“One of our number is a sailor,” Lyrna replied. “He can take his place.”
She sensed there was something forced about the captain’s ire, his curt treatment of the injured crewmen evidence of an already scant regard. “He’d better,” he growled but said no more, stomping off to berate the helmsman for letting the bow wander too far from the compass.
She found Iltis being nursed by Murel in the hold, the girl’s slender hands dabbing a reddened cloth to his bruises. Lyrna said nothing but pressed a kiss onto his stubbled head. It was gone in an instant, but she fancied she saw a smile twitch on his lips before he growled and turned away.
◆ ◆ ◆
It became her habit to linger above as night fell. Orena and Murel had a tendency to jabber away for hours until sleep claimed them, usually about matters of the meanest consequence. Lyrna suspected there was a deliberate shallowness to their conversation, an avoidance of recent trauma in talk of past loves and girlhood escapades, a trauma she hadn’t fully shared thanks to her burns. She didn’t begrudge them their distractions but found she needed the comparative quiet of the foredeck to continue the ceaseless examination of evidence.
At first all contemplation had been coloured by the events in the throne room, a central horror that commanded her every thought, birthing uncomfortable conclusions. A plan years in the making, she decided. To prepare such a perfect assassin. And who would have thought Al Telnar would die a hero? She experienced a momentary shame at her many clipped dismissals of the lord’s approaches over the years. Clearly he had been a better man than she judged him, braving Dark fire to save her without care for his own life. But, hero or not, she couldn’t help but conclude he would still have made a terrible husband.
She began to realise concentration on a single event was obstructing the consideration of other evidence. She recalled a phrase from The Wisdoms of Reltak: “Beware the seduction of the quick conclusion. Do not indulge in the answer you desire until you know all you need to know.”
Subduing a city the size of Varinshold would require an army of thousands, she reasoned. Even with Realm Guard absent . . . The Realm Guard, marching forth with the invasion only days away. A case of remarkable ill fortune brought about by the attack on the Tower Lord of the Southern Shore . . . She strove to recover every scrap of detail she had learned about the attempt on the Tower Lord’s life. Two assassins, Cumbraelin fanatics . . . Two assassins.
She should call it merely a suspicion in the absence of other evidence, but allowed herself a certainty. Brother Frentis and the Volarian woman. They’ve been busy. Incredibly she felt a sense of regret at Frentis’s death. How much more evidence could I have wrung from him if he’d lived? But she lives, no doubt killing ever more as her countrymen rape my lands.
She looked down at her hands, finding her fists clenched, as they had been when she stabbed the Volarian. She recalled the twitch of the dagger in her hand as his heart had given a final convulsive beat after the blade pierced it. She can kill, she mused. But now so can I.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Frentis
The Free Sword held the blade up to the moonlight, running an admiring eye over the edge, smiling a little as he picked out the grey flames trapped in the metal. Truly a valuable prize to take home.
“That doesn’t belong to you,” Frentis told him as he vaulted over the battlement.
A Kuritai might have had a chance to parry the thrust, but this man had none of the unnatural reflex required. The hunting knife took him in the throat, stilling any shout he may have been trying to voice, Frentis holding him down until his twitching ceased. He crouched, looking down at the courtyard, seeing only a few Volarians pacing back and forth from one familiar doorway to another, all Free Swords. Kuritai too valuable to waste on guard duty, he thought.
His gaze roamed the Order House, drinking in the sight, every corner, rooftop and brick as he remembered, with an important difference. No blue-cloaked figures walking the walls this night, just an infestation of Volarians.
He took the dead Free Sword’s cloak, exchanging the Order sword for his own, and walked at a sedate pace towards the nearest guard, killing him with a knife throw when he got close enough for the man to make out his face. He completed a full circuit of the walls in an hour, killing every guard he encountered, only one managing to put up a fight, a veteran sergeant in the gatehouse with a swarthy, sun-bronzed look, probably from the southern empire. He managed a parry or two, shouting for assistance from his dead comrades before the star-silver blade slipped past his short sword to punch through the breastplate and into his belly. Frentis finished him with the hunting knife and found a shadow, waiting for someone to come in answer to the sergeant’s shouts. None did.
He slipped from the shadow and lifted a torch from its mounting, standing atop the battlements and waving it back and forth three times. Within seconds they emerged from the tree-line, over a hundred shadows running full pelt for the gate, Davoka’s tall form in the lead. Frentis made his way to the courtyard, lifting free the great oak plank that held the gates closed. He didn’t wait for the others, finding the doorway which led to the vaults and descending the steps at a run. The heavy door securing the Order’s supply store was guarded by two Kuritai, indicating the Volarians put some value on what they kept here. Frentis saw little point in further stealth and shrugged off his stolen cloak, advancing with sword in one hand and hunting knife in the other. As expected the guards betrayed no sign of alarm and drew their weapons, arranging themselves into a dual fighting formation he recognised from the pits, one behind the other, the one in front crouched, the one behind standing.
It was over in six moves, one less than his best performance in the pits. Feint towards the one in front, leap and slash at the one behind forcing the parry, extend a kick into his chest sending him reeling, block the thrust of the crouching man, open his neck with the backswing and send the hunting knife spinning into the eye of the other as he rebounded from the wall.
