by Nathan Hawke
‘What do you want, forkbeard?’
Gallow growled and raised his fist and they did as he asked. He made the old man show him where they kept their food. He took as much as he could carry and a leather bag with a strap to carry it. Everywhere he went would be like this until he was home. There’d be no shelter, no charity, nothing for the hated forkbeard. Fate again, laughing at him. ‘I didn’t want to kill your dog, old Marroc. I have nothing against dogs.’ The old man’s face stayed as it was, a mask of hidden fear and sullen hate. ‘I’ll take my rest in your house tonight. You’ll stay in your night room, all of you. If you do as I say then I’ll be on my way in the morning and you’ll not see me again. If you come out, if you seek help, if any one of you raises a single hand or word against me, I’ll kill every person here. I’ll burn your farm. I’ll go back to my kin and they’ll burn your neighbours. We’ll hunt you until every single Marroc here lies bloody in the snow. Do you understand me, old man?’
The words hissed out of him. ‘I understand you, forkbeard.’
‘Then go to your night room and keep your kin there with you, close.’
He pushed the corpse of the dog outside and closed the door behind it. After nights in the mountain snow the house was deliciously warm. In the morning he left with a clutch of fresh eggs. The Marroc had seen just another forkbeard and so that’s what he’d become. The realisation haunted him. This was how it was for the Lhosir here; and what if some forkbeard happened upon Nadric’s forge, hungry and desperate? Would Arda have the sense to keep her peace?
He skirted around Hrodicslet to the edge of the Crackmarsh, the quickest way home. The fringes of the marsh were boggy but not waterlogged, not like the water meadows they became each spring. The ghuldogs were mostly quiet in the winter, hiding in their burrows. Nothing much came out into this dead open landscape with its stands of twisted trees, not at this time of year. He crossed it without trouble, walking on through the night to keep warm, dozing in the warmest hours of the day, surviving on the food he’d stolen.
Stolen. He’d never been a thief before. At least, he’d never seen himself like that. The Screambreaker’s army had plundered the Marroc lands, taking what pleased them, burning whatever caught their eye to burn. The spoils of war though, not thieving, although from where he stood now it was hard to see the difference.
The edge of the Crackmarsh took him to the caves and the woods where the villagers of Middislet had hidden when they’d thought the Vathen were coming, all of them except Arda, who’d stayed alone to defend Nadric’s forge because she was fed up with soldiers coming and taking everything that was hers. He remembered that day well, as clear as he remembered the day he’d first seen her, and the memories made a longing that drove him onward, heedless of the pain in his feet and his legs, the weariness in his bones. He couldn’t be sure that she was there, whether any of them were even still alive, but each time he closed his eyes he saw her, waiting all this time.
One way or another, he was coming home.
25
WHAT HAPPENED TO TOLVIS LOUDMOUTH
‘There’s something else I want from you, Loudmouth.’ Three years ago Tolvis Loudmouth had stood beside the Screambreaker. It was the morning before the battle that would see the Screambreaker take the red sword from the dead hands of the Weeping Giant and then fall in his turn. Tolvis was hardly ready to be asked for any other favours, given what the Screambreaker had just told him about keeping Twelvefingers from burning Andhun, but you didn’t say no to the old man so he’d kept his mouth shut for once. ‘If I die tomorrow, take my body and speak me out in secret. I’ll have no great celebration for all the things I’ve done. Then take this where it belongs.’ He’d handed over a fat purse of silver. Tolvis knew exactly what it was because it was the same fat purse he’d given to Gallow Truesword a couple of weeks earlier when he’d traded it for Truesword’s plundered Vathan horses.
A hundred men saw the Screambreaker die later that same day, moments before the Lhosir broke the Vathan army. Afterwards, when they couldn’t find his body, they built a pyre to him anyway and spoke him out. And then Twelvefingers turned on Andhun and the Marroc there, and Tolvis had led a band of the Screambreaker’s men to stop him, and Gallow had chopped off Medrin’s hand and turned him into Sixfingers instead of Twelve; and then the Vathen had turned out not to be as broken as everyone thought and by the next sunrise half of Andhun belonged to the horsemen, someone burning the bridge across the Isset was the only thing keeping them out of the other half, and Sixfingers was on a ship back across the sea, hovering somewhere between life and death. Tolvis had watched Gallow fall from the cliffs into the sea and thought maybe he’d seen a man with a boat trying to haul someone out of the water or maybe not, but either way it was hard to be sure because the air over his head had been full of Vathan arrows and javelots at the time and mostly he’d been trying not to die.
