“You’ll fight me from now on,” he told Vaelin as they faced each other, wooden swords ready.
“An honour master,” Vaelin said.
Sollis’s sword cracked against his wrist, the wooden blade flying from his grasp. Vaelin tried to step backwards but Sollis was too fast, the shaft of ash thudding into his midriff, forcing the air from his lungs as he collapsed to the ground.
“You should always respect an opponent,” Sollis was telling the others as Vaelin fought to contain his rising gorge. “But not too much.”
With winter came Frentis’s Test of the Wild and they gathered in the courtyard to see him off with a few choice words of advice.
“Stay out of caves,” said Nortah.
“Kill and eat everything you can find,” Caenis told him.
“Don’t lose your flint,” Dentos advised.
“If there’s a storm,” Vaelin said, “stay in your shelter and don’t listen to the wind.”
Only Barkus had nothing to say. Finding Jennis’s body during his own Test was still a raw memory and he confined his farewell to a soft pat on Frentis’s shoulder.
“Lookin’ forward to it, I am,” Frentis told them brightly, hefting his pack. “Five days outside the walls. No practice, no canings. Can’t wait.”
“Five days of cold and hunger,” Nortah reminded him.
Frentis shrugged. “Been hungry before. Cold too. Reckon I’ll get used to it again quick enough.”
Vaelin was struck by how strong Frentis had become in the two years since his joining. He was now almost as tall as Caenis and his shoulders seemed to grow broader by the day. Added to the change in his body was the change in his character, the whine that coloured his speech as a boy had mostly disappeared and he approached every challenge with a blind confidence in his own abilities. It was no surprise that he had emerged as leader of his group, although his reaction to criticism was often instant anger and occasional violence.
They watched him climb into the cart with the other boys. Master Hutril snapped the reins and steered the cart through the gate, Frentis waving with a broad grin on his face.
“He’ll make it,” Caenis assured Vaelin.
“Too right he will,” Dentos said. “He’s the type that comes back fatter than when he went out.”
The days passed slowly as they practised and nursed their bruises, Vaelin’s concern for Frentis growing with every dawn. Four days after the boy’s departure it had begun to dominate his thoughts, dulling his sword skills and leaving him with livid bruises he barely noticed. He couldn’t shake the nagging knowledge that something was wrong. It was a familiar feeling by now, a shadow on his thoughts he had grown to trust, but stronger now, nagging, persistent, like a tune he couldn’t quite remember.
When the fifth day passed he found himself hovering near the gates, clutching his cloak about him as he searched the gathering dark for sign of the cart bringing Frentis back to the safety of the Order House.
“What are we doing here?” Nortah asked, his face for once made ugly by the pinching chill of a winter’s night. The others were back in their tower room. Today’s practice had been hard, harder even than they were used to, and they had cuts to tend before the evening meal.
“I’m waiting for Frentis,” Vaelin replied. “Go inside if you’re cold.”
“Didn’t say I was cold,” Nortah muttered but stayed put.
Finally, as the clear winter sky darkened to reveal its stars, the cart came into view, Master Hutril guiding it towards the gate, bearing four charges, three less than had left with him five days before. Vaelin knew even before the drays’ shoes clattered on the courtyard cobbles that Frentis was not among them.
“Where is he?” he demanded of Master Hutril as he reined in.
Master Hutril ignored the discourtesy and gave Vaelin a rigidly neutral glance. “Wasn’t there,” he said, climbing down from the cart. “Need to see the Aspect. Stay here.” With that he stomped off towards the Aspect’s chambers. Vaelin managed to wait a full ten seconds before hastening after him.
Master Hutril was in the Aspect’s rooms for several long minutes before he emerged, walking past Vaelin without a glance, ignoring his questions. The Aspect’s door remained firmly closed and Vaelin found himself stepping forward to knock.
“No!” Nortah’s hand was on his wrist. “Are you mad?”
“I need to know.”
“You have to wait.”
“Wait for what? Silence? No sign that he had ever been here? Like Mikehl or Jennis? Light a fire, say some words and it’s another one of us gone, forgotten.”
