It was another mile before they saw it, a column of black smoke rising above the trees, Frentis breaking into an immediate run. Davoka called to him but he ran on, the wound now a burning cinder in his side and his vision starting to swim. He stumbled to a halt at the sight of the first body, a man in a blue cloak, propped against a tree, face white as marble. Frentis went to him, searching the face but seeing a stranger. Young, probably newly confirmed. The brother had a sword within reach of his right hand, the blade dark with dried blood. His chest was encrusted with his own, the earth beneath him damp from it.
“What is death?” Frentis whispered. “Death is but a gateway to the Beyond and union with the Departed. It is both ending and beginning. Fear it and welcome it.”
He got to his feet, swaying a little, wiping sweat from his eyes, stumbling on. He found more bodies, all Kuritai, at least a dozen littering the forest, a few still moving despite their wounds, quickly dispatched with the point of his sword. A hundred yards on he found another brother, a tall man with two arrows in his chest. Master Smentil, the tongueless gardener. You always let me get away, Frentis thought, recalling his apple-stealing missions to the orchard. And they always tasted so sweet.
His gaze was drawn to a strange sight, another dead Kuritai, but instead of lying on the forest floor he was impaled on the broken stump of a tree branch, hanging at least ten feet in the air, blood dripping into a growing puddle below.
Frentis staggered as a fresh bout of pain and fever tore through him. Tearing his eyes from the bloody spectacle of the impaled man, he stumbled on but managed only a few more steps before the pain forced him to his knees. No! He tried to crawl forward, seeing more blue-cloaked corpses ahead. I need to go home.
“Brother?” The voice was soft, cautious and familiar.
Frentis rolled onto his back, chest heaving, dazzled by the sun blazing through the swaying leaves above, the light dimming as a very large shadow came into view. “Were I a suspicious man,” Master Grealin said, “I might see some significance in your returning to us on this particular day.”
The shadow disappeared and Frentis felt himself being lifted, head lolling as he was carried away.
◆ ◆ ◆
It was dark when he awoke, starting from the feel of fingers on his wound. “Lie still,” Davoka said. “You’ll work them loose.”
He relaxed, feeling a bed of soft ferns under his back, looking up at a roof of cloth. “Fat man’s cloak makes a good shelter,” Davoka said, wiping her hands and settling back on her haunches. Frentis looked down at the wound, grunting in disgust at the mass of wriggling white maggots covering it.
“Forests are full of dead things, rotting away,” Davoka said. “The white worms only eat dead flesh. Another day and they clean the wound.” She pressed a hand against his forehead, nodding in satisfaction. “Not so hot, good.”
“Where,” Frentis coughed and swallowed. “Where are we?”
“Deeper in the forest,” she said. “Trees are thick here.”
“The fat man? Is he the only one?”
She gave an expressionless nod. “I tell him you’re awake.”
The years had done little to diminish Master Grealin’s girth, though there was a hollowed-out look to his face as he settled his bulk next to Frentis, flesh hanging from prominent cheekbones below sunken eyes.
“The Aspect?” Frentis asked without preamble.
“Dead or captured, I expect. The storm broke far too quickly, brother, and with the regiment off chasing shadows in Cumbrael . . .” He spread his hands.
“Who did you see fall?”
“Master Haunlin and Master Hutril were both cut down on the walls, though they certainly made them pay for it. I saw Master Makril and his hound charge into the battalion that broke through the gate, but by then the Aspect had ordered us to flee and I was running for the vaults. There’s a passage, built centuries ago for just such an emergency, it leads from the vaults all the way into the Urlish. Myself, Master Smentil and a few brothers made it through but they caught us on the other side.”
Frentis was struck by the absence of emotion in Grealin’s tone, his voice clear but distant, almost as if he were telling one of his innumerable stories of the Order’s history. “They killed the boys too,” he said, sounding more puzzled than outraged. “All the little men, fighting like wildcats to the last.” A faint, fond smile came to his plump lips and he lapsed into silence.
“Does this mean you are now Aspect?” Frentis asked after a moment.
