Swords & Heroes Story #29

A Time to Kill by L.N. Hunter

Jul 24, 2025

Time travel, multi-dimensions, alternate universes, they’re all pretty hard sells for me. But every now and then a story catches my imagination, draws me in, and before I know it I’m quite enjoying the mind-bending adventure. Most stories that rely on a twist of some kind in the fabric of the universe simply don’t work, imo. But some do - and “A Time to Kill” by L.N. Hunter certainly works for me. It starts out as a fairly straightforward assassin guild quest… but expertly turns into something far more interesting. So it is with great pleasure that I get to introduce a new writer to our pages along with a compelling tale of fantasy. + Ed.

A Time to Kill by L.N. Hunter

The tentative knock of a novice disturbed my evening meditation; I was required at the Master’s chamber. I dressed quickly but still took time to secure my wrist and ankle daggers in their sheaths. It was a route I knew well, but appearances must be kept for the sake of visitors, so I followed the novice from my small, undistinguished cell to the Master’s plush suite in the heart of the guild house.

The novice knocked on the ornate oak and bronze door and ushered me into the room.

“Aha, here he is, our finest!” Master Carrilon greeted my entrance with unexpected enthusiasm. “If anyone can complete this particular task, young Whitlocke can. Ha!” His voice seemed strained, uncharacteristic joviality betraying a hint of anxiety.

Unusually, the curtains were drawn and most of the candles extinguished. I bowed towards the three shadowy figures standing at the Master’s desk. They wore dark robes—red, I thought, but it was difficult to be certain in the dim light. Deep hoods obscured their faces, and they remained silent and motionless while Master Carrilon explained my task. He kept glancing in their direction, as if to check that he was relaying their instructions accurately.

Despite the Master’s odd behavior, the assignment sounded like any other—someone wanted someone else dead for an appropriately large sum of money. In this particular case, aside from the distance to be travelled, nothing was out of the ordinary.

I’d nodded at appropriate points during this account. Naturally, I did not speak. Towards the end of our qualifying year at the academy, students are required to remove our own tongues, ostensibly to prevent communication of client secrets under torture or otherwise. It’s a symbolic, if dramatic, gesture these days, when everyone—everyone who matters, that is—can read and write several languages. Rather than follow the traditional approach, I had carefully sliced my tongue into three strips and extracted the central portion, leaving two narrow but dexterous slivers, and thereby, no ability to talk.

“Our clients have requested you employ this specially crafted poison.” Master Carrilon indicated a small green vial sitting on his desk. “Nothing else will suffice for this assignment.”

I raised an eyebrow. Experienced guild members generally have free rein in their choice of materials and methods.

The Master mopped his brow with a large handkerchief. These were obviously important clients.

At thirty-five, I had been on the brink of retirement for several years, but boredom kept me active. Had things been different, I would have settled down with Vanique, my first and only love, but her death meant there was little for me beyond the guild. Few reached their thirties in this profession, but I was one of the most talented, maybe even the best. Perhaps my superior talent came as a consequence of Vanique’s unjust death.

I had already earned more than enough to pay my guild dues several times over and intended to decline this somewhat arduous assignment. I started to shake my head when I detected a faint shimmer, as if a candle’s flame flickered in front of the Master’s face, accompanied by the merest suggestion of a hiss. Before I could focus on this curiosity, the three hoods turned towards me while Master Carrilon reiterated that our clients had requested me specifically. It would not bode well for the guild—or for me—if I were to refuse.

Whatever reservations I’d entertained a moment earlier fled my mind, and I nodded to indicate my acceptance.

I eased my white-masked head above the snow-covered rock, taking care not to be spotted as I waited for the guard change in order to maximize the time I would have before any discovery.

Two soldiers in red uniforms and shining breastplates stood on my side of the bridge, about fifty paces distant, indifferently surveying the snow field for intruders. It was obvious they were completely unprepared and expected no visitors. Another red and silver clad soldier leaned against the bridge post on the far side, from where a path wound up the mountain. The crossing itself was the longest rope bridge I had ever seen. It hung lazily across the abyss, completely stationary in the thin, windless air. The guards’ breath formed swirls of icy gray mist, while I carefully controlled my breathing, so not even that indicated my presence.