He hadn’t gone home nor sought the remnants of the Lhosir army. By then he’d had enough of it all, and so he’d gone inland instead, all on his own, because Gallow had been a friend, and being a friend had to be worth something. He’d gone to Varyxhun and poked his nose around for Arda Smithswife and eventually found her and gave her the purse full of silver that Gallow had always meant her to have, and she’d taken it with thanks. And maybe it came from living with a Lhosir for eight years or maybe it was simply the way she was, but it didn’t seem to trouble her much that he was a forkbeard. He’d stayed a while because he wasn’t quite sure whether Gallow was dead or alive, but if he was alive then he’d certainly find a way back home from Andhun and it seemed only right that he should keep an eye on his friend’s family until then. A week grew into a month and then two. Varyxhun filled with Lhosir looking for Gallow Foxbeard, the traitor, the nioingr. Tolvis kept away. They’d have been happy enough to hang Loudmouth too.
Two months turned into three. By then they all knew that Gallow wouldn’t be coming back, though none of them said it; and he still stayed, and Arda never minded about that as long as he made himself useful, and none of them said anything about the Lhosir looking for the Foxbeard. When the Fateguard came, they left, quietly, going back to Nadric’s old forge in Middislet, and the months turned into a year without any of them quite noticing. Nadric was getting too old to earn his living at his forge but Tolvis knew how to work a farm and he had a strong arm and a quick enough wit to learn the simple things. As that first winter came, Arda took to being away for days at a time. Tolvis never asked, not then, and she never said, but she came back with food, and more than they needed. There were Marroc in the Crackmarsh, bandits and renegades sworn to fight the forkbeards. He knew that was where she went, but it wasn’t his business and so he left her to it. The villagers in Middislet weren’t that keen on forkbeards just like all the other Marroc, but Middislet wasn’t Varyxhun or Andhun and they’d never had blood ravens lining the roads. Mostly everyone got quietly on with their lives, and if Arda had swapped one forkbeard for another, so what? Loudmouth had a quiet suspicion that half the Marroc thought he was Gallow just come back from the fighting with a big mess made of his face. Besides, that first winter was a hard one and there were plenty of people grateful for the food Arda brought out of the Crackmarsh.
A year turned into two and Arda came to him one day and told him that if he was staying he might want to cut off his beard, and it hadn’t surprised him greatly either when, after he did it, she’d taken him to the night room alone. There wasn’t any ceremony about it, but she was lying with him and laying Gallow to rest both at once, and he’d been happy enough with that. Some of the Marroc said things behind her back and others said them to her face, but she only shrugged and pointed out that people had always said things behind her back even before she’d married Gallow, and that she had no truck with anyone whose life was so joyless they had nothing better to do than make misery for others, nor did she care in the least as long as there was food for her family. Gallow’s silver made her rich in the village, she still v
anished off among the Crackmarsh men for whole weeks at a time, and it wasn’t as if there were baskets full of spare men going at the market who’d look after her and her half-forkbeard children. She made Tolvis laugh, and he made her laugh too, and when Sixfingers came back across the sea with a new hand made of witch’s iron and set about raising armies to fight the Vathen, Tolvis kept to himself, not wanting anything to do with it.
‘Loudmouth!’
He looked up from where he was supposed to be cutting nails for Nadric. There weren’t too many Marroc who bothered to talk to him in Middislet. They were used to him, tolerated him with grudging reluctance, but no one said they had to like it. But now and then Fenaric the carter came by, and Fenaric didn’t seem to care who Tolvis was, even though Arda made it plain that she couldn’t stand the carter and wouldn’t spare him a word.