“You know Aspects do not ascend by virtue of seniority. And I hardly think I stand as the best example of the Order’s ethos, do you? But it does mean that, until we can join with our brothers in the north, we are all that remains of the Order in this fief.”
“You were right.” Frentis paused to cough, accepting the canteen Grealin passed to him and gulping some water.
“Right?” he enquired. “About what?”
“To be suspicious of my return. My presence here is no coincidence.”
A glimmer of the old twinkle shone in Grealin’s eye. “I have a feeling you are about to tell me a very interesting story, brother.”
◆ ◆ ◆
“The Lonak woman and the others,” Grealin said some hours later, the forest now pitch-dark save for the glow of the campfire outside the shelter. “I trust you’ve told them nothing of your enforced role in our King’s sad demise?”
“I told them it was an assassin, an assassin I killed. Master, I seek no pardon for my crime . . .”
“It was not your crime, brother. And I can see no good arising from any misguided honesty. Indulge your guilt when this war is won.”
“Yes, Master.”
“This woman with whom you journeyed. You’re certain she’s dead?”
Her red smile, the love shining in her eyes before he twisted the blade . . . Beloved . . . “Very.”
Grealin fell to silence, lost in thought for several long minutes. When he spoke again it was a reflective murmur. “She stole a gift . . .”
“Master?”
Grealin blinked then turned to him with a smile. “Rest, brother. Sooner you’re mended the sooner we can plan our war, eh?”
“You intend to fight?”
“That is our Order’s charge, is it not?”
Frentis nodded. “I am glad we are of like mind in this.”
“Hungry for revenge, brother?”
Frentis felt a smile come to his lips. “Starving, Master.”
◆ ◆ ◆
He knew it was a dream from the slow even beat of his heart, free of hatred or guilt; the heart of a contented man. He stood on a beach, watching the surf crash on the shore. Gulls soared low over the waves and the air had a bitter chill, harsh on his skin but welcome all the same. There was a child playing near the water’s edge, a boy of perhaps seven years. Nearby a slender woman stood, close enough to catch the boy should he venture too close to the waves. Her face was turned from him, long dark hair twisted and tangled in the wind, a plain woollen shawl about her shoulders.
He walked to her, feet soft on the sand, keeping low. She kept her gaze on the boy, seemingly deaf to his approach, then spinning as he closed, catching the arm he sought to wrap around her neck, a kick sending him sprawling to the sand.
“One day,” he said, scowling up at her.
“But not today, beloved,” she replied with a laugh, helping him up.
She pressed herself against him, planting a soft kiss on his lips, then turned back to the boy as his arms enfolded her. “I did say he would be beautiful.”
“You did, and you were right.”
She shuddered against the wind, pulling his arms tighter about her. “Why did you kill me?”
Tears were falling down his face, his contented heart vanished now, replaced by something fierce and hungry. “Because of all the people we killed. Because of the madness I saw in your eyes. Because you refused this.”
She gasped as his arms tightened, ribs breaking. The boy was caught by a wave and began to jump in the water, laughing and waving at his parents. The woman laughed and coughed blood.
“Did you ever have a name?” Frentis asked her.
She convulsed in his arms and he knew she was smiling her red smile once more. “I still do, beloved . . .”
◆ ◆ ◆
He was woken by shouting, rolling from his bed of ferns and feeling every muscle groan in protest. He looked at the wound, finding it bandaged with no sign of maggots. He was light-headed and possessed of a monstrous thirst, but the fever was gone, his skin cold to the touch and free of sweat. He pulled on his dead man’s jerkin and emerged from the shelter.
“The brother I know,” Ratter was shouting at Master Grealin. “You I don’t, fat man. Don’t give me no fuckin’ orders.”
Frentis looked on in wide-eyed wonder as the master failed to beat the wiry thief to the ground. Instead he gave a patient nod and clasped his hands together. “Not orders, good fellow. Merely an observation . . .”
“Oh, bugger off with the big words—”
Frentis’s cuff caught Ratter on the side of the head and sent him sprawling. “Don’t talk to him like that,” he stated, turning to Grealin. “Problem, Master?”