Imperial Assassin by Mark Robson Page B

the fight had sapped what little resources of energy he had retained after his first week back in training. It was likely
that Sidis would give him a hard time for having ripped his shirt, regardless of the circumstances. Then it occurred to him that the assassin was wearing an identical shirt of a similar size with
no such rips.
    ‘Excellent!’ he muttered. ‘I might not come out of this so badly after all.’
    He rested for a minute, applying direct pressure to his sliced arm the whole time, in order to restrict the flow of blood. When he had recovered his breath sufficiently, he grabbed his wooden
handle and used it as a prop to help get back onto his feet. His legs felt weak and his knees threatened to give way as he wobbled over to where the unconscious assassin was sprawled on the
ground.
    Reynik prodded him gently with the pole, looking for any signs that the man was acting. There were none. He was out cold. Having established this, Reynik went and recovered the man’s knife
from where it had skittered to rest a little way down the street. He removed his shirt, wincing at the fresh pain as he peeled the blood-soaked sleeve from his arm. Looking at the wound made him
feel light-headed. It needed stitching, but he could not do it on his own.
    Using the knife, he cut several strips from the back of his ruined shirt. The first he folded into a pad. Then he bound the pad of material over the wound with the second. It was not an easy
task. He fumbled for some time trying to get the bandage to take hold. Working one-handed made it all but impossible to get a suitably tight finish, but having managed to tie it off, he concluded
that it would do until he could get back to the Legion medics.
    The temperature was dropping as the darkness of night deepened, and Reynik shivered as the cold fingers of the evening breeze stroked his back. Again, he was cautious as he approached the man.
The last blow he had struck with the wooden pole had been hard and accurate. Looking at the man’s face closely, Reynik began to wonder if he had hit him too hard. Judging by the damage to his
left temple, it was possible that he might never regain consciousness. Stripping him would not help his cause, but Reynik was not about to freeze for this man’s comfort.
    The task of removing the unconscious man’s shirt was not an easy one. It took several minutes of manoeuvring and tugging awkwardly at the fabric, but Reynik finally held the shirt in his
hands. He donned it swiftly, ignoring the pain as he forced his wounded arm into the sleeve. The fit was not quite perfect. It was a little on the loose side, but that was all to the good under the
circumstances.
    Having regained a degree of comfort, Reynik bent over the man to take a closer look at something curious he had discovered underneath the man’s shirt. It was a sort of pendant. A leather
strap around the man’s neck sported a most unusual talisman. As Reynik looked more closely, he realised that it was a silver replica of a wolf spider. He had never seen a live one, but his
father had an artist’s impression of one in his study at home, so he identified it immediately. As a boy he had asked his father about it, and he vividly remembered what his father had
said.
    ‘The wolf spider is an amazing predator, son. It is not like other spiders. It doesn’t weave webs with which to trap its prey. It hunts like a wolf, running down its victim and
killing it with a venomous bite. Nasty creatures, wolf spiders.’
    ‘Nasty creatures, wolf spiders.’ The words echoed in his mind like a prophecy. He shivered again, but not from the cold this time.
    Thinking to take a closer look, Reynik lifted the leather necklace over the man’s head and walked a short distance down the street towards the nearest oil lamp. As he walked away from the
man, the necklace began to tingle in his hand. The sensation was strangely alien, and Reynik’s instinct was to drop it immediately.
    As it struck