Finally, the three replacement guards strolled along the winding path towards the bridge. One waited with the soldier who’d been standing on the far side, while the others crossed, causing the bridge to sway. Shift change completed, the three original sentinels trudged back up the path. When they were out of sight, it was time to act.

I needed to dispose of the current guards as quickly as possible. Any of them could instantaneously trigger the release of his end of the bridge, causing it to vanish soundlessly into the chasm below, cutting me off from my goal.

I loaded my blowpipe and placed it on the rock before me and grasped a second dart in what remained of my tongue, ready for a quick reload. I reached for my bow, nocked an arrow and aimed at the farthest guard’s neck. As soon as I had released the arrow, I picked up the blowpipe and fired poison tipped darts at the closer guards.

A moment later, the guards’ breath no longer disturbed the still air.

Returning bow and blowpipe to my back, I waited a few heartbeats for any reaction to the guards’ demise. The air remained still and silent. I hurried over the crossing, taking steps so precise and delicate that the slender bridge did not sway as I ghosted across.

Following a month of research and preparation, it had taken one hundred and seventeen days to get this far, by ship, horse, dog-sled and foot. I reached my destination after a further quarter-day along the meandering trail from the bridge.

Often referred to as a temple, it looked more like a fortress, squatting close to the peak of the tallest mountain in the long range through which I had been travelling. Thanks to my preparations, I already knew which wall was the most vulnerable.

Another blowpipe dart dispatched the guard by the door and I was inside, swapping the chilled scent of pine needles for the warmer smell of dust and age.

I followed winding corridors, ascending and descending elaborate staircases to reach the inner sanctum. I paused at each junction before continuing on my meticulously choreographed route, listening for signs of the temple’s occupants. Apart from the torches on the walls, I detected no sign of any other soul. At last, with an uneasy feeling that this had been too easy, I quietly pushed aside the heavy tapestry at the end of the final long and narrow passage.

I eased into the room.

A wavering voice broke the silence. “Welcome traveler, I’ve been waiting for you.”

Instantly, my wrist daggers were in my hands, ready to be thrown.

“No need for that, boy. Put those away and come here where I can get the measure of you,” commanded the voice, stronger now, as if its owner was becoming reacquainted with speech after many years.

Cautious, I slid farther into the room and caught sight of a bald head over the back of a carved wooden throne facing away from me: my target. From his seat, he could not possibly see the covered doorway I had used. I had made no sound, so how could he have detected my entrance? A breeze from the corridor—was I really that careless? His head was hairless and liver-spotted and, as I moved in front of him, a long, wispy grey beard and moustache came into view. However, it was his totally white, blind eyes that gripped my attention.

“Cat got your tongue, boy, hmm?” he laughed humorlessly, and gestured for me to approach. “You can put those toothpicks away. Come, sit down. No one is going to disturb us.” He waved a gnarled hand to one side of his throne. A chair sat at a small round table with a jug and wine glass on it, alongside a number of rolled-up parchments.

I came closer, but not to the chair. Wary of tricks to prevent me from carrying out my assignment, I kept the wall to my back and my daggers in my hands. I glanced around, up as well as side to side—most people outside the guild forget the world in which we live has a vertical dimension, much to the advantage of our members.

There was little to see in the room. The only furniture consisted of the throne and the table and chair. Tapestries hung from all the walls, and small windows high in between them let in hazy sunlight.

“Let me tell you what we do here, boy. We have plenty of time.” The old man snickered unpleasantly. “First, a little exercise in perception. Listen. And, when you’ve listened, take a look at what’s behind me.”

Typically, my targets had little chance to speak. In the few circumstances in which they did, they subjected me to blustering, pleading or crying, sometimes threats and even bribery, none of which altered the outcome. Ages past, I stopped attending to the words, just to the tone. However, something in this old man’s voice permeated through to my consciousness, and I could not help but listen.

