Frentis glanced around, finding no others within earshot and straightening from his fearful hunch. “Brother Frentis of the Sixth Order,” he said, jabbing his fore-knuckles into the sergeant’s upper lip. “Here on the queen’s business.”
He left the man barely conscious but alive. From his reaction to their tidings Frentis surmised he had been a long-serving subordinate to the fallen commander whose son might well benefit from such fiercely loyal counsel.
Dallin waited where they had left him on the eastern side of one of the larger rocks, keeping tight hold of the horses despite their skittishness at the burgeoning uproar from the camp. “Press hard,” Frentis told him, climbing into the saddle. “No rest till sunrise.”
• • •
The Volarian pursuit proved more sluggish than expected, the dust raised by their outriders not appearing until well past dawn the following day.
“Back in the Urlish they’d’ve been nipping our heels by now,” Dallin observed.
Frentis raised his spyglass to get a better view of their pursuers; thirty men, all bunched together. “I’m starting to suspect their best troops are all lying dead in the Realm.”
He ordered Dallin on ahead with instructions for Ivelda and Lekran whilst he and Rensial lingered to leave some obvious traces for the Volarians; an overturned stone, a strip of torn clothing on a gorse branch. He waited until the riders were no more than a mile distant and the infantry could be seen filing along a narrow track in their wake. They rode on for a time then reined in on the crest of a hill, plainly silhouetted against the sky. He could see the infantry more clearly now, a long column of Varitai all moving at a steady run and somehow still managing to stay in step. The outriders were coming on at a good pace, Frentis’s spyglass picking out two figures in front, a tall young man closely followed by a burly figure with a discoloured upper lip.
Lekran came into sight some two hours later, axe raised as he waved from atop one of the monolithic boulders, the Garisai appearing out of the rocks on either side.
“All is ready?” Frentis called to him, dismounting to scramble up the boulder’s steep side.
“The Rotha bitch holds the southern flank with half the Garisai.” Lekran pointed to the box canyon below, a narrow gouge in the landscape some two hundred paces long and about fifty wide. The canyon was closed at the far end where a group of free fighters had made a suitably obvious camp, smoke rising from cookfires and meagre shelters raised among the rocks. “And the hook is baited.”
Frentis knew this was a gamble; he could only hope the Volarians’ fury would blind them to questioning why their enemies had chosen such a poor spot for a campsite. However, Lekran saw scant risk in the plan. “Volarians see slaves as less than men,” he said. “Incapable of true reason. Trust me, Redbrother. They’ll swallow it whole and we’ll make them choke.”
“The gorse?”
Lekran nodded to where Vinten’s archers crouched among the rocks just back from the canyon’s northern edge, surrounded by bundles of tight-bound gorse. Frentis began to clamber down from the boulder. “I’d best take my place. Remember to let a few Free Swords escape.”
He made his way to the far end of the canyon, finding Illian overseeing preparations. “I told you to make ready the main camp, sister,” he said in annoyance.
“Draker has it well in hand,” she replied, meeting his gaze with little sign of contrition. “And since I have trained these people, I am unwilling to let them face battle without me.”
He fought down the urge to order her gone. She was becoming less deferential by the day, exercising a certain flexibility in interpreting his orders and often more than willing to argue her case. It was not necessarily a bad thing, he knew. There always came a point in the Order when novices stepped from their masters’ shadow, but he had hoped it might take longer for her; she still had much to learn and he feared the consequences of her ignorance.
“Stay close to me,” he said. “No more than an arm’s length away at any time. Understood?”
Her defiance softened a little and she nodded, hefting her crossbow and notching a bolt before clasping a second between her teeth in what was now a recognisable pre-battle ritual.
“Brother!” Dallin stood atop a rock pointing to the canyon’s west-facing opening where the Volarian cavalry had appeared.
“You know the plan!” Frentis called to the others as they made ready, hefting their assorted weapons and arranging themselves in a loosely ordered line. They were mostly his original fighters from the Urlish mingled with the more able recruits gathered on the march, Weaver and his Varitai among them, laden with ropes and cudgels. All had tied dampened cloths around their mouths, something he hoped the Volarians would interpret as an effort to avoid recognition.