“The Test of the Wild is hard, brother…”
“Not for him! For him it was nothing…”
“You don’t know that. You don’t know what could have happened beyond the walls.”
“I know hunger and cold would never have laid him low. He was too strong.”
“For all his strength he was but a boy. As we were when they sent us out into the cold and the dark to fend for ourselves.”
Vaelin tore his wrist away, smoothing his hands through his hair in frustration. “I don’t think he was ever a boy.”
The sound of boots on stone snapped their attention to the corridor, seeing Master Sollis striding towards them. “What are you two doing here?” he demanded, halting before the Aspect’s door.
“Waiting for news of our brother, master,” Vaelin replied evenly.
Sollis showed a brief spasm of anger before he reached for the door handle. “Then wait.” With that he went inside.
It was only five minutes or so but seemed like an hour. Abruptly the door opened and Master Sollis jerked his head indicating leave to enter. They found the Aspect behind his desk, his long face as inexpressive as ever but there was a calculation in the gaze he levelled at Vaelin, as if what was about to transpire had more import than he could know.
“Brother Vaelin,” he said. “Do you know if Brother Frentis has any enemies outside these walls?”
Enemies… Vaelin felt his heart plummet. He found him. I couldn’t protect him. “There is a man, Aspect,” he replied, his tone heavy with sorrow. “The leader of Varinshold’s criminal fraternity. Before Brother Frentis joined us he put a knife in his eye. I have heard that he still bears a grudge.”
Master Sollis gave a snort of exasperation and Nortah, for once, appeared lost for words.
“And it didn’t occur to you,” the Aspect said, “to share this information with myself or Master Sollis?”
Vaelin could only shake his head in numb silence.
“You arrogant idiot,” Master Sollis said, very precisely.
“Yes master.”
“What’s done is done,” the Aspect said. “Do you have any notion of where this man with one eye might take our brother?”
Vaelin’s head snapped up. “He’s alive?”
“Master Hutril found a body, but it wasn’t Brother Frentis, although the unfortunate fellow had one of our Order’s hunting knives buried in his chest. There were signs of a fierce struggle, several blood trails, but no Brother Frentis.”
Somehow they knew he was here. So stupid to think One Eye’s servants wouldn’t find him. They must have followed the cart, took him alive. The words of Gallis the Climber came back to him: One Eye says he’s gonna take a year to skin him alive when he finds him…
“I will recover him,” he told the Aspect, his voice cold with certainty. “I will kill those who took him and bring him back to the Order. Living or dead.”
The Aspect’s eyes flicked to Master Sollis.
“What do you need?” Sollis asked.
“Half a day outside the walls, my brothers, and my dog.”
Scratch seemed to know what was expected of him, sniffing the sock they had found under Frentis’s bunk and immediately sprinting off with a brief yelp. Vaelin had led him to the road leading to Varinshold's North Gate before producing the sock, the slave-hound’s evident joy at finding himself beyond the confines of the Order House muted by their grim mood. They ran after him, labouring to keep him in sight, the slave-hound setting a killing pace as he traced a winding route away from the road and towards the banks of the Brinewash. Vaelin found him pawing uncertainly at a patch of mud near some shallows, a plainting whine coming from his throat as he pointed his nose at something lying in the river. Vaelin’s heart plummeted at the sight of the body, face down and covered with a blue cloak.
He jumped into the shallows and waded towards it, his brothers soon joining him to pull the body onto its back.
“Who’s this bugger?” Dentos asked.
The dead man was short, only a little taller than Frentis, with a pock-marked face and a recent cut on his cheek.
“He’s drained,” Nortah observed, noting the man's pallor and ripping open his shirt to reveal a stab wound to the lower belly. “Our little brother's work perhaps.”
Vaelin pulled the cloak from the corpse and they searched it for any clue as to Frentis's whereabouts, finding nothing save some sodden pipe leaf.
“I make it five horses,” Caenis said, crouching to examine the tracks in the mud at the water’s edge. “He fell from his mount when they forded so they took anything of value and left him to bleed. ”