JAHAMA'S LESSON
by Matt Farrer

SOMETHING HAD ARRIVED on the shores of Bretonnia, a chill shadow that slipped into the Bay of Hawks under an empty night sky and through a still, quiet ocean mist. It was a thick, unseasonable fog that lay across the shore like a blanket of some parasitic mould, drowning the shingle beach and tangling itself in the trees beyond. On another night it would have had poachers or late-night fishermen muttering uneasily, but tonight the moon was in and nothing moved in the dimness. Out to sea it narrowed sharply to a spot in the centre of the bay: a spire of black rock, glistening like a rotted tooth, spearing into the air between the headlands. The spire had not been there at sundown.
Khreos Maledict, Lord of Karond Kar, master of the Black Ark Exultation of Blighted Hope, chuckled over the sound of lapping water and tugged at the cloak about his armoured shoulders. The night had been mild as they had sailed into the bay, but the sorcerous fog had brought a chill to the air.
'I confess I have often thought our sorcerers' interest in weather weaving and concealment foolish and effete, but I profess myself newly educated. Even lacking the skills of our soft-spined southern cousins, I can see how the techniques Skail and his apprentices were fretting over could be... profitable. I have never seen the Exultation's walls of mist extended so far from her, or so thick.'
He peered about him, trying to see the hills over the curve of the bay, but they were as smothered by the fog as the shape of the Black Ark behind them. The young helldrake towing the landing-skiff was invisible in the whiteness ahead, although every so often he thought he could hear a crack or chink as the Drakemasters goaded their charge one way or another. Even the lines of his coach, almost close enough to touch, were grey and dreamlike, and the four dark riders behind it made ghost-shapes as their horses pawed at the skiff's broad deck. Khreos shot a look at the young elf next to him.
'You, nephew, are clearly still not convinced of this whole exercise. No matter. Truth to tell, Khrait, I do not believe you will be convinced until you stand at the foregate of the Exultation and watch the, feh, what's the creature purporting to rule this piece of the land?'
'The Due d'Argent,' put in a pale shape from the gloom at the front of the skiff.
'Watch the Due d'Argent being towed aboard by the witch elf hooks in his flesh. What do you think, Miharan? Gilded chains for the baron and his family, in honour of their station?'
Miharan Diamo, the diminutive witch elf elder, the one they called the Scorpion's Daughter, would not return his smile.
'Make sure your reach does not exceed your grasp, Lord Khreos. You have not yet made your cut - you are only just drawing the knife.' She gave a dismissive gesture of her hand. 'But when the Castille d'Argent has fallen, I will commission your gilded chains happily enough.'
Khreos kept his smile in place and made a polite bow of acknowledgement, as he narrowed his eyes and promised himself yet another time that the little albino bitch would be meeting with an accident as soon as he could find a foolproof way to arrange one. Ahead of them splashing sounds came through the fog as the helldrake gained shallow water and was made to pull the skiff aground. The little vessel juddered as its bow was hinged down into a ramp, and Khreos and Khrait climbed carefully into the coach as Miharan stepped in on the other side. There was the sound of hooves and they were off, jolting up the beach until they reached the road into the hills, the Dark Riders taking up position around them as they emerged from the fog.
'Perfect,' declared Khreos, sitting back and smiling again. 'See, nephew? I told you the coach would cross the beach with no trouble. I selected this bay for its shingle as well as its roadway.' His nephew did not reply, and Khreos's gaze switched to the fourth figure in the coach, a silent patch of black against the wine-and-gold colours of the seats.
'And you, Jahama, you are to be the knife we draw tonight, the core and pivot of my stratagem.' He leaned forward to the figure - but not too close. He had heard stories about the assassins who emerged from all those years under the witch elves' tutelage, and of what happened to those who got too trusting toward them. 'Miharan has sung your praises, sir. I don't doubt that when we ride upon the Castille d'Argent tomorrow we shall find you greeting us at the gate, knife-blade wet, eh?'
'I understand my orders, lord.' The assassin spoke well enough but his voice was oddly soft and flat, as if reciting unfamiliar words by rote. He would not meet Khreos's eyes.
'You'd best leave him, Lord Maledict. He has a hard night ahead of him, and he must prepare himself.' Khreos snorted at the sound of Miharan's voice, making less effort to hide his displeasure now, and sat back to watch the trees shadowing out the stars over the road. The road was entering woods and the sounds of hoofbeats slowed as the coach-horses moved onto rougher road and the Dark Riders began weaving in and out through the trees, watchful for movement in the dark around them. There was something oppressive about the evening and for a time the only sounds were hooves and the wind until the coach slowed and they heard the driver's voice murmuring through the little window: 'Lord, we are at the place. Beyond here the patrols from the Castille begin.'
With what Khreos considered unseemly haste, Miharan flicked open the coach door and vaulted easily out of the howdah and down to the ground, Jahama a moment behind her. But when Khrait went to lower the little folding steps and follow them Khreos put a hand on his shoulder.
'Don't look so puzzled, nephew. Just bide your time. We wait for the Lady Miharan to kiss her throat-cutter goodbye and come back aboard, then we return to the Exultation. In the meantime, try turning your wits to what we're actually about here.' His eyes turned to the two shapes outside in the clearing. 'Let's see if you can realise what I have planned.'

