“Leave him!” she said. “This . . . hurts him, much.”
“You can hear Lord Vaelin’s thoughts?” Frentis asked Lernial in a gentler tone.
The brother shook his head. “Brother Caenis only. It’s . . . easier that way.” He gave a wan smile. “But to wade through even the most disciplined mind is a tiring task.”
Frentis nodded his thanks and rose from the man’s side, moving away to confer with Banders and Sollis. “Three days until Winterfall Eve,” the baron said. “Scant time for planning. I’ve had my lot fell the few trees around here for ladders and engines, but none are ready yet.”
“Which makes the sewers our only option,” Frentis said. “We know from Darnel’s knights that Aspects Elera and Dendrish are in the Blackhold, perhaps Aspect Arlyn too. I don’t give much for their chances if the city is attacked. I can secure them if you’ll allow me.”
“Securing a gate is more important,” Sollis said.
“The Aspects . . .”
“Are aware that the Faith occasionally requires sacrifice. We will secure a gate to allow Baron Banders’s knights into the city, then make for the Blackhold.”
“We, brother?”
Sollis’s pale gaze was steady, yielding no room for argument. “Brother, you have led your company well, and they are loyal to you. But your loyalty is to me. Or are you no longer willing to call yourself a brother?”
“I will never call myself anything else,” Frentis returned, anger rising to colour his face.
Sollis merely blinked and turned to the baron. “We’ll set out at dawn, which should enable us to approach the city under dark in three nights.” He looked at Frentis. “Choose your people and be ready.”
? ? ?
They followed the Brinewash towards Varinshold, moving in single file along the bank, which was damp enough to prevent any betraying dust cloud. Frentis chose Davoka, Draker and Thirty-Four to accompany him through the sewers, provoking Arendil and Illian to loud protests at being excluded. Davoka sternly rebuked the lady for her petulance, and Banders refused to even countenance the thought of Arendil leaving his sight. “You’ll stay by me at all times,” he told his grandson. “If this goes right, the fief will have need of a new lord by the week’s end.”
They stopped after a two-day trek, occupying a shallow dip in the ground just south of the Brinewash, Varinshold out of sight just over the horizon. Sollis’s brothers scouted the surrounding country, mostly grass and expanses of ash left by the demise of the Urlish. They returned at nightfall reporting the Volarians seemed to have abandoned patrolling. “Could be they’ve no cavalry left for such duty,” Ermund suggested. “We killed hundreds back at the Spur.”
They settled down to rest as night set in, huddling in cloaks against the chill as fires could not be risked. Frentis sat watching the others sleep, determined to stay awake, as he had for the past two nights, fighting exhaustion with every step. At one point he had snapped awake finding himself held in the saddle by Davoka, shaking his head at her stern entreaties to rest come the night. She waits for me there, he knew with a cold certainty.
“Will it end tomorrow, brother?” It was Illian, sitting a few feet away, swaddled in a cloak taken from a dead Volarian at the Spur. It covered her easily, leaving only the pale oval of her face peering out from the hood.
So young, Frentis thought. So small. You would never know, as no one knew when they looked at her. Annoyed by the comparison, he looked away. “Will what end?” he asked, keeping his voice low.
“The war,” she said, shuffling closer. “Draker said it’ll all be over come the new day.” She gave a rueful smile. “Then he said he’d buy a whorehouse with his spoils.”
“I doubt there are any left to buy, my lady.”
“But we’ll be done? The war will end?”
“I hope so.”
She seemed oddly deflated by this, a flicker of her increasingly rare pout on her lips. “No more Gorin,” she murmured. “No more Davoka. Arendil will go off and rule his fief, Draker to his whorehouse, you to the Order.”
“And you, my lady?”
“I don’t know. I have no idea if my father lives, if his house still stands.”
“And your mother?”
Illian’s expression soured a little. “Father used to tell me she died when I was little. One day I heard two of the maids gossiping, seems my darling mother took off with a sea captain when I was no more than a year old. Father had every scrap of clothing she owned stripped from the house, along with every image of her. I don’t even know what she looked like.”