The Gathandrian Trilogy 02 - Hallsfoots Battle

other side of Kanlin. The man crouching down failed to notice. From instinct, Simon opened his mouth to cry a warning, but no sound came out. Something glittered in the younger brother’s hand. A heartbeat later, the scribe saw it was a knife. This shining object plunged deep into the figure of the older man, who cried out and fell backwards against the tree. Dark liquid gushed from the wound, and the scribe felt the sticky wetness spray against his face. He turned, able to move at last, and vomited into the undergrowth. From the edge of his vision, he saw the knife rise and fall again, twice, and then Kanlin was silent.
    “Please,” the scribe heard himself say. “Please…”
    “ Hush your mouth ,” came Ahelos’ reply, his voice now changed from the charm of before into a harsher tone. And still Simon could sense none of the man’s emotions. “I have to make sure my brother is dead.”
    “Why have you killed him?” The question was in the air before the scribe could prevent it and he would have given much of the little he owned, and all he didn’t, to pull the question back.
    Ahelos laughed. “Would you not wish to? He has spent years of his life belittling me and taking what is mine. He deserves to die. It is a miracle he has survived thus far.”
    “You will be punished. Even if you k-kill me, those you live with will find it out, no matter how far you run.” The scribe wished he’d sounded stronger, but his stammer under pressure couldn’t be helped. He also wished he’d had the sense to remain silent or even to run, but the taste of vomit in his mouth seemed to force words out of him he would never otherwise have said. Likewise, the tremble in his legs betrayed his need to escape.
    “Ah, but I don’t intend to run,” whispered Ahelos, and now Simon could see the glitter of the knife streaked with its black globules of blood as it came ever closer. “Because you, a stranger, are here. I’d thought of a river fox as the killer of my beloved brother, but why should not a stranger be a murderer just as well?”
    “I-I don’t want to kill anyone,” the scribe tried to back away but the mind-cane hummed in his hand and once more he found he couldn’t move. From somewhere beyond the trees, he heard the snow-raven’s cry.
    “Nobody knows that,” Ahelos said with a laugh. “I’ll say you followed us, tried to rob us and killed my brother. Then I, in my natural anger, killed you. Justice was done.”
    He brought the knife down. The steel, still warm from Kanlin’s body, touched Simon’s arm on its way to his belly. The scribe cried out. The mind-cane screamed but not with fear and, the next moment, Simon drove the cane into Ahelos’ face.
    He was hoping only to fend off his assailant, but the mind-cane had a different purpose. As the ebony touched the murderous brother, fire leapt from it, suffused with the wild humming. The sound was so piercing that Simon was forced to cover his ears with his arms, although the overwhelming noise was in his thoughts, also, and that could not be gainsaid. Ahelos’ hair burst into a dark crimson flame that ran down his body, licking away tunic and skin and flesh. The smell of burning drove all other thoughts away and the scribe turned and vomited again.
    When he looked round, the air was still and the humming had stopped. The mind-cane was motionless. The snow-raven was perched on a branch nearby that swayed under his weight. The bird was glowing and a single speck of bright blood marked his head. Simon couldn’t help but shake. He longed to drop both the book of this legend and the cane, but his fingers would not let go. He glanced at the ground. Ahelos lay at his feet. In the light cast through the trees by the snow-raven, Simon could see the man’s face and skin were burnt away.
    He swore with words he had heard Ralph say in what seemed a lifetime ago. His heart was beating at such a pace but he could not breathe in enough air. He’d killed Ahelos. He’d killed him, when he’d sworn to himself he would not kill again. He hadn’t meant to. Dropping to his knees, Simon peered into his victim’s features, or what he could see of them. He could sense nothing, but that was no surprise—he had been unable to link with either of these men while they lived, so how could he understand fully when they had died?
    “I’m sorry,” he whispered to no one. “I’m sorry.”
    The snow-raven gave a low whistle and Ahelos’ eyes flickered open. Simon