by Nathan Hawke
‘Looking for a place to get drunk.’
‘In a town full of Marroc?’ She hooted with glee. ‘You forkbeards are mad. I’m surprised they didn’t slit your throat.’
‘But they didn’t.’
She went away then, back to the fires to be among her men, but later, when it was dark and the Vathen were settling to sleep for the night, she returned with a ragged half-eaten leg of fire-burned meat, cold again now, with the fat congealed among the flecks of charred flesh and skin. She poked Gallow with her foot until he stirred, and when he sat up she dropped the meat on his lap. He wriggled until he had it wedged between his knees. Doubled over he could reach it with his teeth. He tore at it carefully, wary of dislodging it. The woman watched him. ‘You’re a strange one, forkbeard. The Marroc all scream and cry and wail to be let go. They beg and wave their hands. The forkbeards I’ve met before were all full of curses and threats. They never gave an inch and they all came to bad ends. But you? You just sit here as though none of this really matters.’ She snorted and laughed at the same time, an odd squeaking sound.
Gallow glanced up between mouthfuls. ‘Your ropes are strong and your knots are good, Vathan. I told you already that Lhosir make poor slaves and I’ll be no different, but why waste my strength fighting what cannot be fought?’
The Vathan shook her head as she got up. ‘You intrigue me, forkbeard, but that was a dull answer. Do better.’
He slept as best he could in the lashing winds blowing off the Storm Coast to the north. In the morning the Vathan woman poked him in his shivering ribs until he was on his feet and they were away again. She ignored him for the rest of that day and for most of the next one too, until his throat was swollen with thirst and his legs ached and his belly knotted with hunger, but on the third night, as the Vathen camped amid a wind that howled like a fury and whipped the trees and the grass and staggered men whenever they took a careless step, she came back to him again. She held water and meat still warm and dripping from the fire in front of him, and shouted over the gale, ‘Amuse me, forkbeard. Never mind the sword, if that somehow troubles your honour. Tell me the story of how a drunken forkbeard found himself in a Marroc town so far from his fellows and then simply didn’t care when a Vathan bashar took him for her slave.’
Another day without water would be the end of him. He wasn’t sure if the Vathan woman would let that happen but the smell of hot fat drove him wild. And in the end what did it matter? He laughed. ‘Strange that you should ask that tonight.’ The land around them had been familiar for hours. He remembered riding across it with the Screambreaker after Lostring Hill. Middislet was less than a dozen miles away, somewhere to the south and the west – Middislet and Nadric’s forge and Arda and home – but he didn’t dare breathe a word of any of that. So he told her instead how the ghost of the Screambreaker had been waiting for him after he’d thrown himself into the sea from the cliffs of Andhun, of the choices he’d been given there and of the choice he’d made. Of how storms and slavers had taken him ever further from his home. A year as a slave, an arena fighter, then a wanderer and a corsair, and finally on a ship again, looking for the way home and yet another storm that sank him and washed him up on a beach in a distant land to the very far south. And always he had the sword. He told her how he’d clung to it, gone back for it, always kept it somehow with him in each escape, the red sword and his old shield of Medrin’s Crimson Legion. He watched her eyes as he told her and saw the hunger there, and so each night he told her more.
The Vathen reached Fedderhun and then the sea and the coast road to Andhun. The gales blew themselves out and in their place a stillness settled in the air. A cold was coming, a bitter cold drifting down from the Ice Wraiths in the distant north. The Vathen stopped in Marroc villages, each one quietly getting on with its life until a hundred Vathan riders threw them out of their homes and hearths for a night and ate their food and moved on. In a Marroc house around a Marroc fire Gallow told the Vathan woman of Oribas – how the Aulian had found him washed up on the beach with the last of his crew and nursed them all back to life – and of the Rakshasa, the great monster they’d hunted together while Gallow always looked for roads north that would take him home. As snow fell outside, he spoke of how he found the pass through the mountains, the Aulian Way to the Varyxhun valley, and at the same time the secret that would kill the Rakshasa, how he’d gone back to the desert and to Oribas to finish their hunt and how he’d lost the red sword in that battle, the one and only lie in everything he said. She looked at him hard when he told her that and asked many questions, and he knew she didn’t know whether to believe him but here and now he didn’t care. In a way he was speaking himself out, since the Vathen in Andhun would surely kill him once they knew who he was. They’d ask him about the sword over and over, and either he’d break as they tortured him or he wouldn’t but the end would be the same.
She came back, that was what mattered, and when the cold came as he knew it would and the snow lay thick and men shivered and died under their blankets at night, she made sure they kept him warm. He got her name out of her. Mirrahj Bashar. He couldn’t think of much reason to lie about the rest and so he told her how it was: how a forkbeard had come across the mountains after three years of looking for the way home and found himself caught between the Marroc and his own people. How other forkbeards had been looking for the sword too and how they wouldn’t let him be. How he’d found himself fighting his own brothers of the sea, killed the man who’d been his best friend in the world and found his family at last only to leave them again. How his wife had sent him away. How the Marroc had thrown him out and how he’d long ago burned all bridges with his own kin.
‘So you see, Vathan, there’s no peace for me and never has been, except for this. I’m done. Kill King Sixfingers and then perhaps I can go home. I’d like to see my sons grow into men, even if they want nothing to do with me. But if that’s not to be then best I stay away. Far away. It’s no hurt what you’re doing, taking me from where I was.’
