“Star's come out again. Out there. To the southeast, out there over the Towers of Dawn.”

Skane didn't need to look where the moron was pointing. He had seen the demon-star a half-hour ago. He ignored the man and drew the oiled whetstone over the edge of his blade. The sound it made was the most comforting noise he had ever known.

“I'll be damned if I'm going anywhere near that accursed thing. We came too goddamn close to it over at Groendyke. No way, no how, no way.”

Skane continued sharpening his sword, ignoring him. The other man, ridiculously overdressed in far too many layers of fur, mail and leather, stamped his feet in the snow and rubbed his gloves hands together for warmth. Skane knew when the idiot danced what was coming next.

“Hey, the assassins... they've been down there now for hours. That demon-star is coming back here. I just know it. We've got to strike now, if we mean to claim what's ours. Before the demon comes and takes it from us.”

Skane put his whetstone away in his pack, laid back in the snow and closed his eyes, hoping that the man would shut up. No such luck.

“Listen to me! We're dead men just sitting up here. I didn't come all this way just to freeze to death. Night is coming. Another night like last night and I'll die. Die here on this godforsaken mountain.”

Skane crossed one leg over the other, put his gloved hands behind his head, and waited.

The other man looked down on Skane and sighed loudly, trying to make his exasperation obvious. “Die here in the snow if you like. I'm heading out.”

The other man trudged off into the forest. Normally Skane would've opened up the middle of his shoulder blades with a handaxe right there, but three of the four assassins were down in Exmortus Abbey, while a fourth was bringing the horses around the south gate. There was little chance the idiot would give their position away now.

Skane closed his eyes and dozed for a few minutes, then rolled over through the snow to the crest of the ridge. The three in the Abbey were down there, somewhere, rooting around for something they had left behind. It must be pretty important, to come stumbling back here like drooling imbeciles. More, even, than their own miserable lives. Let them find it, whatever it is. Then, and only then, let them find me.

He had studied them for days, watching who took which watch, what weapons they wielded, how they tracked in the snow. The big one would be a problem. The little one was hard to read, which made him especially dangerous. The tall, lanky one appeared to be the leader, but like every leader Skane had ever known, he was also the least equipped for an ambush in the snow. These leader types—these planners—never seem to plan for something like me. For death.

The bookish, plump one leading the horses around was the least of his worries. He would keep that one alive. Probably the leader too, if he didn't mouth off too much. Maybe remove some fingers or a hand if it came down to it. The big one and the small one would have to be killed outright. It wouldn't be easy —these two were very fast. But he had killed and captured far faster prey under worse conditions than this.

A noise down in the Abbey caught his attention. The big one and the small one were having a snowball fight. Skane licked his lips. They can't be serious. The world is a good—

The other man noisily dropped a pile of dry sticks in the snow, sat down and started rifling through his pack. He glanced at Skane through the corner of his eye. Skane quickly got to his feet, thumbing the handaxes on his belt.

“Close the pack.”

“You can't tell me what to do.”

“Close the pack.”

“You don't even know what I'm taking out, so shut the fuck up.”

Skane calmly walked over to the crouching man. With a swift kick he knocked the pack out of his hands and sent it flying against the rock wall. He heard something shatter. Without looking back he walked back to the crest and looked down over the Abbey.

“Goddamnit Skane! Goddamnit! I was, goddamnit, I was just—“

Sweet, sudden silence. Skane did not turn to look. Is he coming on me with a poisoned dagger drawn? No, of course not. He doesn't have the guts. When the Cowled Ones had hired him for this job, they had paid in gold up-front on the condition that this other man Albert came with him. It was not an ideal situation but the gold was too good to pass up, and his contact said the other man was a skilled poisoner. That he had already assassinated a half-score of troublesome targets already down in Helios.

He certainly boasts of it often enough. What kind of a paid killer brags about his work? I'd give good odds that those half-score victims were women, children and beggars.

When the Dukes had approached him with twice the gold for the same job, he had taken their money too. And they didn't demand he bring one of their lackeys along. The Golden Dukes, now, those guys are professionals. Here's your task, here's your money. Now go out there and get it done.

The Cowled Ones, however, were not as trusting. Or as trustworthy. Clearly they were in above their heads. They're weren't as familiar with this kind of work as the Dukes. A simple task. I just headed straight for where they originated from. Their home base. He knew other hunters were out there, perhaps dozens. Most of them were probably still scouring the area around Helios. Idiots.

Still, the silent man behind him was supposedly a seasoned killer. He listened for all the familiar sounds. The heavy breathing, the muttered curses, the sniffling, clumsy footfalls in the greying snow.

