Read The Light of Heaven for Free Online Page A

understanding he could do without.
    He slid out of the narrow shooting position and made use of the chamber pot and the earth. By touch alone - he daren't light a candle and give away his position to the outside world - he then retrieved a small water skin from a knapsack and warmed himself up with some stinging liquor.
    Getting the right balance of simplicity and forward planning had been at the forefront of his thoughts for many months. The best way to kill someone with the least chance of getting caught was always - and would always be - to hit them over the head with a piece of street debris in a dark alley one night. The more one planned and set conditions, the more likely it was that some element would become a stumbling block that would get you hanged. With that in mind, he didn't wonder that he had nightmares of being trapped in a coffin. He almost regretted the decision to take up his position two days in advance of the duty he had been hired to undertake. Almost, but not quite. It was better to be part of the scenery, invisible, than to skulk his way to a good position when the streets were thronged.
    He squinted up at Kerberos. It looked the colour of a bruise tonight, like blood purpling under dead skin. He looked away, half imagining that it was a bilious, sickly eye, watching him. It felt like a spotlight, picking him out for all to see, and that, at any moment now, he would hear the cries of alarm and anger. Then the soldiers would come.
    He turned away with a grimace, but could still feel its diseased light on him. He curled up and closed his eyes, as he often did when he felt troubled. He always hoped that he would sleep, and find the thing that troubled him gone in the morning.

CHAPTER 2
     
    Erak Brand was awake and alert as soon as he stepped out onto the esplanade. An army of servants from the castle had swarmed around the open space overnight, putting the finishing touches to the banner-draped enclosures that now housed the various groups who had come to view the wedding of Freihurr vom Kalten's eldest son, Motte, to Undina of Malmkrug. He was lucky to have seen any of it, of course, since he'd been on duty in the castle itself most of the time, but a wedding always gave him a cheerful buzz. It wasn't so much the dancing or the food as the idea that two people were so committed to each other and to the Lord of All.
    Well, maybe it was the dancing and the food as well, if he was honest with himself.
    Erak was of average height and had a wiry build under his amour, but that didn't mean he was more resistant than anyone else to the lure of extra food. Any soldier in the Empire soon learned that rations, like sleep, were something to be savoured whenever available, just in case there was a dearth of them around the next corner.
    He walked around the edge of the esplanade, watching the people who were beginning to fill it up, ready for the happy couple to be presented to them. Weddings had always been a time for a celebratory drink, and carousing, and if people were going to flaunt the local temperance laws that Freihurr had instituted, it would be at an occasion like this.
    Ducal soldiers of Kalten lined the castle walls, their dress amour glinting even in the overcast light of the winter's day, scarlet surcoats covering their mail. Erak himself, like the other knights of the Order of the Swords of Dawn who were in Kalten, wore his normal amour and a white Final Faith surplice. In the eyes of the Lord of All, it was a day for vigilance, like any other.
    That buzz was still there, though, and he was determined to enjoy it just enough to be glad of it but not enough to be distracted by it.
     
    Watery dawn light woke the man in the shooting cell. There was no more claustrophobia now and he knew that he wouldn't have to spend another night crammed into this cell. Outside, the day was beginning. Flatbed carts pulled by teams of two or four horses were moving to and fro along North Cliff, fetching and carrying