Текст книги "Blood Song"

Автор книги: Anthony Ryan

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Part II

What is the body?

The body is a shell, the cradle of the soul.

What is the body without the soul?

Corrupted flesh, nothing more. Mark the passing of loved ones by giving their shell to the fire.

What is death?

Death is but a gateway to the Beyond and union with the Departed. It is both ending and beginning. Fear it and welcome it.

The Catechism of Faith

Verniers' Account

“It was Blood Rose, wasn’t it?” I asked. “The Lord Marshall at the Summertide Fair.”

“Al Hestian? Yes,” the Hope Killer replied. “Though he didn’t earn that name until the war.”

I drew a line under the passage I had just set down, finding myself nearly out of ink. “A moment,” I said, rising to open my chest and extract another bottle and some more parchment. I had filled several pages already and worried that I might exhaust my supply. I hesitated before opening the chest, finding his hateful sword propped against it. Seeing my discomfort he reached for the weapon, resting it on his knees.

“The Lonak have a superstition that imbues their weapons with the souls of the enemies they kill,” he said. “They give names to their warclubs and knives, imagining them possessed of the Dark. My people have no such illusions. A sword is just a sword. It’s the man who kills, not the blade.”

Why was he telling me this? Did he want me to hate him even more? Seeing his scarred, powerful hand resting on the sword hilt I recalled how Seliesen, after the Emperor formally named him as the Hope, had submitted himself to months of harsh tutelage under the Imperial Guard, becoming proficient, even skilled with sabre and lance. “The Hope must be a warrior,” he told me. “The Gods and the people expect it.” The Imperial Guard had taken him in like one of their own and he had ridden with them against the Volarians the summer before Janus sent his armies to our shores, winning plaudits for his courage in the melee. It had availed him nothing against the Hope Killer. I knew the moment would come when the Northman would relate what had happened on that terrible day, and, even though I had heard many accounts of the event, the prospect of hearing it from Al Sorna himself was both dreadful and irresistible.

I sat down again and opened the ink bottle, dipped the quill and smoothed a fresh sheet of parchment on the deck. “The Dark,” I said. “What’s that?”

“Your people call it magic, I believe.”

“They might, I call it superstition. You believe in such things?”

There was a moment’s pause and I formed the impression he was considering his next words carefully. “There are many unknown facets of this world.”

“There are stories told of the war, stories that ascribe great and powerful magic to the Northmen, and to you in particular. Some claim it was with magic that you clouded our soldiers’ minds at the Bloody Hill, and that you stole through the walls of Linesh with sorcery.”

His mouth twitched in faint amusement. “There was no magic at the Bloody Hill, just men possessed of a mindless anger hurling themselves at certain death. As for Linesh, a shit stinking sewer in the harbour hardly counts as sorcery. Besides, any Realm Guard officer who even suggested use of the Dark would most likely find himself hung from the nearest tree by his own men. The Dark is believed to be integral to those forms of worship that deny the Faith.”

He paused again, looking down at the sword resting in his lap. “There’s a story, if you’d like to hear it. A story we tell our children to warn them against the dangers of the Dark.”

He glanced up at me, eyebrows raised. Although I consider myself a historian and not a compiler of myths and fables, such tales often shed some light on the truth of events, if only to illustrate the delusions that many mistake for reason. “Tell me,” I said with a shrug.

When he spoke again his voice had taken on a new tone, grave but engaging, a storyteller’s voice. “Gather close and listen well to the tale of the Witch’s Bastard. This is not a story for the faint at heart or the weak of bladder. This is the most terrible and frightful of tales and when I am done you may curse my name for ever having given it voice.

“In the darkest part of the darkest woods in old Renfael, long before the time of the Realm, there stood a village. And in this village there dwelt a witch, comely to the eye but with a heart blacker than the blackest night. Sweet and kind was the face she offered to the village, but mean and jealous was the soul behind it. For it was lust that drove this woman, lust for flesh, lust for gold and lust for death. The Dark had taken her at an early age and she had surrendered to its vileness with willing abandon, denying the Faith and winning power in return, the power to possess men, inflame their desires and have them commit dreadful acts in her name.

“First to fall under her spell was the village Factor, a good and kind man, grown wealthy through thrift and hard work, grown wealthy enough to arouse the witch’s lust. Every day she would wander past his place of business, flaunting herself in subtle ways, stoking the flames of his passion until they became a raging fire, burning away his reason, making him prey for her Dark whispered plan: kill your wife and take me in her place. And so, one fateful night, he sprinkled the poison known as Hunter’s Arrow into his wife’s supper and, come the morn, she breathed no more.

