“ The bane of our realm and our Faith, Vaelin,” Tendris replied sadly. “The Unfaithful. It is a task charged to me and the brothers with whom I ride. We hunt those who would deny the Faith. It may be a surprise to you that such folk exist, but believe me they do.”
“ There’s nothing here,” Makril said. “No tracks, nothing for the dogs to scent.” He made his way through a heavy snow drift to stand in front of Vaelin. “Except you, brother.”
Vaelin frowned. “Why would your dogs track me?”
“ Have you met anyone during your test?” Tendris asked. “A man and a girl perhaps?”
“ Erlin and Sella?”
Makril and Tendris exchanged a glance. “When?” Makril demanded.
“ Two nights ago.” Vaelin was proud of the smoothness of the lie, he was becoming more adept at dishonesty. “The snow was heavy, they needed shelter. I offered them mine.” He looked at Tendris. “Was I wrong to do so, brother?”
“ Kindness and generosity are never wrong, Vaelin.” Tendris smiled. Vaelin was disturbed by the fact that the smile seemed genuine. “Are they still at your camp?”
“ No, they left the next morning.
They said little, in fact the girl said nothing.”
Makril snorted a mirthless laugh. “She can’t speak, boy.”
“ She did give me this.” Vaelin pulled Sella’s silk scarf from under his shirt. “By way of thanks the man said. I saw no harm in taking it. If offers no warmth. If you’re hunting them perhaps your dogs scented this.”
Makril leaned closer, sniffing the scarf, nostril’s flared, his eyes locked on Vaelin’s. He doesn’t believe a word of it, Vaelin realised.
“ Did the man tell you where they were going?” Tendris asked.
“ North, to Renfael. He said the girl had family there.”
“ He lied,” Makril said. “She has no family anywhere.” Next to Vaelin the dog’s growls deepened. Makril moved back slowly, making Vaelin wonder what kind of dog could provoke fear in its own master.
“ Vaelin, this is very important,” Tendris said, leaning forward in his saddle, studying Vaelin intently. “Did the girl touch you at all?”
“ Touch me, brother?”
“ Yes. Even the slightest touch?”
Vaelin remembered the hesitancy as Sella reached to him and realised she hadn’t touched him at all, although the depth of her gaze when she found something in him had felt almost like being touched, touched on the inside. “No. No she didn’t.”
Tendris settled back into the saddle, nodding in satisfaction. “Then you were indeed fortunate.”
“ Fortunate?”
“ The girl’s a Denier witch, boy,” Makril said. He had perched on the birch trunk and was chewing a sugar cane that had appeared in his weathered fist. “She can twist your heart with a touch of that dainty hand of hers.”
“ What our brother means,” Tendris explained. “Is that this girl has a power, an ability that comes from the Dark. The heresy of the Unfaithful sometimes manifests itself in strange ways.”
“ She has a power?”
“ It’s better we don’t burden you with the details.” He tugged his horse’s reins, guiding it to the edge of the clearing, looking around for tracks. “They left yesterday morning, you say?”
“ Yes, brother.” Vaelin tried not to look at Makril, knowing the stocky tracker was subjecting him to an intense, dubious scrutiny. “Heading north.”
“ Mmm.” Tendris glanced at Makril. “Can we still track them without the dogs?”
Makril shrugged. “Maybe, won’t be easy after last night’s storm.” He took another bite from his sugar cane and tossed it away. “I’ll do some scouting north of the hills. Best if you take the others and check towards the west and east. They may have tried to double back to throw us off their trail.” He gave Vaelin a final, hostile glare before disappearing into the trees at a dead run.
“ It’s time for me to take my leave, brother,” Tendris said. “I’m sure I’ll see you again when you’ve passed all your tests. Who knows, perhaps there’ll be a place in my company for a young brother with a brave heart and a quick eye.”
