duties, each man would only wander as far as an adjacent fire. They gambled, but they didn’t drink, and they kept their voices low. The only snag in all the Ceurans’ efficiency seemed to come from their armor. With Ceuran bamboo-and-lacquer armor, a man could dress himself. But donning the Khalidoran armor they had stolen a week ago at Pavvil’s Grove required assistance. Scale mail mixed with chain and even plate, and the Ceurans couldn’t decide if they needed to sleep armored or if men should be assigned to each other as squires.
When each squad was allowed to decide for itself how to fix the problem and didn’t waste time asking up the chain of command, Kylar knew his friend Logan Gyre was doomed. War Leader Lantano Garuwashi paired the Ceuran love of order with individual responsibility. It was emblematic of why Garuwashi had never lost a battle. It was why he had to die.
So Kylar moved through the trees like the breath of a vengeful god, only rustling the branches in time with the evening wind. The oaks grew in straight, widely spaced rows broken where younger trees had muscled between their elders’ shoulders and grown ancient themselves. Kylar climbed out as far on a limb as he could and spied Lantano Garuwashi through the swaying branches, dimly illuminated in the light of his fire, touching the sword in his lap with the delight of recent acquisition. If Kylar could get to the next oak, he could climb down mere paces from his deader.
Can I still call my target a “deader,” even though I’m not a wetboy anymore? Thinking of Garuwashi as a “target” was impossible. Kylar could still hear his master Durzo Blint’s voice, “Assassins,” he sneered, “have targets, because assassins sometimes miss.”
Kylar gauged the distance to the next limb that could bear his weight. Eight paces. It was no great leap. The daunting part was landing on a tree limb and arresting his momentum silently with only one arm. If Kylar didn’t leap, he’d have to sneak between two fires where men were still passing intermittently, and the ground was strewn with dead leaves. He’d jump, he decided, when the next good breeze came.
“There’s an odd light in your eyes,” Lantano Garuwashi said. He was big for a Ceuran, tall and lean and as heavily muscled as a tiger. Stripes of his own hair, burning the same color as the flickering fire, were visible through the sixty locks of all colors he’d claimed from opponents he’d killed.
“I’ve always loved fire. I want to remember it as I die.”
Kylar shifted to get a look at the speaker. It was Feir Cousat, a blond mountain of a man as wide as he was tall. Kylar had met him once. Feir was not only a capable hand with a sword, he was a mage. Kylar was lucky the man’s back was to him.
A week ago, after the Khalidoran Godking Garoth Ursuul killed him, Kylar had made a bargain with the yellow-eyed being called the Wolf. In his weird lair in the lands between life and death, the Wolf promised to restore Kylar’s right arm and bring him back to life quickly if Kylar stole Lantano Garuwashi’s sword. What had seemed simple—who can stop an invisible man from stealing?—was getting more complicated by the second. Who can stop an invisible man? A mage who can see invisible men.
“So you really don't so easily believe the Dark Hunter lives in those woods?” Garuwashi asked.
“Draw the blade a little, War Leader,” Feir said. Garuwashi bared the sword a hand’s breadth. Light poured from a blade that looked like a crystal filled with fire. “The blade burns to warn of danger or magic. The Dark Hunter is both.”
So am I, Kylar thought.
“It’s close?” Garuwashi asked. He rose to a crouch like a tiger ready to pounce.
“I told you luring the Cenarian army here might be our deaths, not theirs,” Feir said. He stared back into the fire.
For the past week, since the battle of Pavvil’s Grove, Garuwashi had led Logan and his men east. Because the Ceurans had disguised themselves in dead Khalidorans’ armor, Logan thought he was chasing the remnants of the defeated Khalidoran army. Kylar still had no idea why Lantano Garuwashi had led Logan here.
But then, he had no idea why the black metal ball called a ka’kari had chosen to serve him, or why it brought him back from death, or why he saw the taint on men’s souls that