Devil Take The Hindmost

Chronicle of Wulfrun III

Wulfrun's Heantun, Kingdom of Mercia, 960 AD

The man waited, crouching low in the dark and allowing his eyes time to adjust to the gloom.

Gaining entry to the wood-walled interior of the hall had been simple enough. There were only two guards, and they followed the same pattern of movements as they had the previous two nights.

He had simply to wait for them both to rise from their posts and head into the kitchens for their evening meal, before slipping inside and concealing himself beneath an inviting pile of fleeces tucked below the treads of a steep staircase below the sleeping chamber.

Waiting until the dead of night was no great matter. Indeed, it is a skill in which he possessed ample practice.

Now, as the darkest hour was upon him and the entire household fast asleep, even the rats would be tucked snug into their holes. All except one, he grinned, checking that the double layer of sack cloth worn over his feet was secure and would guarantee the silence of his steps.

The bedchamber itself was more spartan than he expected. For a noble woman who held sway over a prosperous and growing town, there was little evidence of finery nor trinkets in the guttering light of the single candle burning at the bedside. Evidently no one impressed upon this woman that sleeping with an unattended flame could be bad for the health.

The man crossed the room towards the bed with four silent paces, unwinding the length of wire from his waist as he did so.

The woman, he was told, possessed a grave sort of beauty. Not a fair Saxon maid of flaxen hair and milk-white breasts, but something darker and more exotic.

She was also quite mad, judging by the tales he had heard over cups these past nights while planning this moment in the ale houses of the town. His employer only stipulated that he wanted the woman dead, not what might happen to her beforehand.

Perhaps, if she could be sufficiently silenced, he might have a little fun with her before sending her off to an eternal sleep.

And sleep she did. The suggestive and sinuous curve of a female body lay tucked beneath heavy woollen blankets, chest rising and falling slowly, and covers pulled up and over the head to ward against the cold night air.

This was, he grinned in the gloom, pathetically easy. Just loop the wire around the throat and squeeze.

He gripped a handful of blankets with one hand, preparing to wrench them away. He planned to cover the inevitable screaming with his other hand and the expected shocked spasming response with the heavy press of his body.

The wire noose could wait a few minutes.

The assassin tensed his body, then yanked hard on the blankets, snatching them away from the form of the young woman sleeping beneath.

He moved to suppress her when he was drawn up short, halfway down onto the bed, by the surprise of seeing it was a young woman before him. She yawned, stretching, and blinked up at him without a hint of concern on her teenage face.

She had the taught lean body born of long months of labour in the fields, not the soft curves of a noblewoman, and across the pillows a shock of bright orange hair glowed like iron in a smith's forge in the flickering candlelight.

She was, without any question, not the woman he had been sent to kill.

The man straightened, frozen by surprise as the young woman, now wide awake, propped herself up on bent elbows and regarded him with curiosity.