As the knife came up a shadow fell across Banouin. Something dark flashed across his vision and there was a sickening thud, followed by a loud crack. Banouin blinked. Bane was standing there, a long, heavy lump of wood in his hands. Forvar was on the ground, his neck twisted at a bizarre angle. With trembling limbs Banouin pushed himself to his knees. Forvar was dead, his friends standing by, shocked and frozen.
‘You killed him!’ whispered Huin, Forvar’s younger brother.
Bane tossed the blood-smeared club to the ground and swung to Banouin, hauling him to his feet. ‘How badly are you hurt?’ he asked.
Banouin did not reply. He could not tear his eyes from the corpse.
There had been a full inquest, with a jury of nine, held under the direction of the Laird Braefar. Here it was decided that the death was caused by misadventure. Forvar had died as the result of his unwarranted attack on Banouin. Bane had not intended to kill him, but merely to stop him killing another boy.
The fire died away, and Banouin settled down to sleep.
He awoke with the dawn and nudged Bane, who merely grunted and turned over. Banouin shook his shoulder. Bane yawned and sat up. ‘You sleep too deeply,’ said Banouin.
‘Aye, it has always been a problem to me. But I was having the most wonderful dream. There were these two sisters . . .’
‘Please!’ interrupted Banouin with mock severity. ‘No sexual fantasies before breakfast.’
Bane chuckled, and walked to the stream, where he stripped off his pale green shirt and doused his head and chest with water. After they had breakfasted on dried fruit and meat they saddled their mounts and began to ride up out of the hollow. Bane was whistling a merry tune, and seemed in good spirits. He steered his horse away from the trail. Banouin called out to him. That looks a more difficult climb,’ he said.
‘I think it might be quicker,’ said Bane.
‘Well, you can go that way,’ Banouin told him, and continued on the easier route. At the edge of the trees he drew rein, and gazed down, horror-struck. A man’s body lay there, the throat cut, blood pooling on the earth. It was the black-bearded Karn. His eyes were open, staring sightlessly up at the morning sky.
Bane rode alongside his friend. ‘He and two others came back in the night,’ he said quietly.
‘Two others?’
‘Aye. They ran off. You were right, though. One-eye was not among them.’
‘So you killed Black Beard, then came back to sleep?’ stormed Banouin.
‘I was tired. Don’t you sleep when you’re tired? What would you have had me do? Wake you when they were coming? For what purpose? I love you, my friend, but you are not a fighter. And there was no point in waking you after they’d gone.’
Banouin dragged his eyes from the corpse and heeled the chestnut up the slope and out on to the road.
Bane followed him. ‘You want to hear my dream now?’
‘No, I do not,’ snapped Banouin. There is a man dead back there. Killed by you. And it means nothing to you, does it?’
‘What should it mean? They came to kill us. Would you prefer it if we were dead?’
Banouin drew rein and took a deep breath, trying to ease the anger from his system. He looked at his friend, saw the genuine confusion in his eyes. ‘Of course I am glad we are alive,’ he said. ‘It is not the fact that you killed him, Bane, but that it did not touch you. Perhaps he had a wife and children. Perhaps he once had the chance to be a good man. Perhaps he might have had that chance again. Now he never will. Carrion birds and foxes will feast on his flesh, and worms will devour the rest.’
Bane laughed. ‘He was just a turd, floating on the stream of life. The land is better off without him.’
‘In his case that may be true,’ agreed Banouin. ‘But what I fear is that you kill too swiftly. You like to kill. But how long before a good man falls beneath your blade, a kind man, a loving man?’