Tower Lord

CHAPTER EIGHT

Frentis

The Free Sword held the blade up to the moonlight, running an admiring eye over the edge, smiling a little as he picked out the grey flames trapped in the metal. Truly a valuable prize to take home.

“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.”

“The value of surprise should never be underestimated,” the master observed.

They sat together on the riverbank a short walk from the camp where over three hundred souls now made their home. They had been accumulating refugees and freed slaves for the past few weeks, some electing to move on when it became clear they were expected to fight, most deciding to stay. Even so their fighting strength numbered barely a hundred, the remainder too young, old, sick or ill trained to carry a weapon against the Volarians. Before last night their victories had been small, confined to raiding slavers’ caravans and Volarian supply trains.

“They’ll be coming,” the master said. “Now we’ve proved ourselves more than a nuisance.”

“As we knew they would. Master, about the Aspect . . .”

Grealin shook his bald head. “No.”

“I know many ways in . . .”

“To search an entire city for one man, who for all we know languishes in the hold of a slave ship halfway across the ocean by now. I’m sorry, brother, but no. These people need their champion, now more than ever.”

The slave was sitting where he left him, silent and unmoving beside the shelter Davoka shared with Illian. The girl stared at him in open curiosity as she stirred the pot of soup hanging over the fire, the rising aroma convincing Frentis her talents, whatever they were, didn’t reside in cookery.

“Brother!” She brightened as he moved to his own tent, unbuckling the sword from his back. “Another victory. The whole camp is afire with it. Did you really kill ten of the beasts?”

“I don’t know,” he replied honestly.

“Take me next time,” Arendil said in a sullen voice, prodding the cook fire with a stick. “I’ll kill more than ten.”

“You couldn’t kill a mouse,” Illian said with a laugh.

“I am a trained squire of House Banders,” the boy retorted. “Dishonoured by being left here with you whilst my comrades win glorious victory.”

“The camp must be guarded,” Frentis told him in a tone that indicated he had heard enough on this subject.

He took a bowl and scooped some soup from the pot, moving to squat down at the slave’s side. “Eat,” he said, holding it in front of his face.

The slave took the bowl and began to eat with mechanical obedience, holding it to his lips and drinking the less-than-flavoursome contents without sign of reluctance.

“You have a name?” Frentis asked when he had finished.

“I do, Master. Number Thirty-Four.”

Numbered slave. A specialist, trained from childhood for a particular task. This man can’t be more than twenty-five, but I’ll wager he’s taken far more lives than I, none of them quickly.

“I’m not a master,” he told Thirty-Four. “And you are not a slave. You’re free.”

The slave’s face betrayed no joy at this news, just bafflement as he voiced a sentence with an oddly stilted intonation. “Freedom, once lost, cannot be regained. Those not born free are enslaved by the weakness of their blood. Those enslaved in life forsake freedom by virtue of their own weakness.”

“That sounds like something you read,” Frentis observed.

“Codicils of the Ruling Council, Volume Six.”

“Well, forget the Council and the empire. You’re a long way from both, and this Realm has no slaves.”

Thirty-Four gave him a cautious glance. “You do not bring me here to exact revenge?”

“You only do as you are commanded, since you were old enough to remember. Am I correct?”

Thirty-Four nodded, reaching into his tunic and extracting a small glass vial on a chain about his neck. “I need this, it numbs the pain . . . my pain. It’s how I do what I do.”

Frentis eyed the pale yellow liquid in the vial and felt an echo of the binding flicker across his chest. “And if you stop taking it?”

“I . . . hurt.”

“You’re a free man now, you can take it or not, as you wish. You can stay with us or go, as you wish.”

“What do you want of me?”

“You have skills, they will be useful to us.”

Davoka arrived, dumping the sack of grain she had carried from the Order House next to the fire and scowling at the sight of the slave. She accepted a bowl of soup from Illian, spooning some into her mouth and promptly spitting it out. “No more of this for you,” she told Illian, taking the soup pot and tipping the contents into a patch of ferns. She went to her tent and returned with a captured Volarian knife, tossing it to the girl. “You learn to hunt. Arendil, make more soup.”

Illian looked at the knife in her hand with obvious delight, waving it at Arendil with a taunting snicker.

“Come, we check the snares,” Davoka said, hefting her spear. She paused beside Frentis, scowling again at Thirty-Four. “Find another place for him,” she said quietly. “Don’t want him near the children.”

She strode off with Illian scampering after. “I’m not a child,” the girl said. “I’ll be old enough to marry in a year and a half.”

