The Jester at Scar

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In the lamplight, the woman's face was drawn, anxious. "Earl," she said. "Earl, please wake up."

Dumarest opened his eyes, immediately alert. "What is it?"

"Men," she said, "moving outside. I thought I heard noises from the street, screams and the sound of laughter." The guttering flame of the lamp threw patches of moving shadow across her face as she straightened from the side of the bed. "Cruel laughter, it had an ugly sound."

He frowned, listening and hearing nothing but the normal violence of the night. "A dream," he suggested. "A trick of the wind."

"No." She was emphatic. "I've lived on this world too long to be mistaken. I heard something unnatural, the noise of men searching, perhaps. But it was there; I didn't imagine it."

Dumarest threw back the covers and rose, the soft lamp light shining on his hard, white skin and accentuating the thin scars of old wounds. The interior of the hut was reeking with damp, the ground soggy beneath his bare feet. He took his clothes from the couch and quickly dressed in pants, knee-high boots and a sleeved tunic which fell to mid-thigh. Carefully he fastened the high collar around his throat. From beneath the pillow he took a knife and sheathed it in his right boot.

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