Nothing.

Skane slowly turned around. The other man was still crouched where he had left him, slightly swaying with each tiny gust of wind. The back of his head was open and a milk-skinned man in soiled white robes was holding his partially-eaten brain in his spindly fingers, studying it silently.

Skane quickly sized up the intruder. Queerly-scaled reptilian armor showed through holes in the man's filthy robes. He had no weapons, no shield. No helmet other than a single, wire-thin silver circlet crowning a head of short golden-brown hair. Face, neck, hands were exposed, everything else was likely armored. Skane sent both handaxes at the man's jaw.

They both hit, and yet missed.

The milk-white man drew his attention to Skane now, quickly but gently placing the brain back into the gaping hole in Albert's head. He smiled, bits of grey matter falling from his teeth and into the snow.

Skane drew both his swords and braced himself against the ridge. A sturdy shove and he would be tumbling down the slope to the Abbey. Although that, at least, was better than having your brain eaten by ... what is this creature?

“Name yourself!”

The milk-white man still stood there, grinning. He did not draw a weapon or advance. Neither of his axes, although he swore he saw them hit the man's neck and forehead, had seemed to make a mark.

“Are you–are you human, or... ghost?”

A look of concern passed over the milk-white man's eyes and his forehead crinkled in a worried frown. He stopped smiling, and put his hands in front of him with the palms out. One was covered in dark red stains and a solid chunk of hair and bone.

“Stay back, ghoul!” Skane slowly circled back to his left, his back toward an outcropping, the steep ridge to his left in case he needed to leap. To a better death than his.

The milk-white man kept his palms facing out towards Skane, and a small smile returned to his thin, bloodless lips.

“Timelessness cannot divide. The distinction between life and death is illusory,” the man said as he licked the gore from his palm. “Are you another killer?”

The milk-white man's voice was that of a young man, proud and noble, with a heavy deep bass resonance that didn't match his appearance. Not a ghost, at least. Skane stood his ground.

“My name is Skane. What do you want?”

“Are you another killer?”

“Just a hunter.”

“A hunter of men.”

“A hunter.”

“Put down your swords.”

Skane's muscles tightened. He flexed the fingers on both hands. He told himself he had faced this type before, but it wasn't true.

“Put down your swords. Skane.”

“Who are you?”

“A hunter.”

“Of what?”

The milk-white man looked down the ridge to the Abbey.

“Hunters.”
Skane blinked and the man's clean white hand was inches from his face. He swung a hard right uppercut and connected but his sword bounced off the man's scaly, reptilian skin. A stab of pain shot through his chest and he lost control of his limbs and bowels. Skane slumped backwards onto the snow-covered rock wall behind him. He looked up.

The milk-white man held a heart, still beating, with a solid chunk of boiled leather, hair, bone and tiny ringlets of chainmail clasped within his bone-white fist. Some of the gold coins he had sewn under his armor were there, too. The man held the heart above his head and squeezed it, tiny hissing streams of dark red blood cascading onto the man's forked black tongue. He savored it for a moment, then turned back to Skane, laying motionless in the snow.

“You came for those boys. Those sweet, innocent boys, down in the Abbey.”

Skane tried to shake his head, No, but he no longer had any control over his body.

“You came for them. But you can't have them. None of you can. They belong to me.”

Skane's sky-blue eyes stared out at him, expressionless. A quiet gurgling sound came from his throat, and the cold body gave a single violent shudder. The white man sunk his long teeth into the dying heart and chewed slowly, with thoughtful deliberation.

He savored the juices for a minute, then spit a small brown lump of flesh into the snow. He casually tossed the rest of the heart over the ridge and looked down. The sound of a warhorn echoed from the Abbey, it's long wail bouncing off the jagged rock walls around him, as if thousands of tiny warhorns answered the master's call. The milk-white man watched the scene below, as a horse-sized hound emerged from a pile of rubble in the northern tip of the Abbey and howled.

A broad, skeletal grin enveloped his face.

“They told me there is no better morsel than the heart of a killer.” He looked over his bony shoulder at Skane's corpse. “The hearts of a warrior, a hunter, were prized above all the others. Even above the newborn babes. The sacred bond of one who has taken a life.”

With a sudden loud whistling noise the milk-white man inhaled deeply, his neck muscles going rigid as his body started shaking. His eyes bulged out, two bloodshot pink-white spheres protruding out of his strained, quivering face. He hissed through his clenched teeth, then slowly relaxed. He grinned as he picked a small bit of gristle and hair from his long, filed teeth and flicked it at Skane's corpse.

“But to me they taste worse than shit.”

~~~~