Alucius wrapped his cloak tightly around his shoulders, his hollowed eyes making him seem an old man peering out from behind a young man’s face. “All of this blood spilt over a couple of letters.” He shook his head. “Linden would have wept to see it.” He reached inside his cloak and unhitched Vaelin’s short sword from his belt. “Here,” he said, offering the hilt. “I won’t need this anymore.”
“ Keep it. A gift from me. You should have a souvenir of your time as a soldier.”
“ I can’t. The King gave you this…”
“ And now I’m giving it to you”
“ I don’t… It shouldn’t be given to one such as I.”
Seeing the way the boy gripped the sword-hilt, the tremble of his fingers, Vaelin recalled the red slick that covered the blade when he had been pulled from beneath the pile of corpses near the gate. The face of battle is always most ugly when seen for the first time. “Who better to give it to?” he said, putting his hand over the hilt, gently pushing it away. “Put it on your wall when you get home. Leave it there. I will not take it back.”
The boy seemed about to say more but restrained himself, returning the sword to his belt. “As you wish, my lord.”
“ Will you write about this? Is it worth a poem, do you think?”
“ It’s worth a hundred, I’m sure, but I doubt I’ll write any of them. Since my awakening, words don’t seem to come to me as they once did. I’ve tried, I sit with pen and parchment but nothing comes.”
“ It takes a while for a man to return to himself after a wound. Rest and eat well. I’m sure your talent will return.”
“ I hope so.” The boy gave a faint smile. “Perhaps I’ll write to Lyrna. I’m sure I can find some words for her.”
Vaelin, who had plenty of words of his own for the princess, nodded and turned back to the drill, venting his sudden anger at a man who held his pole-axe too high in the defensive formation. “Lower it, lackwit! How are you supposed to gut a horse with your weapon stuck up in the air? Sergeant, an extra hour’s drill for this man.”
Each evening was spent in Sherin’s company. They would sit in the lord’s chamber exchanging stories about their experiences over the last few years. He discovered she had travelled far more widely than he, visiting Fifth Order missions in all four fiefs of the Realm, even taking a ship to the enclave in the Northern Reaches where Tower Lord Vanos Al Myrna ruled in the King’s name.
“ A lively place, despite the cold,” she told him. “And home to so many different people. Most of the farming folk are in fact exiles from the southern Alpiran Empire. Tall, handsome people with black skin. Apparently they angered the emperor and had to take ship or face extermination, fetching up in the Northern Reaches more than fifty years hence. Most of the Tower Lord’s Guard is made up of exiles, they have a fearsome reputation.”
“ I met the Tower Lord once, and his daughter. I don’t think she liked me much.”
“ The famous Lonak foundling? She was absent when I visited, away in the forest with the Seordah. They seem to revere her and her father greatly. Something to do with the great battle against the Ice Horde.”
He told her of his months in the Martishe, sharing the painful memory of Al Hestian’s passing, feeling like a coward and a liar for leaving out his murderous scheming.
“ It was a mercy, Vaelin,” she said, taking his hand, reading the guilt in his face. “Leaving him to suffer would have been wrong, against the Faith.”
“ I have done much in the name of the Faith.” He looked at the scarred flesh of his hand next to the pale smoothness of her own. Killer’s hands, healer’s hands. Faith, why does she feel so warm?
“ All any of us can ask of ourselves is have we done wrong in the name of the Faith,” Sherin said. “Have you Vaelin?”
“ I’ve killed men, men I didn’t know. Some were criminals, some assassins, scum really. But some, like the deluded fanatics who dwelt here, were men who simply followed another belief. Men who may have been my friends if we’d met in a different time or place.”
“ The men who dwelt here were murderers. They slaughtered an entire mission of my Order merely to take me captive. Could you ever do the same?”
She doesn’t see it, he realised. Doesn’t see the killer in me. “No,” he said, for some reason again feeling like a liar. “No. I couldn’t.”
As the days passed he began to indulge in the dream that the King and the Order might allow them to remain here, a permanent garrison in Cumbraelin lands. He would be master of the keep, a reminder to any Cumbraelin fanatics of the price of rebellion. Sherin could establish a mission to administer to the sick in this remote and bitter land and they could serve the Faith and the Realm in happy isolation for years. Although he recognised its impossibility the dream lingered in his mind, a bright and enticing hope that grew with every deluded imagining. Caenis would take over the keep’s library, establish a school for local children, teaching them letters and the truth of the Faith. Barkus would occupy the smithy, Nortah the stables, Dentos would become Huntmaster. He would bring Scratch and Frentis from the Order House to join them. He knew it was a delusion, a lie he told himself after every evening spent in Sherin’s company. Because he didn’t want it to end, because he wanted the peace he felt in her presence to last for as long as he could make it. He even began to compose a formal proposal to Aspect Arlyn in his head, rephrasing it over and over but putting off the moment when he would ask Caenis to pen it for him. Speaking it aloud would reveal the absurdity of it, and he preferred the dream.
The scale of his delusion became apparent on the morning of the ninth day. He had woken early, briefly inspected the guard on the gate and was taking a tour of the sentries on the battlements before going to find some breakfast. The sentries were chilled but cheerful enough, making him suspect they had been indulging in a tot or two of Brother’s Friend whilst on duty. He paused for a moment before descending to the courtyard, taking in the brooding majesty of the view. A forbidding place to serve out the rest of your days. But quiet, blessedly quiet.
For years to come he would remember it clearly, the brightness of the morning sun shimmering blue-silver on the fresh snowfall that covered the surrounding mountain tops, the clear blue of the sky, the sharp wind on his face. He never forgot it, the moment before everything changed.
He was about to turn away when his gaze was drawn to the long narrow road ascending from the valley floor: a rider, making haste. Even from this distance he could see the bright plume of the horse’s breath as it laboured up the road at the gallop. Dentos, he realised as the rider drew nearer. Dentos without Nortah.
Dentos’s face was grey with fatigue as he dismounted in the courtyard, a livid bruise discolouring his cheek. “Brother,” he greeted Vaelin in a voice heavy with sorrow and exhaustion. “I must talk to you.” He staggered a little and Vaelin reached out to steady him.
“ What it is?” Vaelin demanded. “Where’s Nortah?”
Dentos gave an entirely humourless grin. “Many miles away I reckon.” His face clouded and he looked down, as if fearing to meet Vaelin’s eye. “Our brother tried to kill the Battle Lord. He’s a fugitive with half the Realm Guard on his tail.”
“ There was a battle,” Dentos said, a cup of brandy-laced warm milk clutched in his hands as he sat by the fire in the meal hall. Vaelin had called Barkus and Caenis to hear his story along with Prince Malcius and Sister Sherin who had applied a balm to his bruise. “The Cumbraelins had gotten together about five thousand men to oppose the Realm Guard at Greenwater Ford. Not much’ve a force to stand against so many but I guess they were trying to buy time for their city to muster its defences. Could’ve cut down many guardsmen as they forded the river but the Battle Lord was too wily for ’em. Drew up all his cavalry on the south bank to fix their sight and sent half his infantry downstream to ford in deep water in the early hours of the morning, lost fifty men to the current doing it but they got across. Fell on the Cumbraelin right flank whilst they were still unwrapping their arrows. It was all but over by the time me and Nortah got there, place looked like a charnel house, the river was red with it.”