“Being a woman of middle years with a history of illness, the passing of the Factor’s wife was taken as simply an act of nature by the village. But of course the witch knew better, hiding her delight with tears when they gave the poor murdered woman to the fire, all the time calling to the Factor with her Dark power: “lavish gifts on me, and I will be yours.” And gifts he gave her, a fine horse, jewels and gold and silver, but the witch was clever and refused it all, making a great show of outrage at the impropriety of a man pressing his suit on so young a woman, and so soon after his wife’s passing at that. How she tormented him, calling to him and then rebuffing his every advance, it wasn’t long before her cruelty unhinged his reason and, seeking escape from the Dark enslavement of her lust, he stole away into the forest and stretched his neck from the high branch of a tall oak, leaving writ word of his ill deed and naming the witch as the cause of his madness.

“Of course the villagers wouldn’t believe it, so sweet she was, so kind. The Factor was clearly driven mad by his own delusion of love for a younger woman. They gave him to the fire and endeavoured to forget this dread episode. But, of course, the witch was not done, for her eye had alighted on the village blacksmith, a great handsome fellow, strong of arm and strong of heart, but even his heart could be twisted by her Dark power.

“She had taken to living apart from the villagers, all the better to practice her vile arts away from prying eyes. As she could turn a man’s heart this witch could also turn the wind, and as the blacksmith burned charcoal in the forest, she called a northern gale to whip snow down from the mountains, forcing him to seek shelter under her roof, and there, although he resisted with all his mighty strength, she forced him to lie with her, a black, evil union from which her dread bastard would be born.

“It was shame that broke her spell, shame of a good man forced to betray his wife, shame that made him deaf to her sweet enticements the next morn, and deaf to the threats she screamed as he fled back to the village where, foolishly, he told no one of what had transpired.

“And the witch, she waited. As the black seed grew in her belly, she waited. As winter gave way to spring and the crops grew tall, she waited. And then, when the scythes were sharpened for harvest and her foul creation clawed from between her legs, she acted.

“It was a storm unlike any seen before or since, heralded by ashen clouds that covered the whole sky from north to south, east to west, bringing wind and rain in terrible abundance. For three weeks the rain fell and the wind blew and the villagers huddled in fearful misery until, when at last it was over, they ventured into the fields to find every acre a wasted ruin. The only crop they would reap that year would be hunger.

“They looked to the forest, seeking game to fill their bellies, but finding all the beasts driven off by some Dark whisper of the witch. The children cried to be so hungry, the old people sickened and, one by one, began to pass into the Beyond, and all the time the witch kept to her small cottage in the woods, for she and her bastard always had plenty to eat, unwitting beasts could be easily snared by one so well versed in the Dark.

“It was the death of the blacksmith’s beloved mother that finally drove the truth from him. Confess he did to the gathered villagers, telling them all of the witch’s designs and how he had fallen under her spell to sire the well-fed bastard she carried through the forest, mocking their starving young with his happy laughter. The villagers voted and none disagreed: the witch must be driven out.

“At first she tried to use her power to assuage them, casting lies at the blacksmith, accusing him of the most terrible of crimes: rape. But her power had no effect now they could see the truth, now they could hear the venom that coloured every lie she told, the evil glint in her eye showing the vileness hidden behind her pretty face. And so with torches flaming they drove her forth, her cottage burned by their righteous anger as she fled into the forest, clutching her vile whelp to her breast, all pretence gone as she cursed them… and promised revenge.

“And so, while the villagers returned to their homes and tried best they could to survive the coming winter, the witch sought out a hiding place in the dark reaches of the forest, a place where no foot had stepped before, and began to teach her spawn the ways of the Dark.

“Years passed, the village buried its dead and refused to die. Years went by and the witch became but a memory then a story told on cold nights to frighten children. The crops grew, the seasons passed and all seemed right with the world once more. How blind they were, how naked before the coming storm. For the witch had made a monster of her bastard, seemingly but a scrawny, ragged boy gone wild in the woods, but in truth possessed of all the Dark she could pour into him, first with the tainted milk of her breast then the whispered tutelage in their stinking refuge and finally with her own blood. For she had sacrificed herself, this witch, this hate filled woman, when he had grown old enough she took a knife to her wrists and bade him drink. And drink he did, hard and deep until the witch was but a husk, gone to the nothingness that awaits the unfaithful but succoured by the knowledge of her impending vengeance.

