Chapter 17: The Stake

The point of the stake came through the door a hand's breadth from my fingers.

It was black iron, slick with oil, and it shone in the light from the chute.

It stood out into the cellar and found nothing.

I heard it scrape on stone on the other side.

I heard it strike the empty slab in the middle of the floor.

The hunter grunted and leaned harder, driving it in up to the ash.

"Got him," he said, through his teeth.

"Feel that give."

He felt the point of it slide off cold stone and bang against the far wall.

He stopped.

"You'll not find him there," I said.

I had put Niall down in the niche behind the wine racks, a good eight feet from the slab.

I had put him there myself, and I had never been so pleased with a thing in my life.

The hunter looked at me.

For the first time since I had met him, he stopped smiling.

He tried to pull the stake out of the door, and it stuck in the oak.

Someone on the stair behind me thrust a poker into my hand.

It was the old kitchen poker with the hooked end, black and as long as my arm.

I had never hit anyone with a poker.

I had hit one man with a pan and put shears through the hand of another.

I swung it overhand with both fists, and it landed across the hunter's forearm just below the elbow.

The bone broke with a crack that I felt in my own teeth.

He screamed and let go of the stake.

He staggered back, clutching the arm, and fell against the bent hinge.

Two crofters took him by the coat.

"Don't kill him," I said.

I was out of breath.

"There's no need."

"He's only a hired man."

"He was going to put that through my husband's heart."

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