ON THE GROUND below them, Jahama shrugged his shoulders and adjusted the hang of his cloak. His hands flickered pale in the dimness as he tested the draw on each of his weapons.
'You need no final advice, Jahama. Remember only what it is you have to achieve. I will greet you again on the Black Ark.' Miharan gave a small tilt of her head, and Jahama swept back into a deep kneeling bow. The witch elf placed her hand on his head. Then they both straightened and stepped apart.
As Jahama scanned the hills and got his bearings Miharan leapt lightly onto the running board and slipped into the coach. He ignored the sound of its wheeling and moving away, but one of the Dark Riders paused long enough to look down at Jahama with an odd expression. Jahama met the other elf's gaze for a chilly moment before the Rider wheeled his mount and disappeared after the rest of the party. His face still expressionless, Jahama looked around the clearing again.
The stiff wind blew at ground level too, crumpling the treetops and sending gusts between the trunks. Night-eyed as he was, Jahama had to crouch in the shelter between two thick roots and strike one of the little tapers the assassins used, designed to burn for just a moment and to be easily shielded with a cupped hand. It showed him the piece of yellow parchment, the one with the forest, the road, the little river-bridge, the village, and the Castille d'Argent on its hill. In the seconds it took for the taper to burn down and extinguish he had fitted the map to the clearing he stood in, tucking it into his belt he could turn and look into the night in the direction he now knew the castle lay.
'I understand my orders, lord,' he said again, and now his voice was full of a soft, easy amusement. His cloak sat warm and close about his shoulders as he began a gentle jog away through the woods to the killing ground.

SEATED IN THE coach, Khrait Maledict sprawled his legs out in a finely calculated pose of carelessness and listened to the sparring between his uncle and the Scorpion's Daughter. He hooded his eyes and tilted his helm forward a little to obscure where his gaze was resting, and idly rested his head on his hand in such as way that he could grin without it showing. This was interesting.
'And so, my Bride of Khaine, was your assassin ready? Had he prepared himself adequately? He needed no further tutelage from you?' The lord's tone was heavy and bantering, more so than it would normally have been. Dark elves, particularly their nobility, never conversed - the most trifling exchange of words was always a subtle, studied contest of insult and counter-insult as each tried to saw away at the other's composure. Khrait knew it irritated his uncle that the game didn't seem to work with witch elves, whose manners tended to the simple and brutal. Miharan didn't seem to have the wit to feel the barbs that Khreos had constantly thrown at her on the Exultation's voyage out - but that fact nettled the lord so intensely that Khrait couldn't believe it wasn't a deliberate gambit by Miharan herself. He wondered why his uncle hadn't picked that up. Perhaps the old fool really was starting to lose his edge.
'He is the equal of the task you have set him and more, my Lord Maledict. When you came to me at Naggarond, you demanded the finest assassin under my tutelage. I promised I would provide no less. I was sent for that night and told to bring Jahama to your docks. My finest pupil. I could hardly have sent anyone less.'
'You do credit to yourself, Daughter of the Scorpion,' said the lord. 'Your reputation, your skills as a tutor...' Miharan waved a hand airily as the coach bounced over a rough spot. They were moving faster now, the driver more sure of himself and their cargo delivered.
'It takes a certain eye, lord, and the providence of Khaine. I took Jahama personally, of course. A small manse over Karond Kar harbour. I understand they were master shipwrights of some kind.' She shrugged. 'Their blood was as red as anyone else's.'
Khrait suppressed a shudder. He had wondered, as had everyone he knew when they were young, whether the eyes of the witch elves would ever fall on him. How could they not when sometimes on the dazed, shattered morning after Death Night houses were found with the families and retainers butchered, even the animals cut apart, but the children not dead but simply gone? And then years later, as an army drew up for battle, one might hear among the witch elves' battle-cries the particular voice of a girl not heard since childhood, or move to let an assassin take his place among the soldiers and glimpse for half a second under a cowl the features of a playmate vanished a quarter of a lifetime before...
Jahama had seemed about his own age. Khrait shuddered again and wondered if the assassin would have been someone he would have grown up to know.

THE WIND HAD been Jahama's friend. It gusted and eddied and stung the skin in a way that reminded him of the training grounds outside Ghrond. And it would also break up his scent and stop more than a scrap of it reaching the giant hunting-hounds that seemed to be tethered outside every farmer's cottage he passed. He had rubbed his tunic and plastered his hair with the oil that Bretonnians used on their leather jerkins and tack, and that confused them further: he had triggered nothing more than the occasional puzzled, hesitant bark. Had this been Naggaroth, these ones would have been dead in their sleep at their own brothers' hands five times over, with guards that soft.
Deep night though it was, the countryside was not as deserted as the bay and forest had been. Not long after the road left the forest for farmland he had come up behind a pair of wagons pulled by great slab-muscled horses, decked with lanterns and with men-at-arms jogging beside them. Whatever was urgent enough to have such a cavalcade out at night Jahama did not try to guess, but they created a useful commotion, setting dogs barking and flocks of geese honking and making the farmers more likely to ignore them. He had shadowed them for the time it took to pass by the village, then peeled off and flitted away through the vineyards.

