by Nathan Hawke
‘The Vathen came as far south as the Crackmarsh after,’ said Stannic as they settled down for the night. ‘Valaric ever tell you that story, Torvic?’
Torvic nodded, because yes, he knew all about it, and so did anyone who’d lived through Andhun and the months afterwards, but then he saw Reddic shake his head. Reddic was too young to have been at Lostring Hill or at Andhun after. The first forkbeards had probably come from across the sea before Reddic was even born. To him they were simply the way of the world. Hadn’t stopped him running away to the Crackmarsh though.
Stannic belched. ‘Lad, you’ve heard of the Widowmaker, curse his soul, the Nightmare of the North? That was who the forkbeards sent to hold the Vathen outside Fedderhun. Well he lost, didn’t he, and it was Valaric who found him after the battle, out of his senses, and he let the Widowmaker go. Let Gallow take him away.’ He jerked his head down the track towards Middislet and the Crackmarsh. ‘That’s why half of Middislet looks like it was only put up yesterday. Vathen tore a good piece of it down.’ He poked the fire with a stick and watched the sparks rise with the smoke.
Reddic leaned sideways and let out a long fart. ‘Did they find him?’
‘The Widowmaker? He died fighting them outside Andhun the day before the city fell.’
‘I knew that.’
‘Well, how’d you think he got to be at Andhun a month later if the horse shaggers had found him Middislet?’ Stannic laughed and shook his head.
‘Could have escaped.’
‘No. He got away.’ Stannic stared into the flames, remembering, and Torvic stared too, remembering much the same, fleeing through the woods with Valaric and the Foxbeard and then the two Vathan horses and the rest and the aftermath of the battle, and then the days after, riding for Andhun. He looked suddenly up at Stannic.
‘You ever face him? The Nightmare of the North?’
‘Go against him?’ Stannic shook his head and laughed. ‘Never wanted to go and fight when I was younger. Scared, I suppose. I was about the age of your lad here when the Widowmaker came and I didn’t have the balls to run away and be a Crackmarsh man even if there’d been such a thing. Forkbeards didn’t come by these parts for years, and when they did they weren’t as bad as everyone said they’d be, not back then. That was after Tane died and Varyxhun fell. Just wanted to go home, I think. Most of them did, too.’
Reddic looked awed. Torvic grinned. Lostring Hill wasn’t something he talked about that much because everyone who hadn’t been there made out that the Marroc who’d survived the battle were heroes, whereas Torvic knew perfectly well that most of them had been shitting themselves as much as everyone else and just kept their heads a little better and got lucky. He snorted. ‘You remember the Foxbeard said he saw horses? And then he and Valaric went on their own to look, and Valaric came back and it was just him? How we all thought he’d done for the forkbeard?’ He chuckled again and looked at Reddic. ‘The Wolf only told us the truth later, and even then only because there were some Vathen who just wouldn’t stop following us until Valaric skinned a few of them to find out why. That’s when it came out. Ask Sarvic if you like – he was there too. Don’t ask Valaric though. Valaric doesn’t talk about it. He and the Foxbeard got a history . . .’
He froze. A noise. Outside. The look on Reddic’s face said he’d heard it too. Then it came again. A heavy broken shuffle, as though someone was dragging a load through the snow in long slow pulls with a good rest between each one. Reddic jumped up, startled, eyes darting from one door to the other and one hand already on his axe. ‘Forkbeards?’
Torvic shook his head. ‘Not out here.’
Stannic waved at them both to sit down. ‘Wolf maybe. If it is then it’s got something. Leave it be. Dead of night in that cold?’
He snorted but now Torvic got up too. ‘Didn’t sound like an animal to me.’ He crept to the door and opened it. Cold air froze his face but at least the winds weren’t the gales they’d been a week ago. The moon was full and high, its light bright on the snow except where long deep shadows spilled from the wood pile and the low barns. A soldier in mail and a helm stood not more than a dozen yards in front of him. Hard to make out much in the moonlight but he had a naked sword hanging loose and long from his hand and he was too big to be a Vathan. Torvic snatched his shield from beside the door and whipped out his axe. ‘Reddic! Stannic!’ The soldier was a forkbeard. Had to be, although only Modris knew what a forkbeard was doing all the way out here. He couldn’t see the forkbeard’s eyes but he felt them staring at him, and when the forkbeard moved, he lurched a stride closer, dragging one leg as though crippled. Crippled was good. Torvic tried to tell himself that one crippled forkbeard was more a gift than something to fear but he couldn’t quite make himself believe it. One forkbeard out here all on his own? One?
