Karnak swore and slumped back into his seat, rubbing a massive hand across his face. ‘I have no choice, Dardalion. Can you not see that? You think I want to see the man killed? You think there is any satisfaction in it for me?’
‘I am sure there is not. But in having him hunted you have unleashed a terrible force. He was living quietly in the mountains, mourning his wife. He was no longer Waylander the Slayer, no longer the man to be feared, but day by day he is becoming Waylander again. And soon he will consider hunting down the man who set the price.’
Td sooner he tried that, than the other alternative,’ said Karnak, wearily. ‘But I hear what you say, priest, and I will think on it.’
‘Call them off, Karnak,’ pleaded Dardalion. ‘Waylander is a force like no other, almost elemental, like a storm. He may be only one man, but he will not be stopped.’
‘Death can stop any man,’ argued Karnak.
‘Remember that, my lord,’ advised Dardalion.
It was the dog that found the remains of the old tinker. Waylander had been moving warily through the forest when the hound’s head had lifted, its great black nostrils quivering. Then it had loped off to the left. Waylander followed and found the animal tearing rotting meat from the old man’s leg.
The dog was not the first to find the body and the corpse was badly mauled.
Waylander made no attempt to call the dog away. There
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was a time when such a scene would have revolted him, but he had seen too much death since then: his memories were littered with corpses. He recalled his father walking him through the woods near their home in the valley, and they had come across a dead hawk. The child he had been was saddened by the sight. That is not the bird,’ said his father. ‘That is merely the cloak he wore.’ The man pointed up to the sky. ‘That is where the hawk is, Dakeyras. Flying towards the sun.’
Old Ralis had gone. What was left was merely food for scavengers, but cold anger flared in Waylander nevertheless. The tinker had been harmless, and always travelled unarmed. There was no need for such senseless torture. But that was Morak’s way. The man loved to inflict pain.
The tracks were easy to read and Waylander left the dog to feed and set off in pursuit of the killers. As he walked he studied the spoor. There were eleven men in the group, but they had soon split up. He knelt and examined the trail. There had been a meeting. One man – Morak? – had addressed the group, and they had paired and moved off. A single set of prints headed east, perhaps towards Kasyra. The others moved in different directions. They were quartering the forest, and that meant they did not know of the cabin. The old man had told them nothing.
Identifying the track of Morak, narrow-toed boots with deep heels, he decided to follow the Ventrian. Morak would not be wandering the forest in the search. He would find a place to wait. Waylander set off once more, moving with care, stopping often to scan the trees and the lines of the hills, keeping always to cover.
Towards dusk he halted and loaded his crossbow. Ahead of him was a narrow path, wending up a gentle rise. The wind had changed and he smelt woodsmoke coming from the south-west. Squatting by a huge, gnarled oak he waited for the sun to go down, his thoughts sombre. These men had come into the forest to kill him. That he understood; this was their chosen occupation. But the torture and murder of the old man had lit a cold fire in Waylander’s heart.
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They would pay for that deed.
And they would pay in kind.
A barn owl soared into the night seeking rodent prey and a grey fox padded across the path directly in front of the waiting man. But Waylander did not move, and the fox ignored him. Slowly the sun set, and night changed the personality of the forest. The whispering wind became the sibilant, ghostly hiss of a serpent’s breath, the gentle trees stood stark and forbidding, and the moon rose, quarter full and curved like a Sathuii tulwar. A killer’s moon.