Blood Song

Barkus slumped down in front of the fire, raising his hands to the flames. His muscle thick arms were bare as he wore only a cotton vest and trews, his feet shorn of boots and his hair matted with sea water. His only weapon was his axe, strapped across his back with leather thongs. “Faith!” he grunted. “Haven’t been this cold since the Martishe.”

“Must’ve been a hard swim.”

“Right enough. We were three miles out before I realised you’d gulled me, brother. The ship's captain took some hard persuading before he'd sail his boat back to shore.” He shook his head, droplets flying from his long hair. “Sailing off to the Far West with Sister Sherin. As if you’d pass up a chance to sacrifice yourself.”

Vaelin watched Barkus’s hands, saw how they were free of any tremble although it was cold enough to make his breath steam.

“That was the deal, right?” Barkus went on. “We get to live and they get you?”

“And Prince Malcius is returned to the Realm.”

Barkus frowned. “He’s alive?”

“I was sparing with the truth in getting you all out of the city without any fuss.”

The large brother grunted again. “How long till they come for you?”

“First light.”

“Time enough to rest up then.” He unslung his axe from his back, setting it down close by. “How many do you think they’ll send?”

Vaelin shrugged. “I didn’t ask.”

“Against the two of us they better send a whole regiment.” He looked up at Vaelin, puzzled. “Where’s your sword, brother?”

“I gave it to Governor Aruan.”

“Not the brightest idea you’ve had. How do you intend to fight?”

“I don’t. In accordance with the king’s word I will surrender myself to Alpiran custody.”

“They’ll kill you.”

“I don’t think so. According to the Fifth Book of the Cumbraelin god I still have many more people to kill.”

“Pah!” Barkus spat into the fire. “Prophecies are bullshit. Superstition for god-worshippers. You took their Hope, they’ll kill you right enough. Just a question of how long they take over it.” He met Vaelin’s eyes. “I can’t stand by and watch them take you, brother.”

“Then leave.”

“You know I can’t do that either. Don’t you think I lost enough brothers already? Nortah, Frentis, Dentos - ”

“Enough!” Vaelin’s voice was sharp, cutting through the night.

Barkus drew back in alarm and bemusement. “Brother, I…”

“Just stop.” Vaelin studied the face of the man in front of him with all the scrutiny he could muster, searching for some crack in the mask, some flicker of lost composure. But it was perfect, impervious and infuriating. He fought to master the anger, knowing it would kill him. “You’ve waited so long for this, why not show me your true face? Here at the end, what difference does it make?”

Barkus grimaced in a flawless display of embarrassed concern. “Vaelin, are you quite well?”

“Captain Antesh told me something before he left. Would you like to hear it?”

Barkus spread his hands uncertainly. “If you wish.”

“It seems Antesh isn’t his real name. Hardly surprising, I’m sure many of the Cumbraelins we hired felt the need to use a false name, either through fear of a criminal past or shame at accepting our coin. What was surprising is that we’ve both heard his other name before.”

Still no slip in the mask. Still nothing beyond the concern of a true brother.

“Bren Antesh was once greatly in thrall to his god,” Vaelin told him. “So great was his devotion it drove him to kill, to gather others who also thirsted to honour their god with the blood of heretics. In time he led them to the Martishe where most of them died at our hands, leading him to question his belief, to abandon his god, accepting the king’s gold and giving it to the families of his fallen men, then seeking death in a foreign war, all the time trying to forget the name he had won in the Martishe: Black Arrow. Bren Antesh was once named Black Arrow. And he assures me he was never in possession of any letters of free passage from his Fief Lord, nor were any of his men.”

Barkus remained still, all expression now vanished.

“You remember the letters, brother?” Vaelin asked. “The letters you found on the body of the archer I killed. The letters that set us to war with Cumbrael.”

It was only a slight change in the angle of his head, a small shift in the set of his shoulders, a new curve to his lips, but suddenly Barkus was gone, like smoke in the wind. When he spoke Vaelin was unsurprised to hear a familiar voice, the voice of two dead men. “Do you really think you’re going to serve a Queen of Fire, brother?”

Vaelin’s heart plummeted like a stone. He had been nurturing a withered hope that he might be wrong, that Antesh had been lying and his brother was still the noble warrior sailing away with the morning tide. Now it was gone and there was just the two of them, alone on the beach with death coming swiftly. “I’m told there are other prophecies,” he replied.