“Wait here,” Vaelin told the North Guard, tossing his bow to the nearest one. He approached the shaft with his sword held low and to the side, his free hand raised and open. He came to a halt when he could make out the two figures clearly, finding he recognised one but not the other.
“Termin Resk,” he said, squinting at the kneeling man. He was a stocky fellow of middling years, a former Realm Guard sergeant, now leader of the Damned Rats, with a dire reputation to match. Resk gasped out something in response; his words, either a plea or an expression of defiance, were quickly choked off by a tightening of the chain around his neck. The outlaw’s stubby fingers clawed at the iron links to little effect, his head increasingly resembling a quivering, reddened blob.
Vaelin’s gaze tracked along the chain to the manacle on the wrist of the man holding Resk. Taking the full measure of the fellow, Vaelin found him to be taller than himself by an inch or more. The man’s bare chest was broad and impressively muscled if marred by numerous scars, some recent, and Vaelin recognised the telltale mark of a whip. The sweat of recent exertion shone on the man’s dark skin and he met Vaelin’s gaze with a cool, appraising stare beneath brows marked by a series of pale, precisely placed scars.
“You are far from the empire,” Vaelin observed, speaking in Alpiran.
The man’s eyes narrowed at the words. From his colouring, Vaelin knew him to be of the southern provinces where the Emperor’s tongue wasn’t always known, but he saw comprehension in his face.
“It is not my empire,” the man replied, his Alpiran accented but clearly spoken. He jerked the chain, causing Resk to grunt in pain, eyes bulging now. “You are this one’s enemy?” he asked.
“He is a . . . bandit,” Vaelin replied, using the term most commonly ascribed to outlaws in the Alpiran Empire. “I enforce the law in these lands.”
“Then you serve her.” The tall man’s eyes betrayed a small glimmer Vaelin recognised: hope. “You serve the Queen of Fire.”
“She doesn’t like that name.” Vaelin gave a formal bow. “Vaelin Al Sorna, Tower Lord of the Northern Reaches by the grace of Queen Lyrna Al Nieren. And you are?”
He saw the tall man’s hope joined by another emotion then, his brows bunching with a particular sense of recognition Vaelin hadn’t seen for many years. “Alum Vi Moreska,” he said, the muscles of his forearms bunching as his fists tightened the chain. In response Resk let out a final, choking gurgle and fell limp, all light fading from his bulging eyes. “I request safe harbour,” Alum Vi Moreska said, unfurling the chain from Resk’s corpse with a skillful flick of his wrists. “For myself and my people.”
Vaelin nodded at the mineshaft. “There are more of you in there?”
“Many.” The man met Vaelin’s gaze once more, letting out a hard, shame-filled sigh as he sank to one knee. “On behalf of the Moreska Clan, I pledge our allegiance to the Great Queen in the hope she will bestow upon us the gift of her renowned mercy and compassion.”
CHAPTER TWO
In all, they had taken six outlaws alive; the rest, over a hundred in number, had perished in either the stockade or the mine. Captain Nohlen, commander of the North Guard contingent, reported a total of four hundred and twenty-three people in chains in the mine, plus another thirty-two corpses besides the outlaws’.
“Bad business, my lord,” the man advised Vaelin in his typically clipped tones. “They didn’t die easy. Those that didn’t perish in the fight had been worked to death, I’d say.”
The slaves were all of the same clan as Alum, the Moreska, and Vaelin could find none with an unscarred back. There were no children or old people amongst their ranks.
“The pirates took them away,” Alum said after describing how their ships had come under attack by a flotilla of pirate vessels in the Arathean Ocean. “We know not where. If the gods are kind, they were given a swift death. If not . . .” A shadow passed across the man’s face, and his nostrils flared as he fought to master himself.
“When did this happen?” Vaelin asked him.
They sat together at a fire pit where the outlaws had cooked their meals, the embers still warm and littered with bones. Alum had taken a spear from one of the dead and used it to describe a