“He started with their animals, beloved pets taken in the dead of night and found tormented to death on the morn. Then heifers or pigs were taken, their severed heads impaled on fence posts at each corner of the village. Fearful, ignorant of the true danger that assailed them, the villagers set watches, lit torches, kept weapons close to hand when darkness came. It availed them nothing.

“After the beasts he came for the children, tottering infants and babes still in their cribs, any he could take he took, and gruesome was their fate. Enraged, maddened they scoured the forest, hunters sought tracks, every known hiding place checked, traps set to ensnare this unseen monster. They found nothing, and on it went, through the autumn and into winter, the nightly toll of torture and death continued. And then, as winter’s chill gripped them, he finally made himself known, simply walking into the village at noon. By now their fear was so great no hand was lifted against him, and they begged. They begged for their children and their lives, they offered all they had if he would just leave them in peace.

“And the Witch’s Bastard laughed. It was not a laugh any normal child could make, nor a laugh that could have come from any human throat. And with that laugh, they knew they were doomed.

“He called forth the lightning and the village burned. The people fled to the river but he swelled it with rain until the banks burst and carried them away. Still his vengeance was not sated and he brought down a blast of wind from the far north to encase them in ice. And when the ice had set, he walked across it until he found the face of his father the blacksmith, frozen in terror for all time.

“No one knows what became of him, although some say on the coldest nights, in a place where it’s said a village once stood, you can hear laughter echoing through the woods, for that is how it is with those who give themselves over to the Dark so completely, release from life is denied them, and the Beyond closed to them for ever more.”

Al Sorna fell silent, his expression thoughtful as he returned his gaze to the sword in his lap. I had a sense that he attached some importance to this lurid tale, something in the gravity with which he had related the story spoke of a significance I couldn’t discern. “You believe this story?” I asked.

“They say all myths have some kernel of truth at their heart. Perhaps in time, a learned fellow like you could find the truth in this one.”

“Folklore is not my field.” I set aside the parchment upon which I had set down the tale of the Witch’s Bastard. It would be several years before I read it again, by which time I had good cause to bitterly regret not following his suggestion.

I reached for fresh pages, looking at him expectantly.

He smiled. “Let me tell you how I first came to meet King Janus.”

Chapter 1

They began riding late in the month of Prensur. Their horses were all stallions, no more than two years old, youthful mounts for youthful riders. The pairing was done under Master Rensial’s supervision, his more extreme behaviour thankfully in check today, although he muttered constantly to himself as he led each of them to their mount.

“Yes, tall, yes,” he mused, surveying Barkus. “Need strength.” He tugged Barkus by the sleeve and led him to the largest of the horses, a hefty chestnut stallion standing at least seventeen hands. “Brush his coat, check his shoes.”

Caenis was led to a fleet looking dark brown stallion and Dentos a sturdy, dappled grey. Nortah’s mount was almost completely black with a blaze of white on his forehead. “Fast,” Master Rensial muttered. “Fast rider, fast horse.” Nortah regarded his horse in silence, his reaction to most things since his return from the infirmary. Their constant attempts to engage him in conversation were met with shrugs or blank indifference. The only time he seemed to come alive was on the practice field, displaying a new found ferocity with sword and pole-axe that left them all bruised or cut.

Vaelin’s own mount turned out to be a sturdy, russet coloured stallion with a cluster of scars on his flanks. “Broken,” Master Rensial told him. “Not bred. Wild horse from the north lands. Still got some spirit left, needs guidance.”

Vaelin’s horse bared its teeth at him and whinnied loudly, the shower of spit making him step back. He hadn’t ridden a horse since leaving his father’s house and found the prospect oddly daunting.

“Care for them today, ride them tomorrow,” Master Rensial was saying. “Win their trust. They will carry you through war, without their trust you will die.” He stopped talking and, seeing his eyes take on the unfocused cast that signified another onset of rambling or violence, they quickly led their mounts to the stables for grooming.

They began to ride the next morning and did little else for the next four weeks. Nortah, having ridden from an early age, was by far the best horseman, beating them all in every race and traversing the most difficult course Master Rensial could devise with relative ease. Only Dentos could compete with him, taking to the saddle like a natural. “Used to go to the races every month in summertime,” he explained. “Me mum would make a packet betting on me. Said I could get a race out of a carthorse.”

