Straslund came up and stood beside me. We were a yard or so from the bank of the moat. My arms and chest were white where I had been searching in the snow.
“I saw you drop something. What was it?”
“Nothing to concern you, Knud. An instrument to measure the density of the falling snow.”
“Indeed? It sounds a most clever device. I must see it.”
“Nay! You’ll ruin the experiment.”
He had already bent down and scooped away handfuls of snow. I leaned over and joined my efforts to his, hoping to find the box before him. His hands touched it first and he lifted the case from the snow bank. He shook it at me.
“It’s just a wooden box.” He seemed disappointed and then smiled. “You are hiding something, Soren. What can it be?”
“It is a box of snakes. Give it to me.” I held out my hand and Straslund took a step back.
“You are lying. What can little Professor Andersmann be concealing in the snow?”
Straslund undid the latch and dropped the lid to the ground. He held the box close to his face, peering in and shaking it again.
“Is that some kind of chain?”
The viper had been only momentarily dazed by the cold, and that moment passed. I reached out, intending to take the box away from Straslund but I was not swift enough. The snake uncoiled and flung himself forward out of the box, his mouth open and his long fangs yellow with drool and venom. Before Straslund could react, the viper sank its fangs into his right eye, slid entirely free of the case, and coiled over the unfortunate idiot’s face.
Straslund clutched the empty box with one hand and with his other beat at the adder clinging to his face. He cried out, a high keening like a whipped dog or a bird with a broken wing, and hopped madly from side to side, and then he spun about and ran directly over the bank of the moat and disappeared beneath the water. All of this took no more than half a minute.
I stood at the lip of the moat flapping my arms in fear and anger, and waited for Straslund to surface. The fool. The meddlesome fool. Did he think I had a trunk full of adders, that he could waste them? I had no idea how I would explain any of this. When Straslund lost his eye, it would be richly deserved. But of course Straslund did not come to the surface, at least not where I could see him. The current through the moat washed him past the castle and his body came up to the south, in the King’s Harbor. Some fishermen pulled him out a few hours later. The snake swam off or froze or drowned, I know not which.
For a quarter of an hour I paced along the moat where Straslund had gone in. The cold grew too much and finally I made my way back to the castle, hurrying to my room where I put on dry clothes and spent the remains of the morning sitting as close as I could to the coal stove, thawing the chill from my bones. Torstensson had brought me more tools of the assassin’s trade than a snake, but I had placed my best hopes on the adder and now those hopes were dashed.
“You are failing,” I said. “You are failing, Soren, and you have barely begun.”
Perhaps the stars had been wrong for this mission. I resolved that later I would cast my own horoscope, letting the heavens show me the best day on which to try my hand against the king.
At midday the news of Straslund’s death had reached the castle. Prince Christian informed me when we dined together in the kitchen.
“You do not seem much upset by it,” he said.
“I did not like him. It is no great secret.”
“Still, Straslund is dead. It is tragic. He was a person of little use to anyone, but I’ve known him my whole life. He was my own age.”
“Was he drunk, my lord?”
“Oh, very like. Did you know he also fell into the moat the night of our arrival? His death by drowning seems to have been fated. It is a terrible misfortune that you were not there to save him as you saved me. Poor Straslund.”
“God’s mercy on him.”
“And on us all. But here is some better news. The storm is breaking, and already it has stopped snowing. My father