Free Book 3 - All Darkness Met by Glen Cook Page B

Ragnarson strapped on the sword that was never out of reach, followed Ahring at a run. And then at a wild gallop through deserted streets.
    A quarter mile short of home Ragnarson shouted, "Hold up!" A patch of white in the park had caught his eye.
    The man was on the verge of dying, but he recognized Ragnarson. Surprise shown through agony. He tried to use a dagger.
    Bragi took it away, studied him. Soon he was dead. "Loss of blood," Ragnarson observed. "Somebody cut him bad." He handed the knife to Ahring.
    "Harish kill-dagger."
    "Yeah. Come on."
    The news was spreading. Lean, sallow Michael Trebilcock had arrived already, and Valther and his wife, Mist, showed up as Bragi did. Their house stood just up the lane. Neighbors clogged the yard. Ahring's troops were keeping them out of the house.
    Bragi took the dagger from Ahring, passed it to Valther's wife. "It is consecrated?"
    That tall, incredibly beautiful woman closed her oval eyes.
    She moaned suddenly, hurled the blade away. A soldier recovered it.
    Mist took two deep breaths, said, "Yes. To your name. But not in Al Rhemish."
    "Ah?" Ragnarson wasn't surprised. "Where, then?"
    "It's genuine. A Harish knife. Under your name is another, without blood."
    "Stolen blade. I thought so."
    "What? How?" Ahring asked.
    "There still some here?" Bragi asked. Harish assassins usually worked in teams. And they didn't leave their wounded behind.
    "Yes sir," a soldier replied. "Upstairs."
    "Come," Ragnarson told Ahring, Valther, and Mist. "You too, Michael."
    Trebilcock was a strange young man. He had come from the Rebsamen with Gjerdrum when Ragnarson's aide had graduat-ed from that university. His father, Wallice Trebilcock of the House of Braden in Czeschin of the Bedelian League, had died shortly before, leaving him an immense fortune.
    He didn't care about money, or anything but getting near the makers and shakers of history.
    Ragnarson had felt a paternal attraction from their first meeting, so the youth had slipped into his circle through the side door.
    Ragnarson, though unaware of the extent of his losses, was already in a form of shock. It was a protective reaction against emotion, a response learned the hard way, at fifteen. It had been then that disaster and despair had first overtaken him, then that he had learned that swords don't exclusively bite the men on the other side.
    He had learned the night he had watched his father die, belly opened by an axe....
    Others had died since, good friends and brothers-in-arms. He had learned, and learned, and learned-to stifle emotions till the smoke had cleared, till the dust had settled, till the enemy had been put away.
    He knelt by the dead man in the hallway, opening his clothing. "Here." He tapped the man over his heart.
    "What?" Valther asked. "He has the tattoo. They always do."
    "Look closer," Ragnarson growled.
    Valther peered intently at a tricolor tattoo, three cursiveletters intertwined. They meant "Beloved of God." Their bearer was guaranteed entry into Paradise. "What?"
    "You see it?"
    "Of course."
    "Why?"
    Valther didn't reply.
    "He's dead, Valther. They fade with the spirit."
    "Oh. Yes."
    So they did, with a genuine Harish assassin, supposedly to indicate that the soul had ascended. Some cynics, though, claimed they vanished to avoid an admission that a Cultist had failed.
    "Somebody went to a lot of trouble here," Bragi observed. "But for that, the frame would've worked." It should have. Not many men outside the Harish knew that secret. Most of those were associates of Haroun bin Yousif.
    Ragnarson's mysterious friend had researched the Cult thoroughly. He'd had to. He had been its top target for a generation.
    And he was still alive.
    "There's a trap here," said Bragi.
    "What now?" Valther demanded.
    "You've got the mind for this. Suppose these are part of the plan? If they failed, and we didn't jump to the conclusion that El Murid was responsible? Who would you suspect then?"
    "Considering their apparent