by Nathan Hawke
Oribas met his eye. ‘I spent a year with a Lhosir, Skilljan Spearhoof. He was brave and strong and good to his word, and he taught me your ways well. I’ll take you to the door. We will make a blood oath in front of your men. I’ll open it and you’ll lead your soldiers into the Reach and you won’t look like a fool beaten by a few Marroc farmers.’ Skilljan ground his teeth. Oribas smiled at him. ‘When you see what I have to offer, you’ll agree it was a small price, and so I’ll have one more thing too. You’ll give me one of the Marroc to do with as I see fit. Whichever one I choose.’
36
THE CHIMNEY
As the sun set, Oribas led Skilljan and three of his men around the mountain to the crack in the crags that led to the tomb beneath Witches’ Reach. They crouched inside and Oribas fiddled with the flint and steel in his satchel until he had a tiny lamp burning. The Lhosir wrinkled their noses. ‘What’s that smell?’
Oribas began up the passage as far as the shaft. ‘The cess of Witches’ Reach makes its way down here.’
One of the Lhosir slipped and fell. ‘Cursed greasy ice! I can’t see a thing.’ He made a retching sound. ‘Stinks of fish.’
‘Bring torches down the mountainside and the Marroc will know your purpose.’ They pressed on all the way to the shaft, guided by the Aulian’s tiny flame until Oribas stood in the mouth of the passage and pointed up. ‘There are rungs set into the far wall. It was a long climb and slippery. One of the Marroc fell.’
‘Show us.’
Oribas pursed his lips. ‘At the top of the shaft is a door made by Aulian priests. I can open it. Go and look if you like. It’s a long way and I’m not sure I have the strength to climb it twice in one night.’
‘Twice, Aulian? The three of us will be enough to open the gates.’
Oribas laughed. ‘You won’t open any gates, Skilljan Spearhoof. I told you: the Marroc have sealed themselves in with ice and only the goddess of spring will open those gates now. That is unless you mean to light a fire beside them and hold off fifty Marroc archers for as long as it takes for that ice to melt.’ Skilljan growled at him. The problem took him longer to mull over than Oribas liked. ‘The Marroc came in this way, all of them. A cautious man like me would wait until he had more swords to follow him.’
‘You’re not as cautious as you’d like me to think.’ Skilljan shook his head and stared up at the shaft.
Oribas withdrew a little way down the passage. ‘The door is closed,’ he whispered, ‘but the Marroc aren’t stupid. They may still have an ear to it. They’ll know by now that I am gone.’
‘But not that you came to me.’ The Lhosir whispered among themselves and then Skilljan and one of his men crept away, leaving Oribas behind with the others. While he was away, Oribas and the two Lhosir sat in the pale light of his Aulian lamp. The Lhosir barred his way out, but it didn’t seem to trouble them when he left the lamp beside them and moved back to the shaft, and so they didn’t see as he circled the stone walkway, sprinkling powder from his satchel into the oily water. Oribas was half minded to climb the shaft without them, but would they follow? So he waited, and from their numbers when Skilljan returned, Oribas guessed he must have brought very nearly his entire band, what was left of them.
‘You first, Aulian,’ hissed Skilljan. ‘I’ll follow.’
Oribas gave Skilljan his lamp. ‘No sound. No light. I’ll take you to the door. You can stand there and see it in front of all your men, and then you can murder me and grind your teeth in frustration or you can whisper your blood oath and I will open it.’
‘We’ll see, Aulian.’
It was a long slow climb, every bit as hard as Oribas remembered. Worse for thinking of what waited at the top. He’d never done a thing like this. A horrible, terrible thing by any reckoning. There would be no forgiveness, not from those he crossed. And it was strange, because the Oribas who’d left the desert would never have done what he was about to do now, would never have considered it, would have thrown up his hands in horror at such a betrayal, and yet he felt no doubt. He would die for Achista, he’d known that for a while, but then he would have died for other things too – for Gallow, for the shadow-stalker and the sword-dancer he’d left behind who’d stood with him against the Rakshasa, for many others too. But for this Marroc woman he would do things far worse. For her and only for her.