A rhythmic sigh impinged on my senses, something of a murmur or a gentle hiss, like that of a breeze through trees or waves on a beach. It was the only sound I had heard in this place apart from the man’s voice. Behind the throne swung a large wood and gold pendulum, silently counting to itself, flashing a brief reflection of the room at the bottom of each swing.

I prided myself on always being precisely aware of my surroundings—how did I not notice the pendulum before? I tightened the grip on my knives and flicked my eyes around the room again, checking to see what else I might have missed.

“This is the reality of passing time,” declared the old man, with a wave towards the pendulum. “Don’t be hard on yourself, boy. No one, not even the most expert member of your quaint little guild, would be aware of these signs of time’s passage until they are pointed out. But what is time anyway? It doesn’t exist outside these walls, and it is imperative that you understand this before you complete your task.”

He paused, either relishing the opportunity to lecture or annoyed by it. “This will take a while, so do make yourself comfortable. It’s been a long time since I’ve spoken to anyone, so I hope you will indulge me.”

He gestured at the chair a second time and, once again, I ignored his invitation.

“Suit yourself.” He shrugged. “You undoubtedly know that everything in this universe is made of fundamental particles. Call them atoms or quarks or strings, or whatever your scientists’ current notion is—I lose track. Whatever these particles might be is irrelevant, but they exist, and their positions define the universe. There is only the configuration of the instant and, most importantly, there is no motion and no time, merely a… jump between configurations.”

The hilts of the daggers were becoming slippery in the sweat of my hands. This shouldn’t be happening. My training had prepared me for airborne poisons and the hypnotic influences of rhythmic sensations—were the hiss and the pendulum doing something to my mind? Regardless, I had a job to do; I was not permitted to fail. No contract had been broken since the guild’s inception, and I wasn’t going to be responsible for the first.

I sheathed one of the daggers, wiped my hand on my trouser leg and extracted the poison vial from an inner pocket. I poured its contents into the waiting glass and topped it up with wine from the jug as the old man continued his monologue.

“There are infinite possible configurations of these countless particles. Imagine tracing through a sequence of these arrangements, as if watching pictures in a kinetoscope. The still pictures give an illusion of motion, in the same way as the sequence of configurations fabricates the mirage of time.”

He waved an arm in my direction. “Are you keeping up, boy?”

Giving me no chance to nod in response, the old man continued, “None of these particles can determine their future, not even when they happen to congregate in something so grand as a human body. People don’t make decisions, though their minds are good at convincing them they do.” He frowned. “Your actions are mere consequences of the configuration. The work of the monks in this temple is to interpret potential configurations, and my task is to define time itself by selecting which will exist. The person seated on this throne”—he thumped the arm of the heavy chair—“determines which sequence of configurations forms the path for life itself. We manufacture time here, while the rest of the universe merely marks it.

“I have been deciding the outcome of every decision in the universe for five hundred and ninety-two years now, and I tire of it. I can remember the chaos when I replaced my predecessor. There were wars and natural catastrophes—ha! not so much natural as caused by incompetence—during my first six years. I committed many blunders before I overcame my lack of skill and started to understand the consequences of my decisions.”

He paused, lost in reminiscence, and rubbed his face. “But now my weariness allows humanity to stagnate, and I’ve started to make mistakes again. It is time for me to pass the burden to someone else. The universe needs a more capable custodian”—he sighed—“which is why you’re here.”

With that, the old man reached out a claw of a hand, unerringly grasping the wineglass. He raised it in a silent toast and gulped down its contents. With a smack of his lips he said, “A pleasant flavor, for my last drink. You don’t understand yet, do you?” He placed the empty glass back on the table. “Even when you were a child, Eustan Whitlocke, I knew it would be you. I chose you.” He started to laugh. “I planned every step of your life to bring you here.”

A moment later, he stopped laughing and directed his blank eyes at me with a hint of pity. “Attend to these scrolls, they’ll show you what you need. I’m sorry for what I’ve done to you.” His head slumped forward.