Caenis and Vaelin proved adequate if not expert riders and Barkus learned quickly although it was clear he didn’t relish the lessons. “My arse feels like it’s been hit with a thousand hammers,” he groaned one night, lowering himself to his bed face down.

The others soon became bonded to their horses, naming them and getting to know their ways. Vaelin called his horse Spit, since that was all the animal ever seemed to do when he attempted to win his trust. He was perennially bad tempered with a tendency towards wayward hooves and sudden, bruising lurches of the head. Attempts to court his favour with sugar sticks or apples did nothing to assuage the beast’s basic aggression. The only comfort in the pairing was the fact that Spit was even more badly behaved towards the others. Whatever his character faults the beast proved fast at the gallop and fearless in practice, often snapping at the other mounts as they charged each other and never shying away from a melee.

Their lessons in mounted combat proved a gruelling affair as they attempted to unseat each other with lance or sword. Nortah’s horsemanship and new found love of the fight meant many tumbles from the saddle and more than a few minor injuries. They also began to learn the difficult art of mounted archery, a necessary element of the Test of the Horse which they would have to pass in less than a year. Vaelin found the bow a hard discipline at the best of times but attempting to sink a shaft into a hay bale from twenty yards whilst twisting in a saddle was almost impossible. Nortah on the other hand hit the mark on his first try and hadn’t missed since.

“Can you teach me?” Vaelin asked him, chagrined by another disastrous practice. “Master Rensial’s instruction is often hard to follow.”

Nortah stared at him with the empty passivity they had come to expect. “That’s because he’s a gibbering loon,” he replied.

“He’s clearly a troubled man,” Vaelin agreed with a smile. Nortah said nothing. “So, any help you could provide...”

Nortah shrugged. “If you wish.”

It turned out there was no real trick to it, just practice. Every day they would spend an hour or more after the evening meal with Vaelin consistently failing to hit the target and Nortah coaching him. “Don’t rise so high in the saddle before you loose… Make sure you get the string back to your chin… Only loose when you feel your mount’s hooves leave the ground… Don’t aim so low…” It took five days before Vaelin could put a shaft in the hay bale and another three before his aim was true enough to find the mark at almost every pass.

“My thanks, brother,” he said one night as they walked their mounts back to the stables. “I doubt I would have picked it up without your help.”

Nortah gave him an unreadable glance. “I owed you a debt, did I not?”

“We are brothers. Debts mean nothing between us.”

“Tell me, do you really believe all this tripe you spout?” There was no venom in Nortah’s tone, just vague curiosity. “We call each other brother but we share no blood. We’re just boys forced together by this Order. Don’t you ever wonder what it would have been like if we had met on the outside? Would we have been friends then, or enemies? Our fathers were enemies, did you know that?”

Hoping silence would end the conversation, Vaelin shook his head.

“Oh yes. When I was young I found a secret place in my father’s house where I could listen to the meetings in his study. He spoke of your father often, and not with kindness. He said he was a jumped up peasant with no more brains than an axe blade. He said Sorna should have been kept in a locked room until war required his service and couldn’t fathom why the King ever listened to the counsel of such an oaf.”

They were halted now, facing each other. Nortah’s eyes were bright with the familiar hunger for combat. Sensing the tension Spit tossed his head and nickered in anticipation.

“You seek to provoke me, brother,” Vaelin said, patting his horse’s neck to calm him. “But you forget, I have no father, so your words mean nothing. Why is it the only joy you show these days is in battle? Why do you hunger for it so? Does it make you forget? Does it ease your pain?”

Nortah tugged his horse's reins and resumed the walk to the stables. “It eases nothing. But it does make me forget, for a while at least.”

Vaelin kicked Spit into a canter, overtaking Nortah. “Then mayhap a race will help you forget too.” He spurred into a gallop and headed for the main gate. Naturally, Nortah beat him by a clear length, but he was smiling when he did so.

It was late in the month of Jenislasur, a week after Vaelin’s uncelebrated fifteenth birthday, when he was called to the Aspect’s chambers.

“What now?” Dentos wondered. They were at the morning meal and he spat bread crumbs across the table as he spoke. Table manners were a lesson too far for Dentos. “He must like you, you’re never away from his rooms.”

