He removed the saddlebags from the horse and slapped a palm against its rump, sending it trotting off into the trees. “We walk from here,” he told the others.
“Thank the Faith!” Draker groaned, climbing down from the saddle and rubbing his backside.
“The house we go to,” Davoka said. “It’s the home of the blue cloaks?”
“That’s right.” My home.
“These new Merim Her seem to know much,” Davoka went on. “They will know of your House, your Order.”
“Yes.” Frentis hoisted the saddlebag over his shoulder and began to walk north.
“Then they will attack it,” she persisted, striding alongside. “Or already have.”
“Then we had best not linger.” The wound in his side flared again, making him hiss in discomfort, but he kept walking.
They came to the river around midday and paused for a brief rest, Draker and Ratter collapsing on the bank with a flurry of curses. Frentis took off his shirt and began to change the bandage on his wound. Davoka came over to peer at it, nose wrinkling as she sniffed, saying something in her own language.
“What?” Frentis asked.
“Wound is . . .” She fumbled for the right word. “Sick, more sick.”
“Festering,” he said, fingers gently probing the cut, still leaking some blood but also now swollen and angry, lines of deeper red tracing through the surrounding flesh. “I know.”
“I heal it,” she said, glancing around at the undergrowth. “Need to find the right plants.”
“No time,” Frentis told her, tossing aside the used bandage and extracting another from the saddlebag.
“I do it.” Davoka took the bandage and wrapped it around his midriff, binding it tight. “Shouldn’t leave it like this. Kill you before long.”
Killed by a princess, he thought. A fitting end. “We need to move on,” he said, getting to his feet.
They followed the river west, keeping back from the bank, shrouded by the trees. After a while they saw a barge, drifting with the current, ropes and blocks swaying, the sail tumbled from the rigging and covering the deck. There was no sign of any crew.
“What does it mean?” Arendil wondered.
“We’re close to the house,” Frentis said. “Barges rarely travel this far upriver except to bring us supplies.”
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?”