The Great Betrayal by Nick Kyme

Unfortunately, no manner of precaution could have prevented this particular predator crossing his path.
    Sevekai took the driver for a merchant – his rings were gold and his armour ornamental. It consisted of little more than a breastplate and vambraces. Each of the guards wore helmets, one with a faceplate slid shut. This was the leader.
    He would die first.
    Heavy plate clad their bodies, with rounded pauldrons and a mail skirt to protect the thighs and knees. No gorget or coif. Sevekai assumed they’d removed them earlier in the journey. Perhaps it was the heat of the day, a desire for cool air on their necks instead of stinging sweat. So close to home, they had thought it a minor act of laxity.
    Sevekai smiled, a cold and hollow thing, and silently told his warriors, Aim for the neck .
    The hand gesture was swift, and heeded by all.
    Most of the dwarfs carried axes. One, the leader, had a hammer that gave off a faint aura of enchantment. Sevekai was not a sorcerer, but he had some small affinity with magic. Some had remarked, his enemies in fact, that he was lucky. Not just average good fortune, but phenomenal, odds-defying luck. It had kept him alive, steered him from danger and heightened his senses. For a murderer, a hired blade whose trade was killing other people, it was an extremely useful trait to possess.
    Other than the hand weapons, a crossbow with a satchel full of stubby quarrels sat within the merchant’s easy reach. It was leant against the wooden back of the driver’s seat with the lethal end pointing up. That was another error, and would increase the merchant’s reaction time by precious seconds once the ambush was sprung.
    Six dwarfs, three of them.
    The odds were stacked high against the stunted little pigs.
    Cloud crawling overhead like ink in dirty water obscured the moon and for a few seconds the road turned black as tar.
    Sevekai rose, as silent as a whisper in a gale, his shrouded body dark against darkness. The sickle blade spun, fast and grey like a bat arrowing through fog, and lodged in the guard leader’s eye-slit as the wagon hit a rock and jumped.
    With a low grunt, the dead dwarf lost his grip on the side rail and pitched off the wagon. To the other guards, in what few breaths remained to them, it would have looked as if their fellow had fallen off.
    ‘Ho!’ Sevekai heard the merchant call, oblivious to the fact there was a black-clad killer arisen in his midst and but a few feet away. Hauling on the reins, the dwarf drew the wagon to a halt with a snort of protest from the mules.
    That was another mistake.
    In the time it took for the merchant to turn and ask one of the other guards what had happened, one of Sevekai’s warriors had crossed the road. Like a funeral veil rippling beneath the wind, the warrior crept along the opposite side of the wagon and rammed his dagger up to the hilt in a guard’s neck. Sevekai couldn’t see the kill, his view was obstructed by the bulky wagon, but he knew how it would have played out.
    Kaitar was a late addition to his band, but a deadly one.
    Two guards remained. One had dismounted to see to his leader; the other looked straight through Sevekai as he searched for signs of ambush.
    You have missed… all of them, swine.
    Sevekai drew back his hood for this dwarf, let him see the red and bloody murder flaring brightly in his dagger-slit eyes.
    The dwarf gasped, swore in his native tongue and drew his axe. One-handed because of the rail, he should have gone for his shield. It would have extended his life expectancy by three more seconds. That was the time it would have taken Sevekai to close the gap, draw his falchion and dispatch the dwarf with a low thrust to his heart.
    Instead he threw his second blade, already clutched in a claw-like grip.
    Bubbling froth erupted from the dwarf’s gullet, staining his lips and beard a satisfying incarnadine red. He gurgled, dropped his axe and fell face first into the dirt.
    The colour spewing from the