'DOUBTLESS JAHAMA HAS profited by his... change in circumstances.' Khreos said silkily. 'Quite an upbringing! A life among the Brides of Khaine - stepchild of the Lord of Murder, as it were. A respectable lineage, even by proxy. And to have excelled in the deadly arts as he has... If, of course, you have described his abilities properly.'
'You seem satisfied enough with my claims about Jahama's capabilities, my lord. You accepted him to be your agent tonight, after all.' Khrait smirked at the lord's questioning of her truthfulness being elegantly turned on its head. If Khreos doubted her confidence in Jahama, she was saying, then to have picked him anyway for this mission was doubly foolish. Oh, she was sharp. No drug-addled beast-woman, this one.
Lord Khreos, glowering, shifted tack.
'The Shades I sent to spy out the land were unable to approach the castle, you know. The peasants are loyal and tenacious. They keep vigils of their own at night, with dogs and wardens, and are quick to answer an alarm from the castle walls - why, you saw for yourself that we could not go even halfway through the forest before we had to leave Jahama to go on by himself. This is a troubled part of the coast, you see, and its people are well prepared. Two of my Shades tracked a warband of Gor that came out of the swamps to the south and into the Due d'Argent's lands, and the Due's response was well marshalled indeed. If he should make it to the castle, he had best be careful when he flees it. I expect the yeomen will be combing the countryside for him. Perhaps we should have warned him that our last three spies were all captured.'
Miharan's face betrayed nothing.
'I would not concern yourself. Jahama was sent last year beyond the Watchtowers and into the east where the Chaos tribes wander. His mission was to poison the wells of a tribe that had been harrying our border. The land was alive with roving warbands - there was some great strife between the Marauder chieftains that had them hunting each other and everything else they found - but Jahama slipped by them all. None found him. Watchful or no, the Bretonnians will not find him either.'

AROUND THE VILLAGE Jahama began to see the wardens and slowed his pace. In country like this the Due's patrols would be no idle night-wanderers, podgy with the bribes they took from the poachers they were supposed to catch. The first he found were on a little footbridge near the village mill, three men in Ducal livery leaning on the bridge wall with a brazier between them. Jahama did not think of taking chances; he moved in a wide semicircle around them and soon found their two companions. Two more yeomen in a grove thirty paces from the bridge, dark capes over their surcoats, easy to overlook if an intruder were intent on the lanterns and conversation of the guards around their little fire. Safely out of reach of their inferior human night-vision Jahama eyed them balefully, fighting down the urge to put a blowpipe dart into each of them. Sentries who knew enough to set up a twofold guard like this would also know enough to keep regular contact with each other, and the instant anyone found any of these men gone there would be an alarm raised. It was not the time for that yet.
It took him ten minutes to circle about them, triple-checking every bush and shadow for a third hidden watcher. There were none. Jahama shrugged out of his cloak and bundled the thick material into a parchment-thin hide envelope - wet, it would cling to him and weigh him down. Then he slipped into the water and darted eel-quick across to the far bank, pulling his cloak about him again as he listened intently. His breathing had not quickened; his face showed nothing but quiet concentration. There were fresh horse tracks on this side of the river, meaning night-time patrols, but he could hear no hooves and so he began to move again. The hillside below the Due's castle was bare and he was grateful for the lack of moonlight: invisible in the dark, he looked up at the black bulk of the castle and grinned.

'I AM PLEASED to hear it,' declared Khreos. 'The quieter and more skilled he is, the greater his chances of catching the Due in his bed. The advantage of surprise would be crucial, I imagine. The Due has something of a reputation as an opponent. Were he to face Kouran of Naggarond himself, I might still hedge my bets.' Khreos kept his voice carefully casual. 'My spies' accounts of his battles against the bestigor war-chief were really quite chilling to read, and he has by all accounts bested vampires, trolls, greenskins of all-'
'Jahama is unmatched at all the assassin's arts. As I told you.' Miharan cut him off, sounding impatient - or was it defensiveness? Miharan's expression was still unreadable above the fur she had wrapped around herself, but Khrait thought he was going to give his uncle this one on points - she seemed rattled.
'I hope for his sake he is.' They were back on shingle again and Khrait realised with mild surprise that they were back at the bay - they had been moving faster than he had realised. Next to him, his uncle was letting his smugness show. 'Jahama will not have the assassin's usual advantage for too long. There will only be a few soldiers he will be able to take by surprise; the rest he must fight while looking them in the eye, and with no others to support him. Or not for many hours, at least. I know he can pounce like a cat, but should he have to fight the Due toe-to-toe, blade against blade... well, we must have hope, eh?'
The lord cocked a triumphant eyebrow. Miharan's gaze was stone.