Then again, the Vathen had taken a forkbeard from Hrodicslet. It made him pause a moment. He took a step closer and peered. ‘Foxbeard?’
The forkbeard took another step and this time it wasn’t so slow. His sword came up fast and lunged and Torvic barely got his shield in the way. The sword was odd. It wasn’t a forkbeard sword. Too long, Torvic thought as he brought his axe down hard on the man’s helm, not hard enough to split the iron but hard enough that the forkbeard would see stars long enough for a killing blow. But the forkbeard grabbed at his shield as though he hadn’t felt anything, and Torvic stepped back, and that was when the moon caught the forkbeard’s face and he saw it wasn’t a man at all. The sight froze him stiff, and in that moment the shadewalker drove its long Aulian sword through Torvic’s guts and then caught him as he crumpled. While one hand still held the sword, the other grabbed Torvic by the throat and pulled him close. The shadewalker stiffened; and as it squeezed Torvic’s life out of him, its crippled leg twisted and straightened and its eyes gazed hard at the door.
And that was how Reddic found him, Torvic gasping and gurgling while his blood ran out of him over his belly and down his legs and dripped off his dangling feet to pool blackly in the snow, and the shadewalker on the other side of him, crushing his throat. For an instant Reddic was paralysed, and in that second the only sound was the snap of bones as the shadewalker finally crushed Torvic’s throat. Reddic struggled for breath and backed away. The shadewalker dropped Torvic and looked at him. It stepped forward, almost into the doorway, and that was when Reddic remembered there were five more people in the house behind him and three of them were children.
‘Shadewalker!’ He slammed the door in its face and hurled himself against it. ‘Shadewalker! Stannic! By Modris! Get up! Run!’ He was screaming now, willing the others to get out of their beds and into their furs as fast as they possibly could. There wasn’t anything to do when a shadewalker came except run, every Marroc knew that. Even the forkbeards didn’t try to fight them because they couldn’t be killed, and they couldn’t be killed because they were already dead. They wandered aimlessly, served no purpose. No one knew what they were or why, save that they came across the mountains from Aulia now and then,
The door rattled. The shadewalker slammed into it hard enough to knock Reddic back a step. The Marroc were piling out of the night room, the children already wailing in fear. Stannic pulled on his boots and wrapped another fur around himself and picked up a hay fork. He threw open the other door and roared at everyone to get out. Against Reddic’s shoulder the door rattled again. The shadewalker pushed it open another inch.
‘I’ll hold it here as long as I can.’ Reddic wasn’t sure why he’d said that except that he was the one holding the door closed and no one was helping him and so he was pretty much stuck with it and never mind how much he wanted to piss himself and sink to the floor. Stannic was still throwing cloaks and furs and blankets to his wife and his children. Reddic’s feet slipped back. A gap opened wide enough for a finger to slip through and then for two and then three, and that was when he turned and let go, and Stannic was out the other door a step ahead, still carrying armfuls of furs. Stannic ran, glancing ove
r his shoulder now and then, while Reddic shot past them all, legs pumping as hard as they’d go, flailing and floundering in the snow. After a minute he stopped to catch his breath. When Stannic’s wife caught him, gasping with her children pecking at her heels, Stannic snapped at them all to wait. He stood and stared back at the farm and at the tracks they’d left behind them in the snow. The shadewalker was following, out in the open now, walking fast and steady, clear as anything.
