“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 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.”