Luck in the Shadows

over on top of him, still pinning him down.
    Gasping for air, Seregil heaved the body aside and staggered to his feet.
    "Illior's merciful today," he panted, bending to make certain the man was dead.
    Something buzzed past his head like an angry wasp and he flung himself down, pulling his poniard free of the body. But it was Alec, another arrow ready on the string, who stepped from the trees. The boy's left thigh was bloody and he looked decidedly pale. Micum Cavish was with him, holding a bloodstained wad of cloth against his side.
    "Behind you." Micum nodded past Seregil's shoulder.
    Turning, Seregil found another ambusher sprawled dead in the snow not four feet from his back, a red-feathered arrow through his throat.
    "Well," he gasped, standing up to brush off the snow, "I believe you just repaid me for that bow."
    "By Sakor, this child can shoot!" Micum grinned.
    "He just put me in his debt back at the road, then picked off two more as easy as you please. I saw another take off through the trees when Alec was coming over to tend me."
    "Damn," Seregil muttered as he collected his weapons and searched the dead men scattered around.
    "Get your arrow from that one, Alec."
    Alec approached the dead man and gingerly tugged on the shaft protruding from his neck. As he pulled it free, the man's head rolled to the side, his open eyes seeming to fix on his killer. Alec backed away from him with a shudder, carefully wiping the arrowhead in the snow before dropping it into his quiver.
    Back at the road they gathered the other bodies into a heap. Alec pulled the arrow from the first man he'd shot, but before he could clean it, Micum took it from him.
    "That was your first man, wasn't it?" he asked.
    "Micum, it's not his way," Seregil warned, knowing what his friend was up to.
    "It's best to do these things proper," Micum replied quietly. "I did it for you, remember? It's you should be doing it for him."
    "No, it's your ritual," Seregil sighed, slouching against a tree. "Go ahead, then. Get it over with."
    "Come here, Alec. Stand facing me." Micum was uncommonly serious as he held up the arrow.
    "There's a twofold purpose in this. The old ways, the soldier ways, say that if you drink the blood of your first man, none of the others you ever kill will be able to haunt you. Open your mouth."
    Alec shot a questioning look to Seregil, who only shrugged and looked away. Under Micum's
    commanding gaze, Alec opened his mouth. Micum laid the arrowhead briefly against his tongue, then withdrew it.
    Seregil saw the boy grimace, remembered the salt and copper taste that had flooded his own mouth years before when Micum had done the same with him. His stomach stirred uneasily.
    When it was over, Micum patted Alec's shoulder.
    "I know you didn't enjoy that much, any more than you enjoyed killing those fellows. Just remember that you did it to protect yourself and your friends, and that's a good thing, the only good reason to kill. But don't ever get so that you like it, any more than you liked the taste of the blood. You understand that?"
    Alec looked down at the steaming crimson stains spreading out from the bodies in the snow and nodded.

7 South to Boersby
    In spite of his wound, Micum agreed with Seregil that they should bolt through as quickly as possible to Boersby. Giving wide berth to the few steadings and inns that lay along the road, they kept up a steady pace for as long as Micum could stay in the saddle, slept in the open, and ate whatever Alec shot. Micum's wound didn't fester, but it was giving him more pain than he cared to admit. More aggravating still, however, was Seregil's increasing silence during the day and a half it took to reach the banks of the Folcwine.
    From past experience, Micum recognized this as a sure sign that something was amiss; Seregil's black mood could go on indefinitely if something didn't happen to shake him out of it.
    They rode out of the forest at late afternoon and sat looking out over the broad course of the Folcwine.
    Micum was bleeding again, and it left him faint and irritable.
    "Bilairy's Guts, Seregil, come out with it before I knock you down!" he growled at last.
    Scowling down at his horse's neck, Seregil muttered, "I wish we'd taken just one of them alive."
    "One of-oh, hell, man! Are you still brooding about that?" Micum turned to Alec. "A nest of forest bandits-hardly a rarity in the Folcwine—surprises him, and instantly there's some dark plot afoot. I think he's just piqued that he