He would not be the first man or boy that I had killed, no, not by a long summer’s day. I had killed before many times in my young life, in battle and out of it — but this felt different. And wrong. It was not only my friend Hanno who was watching me from on high; I felt that God Himself was looking down on my actions. And the Lord of Hosts was telling my conscience loud and clear that this was a mortal sin.

I knew that Robin would laugh if he could read my thoughts before this kill: he would think me soft, womanish. He would shrug and half-smile, if I were to voice my doubts about murdering this boy. And I knew exactly what he would say if he were by my side: ‘It is necessary, Alan,’ he would whisper, and then he would take the misericorde from my hand and do the deed himself — quickly, efficiently, without a moment’s pause. And never lose a wink of sleep afterwards.

Finally the boy stopped gawping at the moon, turned his back to me and took a first reluctant step up the path. I swallowed, blinked, and forced myself to rise as silently as I could from my dark corner, leaving the heavy sack in the shadows, but pulling the dagger from my boot as I did so. I kept my mind almost blank, thinking only, Now I will do this, now I will do that. And I took the first unsteady step, my foot squelching loudly in a patch of mud. I checked myself and stumbled slightly on wobbly legs, but my victim heard nothing. Suddenly my courage rose in me like a pot of water boiling over: I took three fast running steps and threw myself at his back; my left hand snaking around his head to clamp over mouth and nose and prevent him making a sound as my chest thumped into his spine. He fell forward, slamming into the turf bank at the side of the muddy track with jolting force, with me on top of him, the impact of our landing nearly causing me to drop the dagger. Nearly — but drop it I did not. He squirmed wildly under me but I got the blade of the misericorde into the right position on the back of his neck, in the hollow at the base of his skull, the thin point resting between the mail links of his coif, and shoved once, upwards, very hard, sending the eight-inch triangular blade up through the mail rings, splitting them apart, through skin, muscle, spinal cord and deep into his soft brain.