GUILLAUME SHIFTED FROM foot to foot and eyed the brand guttering in the bracket above him. From the castle rampart he could just hear the singing and the banging of goblets on tables from the feasting hall. Jacqueline would be in there, he supposed, carrying the big jugs of coarse red wine back and forth. If he hadn't been bullied into taking Marcel's watch tonight he could have worked his way in, and he was sure that tonight he would finally have found the courage to talk to her. His grandmother in the village had told him that the west wind knew all about love, if you said the name of the one you loved just as you held a burning torch up high and watched the sparks...
He looked about again, didn't see anyone, switched the halberd to his left hand and started trying to wrestle the torch out of its bracket. If the sparks blew straight, it meant your love would be returned, but if they corkscrewed in the wind... Guillaume frowned. He must have strained a muscle or something - there was a sharp pain in his neck. And then his legs crumpled under him.
Jahama fielded the halberd before it could clatter on the stones and slid his stiletto free of Guillaume's body, then took a deep breath of chilly air. The moment in a mission when there was no more need for secrecy and he was free to kill was always the most delicious one. He flicked the blood from his knife, selected a broader, heavier blade for his other hand and looked around.
The wooden roof inside the gatehouse, that would be the stables. Important work: a little poison dust scattered there and any surviving knights would be without mounts come the dawn. That tower to the left: he knew that was the quarters of Sir Roland, the Due's adjutant, and of Jules the Rash and the brat pack of knights-errant that he led. Important men. That should be his next stop after the stables, to deal with any who had retired early and then lie in wait for the rest as they came in, rolling on their feet and flushed with drink. The gatehouse itself, of course, must not be overlooked: there would be the capstans and counterweights for the drawbridge and portcullis, to make sure that the Lord Maledict could march straight into the courtyard upon his arrival.
Hours until dawn, but not that many. Jahama looked up and down the wall, saw no other sentries, then went leaping down the stairs and through the shadows, away from the gatehouse and stables and straight past Sir Roland's tower to the servants' quarters.

THE EXULTATION WAS nothing like the quiet bulk against the stars that it had been when the skiff and its coach had left. Now the lower reaches of the Ark were strung with lamps, and the air rang with shouts and splashes as boat after boat was lowered to the water and dark elves thronged at the docks to board them. Cold ones were being hooded and shoved into longboat corrals and bundles of crossbow-bolts passed from shoulder to shoulder from the armouries. Lord Khreos surveyed the activity and gave his nephew an indulgent smile as their own skiff was hoisted from the water.
'Nearly time now, Khrait. You are already in armour, of course, and our mounts are prepared. We will move straight to begin our march. Enough bickering over our little assassin friend, eh, Miharan? We shall find out if he has done his work soon enough.' The Lord laughed, and Khrait could tell he considered the argument with Miharan over, but the little elf was talking again.
'A pity our trip ended so soon. I had hoped to have time to tell you another story of Jahama before we marched. The manner in which he was made a full assassin is not known to many outside our cult, but the tale is a good one.' She stretched inside her fur cloak, indifferent to the way the skiff hung fifty feet over the Exultation's marshalling yards.
'The year Jahama reached his final training the winter was bitter and the stars in a vile alignment, and Hellebron was in an ill humour. Decreeing a special test for the assassins, she stationed her own master assassin Hakoer beside her, the one they called the Breath of Ice for his coldness.'
'No one I have ever heard of.' Khreos was inspecting the back of his gauntlet, feigning indifference.
'Oh, you will have heard of him, my lord. All Naggaroth has heard of him, simply not his name.' Miharan allowed herself a smile as the implication sank in. The air turned grey as the Ark's shield of enchanted fog swirled around them.
'Jahama was barely six-score years and scrawny with youth. No one else would be his patron, but I knew I had found a quality in the boy. The test was simple. Hellebron locked her palace. Her best artisans set their traps in every room, her own assassins and her guards hunted through her tower with orders to strike down any elf they did not know as one of their own. And to Hakoer she handed her own blade, the Deathsword, to use on any that approached them.
'All they had to do, you see, was make their way to Hellebron's audience chamber, and pluck from Hakoer's neck his silver collar with its single ruby. Then Hellebron would declare it a gift to them and we would have our newly anointed assassin. She laughed as she told us that she would see the hearts of our pupils on Khaine's altar by the next sunrise, and that if any got close enough even to set eyes on Hakoer's silver collar she would reward his trainer richly.'
The skiff came to a gentle landing on its rest, and servants hurried to roll a ramp into place. Dotted with baleful lamplights, the Black Ark's spires skewered the night sky around them.
'But I have wasted time, lord, I apologise. I am sure you have better things to do than listen to old tales of a simple functionary of yours.'
Miharan walked past the two nobles, ignoring their glares, and stepped lightly down to the deck where her handmaidens waited. The lord watched her for a moment, then shrugged her off and turned back to his nephew.
'Well now, Khrait. If you ever wish to take a place in the great hall of House Maledict I trust you have learned from what you saw tonight. We could have followed the urgings of your infantile friends, marched ashore from the Exultation as soon as we came to the bay and tried to smash our way inland. Within a day we would have been surrounded by those ham-handed human knights and brought to battle. By the time we had felled them, what then? Our energy dissipated in barbarous hacking-matches with a foe beneath our dignity.
'Attend! See the way that the edge, the steel, the very spear-point of our army is assembling and moving to shore. Our cold ones are waiting, our retainers and lieutenants. But as we advance through the night, as we move like armoured shadows along the road, our first strike will come sooner still! Like the tongue flicking out ahead of the snake, Jahama is stealing ahead of us. Like the night wind he will pass into the baron's fortress and descend upon the sleeping knights like Khaine himself Blade and venom throughout the halls and walls and chambers!' Khrait, leaning insolently against the rail, rolled his eyes - his uncle's penchant for melodrama had slipped its reins again.
'Tomorrow when we reach the castle, there will be nothing! A gutted husk, its gates standing open before us, its knights lying naked in their beds, their throats open, the watchmen struck down in their towers with never an alarm sounded! And then - attend, nephew - then we shall turn to the countryside at large, to the farms and villages. Then the slavers will bring out their shackles and whips, then the cold ones can gorge, then we shall have our hunts and our fights. And those animals will scurry and cry ''where are our knights, where is our Due?'' but their defenders will have been cut from the tale before it begins! By the time messengers can reach any other castles, the Exultation of Blighted Hopes will be sailing for Karond Kar, and our holds shall groan with slaves!'
'The crashing invasions and battles that you youngbloods seem to favour are well enough in their way. But save them for those repugnant little inbreeds on. Ulthuan! Why waste warriors against these sweaty, hairy savages? Brute force is one thing, Khrait, but this is House Maledict. And a plan like this has...' he matched the words to the closing of a fist, '...elegance.'

