A rising tumult drew his attention to the dockside where he could see a dense knot of fighters attempting to contain a group of Arisai emerging from one of the larger drains fringing the wharf. Weight of numbers managed to keep the red men at bay but more and more were clambering free by the second, claiming lives with every sword stroke.
“Your people with me,” Frentis told Ivelda. “This will be a long night.”
• • •
By morning Viratesk lay under a cloying pall of grey-black smoke, every brick and tile as besmirched as the dazed rebels who wandered the streets or sat stooped in exhaustion. Frentis passed many huddling together, a few weeping from the strain of the night-long battle, most just leaning against each other, the eyes wide, blank holes in soot-covered faces.
“Seven hundred and eighty-two dead,” Thirty-Four reported. “Four hundred wounded.”
“How many of them?” Lekran asked, running a cloth over the blade of his axe. Although he was even more blackened than everyone present, the tribesman’s axe gleamed with a polished sheen.
“We counted just over a hundred bodies,” Thirty-Four replied. “Though, judging by the smell, many more perished in the sewers.”
“Seven to one,” Draker muttered, casting a wary glance at Frentis. “That’s bad odds, brother.”
“When were our odds ever good?” Frentis turned as Weaver approached, their only captive at his back, tightly bound by several chains. The Arisai was shaking his head, uttering a soft, wry laugh as the freed Varitai around him looked on with uniformly sorrowful expressions.
“It won’t work,” Weaver stated. “Not on him.”
“The binding is too strong?” Frentis asked.
“His binding is less constricting than the Varitai. He is . . . wrong. Twisted, in mind and body. Were we to remove his binding, we would be unleashing something terrible upon the world.”
“Then let’s wring what we can from him and have done,” Lekran said, nodding at Thirty-Four.
“He’ll tell you nothing,” Weaver replied. “Any torment you visit on him will be just another amusement.”
“Can you heal him?” Frentis asked. “Mend his twisted soul?”
Weaver glanced back at the Arisai, hands clasped together, his face betraying the first sign of fear Frentis had seen in him. “Perhaps,” he said. “But the consequences . . .”
“Something comes back,” Frentis said. “Every time you heal someone, they give something back.”
Weaver nodded, turning to him with a tight smile. “If you wish me to try . . .”
“No.” He moved towards the Arisai, drawing the dagger from his belt. The man’s amusement deepened at Frentis’s approach, his laugh rich with genuine mirth.
“She did say you would prove interesting,” he said.
“Does she give you names?” Frentis asked him.
The Arisai shrugged. “Sometimes, those of us she bothers to recognise. She called me Dog, once. I quite like it.”
“You know she sent you here to die?”
“Then I am pleased to have served her purpose.” The man met Frentis’s gaze with steady eyes, fearless, even proud, but still mostly just amused.
“What did they do to make you this way?” Frentis asked him, surprising himself with a sudden flare of pity. Weaver was right, this man had been born to a life that twisted him into something far from human.
The Arisai’s grin turned into a mocking snicker. “Don’t you know? Your time in the pits taught them so much. For generations they bred us, trained us, tried different bindings to make us the perfect killers. It never worked, our forebears were either too wild or too much like the Kuritai, deadly but dull, requiring constant supervision. My generation was no different, yet another failure. Ten thousand Arisai destined for execution, after they had bred us with suitable stock of course. Then came you, our saviour, a shining example of the advantages of cruelty, the discipline and cunning inherent in the soul of a true killer. When she sent us here she told us we would be meeting our father, and I must say, I do find it a privilege.”
“So,” Frentis mused, “there’s at least nine thousand more of you?”
For a moment the Arisai lost his smile, frowning in consternation like a child fumbling for an answer to an awkward question. “Not perfected after all,” Frentis observed, moving behind him, dagger poised at the base of his skull. “What do you know of the Ally?”
Dog brightened once more as the point of the blade touched his flesh, laughing with a wry shake of his head. “Only the promise she made us on his behalf the day she led us from the vaults; ‘All your dreams will be made flesh.’ We had been waiting so long, and had many dreams. Should you chance to see her again, father. Please tell her I—”
Frentis thrust the dagger in up to the hilt, Dog the Arisai arching his back and convulsing before slumping lifeless to the ground. “I’ll tell her,” Frentis assured him.
• • •
Why?
