"You lost, stranger?" Magnus asked.

"Are we not all lost, friend?" The voice was pleasant to the ear. "Are we not all wanderers through that

dark valley that men call life?"

"Sure we are." Marcus grinned, not quite certain of himself. "Sure we are."

The man walked closer, light on his feet for a tall man. Both the brothers had quickly noticed that he

wasn't armed. All he was holding was a small disk of inlaid silver that he was spinning on the end of its long chain.

It was very eye-catching.

Magnus was drawn to it, squinting at the whirling circle that seemed to generate its own purplish light. He hadn't realized how tired he was.

"You boys look sleepy. I've just been around and talked with all your good friends. Eight of them. And

they got real sleepy, as well."

Magnus glanced to his right, seeing that the next man in line, Jericho Cooder, had actually fallen asleep on watch. His crossbow lay beside him in the dirt.

Odd thing was, though it wasn't all that easy to see through the shifting fog, Jericho seemed to be sleeping with his eyes wide open.

"That's all right," the stranger said pleasantly. "Lots of men sleep with their eyes open, don't they?"

He had such a gentle, persuasive voice that Magnus found himself nodding in agreement, even though

he'd never actually heard of such a thing before.

It was also strange that Magnus couldn't even remember saying anything about Jericho. Not out loud.

"Shame all of our friends aren't here. They've gone ahead to raid the camp and free the baron's son, have they?"

"Secret," Marcus whispered. "Not supposed to tell anyone the secret."

"Now then, friends, what secret would that be? Good companions don't have secrets from each other. I'd tell you any secret if I had one."

"Would you?" Magnus asked dreamily. He found his eyelids were weighing heavy, and he wanted to lie down and rest, just like Jericho. This stranger was such a kindly, good man. If he hadn't felt so tired, Magnus would've gotten up off the ground and given him a real big brotherly hug.

"Why not?" the stranger asked. "A chaste embrace? For all men are brothers who go down, go down, this lonely road. But first" he turned to Marcus "what's the secret about the mission? It is to rescue the son of Baron Weyman, isn't it?"

"Yes and no," Marcus replied.

Magnus shifted his position, ready to lie down, but he found he was sitting on a sharp spur of jagged rock. Though it was digging into his buttocks, he somehow couldn't be bothered to move to a more comfortable place.

He didn't feel quite so tired, and the spinning silver disk no longer held all of his attention.

"Tell me the secret," the lean stranger whispered, holding the whirling silver of metal closer to Marcus's eyes. "Tell it to me."

"Better not, big brother," Magnus said. But his voice seemed to be trapped inside his own skull. There was a silent whisper of breath from between his cold lips, adding to the coils of wreathing mist, but no sound. The stranger didn't even bother to look in his direction.

"The secret is that the son is not the son. He is a son someone's son. But not the son of Baron Weyman."

The stranger's patient smile slipped and for a splinter of a second, Magnus caught sight of another face, like a grotesque mask buried beneath the skin and flesh. The odd eyes, almost black and flecked with silver, widened, showing a rim of scarlet blood around them.

"The son of the one-eyed man, Cawdor," he said, adjusting the smile back in place again. "Yes, I should have guessed. Very stupid of me." He nodded. "Ah me, but there is still plenty of time to remedy the foolish error. First, I must complete this small piece of business here."

Magnus's buttocks really hurt, the broken shard of rock probing its way into his flesh. A bizarre thought swam into his mind, that he didn't like this stranger after all.

That he wasn't really a friend.

That he meant them harm.

The dark eyes turned toward him for a moment, but Magnus's expression hadn't altered.

Marcus was acting oddly. He had reached up and opened the collar of his dark green livery shirt, running

his hand absently up and down his own neck, leaning his head back to look up into the branches of the

trees, making the sinews stand out, the pulse of the carotid artery clearly visible.

Magnus glanced overhead, wondering what his brother was finding so interesting, but there was nothing there.

When he looked back down again, the stranger had withdrawn something from a little velvet pouch that

he wore neatly tucked away around his throat. It glittered with a pale fire in the wisps of moonlight.

It was a straight-edged razor with a carved ivory handle and the shaved-headed man had cut Marcus's throat with it, ducking slightly to avoid the cascade of arterial blood that gushed out with a frightful force, black in the silvery glow.

The crossbow fell from the dying man's lap, catching the trigger, loosing the quarrel. There was a deep

thrumming sound, and the bolt thudded into a massive redwood on the far side of the clearing.

"Now, Magnus," the stranger said, smiling contentedly. "I will go and arrange a reception for the other invaders, who will walk blindly into it."

It was a nightmare.

That was the only possible answer.

The razor was moving, almost of its own accord, toward his own throat.

If it wasn't a nightmare, then this night stalker had chilled nine of Magnus's friends. Slit all of their throats

so that the floor of the forest was sodden with rank, steaming puddles of fresh-spilled blood.

"No pain and no gain, Magnus," Straub whispered. "What goes around, comes around."

The pain from the stone that he was sitting on was almost unbearable. Magnus's mind had simply gone

blank, knowing that he was about to be brutally murdered and not being able to do anything about it.

"Know what?" he said, his voice like the faint croak of a distant frog.

"What is it?" Straub asked, concerned as a friendly priest at a parish children's party.

"I always said I'd catch him up and get to be oldest. Now I've done it."

"Indeed, you have." Straub patted the young man on his dew-damp cheek. "Indeed, you have. Very well done."

The cold steel, honed to slice a human hair down its length, touched Magnus's skin and began the single, long, deep cut that would end his life.

Only then, woefully too late, did the teenager open his mouth and fill his lungs, giving a terrible, piercing scream.

Chapter Thirty.

"We're fucked." Trader stopped dead in his tracks at the dreadful cry. "They got around us, and they're chilling the sec men."

Bill Rainey's foxy face had gone slack and loose with the shock and horror. "Can't have" he stammered.

"Can't takethem all out."

"Can and has," Ryan snapped. There was a temptation to remind his old leader that he'd warned him

about just this possibility, but it was all too late for that.

"Dark night! Means they know that we're coming." J.B. had dropped to one knee, awkwardly readying the Uzi, trying to steady it one-handed.

"Could mean they know that Dean isn't me," Jamie gasped. "If they know that"

There was a movement in the woods around them, dark shapes flitting through the dense fog, muffled shouting.

Ryan made an instant decision.

"Only one way to save my son," he said. "Going in alone. Now. Rest of you, back to the ville."

The only people to argue were Trader and Krysty.

"No way, Ryan."

"I'll lose you both, lover."

He looked around the circle. Shock and dismay was on every face at the realization that their plan was in