THREE HUMANS IN the little cobbled yard around the well: a pair of servants drawing water and a valet relieving himself against the wall. Running and leaping, Jahama passed over the well and between the two servants who dropped without ever seeing the blades that had cut them. A twist in mid-air and he rolled into a lunging double thrust that caught the valet in sternum and throat as he turned. The man fell with his hands still tangled in his breeches and Jahama was away.
Light and noise emanated from the windows of the servants' hall, and Jahama flicked the stiletto back into his sleeve and grabbed a little wooden stool sitting by a wall. A sweep of a long arm sent it crashing through the shutters and the first of them came milling out of the door a moment later, silhouetted sharp against the firelight. Jahama could have dropped five of them in as many heartbeats with throwing-blades, but he was already bounding up the steps to the walkway that led to the Grail chapel. Its heavy doors stood ajar, throwing out candlelight, and two figures stood outside them, hands on sword-hilts. One grey head, one blond. Harsh human syllables grated on Jahama's ears.
'An argument or something. It's the servants. Shall we finish our prayers, father?'
They peered out, eyes adjusting to the gloom. The old one was no threat, but the young one would be one of the Due's warriors. There was power in his frame and he held his sword with casual ease.
He ran at them and pirouetted by the young knight to take his father with a low, flat backhanded stroke. The old knight fell to his knees, wheezing in agony and as the son turned to try to swing Jahama made a dainty slash just above his eyes. The cut was shallow but the flow of blood was blinding. The knight staggered, wiping his face with one hand and roaring as Jahama neatly finished his pirouette, leapt straight up and swung onto the chapel roof.
He must have knocked over a lantern in the servants' quarters; the firelight was much brighter and people were running with shouts and wet sacks. One or two had even come to the door of the main hall where horns and loud singing were still blaring. In front of the chapel, the young knight was screaming. Jahama knew enough Bretonnian to catch ''Father!'' and ''Murderer!'' before he slipped a noose over a roof-gable and slid down the thin cord to the cobbles on the far side.
A boy was peering out of a high window at the commotion, and Jahama took the opportunity to flick a throwing-needle up and into him. The motion caught the eye of someone at the servants' hall - the fire was all but out but the crowd was growing - and at the first shout of ''Who goes there?'' Jahama was running again, flitting sparrow-quick past the open door to the feasting hall with his blowpipe rising to his lips.
'Marius?' from behind him, then, more urgently, 'Marius? Marius!' In motions so practised they were unconscious, his left hand stowed his blowpipe back at his thigh and re-drew his cleaving knife. His other sheathed the stiletto and tugged the cord that opened a pack at his hip and sent a dozen small steel caltrops tinkling onto the steps behind him. The man at the hall's entrance had dragged his crumpled companion away and now more figures were pouring out, from the hall and the tower, and shouts were going around the walls. Jahama grinned, now things would begin in earnest.