Arendil aimed a kick at the soup pot, grumbling, “I’m the blood heir to the Lordship of Renfael, you know.”

Frentis rose, gesturing for Thirty-Four to follow. “Allow me to show you something.”

Janril sat opposite the captive, honing the edge of his sword with a whetstone. The Volarian was large, impressive muscles bulging on the arms pulled back and secured to the trunk of an elm with strong rope. His face was a patchwork of cuts and bruises, one of his eyes swollen shut and his lips split with recent damage.

“Anything?” Frentis asked Janril.

The sergeant gave a silent shake of his head, narrowing his gaze at the sight of Thirty-Four. “He may be able to help,” Frentis told him.

Janril shrugged and rose to kick the feet of the bound man, his head snapping up, the one good eye casting about in alarm before understanding returned and it narrowed into stern defiance.

“He was wearing that when we took him.” Frentis pointed to the medallion hanging from Janril’s neck, an embossed silver disc showing a chain and a whip. “We believe he may be a man of some importance.”

“Guild-master’s sigil,” Thirty-Four said. “He’ll have command of fifty overseers. I’ve seen this man before, when the fleet was mustering. I believe he answers to General Tokrev himself.”

“Really?” Frentis said, stepping aside so the captive had an unobstructed view of Thirty-Four. “That is interesting.”

The single eye widened considerably at the sight of the slave. “Our new recruit has some questions,” Frentis told the guild-master.

They left them alone for a time, Thirty-Four crouched next to the guild-master as he spoke, the words tumbling from his damaged lips with scarcely any hesitation. The torturer hadn’t touched him at all.

“A large caravan returns from the province to the north in three days,” Thirty-Four reported a short while later. “The lord of that land provided a list of subjects he thought would make good slaves.”

Master Grealin straightened as Frentis related the torturer’s words. “Lord Darnel cooperates with his people?”

Thirty-Four gave a slight shrug when Frentis related the question. “I do not know who that is.”

This has been long planned, Frentis thought with a grimace. “What else? Any word of our Aspect?”

Thirty-Four shook his head. “He knows nothing of that, his sole concern is slaves and profit.”

“Is he going to be any more use?”

“He has numbers, figures on the slaves shipped back to the empire, likely returns on his master’s investment.”

“Get what you can out of him. Especially about this general he answers to. When you’re sure you’ve got it all, turn him over to Sergeant Norin.”

“I promised him a quick death. He begged for it.”

“A promise made to an animal is no promise at all,” Janril said when Frentis explained. It was the most he had spoken in days.

“You will stay?” Frentis asked Thirty-Four.

The slight man took the vial from about his neck and pulled off the stopper, his hands shaking as he hesitated, then tipped the contents away. “I will, but I have a condition.”

“I leave the manner of the slaver’s death to you.”

Thirty-Four shook his head. “No. I want a name.”

“Your role,” Frentis said to Illian and Arendil, lying alongside him in the long grass. “Repeat it to me.”

Arendil rolled his eyes in annoyance but Illian spoke up with prim eagerness. “We walk the road, stumbling about as if wounded. When the caravan comes we sit down and wait.”

Frentis surveyed their appearance one last time, satisfying himself the dried rabbit’s blood and ragged clothing would suffice. “And when it starts?”

Arendil spoke first, drawing a glare from Illian. “Get to the wagons and free the captives.” He brandished one of the keys they had been given. Experience had revealed the slavers were lazy about changing their locks and the keys they had captured would undo most manacles.

“Davoka will run to you as soon as the attack begins. Do not stray from her side.”

He glimpsed the Lonak woman’s stern look of disapproval from her position a few yards away and avoided her gaze, bringing the young ones had not been her idea.

“I thought Lonak children learned war at an early age,” he had said when she voiced her objections back at the camp.

“They are not Lonakhim,” she replied. “Both have known nothing but comfort.”

He knew she had a deeper reason, her eyes seeing another overly comforted soul when she looked at them, especially Illian. “War comes to this forest soon,” he said. “The games we’ve been playing up until now are over. They need to be prepared.”

A short shrill whistle sounded to the north, making the fighters sink deeper into the grass. Frentis turned to the two youths he intended to put in harm’s way. “It’s time.”

They played their part well, although Illian’s stumbles were somewhat elaborate and Arendil’s a little stiff. The caravan crested the low hill a few hundred paces to the north, a full company of Free Cavalry riding in escort. The officer at the head of the column raised a hand at the sight of the two youngsters sitting in the road and the caravan came to a halt. Frentis watched the Volarian captain scan the surrounding fields, taking his time over it. After a moment he barked a command at one of his sergeants and a troop of four riders galloped ahead, reining in a few feet from the bloodied refugees, both of whom were too pretty to kill outright.