The pendulum behind the throne slowed, easing to a stop at the bottom of a long, drawn-out last swing. The hissing murmur ceased, too. Unnerved by the total silence, I whirled, expecting to see someone. Nothing had changed within the room, but something felt very wrong.

Discipline forgotten, I raced to all corners of the room, ripping tapestries off the wall, searching for the source of my unease. I ran through the rest of the temple, finding no sign of life: none of the monks the old man mentioned, not even the three guards whose replacements I had killed.

Although it had been late afternoon when I’d arrived, I started the long trek back to the bridge. I didn’t want to stay in this place any longer, even if it meant travelling in the icy chill of night. The body of the guard I had dispatched at the entrance was gone. This was enough to spur me into a run along the path to the crossing.

The rope bridge had vanished, along with the guards’ bodies. The sun occupied the same position in the sky as it had when I had entered the temple, as if the whole world had stopped. That was the final piece of fuel to feed my shamefully unprofessional panic.

The sides of the chasm were too sheer to climb. Although I already knew there was no other way off this mountain, I frantically clambered all around it, pushing through trees and running across treacherously slick rocks.

Hours later, heart thundering and with sweat freezing on my skin, I realized I had no option but to return to the building. As I dragged my exhausted body between the massive wooden doors of the main entrance, I registered that the location of the sun remained unchanged. I retraced my steps to the inner chamber. The old man’s corpse was still there, the only body that had not vanished. I touched him to prove he was real. His skin felt like ancient parchment and possessed the fragile lightness of age. With a shiver, I eased his desiccated body off the throne. It emitted a papery sigh as it came to rest on the floor. Nervously, I examined the throne.

I tentatively seated myself upon it.

The hiss started again, and I leaped up, heart pounding. The sound ceased. I listened for a while, but nothing broke the silence until I sat down again, at which point the sound resumed. Peering around behind me, I saw the pendulum had started to swing, gradually approaching the speed it had when the old man was alive. Somehow, I knew the world was moving again.

The chamber’s main door opened and two figures entered, clad in dark red robes with the same deep hoods as the visitors in the Master’s office eons ago. I didn’t have my wrist and ankle daggers anymore, having lost them somewhere in my frantic attempts to escape. I was too weary to react as the monks approached the throne, bowed, picked up the body and left.

I remembered the old man’s last words. I reached for the first of the parchments on the table. The writing was in an unfamiliar language, but the text seemed to pulsate, insinuating the words past my eyes directly into my mind. I saw…

It was the boy’s first trip to the city. His father sought an apprenticeship for him, and they visited guild after guild all day. Most often, the gatekeepers turned them away, but sometimes they permitted entry to the courtyards. Although his feet were tired, the boy’s eyes were wide as he stared at every novelty. When father and son entered the armorers’ guild in the late afternoon, those eyes lit up as brightly as the forges within. The man spoke with the master of the guild house for a long time as the boy eagerly watched the work going on around him. He instinctively understood how every task was done and why—this place felt natural. It was where he should be.

As his father and the guild master were about to shake hands, the boy sensed a faint noise, a strange rumble at the edge of perception, and a colorless flash in the corner of his eye. The guild master withdrew his hand and shook his head. The man and boy left the guild house, both disappointed and not understanding what had happened.

As the gate closed behind them, they heard a shout of “Stop, thief!” Even before he saw anything, the boy stretched out a leg and tripped the runner. A breathless city guard, not more than five paces behind, caught up and grabbed the thief’s collar. Another man, by his attire someone important, followed close on his heels and thanked both father and son. He offered them refreshment for their assistance and invited them to join him in his guild house on the other side of the square.

I tore myself away from the parchment. That forgotten visit was as clear as if it had happened only yesterday—my accidental introduction to the assassins’ guild.

I picked up another scroll.

“You have been here eight years now,” the guild master said. “You entered our gates as carefree, empty-headed children, coming from lives that no longer exist. And you few who stand in front of me are adept and skillful young men and women, the best of your generation. You have one final task before you become full members of the guild, your first solo elimination. There are seven of you, and there are seven names in this bag. Come, choose your assignment.”

