This is Honus’s first appearance in the trilogy:

Spring’s cold rains soaked the Turmgeist Forest without transforming it.  In the gloom beneath the hemlocks, the undergrowth remained brown.  The dead vegetation crowded the muddy pathway, forming a dense screen.  A man hid among the plants and patiently waited.  His cloak was sewn with tatters that blended with the drab leaves.  His face was daubed with clay, so it also matched the foliage.

A sword lay before the crouching man, unsheathed and ready.  Leaves covered the blade, so its gleam wouldn’t betray the ambush.  The weapon, once a nobleman’s prized possession, was marred where its jewels had been pried from the hilt.  Its current owner’s interest in those ornaments lay only in the price they had fetched.  A practical man, he valued the weapon solely for its utility.  Its expensive, marbled blade was razor keen and made even deadlier by the application of poison.  Quick death, meted out inelegantly, was the custom of his trade.

The bandit heard footsteps on the path.  Although his quarry was out of sight, experienced ears told the robber much.  He detected a single traveler. A man, he surmised by the sound of the tread.  By the noise he’s making, I’d say he’s fleeing something.  The bandit heard a sword rattle in its scabbard and grinned.  Weapons fetched good prices.  The sounds grew louder and the man prepared to spring.

The source of the footsteps appeared—a bulky, dark-haired youth scarcely out of his teens.  Yet as soon as the youth appeared, the grin vanished from the bandit’s face, for the lad was accompanied by an older man who walked with the silent grace of a tiger.  Like a tiger, his face was marked.  Recognizing what the man was, the bandit froze.

The youth trod on unaware of his observer, but his companion’s eyes fixed on the spy.  They were pale blue and stood out in his heavily tattooed face like twin moons in a dark sky.  As they drew ever nearer, the bandit felt powerless to break from their gaze.  He found neither alarm nor anger in those eyes—only the resignation of a weary executioner.

The tattooed man’s hands moved so quickly they seemed to blur.  Mingled with the blur was a flash of metal.  There was a sound like a cabbage being split, followed by the rustle of something heavy rolling in the leaves.  By the time the youth turned toward the noise, his companion was wiping blood from his blade.

“Shit!” said the young man  “What was that, Honus?”

“Just an animal, Yaun.”

Yaun drew his sword and began to poke about the undergrowth.  “Leave it,” said Honus, not breaking his stride.  “It’s nothing you’d want to eat.”