They ran, sprinting away across the parapet without a backward glance. “Tell your comrades the Red Brother’s here!” Frentis yelled after them before turning to pull a torch from a stanchion. He hopped onto the battlement and waved the torch back and forth, peering into the misted fields beyond the walls. A few heartbeats later he saw it, a single torch flaring to life, burning brighter as the bearer came closer, and two thousand Renfaelin knights resolved out of the mist at full gallop. Banders was clearly visible at the head of the tight column, his faux-rusted armour catching the rising sun, Arendil and Ermund on either side of him. They thundered through the gate without pause, the clatter of steel-shod hooves on cobbles rising to a deafening pitch as they charged along Gate Lane. A few Varitai came running from the western quarter to oppose them, a single company managing to form ranks across the lane before being smashed aside by the tide of horse and steel.
“Brother!” Frentis looked down from the gatehouse, finding a grinning Ivern there, mounted, with Frentis’s horse at his side. “The Blackhold awaits!”
• • •
The squat fortress was already in uproar when they got there, two Varitai lying dead at the main gate and several more inside. They were obliged to fight their way into the courtyard as more guards came rushing from a maze of shadowed doorways, mostly Varitai with a few Free Swords showing none of the cowardice of their comrades on the wall. Sollis took his brothers up the stairs and into the upper levels, clearing the archers from the parapet and sending their own arrows down on the defenders below.
Frentis led his company from doorway to doorway, Draker breaking them open as they searched for the Aspects, finding only more Volarians, most willing to fight, others cowering, but all destined to die. He was emerging from a storeroom when a Kuritai appeared out of the shadows, twin short swords flashing. Frentis parried his first blow but slipped on a patch of blood, tumbling to the flagstones, the Kuritai looming above . . . then falling dead when a crossbow bolt punched through his breastplate.
“Not like you to be so clumsy, brother,” Illian observed from across the courtyard, words garbled somewhat by the bolt held between her teeth as she braced the crossbow against her midriff to draw the string back.
He was about to tell her to join Brother Sollis on the parapet but found his attention drawn to a commotion rising from a half-open door at the rear of the courtyard. He went to it, finding a set of steps leading into the bowels of the Blackhold. He called to Davoka to follow and took the stairs at a run. At the base of the steps he found a dead Free Sword with what appeared to be steel darts embedded in both eyes; beside him lay the body of a man in a bedraggled City Guard uniform, bloodied sword in hand and belly rent open.
In the chamber beyond the stairwell lay three Varitai, steel darts jutting from their necks; beyond them a young woman was grappling with a burly Free Sword, blood streaming from her nose and eyes as he forced her to her knees, short sword inching towards her throat. Frentis drew his sword back for a throw but Illian was faster, sending a bolt into the Volarian’s temple before he could bring his blade to bear.
The woman slumped beneath the collapsing Free Sword, blood bubbling on her lips as she issued a groan of near-complete exhaustion. Frentis hauled the corpse away and helped her upright, finding her eyes still bright despite the paleness of her skin. “My brother . . .” she whispered.
“Brother?”
“Rhelkin . . . City Guard.”
Frentis shook his head and the woman moaned in sorrow, blinking red tears before speaking again. “Aspects . . . are they safe?”
He cast his gaze around the chamber, taking in the sight of the cells. From one of them he could hear an implacable thumping noise, a voice within shouting something unintelligible but with an odd note of authority. “Search the bodies,” he told Illian. “Find the keys.”
Aspect Dendrish stood still and straight-backed as the door swung open, face rigid and composed though his rapidly blinking eyes told of a man expectant of a swift death. “Aspect,” Frentis greeted him with a bow. “Brother Frentis. I doubt you remember, but we met at my Test of Knowledge . . .”
The Aspect seemed to deflate, issuing an explosive sigh of relief and doubling over, as much as his bulk would allow. “Where is Aspect Elera?” he demanded after a moment, raising a haggard face that somehow managed to retain a vestige of the imperious self-regard Frentis recalled.
“Brother Frentis,” she said as the door opened, sitting on her bed, smiling in welcome, her hands clasped in her lap. “How you’ve grown. Is Alucius with you?”
