Lorkan hesitated then reached for the knife, turning and walking towards the fires of the Volarian camp. He paused after a few steps and turned back to Nortah. “Teacher, if I fall tell Cara . . .” He trailed off then forced a grin. “Tell her I was a hero. She won’t believe it, but it may make her laugh, finally.”
He resumed walking, his slender form black against the pale orange horizon, moving without any attempt at stealth or concealment. After he had gone about fifty paces Vaelin heard Adal and the other North Guard utter soft gasps of surprise and bafflement. Vaelin frowned, seeing only a young man walking across a field.
“Shouldn’t be long now.” Nortah notched an arrow to his bow and started after Lorkan. “We’ll secure the slaves. Come on fast when you hear the commotion.”
“He’ll be seen,” Vaelin said, nodding at Lorkan’s retreating shadow.
“Really?” Nortah smiled over his shoulder. “I can’t see him.” He moved off in a low crouch, Snowdance slipping into the grass at his side.
“He’s right, my lord,” Adal said in a whisper. “The boy just . . . vanished.”
They waited as the horizon faded to black and the stars were revealed in a cloudless void, the half-moon adding a pale blue tint to the swaying grass.
“Erm, my lord?” Vaelin turned to see Adal holding out a sword, handle first, the blade resting on his forearm.
“No thank you, Captain.” The canvas bundle was tied to his saddle, the knots still firmly unpicked. “I have a feeling I shan’t need it tonight.”
The screams began shortly after, choked off by Snowdance’s wailing growls. Vaelin spurred Flame into a gallop, the North Guard following instantly as they covered the ground to the Volarian camp in the space of a few heartbeats. He pulled up in the centre of the camp, seeing a slave-hound sail through the air, trailing blood from a torn throat as Snowdance tossed it aside and sought another victim. Bodies lay between the wagons, several pierced with arrows, most clearly the result of the war-cat’s attentions. A few Volarians tried to assail the North Guard with whips and short swords but were swiftly cut down, some throwing their weapons aside and raising arms in a plea for mercy; however, the sights in the village had left the men of the Reaches with no inclination to show it.
He found Nortah helping Lorkan free the slaves from the wagons. They numbered at least a hundred people, evidence that the slavers had visited more than one village. On being unshackled some of them went wild, attacking any Volarians they could find, the living and the dead, but most just stumbled about in shock. One of the freed men recognised Vaelin and immediately sank to his knees, shouting gratitude with tears streaming from his eyes, soon joined by a dozen or more ragged people. He dismounted and went to them, raising his hands to call for silence.
“They answered us,” the man who had recognised him said, still kneeling. “We called to the Departed to send you and they did.”
Vaelin reached down and pulled the man to his feet. “No-one sent me . . .” he began then stopped at the sight of the naked devotion in the man’s eyes. Most of the other freed captives had gathered round now, all staring with unnerving intensity, as if he were something that had stepped from a dream. “I come in answer to the Realm’s need,” he told them. “I offer only war and struggle for any who wish to join with me. Those who don’t are free to go.”
“We go nowhere but with you, my lord,” the weeping man said, immediately echoed by the others. His hands clutched at Vaelin’s arms, frenzied and desperate. “I was with you at Linesh. I knew you would never forsake us.” The other captives closed in around him, voices raised in an awed babble. “You will lead us to freedom . . . The Tower Lord is blessed by the Departed . . . Give us justice, my lord . . . They murdered my children . . .”
“All right!” Nortah moved through the crowd, pushing them back with his bow. “Give His mighty Lordship some room, you fawning fools you.”
Eventually the North Guard had to intervene to release Vaelin from the mob’s adoration, Captain Adal leading Flame to his side so he could mount and ride free. “Escort them back to camp,” he told the captain. “Weapons for any who want them.”
“Even the women, my lord?”
Vaelin recalled the murderous hate in the eyes of a woman he had seen repeatedly lashing a Volarian corpse with her chains. “Even the women. Those unwilling or unsuited to fighting can cook or help Brother Kehlan.”
He started back for the camp in company with Nortah and Lorkan, Snowdance bounding on ahead, her tail whipping about as she rolled and leapt in the grass. “She’s always like that after a hunt,” Nortah explained.
