“The value of surprise should never be underestimated,” the master observed.

They sat together on the riverbank a short walk from the camp where over three hundred souls now made their home. They had been accumulating refugees and freed slaves for the past few weeks, some electing to move on when it became clear they were expected to fight, most deciding to stay. Even so their fighting strength numbered barely a hundred, the remainder too young, old, sick or ill trained to carry a weapon against the Volarians. Before last night their victories had been small, confined to raiding slavers’ caravans and Volarian supply trains.

“They’ll be coming,” the master said. “Now we’ve proved ourselves more than a nuisance.”

“As we knew they would. Master, about the Aspect . . .”

Grealin shook his bald head. “No.”

“I know many ways in . . .”

“To search an entire city for one man, who for all we know languishes in the hold of a slave ship halfway across the ocean by now. I’m sorry, brother, but no. These people need their champion, now more than ever.”

? ? ?

The slave was sitting where he left him, silent and unmoving beside the shelter Davoka shared with Illian. The girl stared at him in open curiosity as she stirred the pot of soup hanging over the fire, the rising aroma convincing Frentis her talents, whatever they were, didn’t reside in cookery.

“Brother!” She brightened as he moved to his own tent, unbuckling the sword from his back. “Another victory. The whole camp is afire with it. Did you really kill ten of the beasts?”

“I don’t know,” he replied honestly.

“Take me next time,” Arendil said in a sullen voice, prodding the cook fire with a stick. “I’ll kill more than ten.”

“You couldn’t kill a mouse,” Illian said with a laugh.

“I am a trained squire of House Banders,” the boy retorted. “Dishonoured by being left here with you whilst my comrades win glorious victory.”

“The camp must be guarded,” Frentis told him in a tone that indicated he had heard enough on this subject.

He took a bowl and scooped some soup from the pot, moving to squat down at the slave’s side. “Eat,” he said, holding it in front of his face.

The slave took the bowl and began to eat with mechanical obedience, holding it to his lips and drinking the less-than-flavoursome contents without sign of reluctance.

“You have a name?” Frentis asked when he had finished.

“I do, Master. Number Thirty-Four.”

Numbered slave. A specialist, trained from childhood for a particular task. This man can’t be more than twenty-five, but I’ll wager he’s taken far more lives than I, none of them quickly.

“I’m not a master,” he told Thirty-Four. “And you are not a slave. You’re free.”

The slave’s face betrayed no joy at this news, just bafflement as he voiced a sentence with an oddly stilted intonation. “Freedom, once lost, cannot be regained. Those not born free are enslaved by the weakness of their blood. Those enslaved in life forsake freedom by virtue of their own weakness.”

“That sounds like something you read,” Frentis observed.

“Codicils of the Ruling Council, Volume Six.”

“Well, forget the Council and the empire. You’re a long way from both, and this Realm has no slaves.”

Thirty-Four gave him a cautious glance. “You do not bring me here to exact revenge?”

“You only do as you are commanded, since you were old enough to remember. Am I correct?”

Thirty-Four nodded, reaching into his tunic and extracting a small glass vial on a chain about his neck. “I need this, it numbs the pain . . . my pain. It’s how I do what I do.”

Frentis eyed the pale yellow liquid in the vial and felt an echo of the binding flicker across his chest. “And if you stop taking it?”

“I . . . hurt.”

“You’re a free man now, you can take it or not, as you wish. You can stay with us or go, as you wish.”

“What do you want of me?”

“You have skills, they will be useful to us.”

Davoka arrived, dumping the sack of grain she had carried from the Order House next to the fire and scowling at the sight of the slave. She accepted a bowl of soup from Illian, spooning some into her mouth and promptly spitting it out. “No more of this for you,” she told Illian, taking the soup pot and tipping the contents into a patch of ferns. She went to her tent and returned with a captured Volarian knife, tossing it to the girl. “You learn to hunt. Arendil, make more soup.”