Below him, Skilljan Spearhoof snarled and snapped at him to climb faster. Oribas kept his pace measured, though he was as eager as the Lhosir to reach the top and be done with this evil. The damp walls of the shaft glittered dimly in the lamplight, the only light any of them had until they reached the top and Skilljan climbed over the ledge and gripped Oribas and shook him. ‘If you’ve brought us all this way for nothing . . .’
Oribas pulled himself free. ‘Light a torch, Lhosir. We will need one.’ Quickly, before too many of the Lhosir could follow Skilljan over the edge, he snatched his lamp and ran to the door. When Skilljan had his brand burning, he followed. ‘Your oath,’ hissed Oribas. ‘And quickly, lest they hear us.’ He started to turn the wheels.
‘You have it.’ Which only made it worse.
Skilljan lit a second torch and held them both so Oribas could see. The wheels moved more easily this time and it was done in seconds. Oribas bowed his head and took back the torch. ‘Then the way is yours.’ He stared at the look of glee on the Lhosir’s face as Skilljan put his shoulder to the stone door and felt it begin to slide, then quietly walked away. There were six Lhosir up, then seven, and each one ran to the door with sword at the ready to race into the tower and fall upon the sleeping Marroc. None of them paid any attention to Oribas, their eyes focused on the slowly moving door, not even when he knelt down by the ledge to help one of them up and accidentally knocked over a bucket of foul-smelling oil that happened to be sitting by where he’d left it the day before. Nor as he stumbled back, holding his hands up in apology, and a piece of paper fell from his fingers and into the oil he’d spilled. Nor as he took his torch and lowered its flame to the ground. They only really noticed him again when the cavern lit up in a flash of light.
The oil he’d spilled over the edge caught alight and the fire began to spread across the floor. A Lhosir looked down to find his boots burning and tried to stamp them out. But it wasn’t the Lhosir who’d already climbed the shaft that Oribas was looking at. He was crouching, making himself as small as he could, looking into the shaft.
The fire ran down the wall. It was slow, not as quick as Oribas had hoped, but the Lhosir clinging to the rungs had nowhere to go as the flames trickled towards them and the stones around their hands and in front of their faces burned. A gobbet of flaming oil dripped down the shaft, a bright falling star vanishing into the darkness. But only so far. For waiting for it was the rest of the trap Oribas had laid. The drop of oil hit the surface of what had once been water but was now oil laced with saltpetre. Oribas looked away as the whole shaft bloomed into bright burning light and the Lhosir began to scream.
In the old tomb Achista heard the stone move and the Lhosir’s whispers grow louder. Through the cracks at the edge of the stone she saw the first flash of light, the signal Oribas had promised her. Thirty Marroc men gripped their spears and swords while a couple helped the Lhosir pull the stone door aside.
Skilljan Spearhoof froze at the first flash of light. He knew at once he’d been betrayed but he didn’t yet know how. The hairs on his back prickled like a creeping spider. He let go of the door and turned to see the fire. The flames didn’t seem like very much.
He turned back. The door kept moving even though no Lhosir was pushing it any more. He caught a glimpse of a face coming at him from the other side. What he didn’t see was the spear point that came at him too, and so he died as steel pierced his eye and deep into his skull, the first forkbeard to fall but not the last.
The Marroc burst out from the tomb. Oribas stayed very still, face turned away from the flames, crouched in his corner, losing himself in the flickering shadows. The Lhosir
could have found him if they’d chosen to look but most of them had no idea what has happening. It was over in a dozen heartbeats. The Marroc slammed into them and cut them down or pushed them back. Two ended up thrown over the edge. The Lhosir below were still climbing as fast as they could, roaring and swearing and howling as flames licked at their hands and reached for their faces and burned their forked beards. The Marroc waiting for them at the top were merciless. The Lhosir who fell vanished into the inferno at the bottom of the shaft. The last few started to climb back down but all they had waiting for them were flames and a thickening fish-stench of choking smoke.
Oribas turned away and then forced himself to turn back. There was nothing here he wanted to see but he needed to. He had to. Had to be sure he would remember what he’d done. He felt a presence at his shoulder. ‘Come away.’ He knew it would be her.
‘I can’t.’