Frentis took a firm grip on his bow and stood up, their small company of archers following suit. The volley was inexpert but enough arrows were launched to bring down all four riders in an instant. Davoka leapt to her feet and sprinted towards the road, Frentis leading his twenty archers towards the caravan at a dead run.

The Volarian captain was clearly experienced, stringing his lead company out in skirmish formation before launching the charge, thirty or so riders bearing down on them at full gallop, long swords levelled.

Frentis stopped, notching another arrow and raising his hand, eyes fixed on the large pale boulder he had placed on the road-side earlier. When the first rider came level with the marker he dropped his hand.

They erupted from the grass on both sides of the road, more than twenty snarling, bounding monsters, voicing barks that were more like roars as they bore down on the charging cavalry. Horses and men alike shrieked in panic and fear as teeth rent flesh, the monsters leaping to tear riders from saddles, jaws clamping down and shaking their flailing prey. Swords hacked and slashed amidst the turmoil in brief but hopeless flickers of resistance.

Frentis waited for the screams to stop before venturing closer. So much blood had been spilled so quickly it seemed a red mist hung over the carnage, several of the archers gagging and turning away at the various horrors littering the road.

The beast sat on the remnants of the Volarian captain, licking its reddened paw. Seeing Frentis, it gave a small whine and dropped to low crawl, slinking forward to lick at his hand. “Slasher,” Frentis said, kneeling down to hug his old companion. “Who’s a good old pup, eh? Who’s a really good old pup?”

There had been a short but ugly fight around the wagons, the mercenary guards and cavalry rear-guard put up stiff resistance but nothing Davoka and the other fighters couldn’t overcome, though they lost five more of their number in doing so. He found Davoka restraining Illian, the girl flailing in her arms as she kicked and spat at the body of an overseer, a knife buried in his chest. The profanity flowing from the girl’s mouth made Frentis suspect her upbringing hadn’t been as sheltered as he imagined. Eventually she exhausted herself, sagging in the Lonak woman’s arms, sobbing as she cradled her. “Sorry,” she whispered. “He touched me, you see? He shouldn’t have touched me.”

Arendil was at work on the road-side, unlocking the shackles from a line of captives. He had a small cut on his forehead but was otherwise unscathed. Frentis surveyed the freed folk, finding the usual mix of mostly young men and women, picked for beauty or strength. Volarian enslavement standards had the paradoxical effect of providing him the most suitable recruits for his growing army.

“Ermund!” Arendil stared at a figure amongst the milling captives, a broad-shouldered man with a scarred nose and the marks of a recent whipping on his back. The man stared at the boy in confusion as he approached.

“Arendil? Am I dreaming?”

“No dream, good sir. How do you come to be here? My mother, grandfather . . . ?”

The man staggered a little and Frentis helped the boy support him as they propped him against a wagon wheel, Frentis handing him a canteen.

“This is Ermund Lewen,” Arendil told Frentis. “First of my grandfather’s knights.”

“Darnel’s dogs came to the estate,” the knight said, having drunk his fill. “Five hundred or more. Too many to fight. At my urging your grandfather took your mother and fled. My men and I . . . We held them for a time, it was a grand thing to see . . .” The knight’s head began to sag, his eyes drooping with exhaustion.

“I’ll find a horse for him,” Frentis said, touching Arendil on the shoulder and moving on.

A few horses had survived the dogs and the battle. Frentis ordered them all rounded up and taken back to camp as Master Rensial was sorely in need of a distraction. When not simply staring into space the mad master would relate the name of every horse he had ever trained to anyone in earshot. Recalling Frentis’s name, however, seemed to be beyond him; he was always just “the boy.”

He took the reins of one of the horses, a fine stallion with a silky black coat, nostrils flaring at the scent of the dogs still busily feeding on the corpses a short distance away. He soothed the animal with the whisper and led it towards the unconscious knight, pausing at the sight of Janril Norin pacing along a line of six Volarian survivors, idly swinging his sword as he addressed them. “Can anyone here sing, at all? We’ve a lack of music in our camp and I should like some entertainment of an evening.” He stopped, turning to face them, sword point lowering to jab a cut into the cheek of the first in line. “Sing!”

Frentis moved closer as the man stared up at Janril in bafflement, tears streaming from terror-filled eyes.

“I said sing, you poxed son of a whore,” Janril whispered, placing his sword against the man’s ear. “I used to sing and my wife would dance . . .”

