broad trunk of a beech, his eyes darting about constantly for eneet was harder to hit But this vague sense of security evaporated when the darkness caht the threat of a painful fall He had tripped twice, sprawling in a tangle of weapons and fear, before accepting that he would have to walk fros he took fro hi a steady course southward but how far he had come or the distance he still had to cover he couldn’t tell He peered ahead with increasing desperation, all the tih the trees It hen he had stopped to get another bearing that he saw the fire A single flickering blob of orange in the black-blueHe al another stride toward the south, but stopped None of the boys fro the test, they just didn’t have ti’s Foresters ca ness in the back of his e sensation, al his bow and notching an arrow, before beginning a cautious advance He kneas taking a risk, both in investigating the fire and indulging in a delay when his deadline for getting back to the House could not be far away But he had to know

The blob grew into a fire slowly, flickering red and gold in the infinite blackness He stopped, opening hih the nocturnal resonance until he caught the