‘Yes, you can.’ She leaned into him, wrapped her arms around his neck and nuzzled his ear.
‘I will not forget that I have done this.’
‘All they ever had to do was go. You’ve spared so many of us who never had that choice.’
Oribas followed her away, certain that he hadn’t saved anyone at all, that these Marroc would stay here until the Lhosir starved them out, or burned them, or laid them low with axe and sword. But it was easier to listen to Achista’s whispers than to the lost ghosts of the men who’d taught him how to do these things.
A few of the Marroc stayed in the tomb, watching. The rest crept up onto the walls of Witches’ Reach and threw down ladders and slipped away into the night. They encircled the Lhosir camp and tore through it, pulling down the men that Skilljan Spearhoof had left to stand watch over his wounded and slaughtering the Lhosir to the last man. They took the heads of the men they’d killed and carried them down to the Varyxhun Road and the Aulian Bridge and once again left them there, another Marroc message of triumph.
Through it all, Achista held Oribas tight. Sometimes he hardly felt her. He sat in the tower, rocking back and forth. Every breath carried the smell of burning fish and burning fur and hair aflame. Between her soothing words he heard the Lhosir scream, howling with rage and fury and pain and, at the very last, a deep and horrible fear.
He didn’t close his eyes to sleep that night. He was far too afraid of what he might see.
SOLACE
37
THE VARYXHUN ROAD
Beyard paused and stared at the Marroc woman Arda and wondered what he was doing. Only the Fateguard themselves could understand what it meant to be made into an ironskin, a man who served the Eyes of Time. Much was lost, many things that other men took for granted and would never willingly have forgone, and almost all those the Eyes of Time chose were given no say in becoming a Fateguard. Yet it was not all loss. With the iron and the sleepless eyes and the ever-present chill and the little need for food and rest there came an instinct for what was proper and what was wrong, what was fated and what was chance, what was a man’s destiny and what was not. This was the instinct that had made Beyard let Gallow go in Middislet, the same instinct again in Hrodicslet. Something lay between them. Their fates had been entwined for a full score years and would not unravel so easily.
So he told himself, and he told himself too that it couldn’t simply be that Gallow had once been his friend or that he was a better man than Sixfingers and always had been. The Fateguard had no friends, and fate cared nothing for right and wrong.
He followed the trail from Hrodicslet up into the mountains, tracing the path Gallow had made coming down. Snow began to fall, and for two nights and one day they were forced to wait in a Marroc farm while a blizzard wiped away every trace of every track that had existed before. When it was gone and the last snowflakes had settled, Beyard looked up at the sky, at the parting clouds, and smiled and followed anyway. Gallow had walked this road. He’d carried Solace for three long years and he left traces of his fate like a wounded man dripped blood.
He wasn’t sure what it meant, this thing that lay between him and Gallow now. He passed through Jodderslet and didn’t have all the Marroc there killed, even though he knew he probably should. His thoughts were distracted, and the more he sought for meaning, the more it seemed to elude him. He crossed into the Varyxhun valley through the Devil’s Caves with every intention of returning to the castle. Gallow would come. He would come for his Marroc wife as surely as the sun would rise each dawn but the walls of Varyxhun would make him pause.
In sight of the city he stopped. Between him and the castle stood a host of Lhosir warriors. There must have been almost a thousand of them, and that, by Beyard’s reckoning, accounted for nearly every Lhosir man in Varyxhun and almost half in the entire valley.
He stopped and watched. He was still watching when two riders broke away and galloped straight to him. ‘Ironskin,’ they called, breathless. ‘Cithjan summons you!’ And when Beyard stood before the man he was supposed to serve, Cithjan looked like he didn’t even begin to understand why everything had turned out the way it had. Beyard pitied him for him for that.
‘My Fateguard vanishes and now the whole valley is on the brink of revolt! Where in the Maker-Devourer’s cauldron have you been?’
‘Hunting Gallow Foxbeard.’ Beyard gave that a moment to sink in. He drew Solace from its scabbard and held it up for Cithjan to see.
‘Is that . . .?’
‘Yes.’ Beyard put the sword away. ‘I will leave the valley and take it to King Medrin when I can take the Foxbeard to him as well.’
