Sampson staggered forwards a few paces, then collapsed on the grass from the final wound that Horatio had given him by stabbing him with such force that he pierced his chest plate.

Horatio walked over to the Braxian and nudged him over onto his back with a foot.

No sound came from the man’s bloody mouth, now exposed, the bottom part of his mask having been smashed by someone in the battle. He lay still, the stiffness of death already starting to grip him rigid.

Horatio looked down on the broken Braxian, nausea swimming in his stomach, and regarded the lifeless viewing-slit in the mask, which before had been entirely white but was now spattered with blood.

Curiosity got the better of him.

He bent down and removed the man’s mask.

The man had thin lips, now turning blue. A high forehead. Brown hair. A completely normal face. A little chubby maybe, with slightly jowly cheeks. But other than that, normal.

Horatio was almost…disappointed? He had been expecting the man to have a horribly scarred face, or some other sort of terrible disfigurement, to hide it behind a mask. Instead, it was just the face of a regular man. A regular old abusive human sadist. He had only worn a mask to hide his run-of-the-mill humanity, perhaps from himself as much as anyone else.

‘Bastard.’

Horatio started. Silvia, the thief girl, was standing next to him, twirling a dagger around with her fingers.

‘Yeah,’ he said in agreement.

‘I’ll see if he’s got any valuables on him,’ said Silvia. ‘I managed to pinch a purse off him during the fight, but he might have more.’

Horatio walked away, leaving her to it. He felt vaguely disgusted by the girl robbing the Braxian as well, but he wasn’t going to stop her.

He walked past the others.

‘Well done, Horatio,’ said Wyvera as he passed them.

He paused as he arrived at the pub they had been inside. The Braxian assassin from the woods, sat propped up against its wall, just as they had left him–except now his throat had been slit from ear to ear. His chest was soaked in blood, and his head lolled to one side, eyes open in death. Horatio had completely forgotten about him when he had been marching out of the pub to fight Sampson.

‘There were some robed Braxians with that Captain we just killed,’ said Primus next to him. ‘They probably did this as a punishment for the assassin’s failure. Who knows where they will gave got to by now, and who they will have told about us? Another reason it was stupid for you to get into this fight.’

‘Shut up, Primus,’ Horatio said. He didn’t care what the consequences would be.

Back in the inn he was greeted by an uneasy quiet. The men within, who in the end had stayed put when Horatio had taken the fight outside, looked down at their drinks, or at the floor.

Helen was still sitting on the floor where she had been before. But there was no longer any sign of the black-hooded men that Sampson had been talking to. They must indeed have fled after murdering the assasin..

Horatio went over to the Huntress as he heard the rest of the party come back into the Inn behind him. He invited her to take a chair with him at a table, which she did reluctantly, then ordered a mug of mead for her from the bar.

Primus and Ceres took a seat at the table too, and the others stood round. The woman moved slowly, her eyes focusing on nothing, as if she was in a daze. But when she had drunk some mead at Horatio’s encouragement a little pinkness came into her cheeks and she blinked a few times, seeming to come back to herself.

‘Helen,’ Horatio said. ‘What happened to you? How did you end up being taken captive by that…man?’

‘The Braxians,’ said Helen at once. For the first time that day she looked him in the eyes. ‘They put an enormous bounty out for anyone who can bring them a young woman with golden hair and mystical powers of foresight, alive.’

Olivia.

‘But why do you want to claim this bounty?’ Horatio pressed.

‘I am a hunter,’ said Helen, ‘the greatest there is, so I set out to find this girl and have been tracking her ever since you...cheated me in battle back in Balamb Cave. There is a bounty on you as well, incidentally, old man, but the bounty on this girl is bigger. So I decided to track her instead. The hunt led me here, but when I was asking around after the girl there, that…man got wind of me as well, and asked if he could join me in the hunt. When I refused, he got angry and challenged me to a duel.’

‘Which you accepted?’

‘Of course! I am the greatest hunter in the whole of Gard–I do not take insults lightly, or back down from challenges. But…’ Helen’s eyes went far away, and she struggled to say her next words. ‘But he was just… so strong. He… he bested me, and…worse… and made me his hunting dog, making me track this girl in his service, which led us here…’

Without warning Helen’s bottom lip began to tremble, and then her own mask of bravery cracked, and she buried her face in her hands.

Ceres drew her chair over to her and put an arm around her, and Helen began to cry quietly against her shoulder. ‘It’s okay,’ said Ceres, ‘it’s okay. He’s gone now.’

Horatio nodded. ‘That’s right. We took care of him. Listen, Helen, we’ll pay for you to stay here at this inn, until you’re better, for as long as you need–’

‘No!’ Helen said all of a sudden, lifting her face from Ceres’ shoulder and breaking apart from her. ‘No,’ she said again. ‘I don’t want to stay here. I want to come with you.’

‘You do?’

‘Yes. The girl has powers, and she was giving me one of the greatest hunts of my life…until it was interrupted. I can see that you want to find her too. I would come with you, to complete my hunt.’

‘Professor?’ asked Ceres.

The sage had been looking off into the distance, and appeared to come back from wherever he had been in his mind. ‘I am beyond caring what wastrels and outcasts you insist on bringing along with us,’ he said harshly. ‘If the Cult of Brax have a bounty on our heads, then the bigger the group we travel in, the better. And if you are able to help us track Olivia, then fine, you can come. At least then there will have been some point to this whole sorry episode.’

‘Yes,’ said Helen, ‘I can track her. I know where she is going. She has been uncannily good at throwing me, and others, off her trail–’

‘–that will be because of her seer’s abilities–’

‘–but from the movement of her scent, and the progression of her trail, on the occasions I have been able to find them, and from the sightings of her that have been made, she is clearly making for the Bay of Vishay in order to sail north to the Frozen Wastes.’

Primus stood up at that, taut and tense, like he had just been hit by one of his own lightning bolts. He put both his hands on the table and leaned forwards over it.

‘Really? Are you sure?’

Helen nodded. ‘I am the greatest hunter in the whole of Gard. Her overall trajectory leads that way, and a number of people who have seen her have said that she has been asking about finding her way to a port, and she recently purchased a heavy, fur-lined, woolen cloak. I have no doubt that that is where she is trying to get to.’

‘But why? Why is she so interested in getting to the Frozen Wastes?’

‘I have no idea. I’d ask you the same thing, old man. Why is everyone so interested in this girl anyway, with her zig-zagging backwards and forwards and leaving false trails and moving unpredictably, the most worthy human prey I have ever encountered?’

‘I…’ Primus faltered. ‘I don’t know. Olivia is a highly gifted young woman. Come on, all of you, we leave now.’

‘Primus, no,’ said Horatio, unable to stop himself from protesting. He seemed to have found a new authority with which to contest his employer’s decisions in all of this somehow. ‘Enough, please. We are all exhausted. We haven’t slept in two days. Helen is hurt, so if she is to come with us Ceres will need to tend to her wounds. We do not leave now. We are stopping here to stay the night and rest.’

Horatio met the old man’s eyes, which were cold chips of flint. They stared each other down. Even Primus had dark rings underneath his eyes.

‘Fine,’ Primus said at last, and broke from Horatio’s gaze. ‘We can stay here. But just one night. And we leave at dawn.’

Horatio exhaled relief through his teeth. The old man had seen reason.

They went over to the innkeeper to see about paying for some rooms for the night.

*Inn! Full healing.*