Deathspell (Peter W. Dawes) - Peter Dawes Page 0,4

my mind was always elsewhere, chasing a shadow I couldn’t catch. The experience had shattered something within my psyche, leaving me to mend the pieces.

The adult I became carried that fourteen year old boy with him wherever he went. I might have grown into fruition as a man, but there had been a scar inflicted upon my soul, an imprint left that no time could ever heal. Within my dreams, I would replay Richard Hardi’s last moments, and in my thoughts I would muse on the emblem those two strange men wore on their cloaks.

A flame within a circle. The sigil of my father’s killers.

Chapter One

Nine years later.

18 September, in the Year of Our Lord, 1465

North Devon, England

It had been planned for several days, down to its last detail, and had I an ear to bend, I might have bragged for both of our sakes while watching it unfold. The night bore the pitch black of a new moon, the air pleasantly crisp and a vantage point provided to me by nature itself so I could enjoy the show. Poised in a tree branch, I picked at the dirt beneath my fingernails with the tip of my dagger while resisting the urge to hum a tune that had started to dance through my mind. Everything seemed to be playing out exactly as we had intended.

Had I more faith in the Almighty, I might have been inspired toward a prayer of thanks. As it stood, not even the absence of a captain to watch over our unwitting victims could move me toward such a gesture. My adult years had taught me that God had little time for anyone without a bag full of coins or a parcel of land to his boast, and a few pence went further in the hand of a whore than a priest’s coffer. The day churches provided prostitutes would be the day I graced them with my presence.

The irony of my name was far from lost on me.

Instead, I simply shook my head at the guards stationed in front of Lord Bertrand’s residence. It took only a few minutes after my co-conspirator departed for them to crack open the cask of ale delivered to them. ‘With the lord’s compliments.’ It took every measure of my scant self-restraint not chuckle at the comment when it had been issued and sure enough, within a short period of time their constitution had proven just as weak as their wits. They went from jolly to raucous and had taken a turn toward incoherent, stripping off pieces of armor the warmer the alcohol made them. This meant it was my turn to play.

Lowering the dagger, I wiped the blade across the fabric of my pants. As I slid it back into its sheath, one of the guards slumped against his comrade, provoking the latter to shove his cohort aside. I tsked under my breath, lifting to the balls of my feet and crouching. “Don’t be too quick to turn away such ready advances,” I whispered to no one but the night. “You might find yourself enjoying it.”

I grasped hold of the branch with one hand and used it to swing to a soundless landing. The years had been kind to me in more manners than one, gifting me with a light frame and nimble fingers all too willing to do the Devil’s work. The leaves collecting on the ground crunched softly when I took my first step, but the guards were none-the-wiser to my presence. As they erupted into another fit of laughter, I crept closer and paused, fingers brushing across the hilt of my sword.

One of them turned away, hearing the rustle my movements created and squinting into the area where I had taken refuge. I huffed with derision, a light burst of steam rising from my nostrils and mingling with the air before anyone else could take notice. Still, the man glanced toward his friends again and cocked a thumb in the direction where I was crouched. “Rabbits’re running all over the place again,” he managed, the actual words sounding much more slurred.

The guard who had been slumped righted himself and spat on the ground. “So? Killit an’ make us somethin’ to eat,” he said.

“Do I look like a bloody cook?”

“Ain’t gonna say what you do look like.”

The third man burst into cacophonous laughter, his friend readily joining in. The one whose attention I had garnered bristled, his gaze flicking back toward me while my hand shifted from sword’s