‘The Foxbeard is here?’
Beyard bowed his head a fraction. ‘I have something he wants and so he will come to me. As I no longer need to hunt him, I am at your disposal until he does. Is there a war? Have the Vathen entered the Crackmarsh again? Has Valaric the Mournful called us to the field at last?’
Words tumbled out of Cithjan’s mouth as he spoke of the Marroc of Witches’ Reach – how they’d taken the tower and slaughtered two Lhosir attacks almost to the man. How they’d held the Reach for twenty days and sent messengers across the bridge to the outlaw Valaric to call for his aid. How Varyxhun simmered with discontent.
‘Let Valaric come. I have a prisoner to be taken on to Varyxhun . . .’ He hesitated. Was that best? Foolish not to send her, but Gallow would go to her, not to him. ‘No. I will keep her close.’ He felt the uncertainty drain away. This was the right thing. ‘I will lead your army, Cithjan.’ Beneath his iron mask Beyard almost smiled.
The Marroc had wiped out the Lhosir in the shaft under Witches’ Reach without losing a single man. When it was finished, Achista sent the last of the walking wounded with the severed heads of the Lhosir to the Aulian Bridge and on across the river, past Issetbridge, which guarded the mountain road to the Varyxhun valley, searching again for the men of the Crackmarsh. Addic went up the valley, murmuring and whispering in every tavern and inn where there were no forkbeards watching. The other Marroc Achista released were never meant to come back, but Addic wouldn’t allow himself to be sent away and so Oribas went with him, and everyone knew that Achista had sent them both so they wouldn’t be in the tower when the end came – all except Oribas and Addic, who had every intention of defying her.
They passed a few small bands of Lhosir heading for the tower but not enough to take it. They watched a party walking down from the Devil’s Caves with a Marroc woman and the iron devil at their head and kept well away. They passed along the valley in secret, spreading their word until they found the Lhosir army from Varyxhun and then they watched it. In the valley Marroc came and went without being seen. In the winter chill, wrapped up in furs, even an Aulian passed unnoticed.
Addic watched the forkbeards trudging the Varyxhun Road. ‘They’re scared,’ he said.
Oribas thought the Lhosir looked more angry than scared, but he kept this to himself. For the next three days the army moved slowly, swamping every village it reached. Most of the Lhosir slept in tents, which it seemed none of them liked. They cre
pt along, stripping the valley of food and firewood as they went, almost deliberately slow. Addic and Oribas kept behind them, riding stolen Lhosir horses and covering five times as much ground, sweeping from side to side, heading into the high valleys the army left untouched. The Marroc were scared, everywhere scared, but angry too, and Oribas felt that more and more as they drew close to Witches’ Reach again. People had seen the forkbeard heads strewn across the road, had heard the tales of bodies left out on the bridge night after night. Everywhere they went Addic spread the call: Rise and throw the forkbeards down! He burned with a barely held hunger. ‘They’re ready, Oribas. Just one more spark to light their fire, just one.’
Oribas wasn’t so sure that a mere spark would be enough, but he kept that to himself too.
‘Do you have any tricks to defeat this army?’ Addic asked when the Lhosir were only a day away from Witches’ Reach.
‘I might suggest ways to defeat a few dozen here, a handful there, but this many?’ Oribas shook his head. ‘Melt away. Burn the tower for all to see and leave them with nothing. Take your secret paths and ways through the high valleys and strike at them somewhere else. They’ve made this army now and so they must use it. Strike them again and again, always out of reach. You have the speed, they have the strength. Take their city, take their castle, any town you wish. Draw them hither and yon and never face them. Make them look like fools.’
After the sun had set and they were left to stare down the mountain at the Lhosir fires, Addic chuckled and shook his head. ‘You’re right, Aulian, but you also haven’t been here very long. Do you know what they’d do? Everywhere we went, they’d burn it flat. They’d burn Varyxhun. If they had to, they’d burn every Marroc out of this valley and simply leave.’ He bared his teeth. ‘What use am I inside the walls now? You go back to her, Aulian. You’ll be her strength. You’ll show her ways to kill forkbeards that I’d never see.’ He stood up.