Shadow Phantoms - H.P. Mallory Page 0,37

mind.

“How many taken or dead?”

“As many as there are on the list.”

“I didn’t count.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“How many?”

“Twenty-seven,” said Matherson, and his gruff voice seemed harsher than usual as he fought back emotions of his own.

“How many remaining?”

“Twenty-nine, all told.”

“The army of the Templars,” I spat the words bitterly.

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“I’ll punch you across that handsome fucking face of yours if you say that again.”

“Do it if it’ll make you feel better,” said Matherson with a well-intended shrug. “But I think we both know how it’ll end up.”

I couldn’t help smiling. His name meant ‘bear’, and that was how he struck people. Matherson was six-foot-eight inches tall, as broad as a bus and as strong as an ox. In battle, he was a terror who cleaved a path through those who didn’t have the sense to run when they saw him bearing down on them. He was also as faithful as a dog and as sweet as a lamb to those who knew him. To see Matherson with children was to understand the term ‘gentle giant’.

“Should have moved camp sooner.” I folded up the piece of paper and tucked it away in the folds of my cloak. “When Bowen didn’t come back.”

“He’d asked you to give him time.”

I shook my head. “I knew better than to send an assassin. That’s not how I wanted this to be.”

“Huh,” Matherson rumbled. “You’re happy with a big fight, but shy away from the death of one man.”

“I’m happy to meet an enemy face to face,” I returned. “It’s this sneaking around that I’m not comfortable with.”

“If we could end this with the death of one man, then why shouldn’t we try?” said Matherson. “If Duine dies, the King’s Alliance—or at least this bastardized version of it—dies with him.”

“I wonder.” I wished I could have as simple a view of the world as the one my friend had, but I saw all the shades of grey. “Or would someone worse take his place?”

“Worse than Duine?” Matherson shook his head, his long beard swaying from side to side. He reminded me of some enormous Viking warlord from the old world. “I’d as soon not think about that.”

“He was there.”

“You can’t be sure.”

I shot a look at Matherson and he raised his hands in capitulation. “Alright, maybe you can be sure. But so what if he was, what of it?”

“We didn’t need to send an assassin,” I pressed. “Maybe… Maybe if I’d challenged Duine there and then, we could have met in single combat and that would have been an end of it.”

Matherson’s laugh competed with the wind that still hammered at the tent. “You think Duine would have played fair, do you?”

“Maybe.”

“And when you won; then what?”

“Then the King’s Alliance would have backed down. If they’ve any honor.”

Matherson’s eyes twinkled beneath his bushy brows. “And if you lost?”

“Well… then you would keep up the good fight.”

He shook his head and chuckled deeply. “Clearly you’ve thought this through very thoroughly.”

“I just want there to be another way.”

From my earliest school days, teachers had written the phrase ‘leadership qualities’ on my report cards. I had been captain of every sports team I’d ever belonged to, even if I wasn’t the best player (though I usually was). Maybe I’d started to believe my own hype. It had been said to me so often that I was ‘a natural leader’ that I knew it to be true and I’d become a leader. People did as I said. There was no point in being modest about it, I had a quality—charisma if you wanted to call it—that made people listen to me, that made people follow me. It also made people do dangerous things when I asked them, and not all of them came back.

Matherson was a good case in point.

The first time we met, eight years ago now, we’d fought. I was too quick and maybe too clever for him to hit, but me hitting him had little real effect. We fought to a standstill, a dead heat, a totally equal result. But he followed me, and there had never been any question of it being the other way around. He could pick me up and break me in half if he wanted, but he hadn’t wanted to. Instead, he’d followed me. And here we were.

Right now, I was starting to wonder if my life to this point, all the things everyone had said about me and expected of me, had badly misled me. I didn’t feel like