The bowman sat alongside him on the stone seat. ‘She didn’t love you, man,’ said Finn, and Chareos had wept like a child. For some time Finn sat in silence, then he placed his hand on Chareos’ shoulder and spoke softly. ‘Men dream of many things, Blademaster. We dream of fame we can never know, or riches we can never win. But the most foolish of all is the dream of love, of the great abiding love. Let it go.’
‘I can’t,’ answered Chareos.
‘Then mask it, for the troops are waiting and it is a long ride to Bel-azar.’
CHAPTER THREE
The stag dipped its head to the stream, its long tongue lapping at the clear water. Something struck it a wicked blow in the side; its head came up and an arrow sliced through one eye, deep into the brain. Its forelegs buckled and it dropped to the earth, blood seeping from its mouth.
The two hunters rose from the bushes and splashed across the stream to the carcass. Both were wearing buckskins, fringed and beaded, and they carried curved hunting-bows of Vagrian horn. The younger of the men – slight, blond-haired, with wide eyes of startling blue – knelt by the stag and opened the great artery of the beast’s throat. The other man, taller and heavily bearded, stood watching the undergrowth.
‘There’s no one about, Finn,’ said the blond hunter. ‘You are getting old, and starting to imagine things.’
The bearded man swore softly. ‘I can smell the bastards – they’re hereabouts. Can’t see why. No raiding for them. No women. But they’re here, right enough. Puking Nadren!’
The smaller man disembowelled the stag and began to skin the carcass with a double-edged hunting-knife. Finn notched an arrow to his bow and stood glaring at the undergrowth opposite.
‘You are making me nervous,’ the younger man told him.
‘We been together twenty years, Maggrig, and you still read sign like a blind man reads script.’
‘Truly? Who was it last year said the Tattooed Men were hunting? Stayed guard for four days and not a sight of the head-hunters?’
‘They were there. They just didn’t want to kill us right then,’ said Finn. ‘How long you going to be quartering that beast?’
Just then four men rose from the bushes on the other side of the stream. They were all armed with bows and swords, but no arrows were notched and the blades were scabbarded.
‘You want to share some of that?’ called a lean, bearded man.
‘We need it for the winter store. Deer are mighty scarce these days,’ Finn told him. Maggrig, kneeling beside the carcass, sheathed his hunting-knife and took up his bow, sliding an arrow from his quiver.
‘There’s two more on this side,’ he whispered.
‘I know,’ said the older man, cursing inwardly. With two Nadren hidden in the undergrowth behind them, they were trapped.
‘You are not being very friendly,’ said the Nadren warrior as he and the others began to wade towards the hunters.
‘You can stop there,’ Finn told him, drawing back the bow-string. ‘We are in no need of company.’ Maggrig, confident that Finn could contain the men at the stream, notched an arrow to his bow, his blue eyes scanning the undergrowth to the rear. A bowman rose from the bushes with his arrow aimed at Finn’s back. Maggrig drew and loosed instantly, his shaft flashing through the man’s throat, and the raider’s arrow sailed over Finn and splashed down into the water before the four men.
‘I didn’t order him to do that,’ said the lean man across the water, waving his arm at the men alongside him. They began to back away but Finn said nothing, his eyes fixed on them.
‘The other one is ready to chance a shaft,’ whispered Maggrig. ‘Do you have to stand there inviting it?’
‘Hell’s Gates, I’m tired of standing around in the cold,’ said Finn. ‘Make the whoreson show himself.’ Maggrig drew back on the bow-string and sent an arrow slicing into the bushes. There was a yelp of surprise and a bowman reared up with a shaft through his upper arm. Finn spun on his heel and sent a second arrow into the man’s chest and he fell face down into the undergrowth. Finn swung back, but the men across the stream had vanished into the bushes.