‘I’ve got news, forkbeard. You might want to hear it.’ He looked from side to side as though there might be someone lurking in the shadows of the forge.
‘What’s that then?’ Tolvis was careful to be civil with the carter. Varyxhun was turning bad. Tolvis quietly thought that if there wasn’t an uprising in the spring then he’d eat Nadric’s forge, and if there was, well he wanted to be far away from it. And then there was Sixfingers. He hadn’t forgotten Gallow, that was for sure. Probably thought of him every time he looked at the stump where his hand used to be. Probably hadn’t forgotten that Gallow had had a family. So yes, he gave Fenaric the time of day, careful to keep an ear to the ground.
Fenaric sat himself on a log beside the forge fire. ‘Could do with new tyres for the wagon,’ he said.
So he was short of money. Tolvis nodded. ‘I’ll talk to Nadric and see what’s to be done.’ That’s how it went. Little favours for snippets of the world outside the village.
‘Was up at Issetbridge.’ He sniffed and looked about as though he was bored. ‘Heard a story that a dozen forkbeards got killed up in the high valleys. Not the only story like that, either.’
‘Glad that’s not near here then.’ Cithjan had a fondness for hangings from what he’d heard. Thought if you hanged enough Marroc everything would be sorted out. Maybe if he hanged every last one of them, it would.
‘Reckon it’s going to get bloody, forkbeard.’
‘Reckon so, carter.’ Tolvis went back to cutting nails. If that was all Fenaric had then he could pay for his tyres.
The carter stayed where he was though, so there was clearly more. Funny thing about the trouble in Varyxhun – it made the Marroc in Middislet more unsure about Tolvis. Reminded them how much they were supposed to hate all forkbeards; but at the same time Tolvis knew it set them thinking about how it might not be such a bad thing to have one living among them if the trouble spilled over the Aulian Bridge. ‘There was one other thing I heard. Something about a sword. That sword the Vathen were supposed to have with them at Andhun, the one you forkbeards took off them.’
Tolvis stopped cutting. ‘Oh yes?’
‘Well I don’t know for sure what’s true and what’s not, but what I heard was it went missing when the Vathen kicked you lot out of Andhun.’ He cocked his head. ‘You know different?’
‘No, that’s about the right of it.’ Tolvis tried not to look interested.
‘There’s a rumour going around Issetbridge that the iron devil of Varyxhun has found it again.’
Tolvis almost choked. ‘Anyone say how?’
Fenaric stuck out his bottom lip and grunted, and Tolvis knew him well enough to know this wasn’t just the carter trying to get some tyres hammered for nothing. After a bit Fenaric stood up. ‘That’s about it.’
‘That was news worth having, carter. I’ll see about those tyres.’
‘No hurry. I’ll be good for another month. If they’re ready for the next time I roll through, that would be fine.’ He walked away.
Tolvis Loudmouth sat and stared at the forge for a very long time and hardly cut any nails at all after Fenaric left. The carter had earned his tyres but Tolvis wasn’t sure what to make of it, because if the red sword hadn’t drowned off the cliffs of Andhun then maybe Gallow hadn’t drowned there either, and a pang of something came with that thought. Not fear, exactly. Sadness, and that was when he realised how content he’d become here, doing nothing very much and being in no way important.
He didn’t tell Arda. The return of the red sword wouldn’t mean anything to her, but he took to sleeping with his own blade kept in the corner of the night room, which she noticed and gave him all sorts of grief for until he made up some story after Fenaric had gone about outlaws roaming the Fedderhun Road. And then the day after that Vennic came screaming through the village with some wild tale about a man made of iron riding the fringes of the Crackmarsh. Vennic hadn’t seen it himself but he’d heard from another shepherd out in the hills and now he had it in his head that a shadewalker was coming. The rest of the village laughed in his face. Shadewalkers never rode horses and they didn’t wear iron or venture out in the middle of the day, and anyway this was Vennic, who saw ghosts in the moon and devils in the shadows and thought Modris talked to him through his sheep.
