It wasn’t just the shoreline, he could see that now. The sea was crowded with corpses from beach to horizon. All the world’s dead within his gaze. “How?”
“I would have been terrible,” she replied. “My reign one of boundless greed and lust, a bitter queen visiting her lonely spite on the whole world. For you would have left me by then, fallen in the last hopeless battle against my Horde. But terrible as fate would make me, I am not him. This would not have been my doing. I was the one chance this world had for salvation.”
He let her take his hand, feeling the warmth of her flesh, not cold like before. He knew then in a chilled rush of certainty that if she had agreed to his bargain, they would have been together for the rest of their days. All hatreds and crimes forgotten in this distant place where they would have raised their child as the world fell to ruin beyond their sight. The guilt of it choked him, made him want to enfold her in his arms once more, snap her bones and feel her shudder as death took her.
She smiled, the cruelty gone as she clasped his hand tighter, her voice catching as she said the final words. “I’m sorry, my love. But we both need to wake up now.”
◆ ◆ ◆
“Brother!” Arendil’s voice was low but urgent as he shook him from sleep with a hard tug on his arm. “Riders coming.”
He led them up a narrow track in the cliff’s side, lying down atop it and peering over the edge as the riders came into view. A battalion of Free Cavalry headed by a troop of Renfaelin knights, a tall figure in blue-enamelled armour riding in front. Frentis felt Arendil stiffen at his side as the figure came closer.
“Your father?”
The boy’s face was grim with hate, knuckles white on the handle of his long sword. “He always wears blue armour. Spends half the fief’s treasury on it, so they say.”
The riders halted about three hundred paces off, hunters and dogs coming to the head of the column. It wasn’t long before one pointed directly at the gully.
“We run while they look for us here,” Davoka said. “Be miles gone before they find our trail.”
Grealin spoke the words already forming in Frentis’s mind. “And when they do they’ll be on us before nightfall.” He met Frentis’s gaze. “I’m very tired of running, brother.”
◆ ◆ ◆
The fat man stood outside the overhang, hands clasped over his extensive belly as the riders galloped into the gully. The tall knight in the blue armour raised a hand, halting the battalion and trotting forward with a bow to greet the fat man, although he felt no impulse to dismount. Their conversation could be only half heard from Frentis’s hiding place at the head of the gully, crouching behind a rock with Arendil at his side, but he discerned the words “Red Brother” and “son.” Grealin spoke his replies with an easy smile and an affable nod, neither of which seemed to hold much sway with the knight who soon drew his sword, nudging his mount forward until the tip was a few inches from the Aspect’s chest. “Enough, brother,” Frentis heard him say. “Where are they? No more games.”
Frentis raised his eyebrows at Arendil. The boy’s face was bleached white but still determined as he replied with a nod.
“Darnel!” Frentis called, stepping free of cover, bow in hand with arrow notched, Arendil at his side, long sword drawn.
The knight wheeled his horse towards them, eyes unseen behind his visor but the triumph of the moment clear in the shouted orders he cast at his retainers. They spurred forward in an instant gallop, forgetting Grealin in what proved a singular misjudgement.
The Aspect allowed the knights and a dozen Free Swords to gallop past before stepping away from the cliff face, turning and raising his arms as he backed away, splayed fingers pointing at the worn notch of the overhang. A sound like a thunderclap echoed through the gully, red dust exploding to envelop the Volarian cavalry, horses rearing in the billowing cloud.
Grealin continued to back away as another thunderclap sounded, the knights’ charge faltering at the force of the concussion shaking the earth, making their mounts draw up in alarm. The man in the blue armour whipped his reins against his horse’s flank to stop it rearing, turning in time to see a spiderweb of cracks spread through the sandstone cliff in the space of a heartbeat. Frentis put an arrow in his leg as he sat staring, the steel-headed barb finding the thinly shielded knee joint. The knight twisted in the saddle, clutching at the shaft then tumbling to the ground as another shaft took him in the gap between breastplate and shoulder.
