Tacit followed the lead of the other Inquisitors and sank to his haunches in the long grass. He drew a hand across his face and rubbed the exhaustion from his eyes. He swatted at a fly and surreptitiously sipped at his hipflask. Dawn rose behind them. Tacit felt rough and unhinged. He’d not slept for days, tracking the clan of heretics as they made their way over the border into Albania. The Inquisitor squad was biding its time, waiting for the most opportune moment to strike.
Tacit knew this was it.
He stowed the flask and grimaced as the liquid burned inside him, sparking his senses into some sort of focus. When he was younger, adrenaline would have fired him up for his task ahead. Now he felt as lumpen as the bodies which would soon be piled up on the banks of the river at which the deviants had gone to pray.
Antonio looked across at him and winked, kissing the signet ring on his right hand. It had been a gift from his father when he’d first been accepted into the Church. He wondered if his father would be proud of Antonio still, the charming boy from Padua near Venice, whose party trick was eviscerating enemies with his bowie knife.
A series of clicks sounded down the line, the signal that the attack had begun. The squad leader had given the nonconformists long enough to finish their prayers. He wasn’t a complete monster.
The crack of a rifle sounded and Antonio’s eye was ripped from his face, throwing him backwards into the long grass. Instantly Tacit gathered him into his arms, holding the shuddering young man, as he looked down into his one dead eye. An inane mumbling bubbled from Antonio’s lips before he fell silent.
Tacit laid him gently on the earth and closed his lifeless eye with his fingers. Then he rose, like an elemental explosion rising from the bowels of the earth, and thundered into a run, screaming and roaring towards the hordes of heretics waiting for them on the river bank.