FOR THE FIRST time since the skiff had set off from the Ark, Khrait spoke aloud. 'The assassin was expensive to procure, uncle. And his success-' he shot a look over his shoulder, but Miharan had passed out of earshot '- his success will bring kudos and rewards to the witch elves at the expense of ourselves. All things considered, uncle, is it really wise to hand Morathi and her followers a gift like this? All that anyone will know when those two return is that House Maledict are so under Miharan's thumb that we're freighting a load of slaves back for her for free.'
Khreos turned to look at his nephew as they sauntered down the ramp to the Ark's lower keep. Scorn, smugness and exasperation fought for position in the curl of his lip and the arch of his eyebrows.
'Return? Return with us? Don't be stupid, boy.'

THERE WAS A howl behind him: someone rousted out of bed had been the first to cross the caltrops and hadn't put on his boots. Jahama laughed loudly for a few moments to give them his location then hurled himself down the cloister alongside the hall and through the first door he found.
A stifling kitchen, cooks banking the coals in the roasting-pits now that the feast was finally done. Good. Jahama's arm described a curt quarter-circle and two fell back with slivers of steel in their necks, then he vaulted a chopping-block, plucked the cleaver from it and drove it into a serving-man's shoulder. Almost without thought his fingers picked a loose-weave sachet of Tuern's Curse - one of the few poisons he had bothered to bring - and tossed it into the stewpot as a surprise for them later, then he turned as the knights poured in behind him.
All were unarmoured, but all were armed: a dozen drawn swords and perhaps half that many axes and maces. All weapons needing a wind-up and space to swing. If he could get in among them, getting back out to the courtyard would be an easier matter.
They were rushing at him, the young one he'd cut in front of the chapel in the lead wearing a mask of blood and tears. Jahama took a moment to wonder how he looked to them - a head taller than they but slender even with his cloak and cowl about him, narrow-faced and steel-eyed even by Naggarothi standards. The dying fires seemed to give everything a lushness, a depth, and turned his assassin's cloak into a pit that drank the light. Then Jahama stopped thinking, gave a nonchalant flick of his arm that threw a line over a roofbeam, and swung neatly up over their heads.
They were quicker than he expected and a sword-point caught the hem of his cloak, but it was too light a touch to slow him and he somersaulted in the air to land lightly behind the men who had run at him. Someone cannoned into him and for a moment he almost lost his balance, but it was no real difficulty to turn and trap the man's leg just so. The knight's knee snapped as he fell forward into the others. Jahama whipped the edge of his hand expertly into the next man's jaw, sending him choking as another bared his teeth and swung a mace. In the second it took the assassin to shift his balance inside the swing the haft had caught him above the ear and with a snarl to match his attacker's Jahama arced his knife up and lunged. His reflex was to take out the man's throat before he could balance for another swing until he remembered what he was here for, just in time to reverse the stroke and smash the weighted pommel into the man's temple. He would live.
Jahama placed his hands on the staggering knight's shoulders as though he were about to deliver a double-cheek Bretonnian kiss of comradeship, then he spun the man about, pushed off and drove both his feet into the face of the first of the squires to come running through the far door. The boy went down unconscious or dead and Jahama turned the movement into a backward roll, swiped a knife through the hamstrings of the second squire and ran through into the great hall.
Almost empty, now, a handful of cowering servants the only ones left. A great bestigor head leered from the wall and captured banners hung from the ceiling. Jahama thought of looking for any he recognised but there was no time. Horns were blowing outside, and the counterpoint of booted feet was everywhere. The knights were on his heels again, far too many to fight now - Jahama was starting to think he had done his work a little too well.

'DO YOU THINK she knows we've sent her star pupil on a suicide mission, uncle?'
'Knows? I don't see how she can. She's too sure of the massacre her pet is preparing to deal out, for all the taunting I gave her.' Forgetting his dignity, Khreos spat on the deck. 'Oh, he'll do his share of damage, I don't doubt. That's why I sent him on ahead to begin with. We'll march into the Due's lands in a few hours and find the castle boiling like ants' nest that someone has kicked. But you've read the reports of the Due and his men. One elf destroy them single-handedly? Even one elf whose smug little mistress loves to spin such stories about him? Hellebron's challenge, indeed! Have you ever heard of that Hakoer fellow? Of course not!
'My speech about Jahama emptying out the castle was for Miharan's benefit, Khrait. If you believe it you're as gullible as she - Jahama will never leave that castle alive. Shadowblade himself would be lucky to silence the Due's entire household. Think about it, Khrait. If one assassin were able to achieve that, or even a dozen, why are there any knights left in Bretonnia at all? He'll never kill them all, certainly not the Due himself. From what I know of our human friend I think he'll swat Jahama like a gnat when they face off. Face off they will, of course, since that's what I had Miharan tell him to do. But Jahama will kill enough of them for the Due to be preoccupied with lamenting his comrades, not watching for more attackers. We arranged for our spies to be captured to teach the Due that dark elves only ever sneak into his lands alone. Just as he's writing off this as another solitary intruder, albeit a more vicious one - there we shall be!'
The lord's steward was standing nearby with a golden tray. They watched carefully as the aged elf had a mouthful of wine from each goblet before they picked them up.
'What will Miharan do when she realises?'
'Oh, I hope she tries to avenge him, Khrait.' Khreos chuckled as he swaggered away. 'Oh, I hope she does.'
Khrait took a last swallow of wine as he watched his uncle go. But even as he was dismissing his uncle's vainglory and walking away to prepare for the march, his thoughts turned back to his last sight of Jahama's cloak parting as the assassin had bent to step out of the coach, and the gleam he had seen at the assassin's neck: a collar of dull silver plates with a single deep red jewel.