“Vaelin is the Aspect’s favourite,” Barkus said in a mock serious tone. “Everyone knows that. He’ll be Aspect himself one day, you mark my words.”

“Piss off the pair of you,” Vaelin responded, stuffing an apple in his mouth as he rose from the table. He had no idea why he was called to the Aspect, likely it was a another sensitive question regarding his father or a new threat to his life. He was often surprised at how the passage of time had made him immune to such fears. His nightmares had abated in recent months and he could look back on the dark events during the Test of the Run with cold reflection, although his dispassionate scrutiny did nothing to dispel the mystery.

He had munched his way through most of the fruit by the time he got to the Aspect’s door and concealed the core in his cloak before knocking. He would feed it to Spit later, doubtless earning a shower of slobber as a reward.

“Come in, brother,” the Aspect’s voice came through the door.

Inside the Aspect was standing next to the narrow window affording a view of the river, smiling his slight smile. Vaelin’s nod of respect was cut short by the sight of the room’s other occupant: a skeletally thin boy dressed in rags with bare, mud-stained feet dangling over the edge of the chair in which he was uncomfortably perched.

“That’s ‘im!” Frentis said, jumping to his feet as Vaelin entered. “That’s the brother that in-inspirated me! Battle Lord’s son ‘e is.”

“He is no-one’s son, boy,” the Aspect told him.

Vaelin swore inwardly, closing the door. Giving knives to a street urchin, a shameful episode. Not what is expected of a brother…

“Do you know this boy, brother?” the Aspect enquired.

Vaelin glanced at Frentis, seeing eagerness under a mask of dirt. “Yes, Aspect. He was of assistance to me during a recent… difficulty.”

“Y’see?” Frentis said urgently to the Aspect. “Told ya’! Told ya’ he knew me.”

“This boy has requested entry to the Order,” the Aspect went on. “Will you vouch for him?”

Vaelin stared at Frentis in appalled surprise. “You want to join the Order?”

“Yeh!” Frentis said, nearly jumping with excitement. “Wanna join. Wanna be a brother.”

“Are you – ?” Vaelin choked off at the word “mad” and took a deep breath before addressing the Aspect. “Vouch for him, Aspect?”

“This boy has no family, no one to speak for him or formally place him in the hands of the Order. Our rules demand that all boys who join must be vouched for, either by a parent or, in the case of an orphan, a subject of recognised good character. The boy has nominated you.”

Vouched for? No-one had told him this. “Was I vouched for, Aspect?”

“Of course.”

My father spoke to them before he brought me here. How many days or weeks before had he arranged it? How long had he known and not told me?

“Tell ‘im I can be a brother,” Frentis was saying. “Tell ‘im I helped you.”

Vaelin drew a heavy breath and looked down at the frantic desperation in Frentis’s eyes. “May I have a moment alone with this boy, Aspect?”

“Very well. I shall be in the main keep.”

After he had gone, Frentis started again, “Ya gotta tell ‘im. Tell ‘im I can be a brother…”

“Do you think this is a game?” Vaelin cut in, stepping close to grasp the rags covering Frentis’s narrow chest, pulling him close. “What do you want here? Safety, food, shelter? Don’t you know what this place is?”

Frentis’s eyes were wide with fear as he shrank back, his voice small now, “’S where they train the brothers.”

“Yes they train us. They beat us, they make us fight each other every day, they put us through tests that might kill us. I have fifteen years and more scars on my body than any seasoned soldier in the Realm Guard. There were ten boys in my group when I started here, now there are five. What are you asking me for? To agree to your death?” He released Frentis and turned back to the door. “I won’t do it. Go back to the city. You’ll live longer.”

“I go back there I’ll be dead by nightfall!” Frentis cried, voice heavy with fear. He sank back into his chair and sobbed miserably. “I got nowhere else to go. You send me away and I’m dead. Hunsil’s boys’ll do for me for sure.”

Vaelin’s hand lingered on the door handle. “Hunsil?”

“Runs the gangs in the quarter, all the dippers, whores and knifers pay ‘im homage, five coppers a month. I couldn’t pay last month so his boys gave me a beatin’.”

“And if you can’t pay this month he’ll kill you?”

“It’s too late for that. Not about the money anymore. ‘S about ‘is eye.”

“His eye?”

“Yeh, the right one. It ain’t there no more.”