Stannic stared at it as he handed out the furs, then met Reddic’s eye. ‘Not the first time I’ve had to run from a shadewalker and probably won’t be the last. They’re not so quick and they don’t run but they don’t give up easy neither, and they don’t feel the cold. Follow us until sunrise, this one, most likely, and pick off whoever drops. So we go steady, quick as we can but slow enough we don’t have to stop much, and we keep warm, and we don’t leave anyone behind. I’ll take the front, you take the back. Keep your eyes on it, lad, and if the cold bites too hard, you shout for help and I’ll come.’ He slapped Reddic on the shoulder. ‘You did good, lad. Held it back long enough so we got what we need. Modris walks with us and we’ll all live to see the sun again.’ The shadewalker was getting closer. Stannic set off. ‘Shout to me, lad, if it gets too close.’
Sometimes Reddic forgot he wasn’t many years from being boy. Others he felt it sharp as an Aulian knife.
7
MIRRAHJ
‘Forkbeard king’s on the move.’ Gallow woke up slumped over the back of a horse. The ground was right in front of him, swaying from side to side, lurching up and down with the animal’s gait. He flinched. His hands were tied behind his back, his ankles bound together and the whole of him lashed tight to the saddle beneath. His head throbbed. Bits and pieces of Vathan conversation drifted over him. ‘Where?’ ‘Somewhere down south.’ He tried to remember what had happened the night before. Trouble. Fighting. He’d been drunk. Marroc running and screaming and men on horses . . . Vathen. And then the Vathan woman, and then . . . And then he didn’t remember.
A dozen Marroc trailed along behind the horsemen, hands bound, pulled by ropes tied to Vathan saddles. If anyone fell then the Vathen wouldn’t stop. Gallow closed his eyes again. No point letting them know he was awake because then they’d only drag him like the others. He let himself drift, trying to doze away the throbbing between his eyes.
The sun was still high when the Vathen finally stopped and made a small camp. They threw together a fire and sat around it roasting haunches of meat while they left their animals to graze. The horses looked thin and hungry and the Vathen tucked into their feast like starving men. Some of them taunted the Marroc with strips of fat, dangling them and then whipping them away again, but they stopped when the woman from Hrodicslet came past and barked at them. Gallow’s eyes followed her. The other Vathen deferred to her. She was their bashar then. And now he dimly remembered. Hadn’t she told him that before . . . before whatever had happened?
She saw him watching her, and while the other Vathen stamped out the fire and rounded up their horses, she cut the ropes that held him and tipped him onto the ground and poked him with her toe.
‘Come on, forkbeard, move. Else I’ll think you’re dead. You might think I’ll leave you and you’ll slip your ropes and escape, but there are some things I want from these Marroc, and I’m thinking that if I let them bleed a forkbeard it might loosen their tongues a little.’
Gallow rolled onto his back and looked up at her. ‘Lhosir make poor slaves. What do you want from me, Vathan?’
‘Right now for you to get to your feet.’ She tied a rope to the horse’s saddle. As Gallow struggled to rise she hauled him up and then strung the rope around his waist. When that was done she cut the ropes around his feet. She didn’t touch the ones around his wrists.
‘It’s easier to walk with your hands at the front.’
She flashed him an unkind smile. ‘So it is. You want to know what I want from you?’ She walked a little way to her own horse and led it back and tapped at the scabbard tied across its saddle. His scabbard. ‘I want to know where to find the sword that goes with this.’
Gallow shrugged, but she was laughing before he could even open his mouth. ‘Of course, forkbeard, of course you don’t know, haven’t the first idea, can’t even imagine what I’m talking about. Save your breath for the walk since I won’t believe a word you say right now. When you’re ready you can tell me how you came to have the scabbard, at least. Or do you propose to tell me that some Marroc hung it on you for a joke when you were drunk last night?’
Gallow twisted his neck from side to side, trying to ease out the knots in his muscles. He felt the joints and the bones crack. ‘I’ll tell you exactly, Vathan, for I see no secret to it. My name is Gallow. Some once called me Truesword. Most call me Foxbeard now. I fought beside the Screambreaker at Andhun. I was there when he defeated your giant and took the red sword and I was beside him when he fell. That’s how I came to be carrying both that scabbard and the sword you’re looking for. Is that what you wanted to hear?’
The Vathan cocked her head. ‘Go on.’
Gallow closed his eyes. ‘Let your Marroc slaves go.’