He lay on the ground, his shouts lost as the cliff continued to fragment behind him, breaking apart in a blast of sound that sent Frentis and Arendil reeling. The sandstone slabs tumbled into the gully below, shrieks of men and horses drowned by the crescendo of falling stone.
More dust rose in a tall plume, swallowing Grealin’s slumped form as the surviving cavalrymen and knights wheeled in confusion. Frentis got to his feet and felled a cavalryman with an arrow to the back as the fighters appeared on both sides of the gully’s edge, loosing arrows and crossbow bolts in a volley that did credit to their weeks of hard-won experience. Frentis saw about half the horsemen fall as he cast his bow aside and charged forward with sword drawn, the fighters running in from both sides.
It was done quickly, the knights and cavalrymen speared or hacked down in short order. He saw Arendil leap and bring his long sword down to cleave through a cavalryman’s arm as he tried to slash at Davoka. Ermund stood in front of a charging knight, sword held level with his head, stepping aside at the last instant to deliver an expert upward slash, finding the knight’s unarmoured throat and sending him from the saddle in a spiral of blood.
Frentis found Grealin lying on his side, eyes half-closed and a thick stream of blood seeping from every opening. He crouched next to him, laying a hand on his broad arm. The Aspect’s eyes fluttered open, still weeping red tears. They regarded Frentis for a silent moment, bright and clear, the flesh around them creasing as Grealin smiled. He sputtered, blood spurting from his mouth as he tried to speak. Frentis leaned close to hear him rasp, “I think . . . I prefer life . . . without prophecy.”
“Aspect?”
But there were no more words from the Aspect of the Seventh Order. Nor would there ever be.
◆ ◆ ◆
Frentis walked towards the prostate form of the man in the blue armour. He was struggling to rise, a torrent of pained profanity issuing from his masked lips. Frentis put his sword point under the visor, the knight becoming instantly still as the other fighters crowded round.
“Don’t we have to try him first?” Draker asked. “Since he’s a Fief Lord and all.”
“Just kill the bastard, brother,” Ermund said. “Or let me have the honour.”
Frentis flipped the visor up, revealing a thin face with bloodied lips and terror-filled eyes.
“Wenders!” Ermund said in disdain, stepping forward to deliver a kick to the man’s skewered knee, drawing an agonised howl. “We want the master, not the dog. Let you out to play in his armour did he? Where is he?” He kicked again. “Where?”
“Enough,” Frentis said. “You know this man?”
“Rekus Wenders, Darnel’s chief retainer and lick-spittle. Led the knights who came for the baron, handed me and my men to the Volarians. Those he hadn’t slaughtered.”
“I-I follow my Fief Lord,” Wenders stammered. “I am bound to him by oath . . .”
“Fuck your oath.” Ermund stamped his boot onto Wenders’s neck and began to push down hard. “My cousins died that day, you filth!”
Davoka stepped forward, laying her hand on Ermund’s chest, her face fierce with disapproval. The knight stared at her in fury then turned away with a shout of frustration, leaving Wenders gasping on the ground.
Frentis beckoned to Thirty-Four. The former slave left off from cleaning his short sword and came to stand at his side, regarding Wenders with his customary incurious stare.
“This man was a numbered slave with a particular skill set,” Frentis told Wenders. “I assume you’ve seen enough of the Volarians to know what that means.”
The knight’s face became rigid with fear and a sharp smell arose from his armour.
“Faith!” Draker said, turning away in disgust. “Watching the knight kill him would’ve been easier to bear.” He walked off to rifle the corpses for valuables; an outlaw’s habits were hard to break.
“Good,” Frentis said to Wenders, sinking to his haunches. “We have little time for my friend’s usual subtlety, so you’ll understand the importance of brief but honest answers.”
The knight’s head began a vigorous nodding in the confines of his helmet.
“You will tell me all you know of Lord Darnel’s dispositions in Varinshold,” Frentis informed him. “How many men he has, where he sleeps, what he eats. And you will also tell me where he keeps the Aspect of my order.”