'ASSASSIN!' THE VOICE filled the room and seemed to thrum in the stones.
Standing on one of the long trestle tables, Jahama turned and stared. In the doorway, almost filling it, his knights assembled behind him, the man he had been sent here for. The Due, his iron-grey hair flowed to his shoulders and his greatsword looked like a rapier in his hands. His scarlet and white tunic caught the torchlight.
'Only vermin stab and flee in the night. Can you not fight a knight of the Lady, you that hide in the shadows and murder children and old men? Let me look you in the eye. Do yourself one service in your degenerate life: die a proper death.'
The man had taken a step into the room and the knights were spreading out around him, watchful but not attacking. Jahama realised they were waiting for the duel between their lord and their invader.
The Due had taken up a fighting stance. His bare arms were heavy with muscle: to an eye used to slender elf limbs he seemed to vibrate with power. Jahama's knives felt like sticks in his hands, felt like nothing. He took a deep breath.
Voices in his memory. The Lord: you are to be the knife we draw tonight, the core and pivot of my stratagem. Lady Miharan: Remember only what it is you have to achieve. He took a deep breath.
Then he swept his arm in a single, careful throw that drove his last throwing-blade through the heart of one of the damsels huddling by the fire, gave the Due his most winning smile and polite bow, and was gone into the courtyard.

TWO MEN-AT-ARMS RAN to block him. Jahama flew by them without seeming to slow or even to strike until one after another they dropped to the cobbles. Everywhere he looked in the courtyard there were soldiers closing about him, he fixed his eyes on the gate and opened his stride to the longest. For one agonising moment he thought he would have to climb back to the parapet and back down the line he had cast to scale the walls, but then he saw the little gatehouse door. Instinct made him swerve and jag as he ran at it, and the archers on the walls sent their arrows down to crack against the cobbles. Then the bar to the little inset gate clattered to the ground behind him - one last move to make. He worked it loose from his belt and dropped it just where they would run in pursuit of him. Then he ran, swerved, and made a long dive that carried him almost to the far edge of the moat. A single stroke and he was surging up the far bank, a shadow among shadows even as the first rumours of dawn began to touch the eastern sky.
I have put my neck down across the block and lifted it away clean, he thought. The wind now gone, he heard voices behind him from the gate and allowed himself a single backward look. He could just make out one man peering after him and another standing hunched over, staring at something on the ground. The little waterproof pouch with the parchment map inside. Jahama laughed then, almost doubling over before he heard the horns behind him and sped up again. He thought they would have better things to do than hunt him now.

IT WOULD BE dawn very soon. Khreos did not like to admit it, but he was finding these lands less detestable than he used to. The sunlight that had scorched his white skin intolerably when he was younger now brought a not unpleasant glow to old bones that felt older in the Naggaroth winter. He put the thought from his mind and hefted his lance - he hated the way he never seemed to be able to concentrate when they were due for battle.
He turned in the saddle, settling into the swaying gait of his cold one, and looked around him; there behind the ranks of his personal guard, Khrait was riding with his own little retinue. To either side, blocks of warriors quick-stepped to keep pace with the cavalry, crossbows slung on shoulders. The sea dragon scales on the corsairs' cloaks and banner caught the pale pre-dawn light.
A noise nagged at the edge of his hearing and he turned his head this way and that, trying to place it. Cries? No. Birdsong? Too harsh. The only thing it sounded like, it couldn't be. Miharan's assassin had seen to it. He craned around again trying to see the little witch elf, but her palanquin had fallen further behind as they rode out from the Ark. As far as he could tell she was still back in the forest that the road had just emerged from.
His cold one raised its head and grunted at the air, and he turned to grab the goad from its saddle-clip. Only then did he see what his soldiers were staring at, and understand the noise he had heard.
The war-horns on the hilltop ahead of them gave another blast, and the glittering ranks of armoured knights sent up a shout as the scarlet and silver Grail banner of the Due unfurled over their heads. Khreos, gaping, could only clutch at his lance as a babble of orders rose behind him, cries as his corsairs milled about into fighting ranks, as the crossbow regiments scrabbled for bolts, as his champions tried to awaken the Blood Banner to bring their cold ones to full frenzy.
And then hissing clouds of arrows flew high into the air, line after line of yeomen and Squires rounded the base of the hill and the Bretonnians were thundering down the road toward them like a floodtide.