The woman howled with laughter. ‘A forkbeard asking mercy for Marroc slaves? There’s a thing. I’m sure they won’t beg for you.’
‘No.’ Gallow bowed his head.
‘Well, if ever you find a Marroc prepared to take your place, I’ll let you go, forkbeard. But for now there are other things I want from these Marroc and so you’ll have to tell me more about what happened to Solace as we walk. Do you think you can manage that?’
‘You told me to save my breath.’
She smirked. ‘Are you the forkbeard who threw Solace off the cliffs of Andhun into the sea?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you jumped right after it?’
‘Yes.’
The woman looked at him askance. Behind her the rest of the Vathen were getting ready to leave. ‘I’ve stood at the top of that cliff, forkbeard, so I’m quite sure I don’t believe you. But suppose for a moment that I did: how are you still alive?’
Gallow wasn’t sure he had much of an answer to that. When he didn’t speak, the Vathan woman laughed and her eyes called him a liar. She turned away and vaulted onto her horse. She didn’t free his wrists so he could walk more easily but as the Vathen rode off, she circled back to take the reins of his horse and led him to the front where everyone could see and had him trot along behind her. She didn’t once look back at him.
The Vathen rode at a hard pace for walking. Gallow didn’t see what happened to the Marroc at the back of the ride, but when they stopped again in the evening on a ridge looking down over a steep valley, most were still there. No one came to untie him so Gallow sat down and stretched his legs while the Vathen set out their camp and lit their fires. He looked down at the valley. He knew this place. At the bottom was the road that ran from Hrodicslet and round the hills to Fedderhun. On its way it passed Middislet only a few miles from Nadric’s forge. From home and from Arda. As he gazed he walked deep among those memories, so deep he didn’t notice the Vathan woman until she squatted beside him, drinking water from a deerskin bottle. ‘I imagine you could keep up that pace for days.’ She drank deeply.
‘I imagine I could.’ Gallow closed his eyes. The sun was setting and the air would get cold quickly even this far from the mountains.
‘Yes. A forkbeard like you should manage well enough. I’m guessing three more days to Fedderhun and then we’ll pick the pace up. Another five or six to Andhun.’
‘I’d like some water, please. Walking makes me thirsty.’
‘Polite too?’ She laughed. ‘But where’s your beard, forkbeard? I feel stupid calling you that when you haven’t got one.’
‘I cut it off.’
‘Why?’
‘Talking makes me thirsty too.’
‘Sit up then.’ When Gallow managed to get himself sitting, the woman moved closer and tipped the bo
ttle against his mouth. She was careful and he managed to drink more than she spilled.
‘This is your ride. The others answer to you. You’re the bashar here?’
‘So I am. Where’s the sword, forkbeard?’
‘I left it behind.’
‘Where?’
‘A place I passed through.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it’s cursed.’
She snorted. ‘I hear the Marroc say so. I thought you forkbeards knew better.’
Gallow turned and smiled at her, though there was no friendliness there. ‘I carried the red sword for long enough to know that the Marroc are right. If I had it, I’d give it to you.’
She laughed. ‘I doubt that very much, forkbeard.’
‘That doesn’t make it any less true.’
‘You’re not going to tell me where it is. But you know. I can see that. That or it’s all been lies right from the start and you just found the scabbard empty washed up on the shore somewhere. I think if I try to beat it out of you, I might kill you before you talk, and the ardshan would have my hide for that. So you can keep your secrets, forkbeard. I’ll take you to Andhun and the ardshan can try. I’ll be curious to see if it can be done.’
‘It’s a long way to Andhun, Vathan. A lot could happen.’
‘It could.’ She stood up and took the bottle away. ‘Hungry yet?’
‘I’ll live.’
‘I bet.’ She chuckled. ‘I’ve killed forkbeards. Two. Three years ago in Andhun. I hated your people once but not so much now. Don’t think for a moment that’ll help you if I have to hunt you down. I’m the bashar of this ride, as you say. Challenge me and I’ll open your throat and damn whatever it is you might know.’ She turned and started off, then stopped and looked back. ‘One thing puzzles me, forkbeard. What were you doing in that Marroc town, just you and none of the rest of your kind?’