Path of the Tiger, стр. 431

PART TWENTY

67

HROTHGAR

31^st October 2020. KSM Nightclub

Hrothgar raised his glass of whiskey and beamed a smile at the members of the Huntsmen Board of Directors, who were all seated around the enormous seventeenth-century walnut dining table, on the surface of which lay nude models of both sexes, their youthful bodies, perfect in build and proportion, which would have been the envy of many a cover model, garnished with sushi, sashimi, caviar and other delicacies.

‘Ladies and gentlemen of the most illustrious and mighty Huntsmen Corporation,’ Hrothgar cried, ‘I welcome you to this Vaetrnacht celebration! Tonight we eat and drink in the ancient tradition of my ancestors, and raise our glasses to victories already won, and in anticipation of victories to bewon in the future! Salut!’

The board members raised their respective glasses to toast this.

‘And here,’ Duchess Younghusband said, raising her glass, ‘is a toast to the destruction of the Rebels, when you ensnare them in your trap here on New Year’s Eve.’

Hrothgar grinned savagely.

‘I will hand you Gisborne’s head on a platter personally, Duchess.’

‘Good thing those cunts aren’t coming here tonight, eh? By the way mate, I’ve never seen you wearing specs,’ Mitchell Fletcher, a fifty-year-old Australian financier and billionaire, said to Hrothgar. ‘I wasn’t aware that your kind needed ‘em!’

‘We don’t,’ Hrothgar said with a disarming smile. ‘These are mere fashion accessories. If you look through the lenses, you’ll see that they make no difference.’

‘Never mind mate, never mind,’ Mitchell said. ‘I was just takin’ the piss.’

Jing-Sun Park, a sixty-three-year-old Korean heiress and owner of a number of technology companies, laughed dryly.

‘If only I could say the same about myself,’ she remarked, wistfully fingering the diamond-studded arms of her own spectacles. ‘I’ve had to wear these since I was a little girl.’

Santosh Gupta, an Indian steel industry tycoon, touched the side of his right eye and flashed a gold-toothed smile at his fellow Huntsmen.

‘Laser eye surgery,’ he commented with a grin. ‘It’s given me back the vision I had forty years ago. I threw my own spectacles into the trash the second I walked out of the clinic!’

All the Huntsmen Board Members laughed, as did Hrothgar.

‘I suppose I should consider myself rather fortunate then,’ Duchess Younghusband said as the polite laughter died down. ‘I’ve had twenty-twenty vision my entire life; all six decades of it.’

‘Lucky you,’ Pablo Silva, an elderly but still powerfully built Brazilian cattle rancher, remarked dryly. ‘I’ve always had shit eyes. I was wearing glasses before I could even read.’

‘Enough talk of you humans’ bad eyes,’ Hrothgar interjected. ‘Come, let us drink to the Alliance.’

‘To the future success of the Alliance, and a total victory over the last few Rebel stragglers who are still clinging to the last, pathetic vestiges of hope,’ Duchess Younghusband declared as she sipped on her red wine. Her tone was one of polite congeniality, but the icy sharpness in her eyes spoke in no uncertain terms of the loathing she had for beastwalkers. ‘But tell me Hrothgar,’ she continued, ‘where is Sigurd? My colleagues and I were most looking forward to discussing certain matters with him. Not that I mean to imply that you alone are inadequate; not at all, my good man. However, you see, you two do operate as equal partners, do you not? And it is best, in business dealings, to get the input of both business partners simultaneously, in order to get a balanced summary of opinions. We really are rather disappointed that Mr Haraldsson could not be here with us. I suspect that Mr Ma will be especially disappointed, as there were a number of items he wished to discuss with both you and Sigurd. And as you know, due to our own individual business interests, as well as our duties as Huntsmen Board Members, time is a luxury that—’

At that moment, the lights went off, plunging the large conference room into darkness. Hrothgar stood up in the suddenly black room as exclamations of shock and indignation erupted from the guests who were seated around the table. His leap up onto his feet was not from surprise though; he had been waiting for this exact moment, and the night vision built into his hi-tech spectacles gave him perfect visibility in the darkness. He was not the only one in the room who sprang into immediate action; the nude ‘models’ on the table – a special table, chosen exactly for this occasion – scrambled to their feet and opened their eyes, which had been closed the whole time. They had kept them closed because they were unaccustomed to light; GH-3213, HC-413, CC-105 and GH-227 had been living in conditions of complete darkness for the last few months, training their eyes to develop acute night vision, almost as clear as that of any cat or wolf, in preparation for this exact mission, this holy crusade against the servants of the Dark One – a mission that had just begun in earnest.

The assassins grabbed the knives that had been hidden inside the mounds of food that had adorned their bodies, and went straight for their targets – targets as deadly as themselves, but with one significant weakness: they lacked the ability to see in the dark. Each assassin was equipped with both a throwing knife and a nine-inch hunting knife, laser-sharpened to an atom’s width on its edge. Stationed near the walls of the room were eight adolescent bodyguards; one per board member. Four of them were killed a second or two after the darkness hit; each got a throwing knife plugged through their left eyeball and were dead before their bodies crumpled to the floor.

Hrothgar’s four assassins, immediately