"A Hunter's Knot"

Tom did the thing he had not been raised to do.

He came off the doorframe in one long step, the fine cord doubled in his left fist, and he had the loop over the brother's head before the man's curved blade had finished its arc toward Mama Yves. The cord was a hunter's cord — built for this — and it bit. Tom drove his knee into the small of the broad man's back and hauled. The brother went down to one knee with a sound like a barrel falling on rope. The curved blade clattered on flagstone. His hands came up, clawing — not at his throat but at the cord — and Tom saw, in that small detail, that this man had been on the other end of such a noose before, and remembered.

He did not let go.

Mama Yves moved. She crossed the chamber in three quick steps and put the point of her paring knife under the brother's jaw, just hard enough to dimple the skin.

"Be still," she said. The brother stilled.

Tom slackened the cord by a hair. The brother sucked one harsh wet breath and laughed — a small, gravelled laugh, no triumph in it, only recognition.

"Boy did it like a hunter," he rasped. "Boy's been taught."

"Boy taught himself ten paces back," Tom said, surprised at his own voice. "Where's the long gun?"

The brother's eyes flicked up. Up, to the stone, to the cistern stair behind the cot.

"Above," he said. "Watching the cistern mouth. He'll come down when I do not come up."

Sary's head rose from behind the table. Marrow, on the cot, had not closed his eyes through any of it. He was watching Tom. There was something in the captain's pale face Tom had not seen there before.

Pride, perhaps. Or grief that looked like pride.