The Masque of Vyle by Andy Chambers Page B

brought it to his shoulder with well-practised precision and began to scan the treeline.
    What he saw caused him to lower the rifle again so that he could check it with his own eyes. Beyond the short-grassed lawn outside the keep the forest shook its leafy head in the gusting breeze. Yesterday it had seemed ancient and immovable, but now the whole damn thing seemed to be on the move like a slow, green sea.
    That was not what had surprised Kassais, however. All along the edge of the forest he could see saucer-eyed faces peering back and groups of smooth-skinned bodies crouching between the thick boles of the trees. There were several hundred natives in view and the forest could have held an army of them out of sight. All of the ones he could see were doing nothing aggressive, indeed they were barely moving at all. They all seemed to be staring expectantly at the keep.
    Kassais raised the rifle to his shoulder again and sighted on one of the faces beneath the trees. The viewing scope reacted to the tiny muscle movements around his eye and zoomed in until its targeting icon was squarely between the creature’s bulbous, unblinking eyes. Whatever toxins Vyle was using in the splinter rifle’s ammunition would probably be deadly enough to kill with the merest scratch, but Kassais was a fan of finesse even – or rather especially – when it was unnecessary. He wanted a head shot.
    When he was satisfied that the rifle could not miss the designated target, he touched the activation stud and felt the tiniest push of recoil as it fired. At the same moment the distant native unaccountably ducked out of sight and the hypervelocity splinter the rifle had fired arrived in the now-vacated space a fraction of a second later. Kassais cursed with the self-same vitriol that Vyle had expressed a few moments earlier.
    ‘It’s the rifle,’ Kassais said in disgust, and tossed it back to Vyle. ‘It must be out of alignment.’
    ‘I thought you’d say that,’ the Shrike Lord responded bleakly.
    ‘What’s happened to the toad? I’d expect him to be here and dutifully sucking up to you by this hour.’
    ‘Yegara has vanished,’ Vyle said disinterestedly as he raised the rifle to his shoulder again and scanned the treeline. ‘My guards are looking for him, they found blood but I doubt they’ll find anything else. I suspect Yegara’s slaves have already murdered him and disposed of the body.’
    Kassais smiled at that. In Commorragh being killed by one’s own slaves was taken as a sign of an individual plumbing the very depths of bumbling incompetence. It was an event that was generally greeted as a welcome weeding out of the gene-pool. It was not too surprising an outcome given the revelations of the preceding night’s banquet but it was a little unsatisfying. Kassais had been looking forward to the point where Vyle’s offhand bullying of Olthanyr Yegara would ferment into some serious torment. There had been something naive and virginal about the last Yegara that Kassais had longed to see broken. Now he was to be denied that pleasure and he felt more than a little cheated.
    ‘We should round up all the suspects and question them,’ Kassais said ruminatively. ‘Grab a few of those goggling natives on the outside too – I’m sure they had something to do with it.’
    ‘I’m sure you’d like that, Kassais,’ Vyle responded tetchily, ‘but my resources are not infinite. Those gawking locals are out there precisely to tempt us out of the keep. Our predilections are certainly well-enough known for them to be taken advantage of.’
    ‘May I say that as a host you’re proving to be no fun at all,’ Kassais complained as Vyle looked through the rifle’s sight again. ‘We could at least bring some lances up here and set the forest burning…’
    The way the Shrike Lord stiffened caused Kassais to spin and look out at the trees with some alarm. The sudden movement provoked a twinge in his shoulder that reminded Kassais his flesh