James Axler – Shadowfall

It was also strange that Magnus couldn’t even remember saying anything about Jericho. Not out loud.

“Shame all of our friends aren’t here. They’ve gone ahead to raid the camp and free the baron’s son, have they?”

“Secret,” Marcus whispered. “Not supposed to tell anyone the secret.”

“Now then, friends, what secret would that be? Good companions don’t have secrets from each other. I’d tell you any secret if I had one.”

“Would you?” Magnus asked dreamily. He found his eyelids were weighing heavy, and he wanted to lie down and rest, just like Jericho. This stranger was such a kindly, good man. If he hadn’t felt so tired, Magnus would’ve gotten up off the ground and given him a real big brotherly hug.

“Why not?” the stranger asked. “A chaste embrace? For all men are brothers who go down, go down, this lonely road. But first” he turned to Marcus “what’s the secret about the mission? It is to rescue the son of Baron Weyman, isn’t it?”

“Yes and no,” Marcus replied.

Magnus shifted his position, ready to lie down, but he found he was sitting on a sharp spur of jagged rock. Though it was digging into his buttocks, he somehow couldn’t be bothered to move to a more comfortable place.

He didn’t feel quite so tired, and the spinning silver disk no longer held all of his attention.

“Tell me the secret,” the lean stranger whispered, holding the whirling silver of metal closer to Marcus’s eyes. “Tell it to me.”

“Better not, big brother,” Magnus said. But his voice seemed to be trapped inside his own skull. There was a silent whisper of breath from between his cold lips, adding to the coils of wreathing mist, but no sound. The stranger didn’t even bother to look in his direction.

“The secret is that the son is not the son. He is a son someone’s son. But not the son of Baron Weyman.”

The stranger’s patient smile slipped and for a splinter of a second, Magnus caught sight of another face, like a grotesque mask buried beneath the skin and flesh. The odd eyes, almost black and flecked with silver, widened, showing a rim of scarlet blood around them.

“The son of the one-eyed man, Cawdor,” he said, adjusting the smile back in place again. “Yes, I should have guessed. Very stupid of me.” He nodded. “Ah me, but there is still plenty of time to remedy the foolish error. First, I must complete this small piece of business here.”

Magnus’s buttocks really hurt, the broken shard of rock probing its way into his flesh. A bizarre thought swam into his mind, that he didn’t like this stranger after all.

That he wasn’t really a friend.

That he meant them harm.

The dark eyes turned toward him for a moment, but Magnus’s expression hadn’t altered.

Marcus was acting oddly. He had reached up and opened the collar of his dark green livery shirt, running his hand absently up and down his own neck, leaning his head back to look up into the branches of the trees, making the sinews stand out, the pulse of the carotid artery clearly visible.

Magnus glanced overhead, wondering what his brother was finding so interesting, but there was nothing there.

When he looked back down again, the stranger had withdrawn something from a little velvet pouch that he wore neatly tucked away around his throat. It glittered with a pale fire in the wisps of moonlight.

It was a straight-edged razor with a carved ivory handle and the shaved-headed man had cut Marcus’s throat with it, ducking slightly to avoid the cascade of arterial blood that gushed out with a frightful force, black in the silvery glow.

The crossbow fell from the dying man’s lap, catching the trigger, loosing the quarrel. There was a deep thrumming sound, and the bolt thudded into a massive redwood on the far side of the clearing.

“Now, Magnus,” the stranger said, smiling contentedly. “I will go and arrange a reception for the other invaders, who will walk blindly into it.”

It was a nightmare.

That was the only possible answer.

The razor was moving, almost of its own accord, toward his own throat.