Vaelin turned back from the door with a heavy sigh. “The knives I gave you.”

“Yeh, couldn’t wait for you to teach me. Practised on me own. Got right good at it too. Thought I’d try it out on Hunsil, waited in the alley outside his tavern ‘til he came out.”

“Taking him in the eye was an impressive throw.”

Frentis smiled weakly. “Was aimin’ for ‘is throat.”

“And he knows it was you?”

“Oh ‘e knows alright. Bastard knows everything.”

“I have some money, not much but my brothers will pitch in some more. We could buy you a berth on a merchant ship, a cabin boy. You would be safer on a ship than you could ever be here."

“Thought about that, din’t wanna. Don’t like ships, get queasy just crossing the river in a flatboat. Besides, I’ve ‘eard sailors’ll do things to cabin boys.”

“I’m sure they’ll leave you alone if we guarantee it.”

“But I wanna be a brother. I saw what you did to those Crows. You and the other one. Never seen nothin’ like it. I wanna be able to do that. I wanna be like you.”

“Why?”

“’Cos it makes you someone, makes you matter. They’re still yakkin’ about it in the taverns y’know, how the Battle Lord’s boy humbled the Blackhawks. You’re almost as famous as your old man.”

“And that’s what you want? To be famous?”

Frentis fidgeted. It was clear he was rarely asked for an opinion on anything and found this level of scrutiny disconcerting. “Dunno. Wanna be someone, not just some dipper. Can’t do that all me life.”

“All you are likely to earn here is an early death.”

Frentis no longer looked like a boy then, rather he seemed so aged and burdened by experience that Vaelin almost felt himself to be a child in the presence of an old man. “That’s all I’ve ever bin likely to earn.”

Can I do this? Vaelin asked himself. Can I condemn him to this? The answer came to him within a heart beat. At least he had a choice. He chose to come here. And what will I condemn him to if I send him away?

“What do you know of the Faith?” Vaelin asked him.

“’S what people believe ‘appens when you die.”

“And what does happen when you die?”

“You join the other Departed and they, y’know, help us.”

Hardly the Catechism of Faith but succinctly put. “Do you believe it?”

Frentis shrugged. “’Spose.”

Vaelin leaned down and looked him in the eye, fixing him. “When the Aspect asks you, don’t suppose, be certain. The Order fights for the Faith before it fights for the Realm.” He straightened. “Let’s go and find him.”

“You’re gonna tell ‘im to let me in?”

May my mother’s soul forgive me. “Yes.”

“Great!” Frentis surged to his feet and ran to the door. “Thanks…”

“Don’t ever thank me for this,” Vaelin told him. “Not ever.”

Frentis gave him a quizzical look. “Alright. So when do I get a sword?”

It would be another three months before the next intake of recruits so Frentis was put to work. He ran errands, laboured in the kitchens or the orchard and swept the stables. They gave him a bunk in their north tower room, the Aspect felt leaving him alone in one of the other rooms would be a poor welcome to the Order.

“This is Frentis,” Vaelin introduced him to the others. “A novice brother. He’ll bunk with us until the turn of the year.”

“Is he old enough?” Barkus asked, looking Frentis up and down. “He’s just rag and bone.”

“Up yours fatso!” Frentis snarled in response, drawing back.

“How charming,” Nortah observed. “An urchin of our very own.”

“Why’s he bunking with us?” Dentos wanted to know.

“Because the Aspect commands it, and because I owe him a debt. And so do you brother,” he said to Nortah. “If he hadn’t helped me you’d be swinging in a wall cage.”

Nortah inclined his head but said no more.

“He’s the one you knocked out,” Frentis said. “The one that knifed that Blackhawk in the leg. Proper sharp that was. Are we allowed to knife Realm Guard then?”

“No!” Vaelin tugged him to his bunk, Mikehl’s old bed which had lain unused in the years since his death. “This is yours. You’ll get bedding from Master Grealin in the vaults, I’ll take you there soon.”

“Do I get a sword from him?”

The others laughed. “Oh you’ll get a sword, right enough,” Dentos said. “Finest blade ash can make.”

“Wanna proper sword,” Frentis insisted sullenly.

“You’ll have to earn it,” Vaelin told him. “Like the rest of us. Now, I want to talk to you about thieving.”

“I ain’t gonna thieve nothin’. I’m done with that, I swear.”

More laughter from the others. “Fine brother he’ll make,” Barkus said.