Tolvis kept his mouth shut. He’d seen enough to know it was a Fateguard that Vennic’s friend had seen, the iron devil of Varyxhun. After that he took to sleeping with his shield in the night room too, and with one eye open, and that was probably why he sat up in the small hours of the morning a few nights later, wide awake and quite sure there was someone outside. He slipped his sword out of its scabbard and slid his shield onto his arm and crept to the door to the yard and opened it a crack, and right there in front of him was the shadow of a man swathed in metal and with a shield of his own on his arm. Tolvis let out a cry and jumped back, ready for a fight, but the iron devil in the yard didn’t move.
‘Tolvis Loudmouth?’ Iron grated on iron. ‘Well I certainly wasn’t expecting to find you. Still, Sixfingers keeps a special place in his heart for both of you.’
26
THE IRON MAN
Middislet was still miles away when the sun set but Gallow kept walking. Perhaps there was shelter to be found in the hills that edged the Crackmarsh but he wasn’t looking for it, not now. He knew how close he was and he knew this land, and besides there were Marroc in the woods and caves here. He’d seen them. Bandits or thieves, he didn’t know which, but it didn’t matter. He was a forkbeard alone and so he kept on going. He could almost have walked these last miles blindfold and still found his way home.
Snow started to fall, muffling the darkness and silencing the wind. The night was black as ink when he reached the forge and the house was still. Everyone inside would be sleeping. He listened at the door and heard nothing, no snores, no snuffles, no wheezes. But this was home, still the way he remembered it, and his heart was beating fast. Three years. Anything could have happened. He didn’t know whether to knock or simply open the door and creep inside.
He was still standing there when he heard movement, the scrape of wood across the floor and then the chink of metal and a footstep and the door opened, and in the night Gallow stared. There was a man. He was holding a candle. Not Nadric, not Arda, but . . .
‘Tolvis Loudmouth?’ Gallow stared. The side of Loudmouth’s face was a mass of scars from that last fight in Andhun. He looked fatter and his forked beard was gone. But most of all Gallow simply couldn’t understand what he was doing here. Here in Middislet at Nadric’s forge. It made no sense. Words started and then faltered.
‘Gallow?’ Tolvis couldn’t find anything to say either.
Gallow couldn’t think, couldn’t think of anything at all except that Tolvis had been a friend, one he’d never thought to see again. He offered his arm and Tolvis took it and they clasped each other. ‘Loudmouth?’ He shook his head in disbelief again. ‘Your beard . . .’
Tolvis was laughing, almost weeping with joy and surprise and dismay. ‘The silver I got you for those horses in Andhun. The Screambreaker.’ He shook his head. ‘There didn’t seem to be a parti
cularly good moment for giving it back, what with the whole chopping Medrin’s hand off and being chased through the castle by a Vathan horde. And then you didn’t come . . . You held the Vathen long enough that we got away. I couldn’t keep all that silver if it wasn’t mine and so I went to Varyxhun after Andhun fell and I found her, and then I stayed in case you came back and weren’t dead after all, and then I never quite . . . left . . .’
‘Loudmouth.’ Gallow shook his head. Now he looked closer there were bruises and a bloody gash on Loudmouth’s face. Fresh, no more than a day old. ‘What’s wrong?’
Tolvis looked over his shoulder. He glanced at the night room. ‘Maker-Devourer, Gallow, I’m so sorry.’
Gallow’s heart beat even faster. ‘What, Loudmouth? What is it?’
He had tears in his eyes. His hands grasped Gallow’s arms. ‘I looked after your family, Gallow. I’ve done what I could but Sixfingers never stopped looking.’
‘My sons?’
Tolvis looked away. Gallow grabbed his shirt and shook him.
‘Arda? What, Loudmouth? What?’
And then the furs around the night room shifted and a shadow moved out of them and a rasp cut the night. ‘This was always where you’d come, Foxbeard. I’ve been waiting for you.’
The scrape of metal on metal and then a shape unfolded itself from the darkness behind Tolvis, a man cased in iron, and Gallow knew, though he couldn’t see the face that lay beneath the mask in the moonlight, that this was Beyard. Who else? Gallow hissed, ‘You’re dead!’