“Sergeant,” Frentis said.

Janril turned to him, a faint look of irritation on his face. “Brother?”

“We’ve no time for this.” He nodded at the third captive in line. “That one’s an ensign, he may know something. Take him back for questioning. Kill the others, and be quick.”

Janril stared at him for a second, face as expressionless as usual, then gave a slow nod. “As you wish, brother.”

“We had no notion why Darnel chose to move when he did,” Ermund said, the firelight painting his face a pale red. Arendil sat beside him, his brows furrowed in worry. Next to him Illian patted the head of the dog resting in her lap. The girl had betrayed some initial nervousness when Slasher and the rest of the pack had come to join them at the fire and a young bitch, only slightly less huge than the others, placed her head on her knees, eyes raised in expectation of petting.

“She likes you,” Frentis explained. Slasher sat on his left, one of his many offspring on his right. The dogs, named by fallen Master Chekril as faith-hounds according to Grealin, were only a little smaller than Scratch, their long-lost forebear, with longer legs and a narrower snout. However, the unnerving loyalty and obedience of the slave-hound still remained strong in the bloodline, though they were somewhat easier to control.

“Only heard about the invasion after I’d been captured,” Ermund went on. “Saw some ugly sights on the road I can tell you. Darnel’s been quick to settle accounts with those who crossed him.”

“Do his people join him in this treachery?” Master Grealin asked.

“Difficult to tell from the back of a wagon, brother,” Ermund replied. “His own knights will be loyal, he tends to pick men of like mind, vicious dullards driven by greed rather than honour. But I know the temper of our folk. Darnel has never been well liked. Can’t imagine throwing his lot in with foreign invaders will endear him any.”

“My grandfather,” Arendil said. “Do you have any notion where he may have gone?”

“None, my boy. Though, if I were him I’d head north to the Skellan Pass, seek refuge with the Order.”

“The garrison in the pass is not what it was,” Grealin said. “Aspect Arlyn was obliged to reduce their number in recent years. We can expect no great reinforcement from Brother Sollis.”

“We fight alone,” Davoka commented.

“Not alone,” Frentis said. “The Tower Lord of the Northern Reaches will come. And when he does we’ll retake this Realm.”

Davoka frowned at the murmur of assent from the others at the fire. “The northern wastes are far. And this Tower Lord cannot have more men than the Volarians.”

Illian voiced a small laugh. “Lord Vaelin could come to us with no men and this war will still be won in a day.”

Davoka merely raised her eyebrows, letting the matter drop.

“We must endure,” Frentis said. “Keep the flame of defiance alight in this Realm until he comes.”

“And kill as many as we can,” Janril commented. He stood outside the circle, face only half-lit by the firelight, fixing an intent gaze on Frentis. “Right, brother?”

Slasher raised his head, sensing some vestige of threat in the minstrel’s tone, a low growl beginning in his throat. Frentis calmed the dog with a scratch to his ears. “Quite right, Sergeant.”

Thirty-Four appeared out of the darkness, making Illian jump. The torturer had an uncanny ability for seeming to materialise out of nowhere. He was yet to choose a name, something that caused little trouble since so few in the camp were able, or willing, to talk to him. “The ensign was stubborn,” he reported. “But not overly so, the damage was minimal.”

“What intelligence do you have?” Frentis asked, gesturing for him to sit.

Thirty-Four chose a place between Davoka and Frentis, seemingly oblivious to the Lonak woman’s palpable discomfort at such proximity. “They know about you, this group. The Free Swords call you the Red Brother. Plans are being drawn to drive you from this forest. The general offers ten thousand squares for your head.”

“Hardly unexpected,” Frentis said. “What else?”

“Taking the city and defeating your army proved more costly than they planned. They await fresh troops from Volaria. The bulk of the army moves south. The lord of the southern province has refused to treat with them and they besiege his city.”

“Darnel sells himself whilst Mustor stands defiant,” Master Grealin commented when Frentis had translated the news. “War always turns the world upside down.”

Frentis caught Davoka’s insistent expression. “Anything about the queen?” he asked Thirty-Four.

“He believes the King and his family all slain. There are no orders to hunt for the queen.”

“That’s all?”

“He misses his wife, their first child was born in the winter.”

“How very sad.” Frentis turned to Janril. “He’s finished with the prisoner.”

The minstrel’s face betrayed a slight grin before disappearing into the darkness. Frentis ruffled the fur around Slasher’s neck, feeling the thick slabs of muscle beneath. We were made monstrous, old pup, he thought. But what am I making them?