“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 the 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.”