◆ ◆ ◆
They built a fire for Grealin, having no time for more than the briefest of words, Frentis stumbling through them as best he could. How do you do justice to a man like this in a few phrases? he thought. He faltered to a halt in trying to recite the Catechism of Faith and Davoka stepped forward as the others exchanged uncertain glances.
“My people fear those like him,” she said, voice ringing in the confines of the gully. “We think they steal what belongs to the Mahlessa and the gods, becoming twisted with the theft, unworthy of trust or clan. This man taught me that we are wrong.”
Arendil came forward, smiling sadly at Grealin’s shrouded bulk. “He used to tell me stories about the Order sometimes, at night when the others were asleep. Every one was different, carrying a new lesson. I hope I listened as well as I should.”
Illian went to his side as her face bunched in anticipation of tears, grasping his hand before raising her own voice. “He said blood made me a lady, but life had made me a huntress. He thought it suited me better.”
Frentis moved forward with the torch, touching it to the kindling and stepping back. “Good-bye Master,” he whispered as the flames rose.
◆ ◆ ◆
Davoka stripped Wenders of his armour and removed the arrows before binding his wounds. She wasn’t gentle and the knight’s yelps were enough to make Ermund clamp a hand over his mouth and hold a dagger to his throat as she completed her work. They propped him against a fallen section of cliff with a canteen within easy reach.
“When your lord asks,” Frentis said, “tell him the Red Brother offers his compliments and will return shortly to settle our business. If you’re smart, you’ll forget to tell him how helpful you’ve been.”
“You’re all fools,” the knight replied, finding some vestige of courage now it was clear they didn’t intend to kill him. “This land belongs to the Volarians now. If you want to live, you have to join with them. Think me a coward if you want, but I’ll still be breathing twenty years from now whilst you’ll all be long de—”
Illian’s crossbow bolt made a loud metallic ping as it punched through Wender’s eye to connect with the rock behind his head. Incredibly he managed to gasp out a few final words, whatever wisdom they held lost in a babble of spittle before he slumped forward, lifeless and silent.
“Sorry, brother,” Illian told Frentis with an expression of sincere contrition. “My finger slipped.”
◆ ◆ ◆
They trekked north for three days. There had been only two surviving horses from the carnage in the gully, tall Renfaelin steeds now pressed into service as pack animals under Master Rensial’s care. The Volarian dead had yielded a decent supply of food, strips of dried beef and a hard biscuit of wheat and barley that turned into a surprisingly appetising porridge when placed in boiling water.
On the third day the crags and vales of northern Asrael gave way to the tall downs of the Renfaelin border, the grassy mounds rising from pasture largely devoid of forest or sheltering rocks.
“We could turn east,” Draker suggested. “Make for the coast. Country’s more broken up there. Remember it well from my smuggling days.”
“We can’t afford the time,” Frentis replied, though he shared the big man’s reluctance. Perfect place for cavalry, but there’s nothing else for it.
They kept to the low country as much as possible, steering clear of roads or villages, climbing the downs only to make camp come evening. Two more days’ march brought them within sight of the River Andur, beyond which Arendil assured them lay forest aplenty.
“Thanks to the Departed,” Illian said. “I feel naked out here.”
◆ ◆ ◆
They covered five miles the following morning before they heard it, a distant thunder accompanied by a faint tremble in the earth. By now there was none amongst them so naïve as to mistake it for an approaching storm.
“Moving south,” Davoka reported, lying down with her ear to the ground. “Ahead of us.” She got to her feet with a grave expression. “Be here very soon.”
“Illian! Arendil!” Frentis beckoned them over to the two horses, Master Rensial swiftly removing the packs and handing them the reins. “Ride west,” Frentis told them. “Push hard. A week’s journey will take you to Nilsael . . .” He trailed off at the sight of Illian releasing the reins and stepping back, arms crossed. Arendil stood at her side, also empty-handed.
“This is not a game . . .” he began.