Illian looked at the knife in her hand with obvious delight, waving it at Arendil with a taunting snicker.

“Come, we check the snares,” Davoka said, hefting her spear. She paused beside Frentis, scowling again at Thirty-Four. “Find another place for him,” she said quietly. “Don’t want him near the children.”

She strode off with Illian scampering after. “I’m not a child,” the girl said. “I’ll be old enough to marry in a year and a half.”

Arendil aimed a kick at the soup pot, grumbling, “I’m the blood heir to the Lordship of Renfael, you know.”

Frentis rose, gesturing for Thirty-Four to follow. “Allow me to show you something.”

? ? ?

Janril sat opposite the captive, honing the edge of his sword with a whetstone. The Volarian was large, impressive muscles bulging on the arms pulled back and secured to the trunk of an elm with strong rope. His face was a patchwork of cuts and bruises, one of his eyes swollen shut and his lips split with recent damage.

“Anything?” Frentis asked Janril.

The sergeant gave a silent shake of his head, narrowing his gaze at the sight of Thirty-Four. “He may be able to help,” Frentis told him.

Janril shrugged and rose to kick the feet of the bound man, his head snapping up, the one good eye casting about in alarm before understanding returned and it narrowed into stern defiance.

“He was wearing that when we took him.” Frentis pointed to the medallion hanging from Janril’s neck, an embossed silver disc showing a chain and a whip. “We believe he may be a man of some importance.”

“Guild-master’s sigil,” Thirty-Four said. “He’ll have command of fifty overseers. I’ve seen this man before, when the fleet was mustering. I believe he answers to General Tokrev himself.”

“Really?” Frentis said, stepping aside so the captive had an unobstructed view of Thirty-Four. “That is interesting.”

The single eye widened considerably at the sight of the slave. “Our new recruit has some questions,” Frentis told the guild-master.

? ? ?

They left them alone for a time, Thirty-Four crouched next to the guild-master as he spoke, the words tumbling from his damaged lips with scarcely any hesitation. The torturer hadn’t touched him at all.

“A large caravan returns from the province to the north in three days,” Thirty-Four reported a short while later. “The lord of that land provided a list of subjects he thought would make good slaves.”

Master Grealin straightened as Frentis related the torturer’s words. “Lord Darnel cooperates with his people?”

Thirty-Four gave a slight shrug when Frentis related the question. “I do not know who that is.”

This has been long planned, Frentis thought with a grimace. “What else? Any word of our Aspect?”

Thirty-Four shook his head. “He knows nothing of that, his sole concern is slaves and profit.”

“Is he going to be any more use?”

“He has numbers, figures on the slaves shipped back to the empire, likely returns on his master’s investment.”

“Get what you can out of him. Especially about this general he answers to. When you’re sure you’ve got it all, turn him over to Sergeant Norin.”

“I promised him a quick death. He begged for it.”

“A promise made to an animal is no promise at all,” Janril said when Frentis explained. It was the most he had spoken in days.

“You will stay?” Frentis asked Thirty-Four.

The slight man took the vial from about his neck and pulled off the stopper, his hands shaking as he hesitated, then tipped the contents away. “I will, but I have a condition.”

“I leave the manner of the slaver’s death to you.”

Thirty-Four shook his head. “No. I want a name.”

? ? ?

“Your role,” Frentis said to Illian and Arendil, lying alongside him in the long grass. “Repeat it to me.”

Arendil rolled his eyes in annoyance but Illian spoke up with prim eagerness. “We walk the road, stumbling about as if wounded. When the caravan comes we sit down and wait.”

Frentis surveyed their appearance one last time, satisfying himself the dried rabbit’s blood and ragged clothing would suffice. “And when it starts?”

Arendil spoke first, drawing a glare from Illian. “Get to the wagons and free the captives.” He brandished one of the keys they had been given. Experience had revealed the slavers were lazy about changing their locks and the keys they had captured would undo most manacles.

“Davoka will run to you as soon as the attack begins. Do not stray from her side.”