“Yar, old fella, and trig o’ you to notice at a time like this, I will say.” Depape pulled Thorin’s head back again and took the old man’s eyes out with two quick flips of his knife. One went into the dead fireplace; the other hit the wall and slid down behind the fire-tools. Thorin’s right foot trembled briefly and was still.

One more job to do.

Depape looked around, saw Thorin’s nightcap, and decided the ball on the end would serve. He picked it up, dipped it in the puddle of blood in the Mayor’s lap, and drew the Good Man’s sigul—

—on the wall.

“There,” he murmured, standing back. “If that don’t finish em, nothing on earth will.”

True enough. The only question left unanswered was whether or not Roland’s ka-tet could be taken alive.

3

Jonas had told Fran Lengyll exactly where to place his men, two inside the stable and six more out, three of these latter gents hidden behind rusty old implements, two hidden in the burnt-out remains of the home place, one—Dave Hollis—crouched on top of the stable itself, spying over the roofpeak. Lengyll was glad to see that the men in the posse took their job seriously. They were only boys, it was true, but boys who had on one occasion come off ahead of the Big Coffin Hunters.

Sheriff Avery gave a fair impression of being in charge of things until they got within a good shout of the Bar K. Then Lengyll, machine-gun slung over one shoulder (and as straight-backed in the saddle as he had been at twenty), took command. Avery, who looked nervous and sounded out of breath, seemed relieved rather than offended.

“I’ll tell ye where to go as was told to me, for it’s a good plan, and I’ve no quarrel with it,” Lengyll had told his posse. In the dark, their faces were little more than dim blurs. “Only one thing I’ll say to ye on my own hook. We don’t need em alive, but it’s best we have em so—it’s the Barony we want to put paid to em, the common folk, and so put paid to this whole business, as well. Shut the door on it, if ye will. So I say this: if there’s cause to shoot, shoot. But I’ll flay the skin off the face of any man who shoots without cause. Do ye understand?”

No response. It seemed they did.

“All right,” Lengyll had said. His face was stony. “I’ll give ye a minute to make sure your gear’s muffled, and then on we go. Not another word from here on out.”

4