He retrieved his knife, took the keys from the hook in the wall and unlocked the doors. The vaults were as dark as he remembered, a faint glow of torchlight glimmering in the depths. He advanced with caution, keeping low, ears alive for any sound, hearing only the laboured breathing of a man in pain.
They were chained to the wall, arms raised and wrists shackled. The first was dead, hanging slack and lifeless, signs of recent torment covering his broad chest. Master Jestin, never to forge another sword. Frentis steeled himself against grief and moved on, finding more tortured corpses, brothers mostly but he recognised Master Chekril amongst them, making him wonder over the fate of the Order’s dogs.
He judged the next one dead also, a thin man of middle years, head slumped and dried blood covering his bare torso, then stifled a shout as the man jerked, chains rattling and wild eyes finding Frentis’s face. “Died,” Master Rensial said. “The stables burned. All my horses died.”
Frentis crouched at his side, the mad eyes fixed on his face. “Master, it’s Brother Frentis . . .”
“The boy.” Rensial’s head bobbed in affirmation. “I knew he would be waiting.”
“Master?”
Rensial’s head swivelled about, manic gaze scanning the surrounding blackness. “Who would have thought the Beyond so dark?”
Frentis rose and tried each key until he found the one that unlocked the master’s manacles, putting an arm around his midriff to help him up. “This is not the Beyond, and I am truly here to take you away. Do you know where they put the Aspect?”
“Gone,” Rensial groaned. “Gone to the shadows.”
Frentis paused at the sight of another dim glow, a narrow rectangle of light in the black void. Master Grealin’s chambers. Racks of weapons, probably all looted but it was worth a look. He helped the stumbling master to the wall and let him slump to the floor. “A moment, Master.”
He drew his sword and advanced towards th
e door, nudging it fully open with his boot. A man of slight build knelt on the floor beside a table bearing a corpse, rivulets of blood streaming over the table’s edge and onto the floor. “Please,” the kneeling man whispered in Volarian, Frentis taking in the fresh blood that covered his arms.
He ignored the man as he continued to beg, moving to the corpse. He had been a sturdy man, the part-shredded skin of his chest covered in hair and those patches of his head not marred by triangular burns evidence he had possessed a thick mane. His features, mostly a mass of livid bruises, had been broad and, Frentis recalled, somewhat brutish in life, except when he tracked, then they came alive. His eyes, now vanished from their sockets, would dart about with the kind of sharpness only a wolf could match.
“So he didn’t die when the gate fell,” Frentis murmured. He looked around the chamber where Master Grealin had once lived and kept his meticulous records of every weapon, bean and scrap of clothing the Order possessed. All the ledgers were gone, replaced by neatly arrayed metal implements, gleaming and very sharp.
“Please,” the man with the bloody hands sobbed, a pool of liquid spreading out across the stone floor from where he knelt. “I only do as I am commanded.”
“Why was this done to him?” Frentis asked.
“The battalion lost many Free Swords to this man, the commander’s nephew amongst them.”
“You are a slave,” Frentis observed.
“I am. I only do as I . . .”
“Yes. You said.” The tumult of battle came to them through the vaults, the Free Sword garrison finally waking to their danger.
Frentis moved to the door. “This battalion commander, where is he quartered?”
◆ ◆ ◆
It transpired the commander had taken over Master Haunlin’s old chamber, fortuitously positioned so as to overlook the courtyard. Frentis left the shutters on the windows open so the prisoners could hear the slave do his work. They knelt in the courtyard, twelve survivors from a garrison of over two hundred, most of them wounded. He had let them stew a while as he visited the kennels, returning to find all displaying a gratifying level of terror.
“Your commander wasn’t very forthcoming,” Frentis told them, some starting at the sound of their own language. “The man who led our order was called Aspect Arlyn. We know he was here when the gate fell. The first man who tells me where he is gets to live.”
From above came a sound Frentis had heard in the pits; castration always produced a uniquely high-pitched scream.
One of the men convulsed and vomited, drawing breath to speak but the man next to him was quicker. “You mean the tall man?”
“Yes,” Frentis said as the other prisoners all began to jabber at once, falling silent as the surrounding fighters stepped closer with swords raised. He stood before the man who had spoken first. “The tall man.”
“A-an officer from the general’s staff took him, b-back to the city. Just after we took the fortress.”
“It’s a house.” Frentis dragged the man to his feet, pulling him towards the gate, passing Janril Norin on the way, the onetime minstrel waiting with his Renfaelin blade resting on his shoulder. “Don’t be too long about it,” Frentis ordered.
He dragged the man through the gate as the screams began in the courtyard, drawing his knife and severing his bonds. “Go back to the city, tell your people what happened here.”
The man stood staring at him in shock for a moment then turned and stumbled into a run, falling down several times before he disappeared from view. Frentis wondered if he should have told him he was running in the wrong direction.
◆ ◆ ◆
Davoka was mostly silent during the journey back to the camp, avoiding his gaze. Garvish, he thought with a sigh.