I was about to reach out to dip my hand into the bag when I paused as something flashed in my eyes and a whisper tickled my ears. I found myself watching as Vanique, my beautiful and elegant Vanique, stepped forth and pulled a name from the bag. I was next to select a name, followed by Sebastien and then the other four apprentices.

The name on my strip of paper was Darile Ganfoy, a well-known and extremely crooked merchant. He was easy to eliminate, though none of the targets for us novices would have been difficult. There was no question about our technical abilities, and the test was to ensure we were emotionally prepared. I merely had to wait for Ganfoy to stumble drunkenly from one of the city’s brothels. I feigned a robbery attempt that got out of hand and simply stabbed him. Somewhat messier than I would have preferred, but Ganfoy was not an interesting challenge.

Vanique’s undertaking was much less successful. Her target, General Ottel Qandoc, an obese glutton renowned for preying on youth and innocence, had been alerted. He had a team of nine bodyguards waiting for an attack. Vanique killed two guards and disabled two others, but three crossbow bolts pierced her before she could flee, dying on the spot.

When I heard the news, I screamed. I had to be sedated and bound to my bed for several days. I knew Qandoc’s warning must have come from within the guild, and as soon as I had calmed, I made it my aim to find the culprit.

Between periods of poring over documents and investigating communications, I redoubled my weapons practice, along with honing my other guild skills. After a few months, I concluded that the informer was Sebastien, whom I had considered a friend. He had been jealous of both Vanique and me, not willing to content himself with occupying third place. He had tried to compromise my mission, too, except that Ganfoy would never have been capable of protecting himself from any determined assassin. I killed Sebastien, and shortly after, I eliminated Qandoc with a blade I forged from the gold coins with which he had rewarded Sebastien.

I could have dealt with the nine bodyguards, had I chosen the first paper strip from the bag, but something had caused the order to change.

With a shudder, I pulled myself away from the second parchment. I recalled how, with the loss of two of the three best graduates that year, I had been given all of the most arduous and difficult assignments. I was eager and proved myself capable of them all. Killing helped to block the memory of Vanique.

Avoiding the poisoned glass and taking a sip of wine directly from the jug, I examined the third scroll. This time it was not my history.

The view was that of a man sitting on the same throne upon which I sat. A column of monks, two by two, stood before him. The pair at the front proffered open books, and the man carefully read one set of pages, then the other, and back to the first again. He sat back and ruminated for a moment before pointing towards the book on the right. It glowed briefly, like those ghostly flashes I remembered seeing. The pages seemed to whisper as the books were closed, and the monks bowed and left. The next pair stepped forward, bowing and presenting their books to the man. He examined both books as before and pointed towards the left one this time. Again, there was a glow and a faint murmur when his choice was made.

I leaned in to see what was written in the books the next pair of monks held out. They contained the same unfathomable language as the parchments, but like the parchments, somehow they implanted images in my mind. In the book on the left, a man—he looked like a hunter—stood at a fork in the road. He decided to take the left route and entered the woods. Further along the path he spied a young doe and shot it through the heart. He heaved the carcass across his shoulders and strode contentedly back to his home. His family would eat well for at least a week.

In the other book, the same man stood at the same fork. He decided to follow the right-hand path this time. Distracted by the sighting of a deer, he trod upon a hidden viper, which reacted by biting him before slithering into the undergrowth. The hunter collapsed and died within the woods. His son found him the following day.

The man on the throne frowned and thought for a while, finally pointing at the book on the right, as a faint whisper-flash sealed the decision.

I looked up from the scroll and saw a column of monks in front of me, arranged two by two, holding books for me to examine.

The realization sank in that I would be sitting in this chair for some time.

A Time to Kill © 2022 by L.N. Hunter (4300 words). All rights reserved by the author. This story was originally published in JOURN-E: The Journal of Imaginative Literature, Vol. 1, No. 2 (September 2022). You may restack this story via Substack but please do not republish elsewhere. Banner and clipart by Gilead, used by permission.

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