Vaelin looked at the bodies of the two dogs, streaks of blood staining the white blanket of snow. They would have killed me. That’s what they’re bred for. Not just tracking. If they’d found Sella and Erlin… “Who knows down what paths the Faith leads us, brother,” he told Tendris, not having the stomach to force more than a neutral tone into his voice.
“ Indeed.” Tendris nodded, accepting the wisdom. “Well, luck go with you.”
Vaelin was so surprised that his plan had worked that he let Tendris guide his horse to the edge of the clearing before he remembered to ask a vital question.
“ Brother! What do I do with this dog?”
Tendris looked over his shoulder as he rode away, spurring his mount to a canter. “Kill it if you’re smart. Keep it if you’re brave.” He laughed, raising a hand as his horse accelerated into a gallop, snow rising into a thick cloud that shimmered in the winter sun.
Vaelin looked down at the dog. It gazed up at him with adoring eyes, long pink tongue lolling from a mouth wet with drool. Again he noted the numerous scars on its snout. Although still young, this animal clearly had endured a hard life. “Scratch,” he told it. “I’ll call you Scratch.”
Dog flesh proved a tough, sinewy meat but Vaelin was long past being choosy over his food. Scratch had whined continually as Vaelin butchered one of the carcasses back at the clearing, slicing a rear haunch off the largest dog. He had kept his distance as Vaelin carried the prize back to the camp and cut strips of meat to roast over his fire. Only when the meat had been eaten and Vaelin had hidden the remainder in his tree hole did the dog venture closer, snuffling at Vaelin’s feet in search of reassurance. Whatever the savage traits of Volarian slave-dogs it appeared cannibalism was not among them.
“ Don’t know what I’m going to feed you if you won’t eat your own kind,” Vaelin mused, patting Scratch awkwardly on the head. The dog was clearly unused to being petted and shrank warily when Vaelin first tried it.
He had been back at the camp for over an hour, cooking, building the fire, clearing snow from his shelter and resisting the temptation to go and see if Erlin and Sella were still hiding in the hollow. He had felt a sense of wrongness ever since Tendris had ridden away, a suspicion that the man had accepted his word a little too easily. He could be wrong, of course. Tendris had struck him as the kind of brother whose Faith was absolute and unshakeable. If so then the concept of a fellow brother lying, lying to protect a Denier at that, simply wouldn’t occur to him. On the other hand, could a man who spent his life hunting the realm for heretics remain so free of cynicism?
Without answers to these questions Vaelin couldn’t risk checking on the fugitives. There was nothing on the wind to warn him otherwise, no change in the song of the wild threatening ambush but still he stayed in his camp, ate dog flesh and puzzled over what to do with his gift.
Scratch seemed an oddly cheerful animal considering he had been bred to hunt and kill people. He scampered about the camp, playing with sticks or bones he dug out of the snow, bringing them to Vaelin who quickly learned trying to wrestle them away was a pointlessly tiring task. He wasn’t remotely sure he would be allowed to keep the dog when he returned to the Order. Master Chekril, the keeper of the kennels, was unlikely to want such a beast near his beloved hounds. More likely they would pull a dagger across its throat as soon as he appeared at the gates.
They went hunting in the afternoon, Vaelin expecting another fruitless search but it wasn’t long before Scratch picked up a trail. With a brief yelp he was off, bounding through the snow, Vaelin struggling in his wake. It wasn’t long before he found the source of the trail: the frozen carcass of a small deer no doubt caught in the storm the night before. Oddly it was untouched, Scratch sat patiently beside the corpse, eyeing Vaelin warily as he approached. Vaelin gutted the carcass, tossing the entrails to Scratch whose ecstatic reaction took him by surprise. He yelped happily, gulping the meat down in a frenzy of teeth and snapping jaws. Vaelin dragged the deer back to camp pondering the an odd change in his circumstances. He had gone from near starvation to an abundance of food in less than a day, more food in fact than he could eat before Master Hutril returned to take him back to the Order