“I know what the Lonak do to their prisoners,” he said when the silence grew irksome.
“Some Lonakhim,” she returned. “Not I.” Her gaze shifted to the slight form of the slave, stumbling along with eyes wide in constant expectation of death. “What play will you make with him?”
Frentis uttered a shallow laugh. “Not play, work.”
“You’re not Garvish,” he heard her say as he walked on ahead. “You’re worse.”
Master Grealin greeted them with wide arms and a broad smile, enfolding a confused Rensial in a warm embrace.
“My horses burned,” the mad master told Grealin with earnest sincerity.
The big man gave a sad smile as he stepped back from his brother. “We’ll get you some more.”
“Over two hundred killed,” Frentis reported to Grealin a short while later. “A large number of weapons captured, plus sundry armour, food and a few bows. And our special new recruits of course. We lost four.”
“The value of surprise should never be underestimated,” the master observed.
They sat together on the riverbank a short walk from the camp where over three hundred souls now made their home. They had been accumulating refugees and freed slaves for the past few weeks, some electing to move on when it became clear they were expected to fight, most deciding to stay. Even so their fighting strength numbered barely a hundred, the remainder too young, old, sick or ill trained to carry a weapon against the Volarians. Before last night their victories had been small, confined to raiding slavers’ caravans and Volarian supply trains.
“They’ll be coming,” the master said. “Now we’ve proved ourselves more than a nuisance.”
“As we knew they would. Master, about the Aspect . . .”
Grealin shook his bald head. “No.”
“I know many ways in . . .”
“To search an entire city for one man, who for all we know languishes in the hold of a slave ship halfway across the ocean by now. I’m sorry, brother, but no. These people need their champion, now more than ever.”
◆ ◆ ◆
The slave was sitting where he left him, silent and unmoving beside the shelter Davoka shared with Illian. The girl stared at him in open curiosity as she stirred the pot of soup hanging over the fire, the rising aroma convincing Frentis her talents, whatever they were, didn’t reside in cookery.
“Brother!” She brightened as he moved to his own tent, unbuckling the sword from his back. “Another victory. The whole camp is afire with it. Did you really kill ten of the beasts?”
“I don’t know,” he replied honestly.
“Take me next time,” Arendil said in a sullen voice, prodding the cook fire with a stick. “I’ll kill more than ten.”
“You couldn’t kill a mouse,” Illian said with a laugh.
“I am a trained squire of House Banders,” the boy retorted. “Dishonoured by being left here with you whilst my comrades win glorious victory.”
“The camp must be guarded,” Frentis told him in a tone that indicated he had heard enough on this subject.
He took a bowl and scooped some soup from the pot, moving to squat down at the slave’s side. “Eat,” he said, holding it in front of his face.
The slave took the bowl and began to eat with mechanical obedience, holding it to his lips and drinking the less-than-flavoursome contents without sign of reluctance.
“You have a name?” Frentis asked when he had finished.
“I do, Master. Number Thirty-Four.”
Numbered slave. A specialist, trained from childhood for a particular task. This man can’t be more than twenty-five, but I’ll wager he’s taken far more lives than I, none of them quickly.
“I’m not a master,” he told Thirty-Four. “And you are not a slave. You’re free.”
The slave’s face betrayed no joy at this news, just bafflement as he voiced a sentence with an oddly stilted intonation. “Freedom, once lost, cannot be regained. Those not born free are enslaved by the weakness of their blood. Those enslaved in life forsake freedom by virtue of their own weakness.”
“T
hat sounds like something you read,” Frentis observed.
“Codicils of the Ruling Council, Volume Six.”
“Well, forget the Council and the empire. You’re a long way from both, and this Realm has no slaves.”
Thirty-Four gave him a cautious glance. “You do not bring me here to exact revenge?”
“You only do as you are commanded, since you were old enough to remember. Am I correct?”
Thirty-Four nodded, reaching into his tunic and extracting a small glass vial on a chain about his neck. “I need this, it numbs the pain . . . my pain. It’s how I do what I do.”
Frentis eyed the pale yellow liquid in the vial and felt an echo of the binding flicker across his chest. “And if you stop taking it?”
“I . . . hurt.”
“You’re a free man now, you can take it or not, as you wish. You can stay with us or go, as you wish.”
“What do you want of me?”
“You have skills, they will be useful to us.”
Davoka arrived, dumping the sack of grain she had carried from the Order House next to the fire and scowling at the sight of the slave. She accepted a bowl of soup from Illian, spooning some into her mouth and promptly spitting it out. “No more of this for you,” she told Illian, taking the soup pot and tipping the contents into a patch of ferns. She went to her tent and returned with a captured Volarian knife, tossing it to the girl. “You learn to hunt. Arendil, make more soup.”
Illian looked at the knife in her hand with obvious delight, waving it at Arendil with a taunting snicker.
“Come, we check the snares,” Davoka said, hefting her spear. She paused beside Frentis, scowling again at Thirty-Four. “Find another place for him,” she said quietly. “Don’t want him near the children.”
She strode off with Illian scampering after. “I’m not a child,” the girl said. “I’ll be old enough to marry in a year and a half.”