“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. ”
“And I thought Outlaws were such admirable folk,” Nortah commented.
“Brother,” Barkus said, nudging Vaelin and pointing to where Scratch was busily sniffing the grass on the bank. After a moment the slave-hound raised his head and bounded off, following the line of the river as they ran in pursuit. He paused again a few hundred paces short of the city walls, circling around some deep parallel tracks ploughed into the earth.
“Cart wheels,” Caenis said. “They hid him in cart to get him through the gate.”