“I know it’s not a game, brother,” Illian broke in. “And I am not a child, neither is Arendil. You can’t do what we have done and remain children. We’re staying.”
Frentis stared at them helplessly, guilt threatening to force a scream from his breast. If you die here, it’s my fault!
“Always was a long bet, brother,” Arendil said with a grim smile.
Frentis breathed out slowly, letting the scream die, casting his gaze about their bedraggled company and finding no fear on any face. They all looked at him in silent respect, waiting for orders. I was made monstrous, they made me better. They brought me back. I came home.
He could feel the rumble in the ground beneath his feet now, building steadily. Must be a thousand or more. “Form a circle,” he said, pointing to a slight rise in the ground twenty paces off. “Master Rensial, please mount up and stand with me in the centre.”
He hauled himself onto one of the warhorses, trotting over to the rise and standing with Rensial alongside as the others closed in around them, forming a spiked hedge of drawn swords and raised bows.
The first riders came into view only minutes later, dim figures in the lingering morning mist, twenty men riding hard. No armour, Frentis saw. Volarian scouts . . . All thought fled as he caught sight of the face of the lead rider. A lean man of middling years with close-cropped hair and pale eyes, his dark blue cloak billowing behind.
“Lower weapons,” Frentis said, dismounting and walking forward on unsteady legs as the blue-cloaked man reined in a short distance away.
“Brother,” Master Sollis greeted him, his voice even more hoarse than Frentis remembered. “You seem to be marching in the wrong direction.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Reva
Reva could hear the Reader’s voice before she reached the square, making her wonder how such an old man could shout so loud.
“. . . the Father’s Sight is taken from us, stolen by these wretched Heretics . . .”
She sprinted into the square, finding it full of people from end to end, crowding around with eyes fixed on the centre, rapt by the Reader’s words.
“. . . this city is the Father’s gift! The jewel given unto the Loved and named for his greatest servant! But we have allowed the corruption of unbelief to fester here . . .”
“Move aside!” Reva began shoving her way through the crowd, most onlookers making way when they saw her face, others proving more reluctant and she was in no mood to be gentle.
“Move I said!” she snarled, the man who reached out to grasp her arm staggering back with a bloody nose. Her passage was a little easier after that.
“. . . cleanse this city! Those are the Father’s words to me, revealed in the Ten Books, though I have laboured long to find another course. ‘Make my city pure again and my Sight will fall on you once more . . .’”
She struggled free of the crowd, emerging to find the square filled with kneeling people, all bound with rope and surrounded by men with swords. She noticed a few of the sword-bearers were priests whilst others were mostly men of middling years, some a little too old to have seen service on the walls. At the sight of her a few grew visibly discomforted, but there were plenty who stared at her with stern-faced defiance, one even stepping forward to block her path as she moved towards the Reader.
Her sword came free of the scabbard in a blur and the man drew up short. With a shock Reva recognised him as the fruit seller who had sold her an apple that first day on the cathedral steps. “Get out my way,” she instructed him, voice soft and full of dire promise. The fruit seller paled and stepped back.
“She comes!” the Reader intoned from the cathedral steps. “As I foretold. The whore’s bastard pupil, the falsely blessed.”
Reva’s gaze took in the sight of Brother Harin, kneeling with a bloodied face in the front row of captives. Veliss knelt beside the healer, arms tied behind her back and a wooden gag secured in her mouth. Arken knelt at her side, hardly able to keep upright, his skin pale and head sagging.
“I have a blessing for you,” Reva told the Reader, breaking into a run, a red haze clouding her vision. “It’s made of steel, not words.”
The Reader’s pet priest tried to stop her, casting an inexpert thrust at her chest with a rapier. It clattered to the tiles along with two of his fingers. The Reader was flanked by his bishops and she found it significant that none came forward to shield him from her charge, most staring in shock or deciding to avert their gaze, although she was sure she glimpsed a smile or two. The old man fell like a bundle of rags as she grasped his robe, forcing him to the steps, sword drawn back.