KHREOS MALEDICT, LORD of Karond Kar, Master of the Black Ark Exultation of Blighted Hope, was dying. He could still feel dim fire in his crumpled leg where his cold one had fallen on it, but he had to lie on that leg because lying on his side was the only way he could drag himself along after a Bretonnian mace had crushed his other shoulder even through his armour and sea dragon cloak. His lungs felt full of splinters and when he coughed he coated the ground in front of him in a fine red spray.
He had to find Khrait. He couldn't see his nephew's black-and-cobalt surcoat anywhere in the drifts of dead dark elves that choked the road. He was sure that Khrait would never have fled like the last remnants of his army had, the triumphant Bretonnians scattering them into the forest and riding them down. He had to find Khrait, or someone that could get him to hiding and then to the Ark, get him somewhere he could heal before the last of his energy ran out or the Bretonnians came back to make sure the battlefield had no survivors.
His vision greyed out and he lay there for a time until another coughing fit ripped unconsciousness away from him. He still lay alone in the road; he was still surrounded by his dead. He was clear of the dead cold ones now: the big beasts has still been blinking stupidly as the lance-points drove at them, their nostrils only just twitching with the Blood Banner's scent. Their corpses were jammed and piled together like sacks, the bright blood of their riders mixing with the dark reptile ichor. Khreos was under no illusions that any of his guard might still be alive. For a moment he thought he saw one of the cold one carcasses breathing, but it was just the shimmer in his vision as another wave of grey broke over him.
Reach, drag. Reach, drag. The gravel of the road was washed red under his fingers, and the dust by the roadside was a bloody slurry.
He was in among the infantry now, piled high atop one another after the knights-errant had crushed the formations as they had tried to plant their spears ready for the charge. Beyond the heaped corpses lay the second, more scattered lines of bodies where his crossbow ranks had died under Bretonnian arrows, scrambling to get their own weapons strung and loaded. The bodies thinned out towards the treeline - those were the ones who had tried to run as they realised what was happening and had been chased down. There were none of the stirrings and cries that he was used to after battles - Bretonnian fury had made the killing far too efficient for that.
Reach, drag. Reach, drag - his world had shrunk to the pain of his broken body and the sun beating on his armoured back.
He lay in between a dead corsair whose name he couldn't remember and a warrior he didn't recognise. He tried to see which regiment's badge the warrior wore, before he realised through the fog of pain that the elf wore no armour at all. The body was not lying in a death-sprawl but reclining lazily on the grass at the roadside twisting a flower-stem in his fingers. Finally he was able to focus his eyes on the red gem in its silver collar about the other elf's neck.
'I'm sorry, lord, was this not what you had planned?'
Khreos managed a single dry croak that would not become words. He could think of nothing to say.
'I would give you your map back, my lord, except that, oh, I seem to have misplaced it. Perhaps that was careless of me, but then who would have expected that a clumsy brute such as the Due - with his castle full of sleeping babes that a single assassin could kill - would be able to read a map that showed the road by which you would be marching to his castle? Perhaps I should have memorised the land and the rendezvous position, rather than carry a map that showed me how to find my way-right... to... you.'
Khreos groaned and closed his eyes. Jahama was paring his nails with a knife.
'Oh, yes, after I'd finished dancing with them I was sure the Bretonnians would have been too stirred-up to read anything, let alone a map. But then how would I have delivered my lesson?' The assassin rolled over onto his stomach, his face next to the lord's. 'You are so fond of your lessons, my lord, always so intent on giving instruction. Haven't we done you a service, my mistress and I? Think of the lesson you will be remembered for! Imagine it! Anyone who thinks of the kind of stupid, clumsy little ruse...' Jahama had started to spit his words, and controlled himself. 'Anyone who thinks to treat myself or my brothers or the blessed Brides of Khaine as their sling-stones, their expendable pawns, will remember the lesson we have made of you.'
He sprang to his feet. 'My mistress could have refused you, you know. She discussed it with her sisters, discussed this petty noble who thought he could make her dance on his strings. But then... then you would have gone on in your tricky little ways, believing you could try to betray the Scorpion's Daughter and never be the worse for it. So why not fall in step with you, sir, dance on your strings until we could turn about and strangle you with them? I don't have your mincing subtlety and I must be blunt. It's important that you understand just why you die as you do.'
The lord's face was twisted in despair, and Jahama nodded in satisfaction.
'I'd offer to make sure, sir, that you aren't alive by the time your enemies return to the field. But I want to give you plenty of time to think about my lesson. And for my part, well, the sun is up and the Ark must sail soon, with or without you at the helm. If your nephew has survived, I'm sure he'll be happy to give the order. Excuse me, lord, I believe there's a boat waiting for me at the bay.'
And Jahama the assassin turned away and left Khreos Maledict weeping in the dust as he disappeared into the forest, as the bright sun slanted down between the trees and the birds sang from the branches.