“You are . . . well, brother?” Vaelin ventured, noting a familiar haunted look in his brother’s eyes.
“Thought it might have gotten easier,” Nortah replied with the faintest of grins. “But even with scum like that, it still hurts as much as it ever did.”
“Wasn’t so bad,” Lorkan said, drinking from a liberated flask of wine. From the slur of his words Vaelin suspected it wasn’t his first. “Hit the last bugger like you said, m’lord. Bam bam behind the ear. ’Cept he didn’t fall like the others, just staggered about a bit and reached for his sword.” Vaelin noted the red-brown stain on Lorkan’s hands as he drank some more. “He saw me. They always do when you touch them.”
“But only those not gifted,” Vaelin said. “We can see you regardless. To others it’s as if you vanish.”
“Well deduced, my lord.” Lorkan bowed in his saddle. “But I don’t vanish, not really. It’s more like I slip beneath their notice, like the buzz of a fly or the shadow of a bird on the ground. As a child I walked the streets of South Tower for years, stealing at will. They see me but don’t see me, so I can steal from them, unless I touch them, then these days it seems I have to kill them.” He raised the wine flask to his lips again, gulping and nearly tipping over until Nortah reached out to steady him. “Don’t tell Cara, Teacher,” the young man said. “What I did. I don’t want her to know.”
◆ ◆ ◆
They marched on in the morning, halting at midday when Captain Orven rode in with confirmation of Dahrena’s warning about a large host approaching from the west. “Twelve miles distant as of this morning, my lord,” the guardsman reported. “We only saw the dust and a few outriders so I can’t say for sure how many.”
Vaelin ordered the regiments into a battle line astride a low hill, facing west with the Eorhil on both flanks and Nortah’s archers strung out in a loose skirmish line a hundred paces in front. The Seordah had accepted the role of rear-guard without demur, clustering about the baggage train in their clans, an arrow notched to every bow. Vaelin placed himself in the centre, the North Guard on his left and Orven’s men on his right, positioned just to the rear of Foreman Ultin’s miners. Dahrena was at his side, patently ignoring Adal’s scowl of disapproval.
There was little talk in the ranks, Vaelin recalled that the stillness before battle had a tendency to calm the tongue. He sat astride Flame, watching the dust-cloud rise above the western hills as the blood-song sang a placid tune lacking any warning. He waited as they came on, loosely ordered companies of light infantry resolving out of the dust, a few troops of cavalry fanning out to cover the flanks. They strung out in a somewhat uneven line some three hundred paces distant, a banner showing an axe within a six-spoked wheel fluttering over the centre of their line.
“Lower weapons!” Vaelin ordered. “Stand easy in the ranks.”
The miners stepped aside as he walked Flame forward then spurred to a trot, raising his hand to the man who rode from the Nilsaelin line to greet him, a lean-faced fellow with a mutilated left ear and close-cropped hair. “I hope you brought more, my lord,” Count Marven said. “As I fear this is nowhere near enough.”
◆ ◆ ◆
Fief Lord Darvus Ezua was possibly the oldest human being Vaelin could remember meeting, sitting in his high-backed Lord’s Chair, bony hands clutching the rests and regarding Vaelin with a deep scrutiny that reminded him of Janus’s owlish gaze. Vaelin and Dahrena stood before him in a large tent in the centre of the Nilsaelin camp, the old lord flanked by his twin grandsons, both of whom seemed to have made efforts to distinguish themselves from one another with differing armour and mismatched capes. They were, however, both uniformly tall and blond with mirrored faces and, Vaelin noticed, a disconcerting tendency to blink in unison. Count Marven stood in a corner of the tent, his expression one of studied neutrality.
“This little jaunt nearly killed me, you know,” Fief Lord Darvus said, his voice marked by a noticeable croak but still strong and clear. “And the poor buggers who had to carry my litter.”
“War was ever a demanding master, my lord,” Vaelin replied.
“War, is it?” The old man gave a brief cackle. “What makes you think I’m here for that?”
“We are invaded. Why else would you bring your host?”
“A show of strength is important when negotiating. Did the same thing when I bent my knee to Janus, though it was stiff as a board even then. Still made me do it though, the Asraelin bastard.”