Mirrahj Bashar listened quietly to it all, and when he was done she didn’t laugh or spit, only shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, forkbeard, but I don’t think that’s your future. We’ll see the walls of Andhun tomorrow.’ She touched his face, a finger on his cheek. Gallow had lost count of the days they’d been on the move since Hrodicslet but it had been more than a week. Like it or not, he was growing a beard.
As she’d said, the middle of the next day brought them to Andhun. Gallow looked up at the gatehouse as they rode beneath it, thinking of the times he’d been this way before. With the Screambreaker more than a decade ago. With Tolvis Loudmouth on the day he’d decided not to go home just yet after all. Walking the other way with Valaric the morning after he’d burned Jyrdas on the beach, with a hundred Marroc howling for his blood. They crossed the square where he and Valaric had stood, side by side, alone against Medrin and his men. He’d never thought to see Andhun again.
Instead of the castle, the Vathen swarmed into the horse market. If they’d been Lhosir they would have kicked a few Marroc for the fun of it, and the Marroc would have shouted back and maybe thrown stones and fistfuls of dung, and then before you knew it there would have been blood and dead men all over the place. The Lhosir liked a fight, and once they started they weren’t that keen on stopping. But the Vathen simply told the Marroc to go and then waited, and the Marroc went and no one killed anyone.
‘Last chance, forkbeard.’ Mirrahj came and sat beside him after she’d eaten with her ride. She offered him a piece of gristly meat and a skin of water. ‘I’ll give you to the ardshan tomorrow. If you’re who you say you are, he’ll remember your face and kill you slowly. I’ve been kind to you, forkbeard, kinder than others might have been. Tell me where the sword is. The ardshan will get it out of you in the end anyway.’
‘In the desert of Aulia, far beyond the southern mountains.’ Gallow smiled and drank the water. Mirrahj snatched the meat away from him.
‘You’re
lying to me, Gallow Foxbeard of the Lhosir.’
‘It’s the only answer I have for you, Mirrahj Bashar of the Vathen.’
‘If I let you go?’
‘But you won’t.’
‘I might promise to kill you quickly and without pain.’
‘I wouldn’t believe you.’
‘What if I told you that I meant to find the sword for myself and overthrow the ardshan and proclaim myself Daughter of the Weeping God and rule over all my people?’
‘Then you’re no different from any other.’ He almost smiled. ‘A dull answer. You can do better.’
Mirrahj Bashar laughed and threw the meat to him anyway. ‘Enjoy it. It’s the last you’ll see.’ She made as if to leave and then stopped and looked at him intently. ‘You know what I think? I think you’re telling me the truth when you say you left it behind. I think you’re telling me the truth when you say it’s cursed and when you say you want nothing more to do with it. All that happened to you, you choose to blame on Solace. Foolish, but then you are a forkbeard. There’s a change in your face when you talk about things that matter, and so I believe you, all of what you say except the where.’ She shuffled closer. ‘You did leave it behind, but not in Aulia. That’s the lie. So where is it, forkbeard? It’s somewhere closer, isn’t it?’
Gallow shook his head and looked away. Saying nothing, that was the best defence when the questions started. The whole truth or else say nothing at all.
‘If you’d left it somewhere that was beyond grasping, you’d have told me, safe and sure that it didn’t matter. So it’s not in Aulia, but if you didn’t lose it in Aulia then you brought it back.’
Gallow caught her smiling at the corners of her eyes. He shrugged.
‘Nothing to say, forkbeard? You left the sword up in the mountains, didn’t you? There’s a road from Andhun that heads south on the other side of the Isset. Goes all the way up there. The Marroc call it the Aulian Way. Not too hard to guess where it goes.’
‘It’s on the other side of the river,’ murmured Gallow. ‘There’s no place to cross. You know that.’
‘Oh, but there is. Go far enough and there must be. Tell me, forkbeard. Tell me and take me to it and I’ll let you live. I’ll let you go. I know what it’s like to want to go home.’
Gallow shook his head. Mirrahj got up and patted him on the shoulder. Later she came back and brought him the remains of a roasted goat’s leg, one with some decent meat still on it, and Gallow knew it was a goodbye of sorts. Made him wonder if Medrin’s Lhosir would have treated Mirrahj Bashar as kindly if they’d taken her. Probably not, all things considered. He ate his fill, rolled onto his side and let his thoughts drift. If they killed him, so be it. Tomorrow was another day.
8
KING SIXFINGERS
In the darkness of the new moon the Legion of the Crimson Shield slipped into the waters of the Isset in a hundred tiny boats and pushed away from the banks. Each had a muffled paddle, but for the most part there was no need for them for the river was already beginning to swell with the first meltwater from the mountains. In each boat a handful of soldiers hid under fur cloaks, eyes at the front to watch their way, tugging on strings to one man at the back trailing a paddle in the water to steer them. There were no words, no whispers. They floated in silence.
On the far side of the river Thanni Ironfoot and two dozen men had crossed the Isset at dusk, hours before the little boats left. Now they ran, trotting along the bank in ones and twos, watching for Vathen. It was a dangerous sport. There might not be any Vathan sentries on the river at all so far north of Tarkhun and the massing Lhosir army. Or there might be any number. If that was the case then Ironfoot and his hunters had to find them and kill them quickly and without alarm, and all the while they had to stay ahead of the little boats, and that meant they had to run through the night. Which was just as well, because the night was as cold as an ice witch’s kiss.
Three miles short of Andhun they found their first watchers. Three Vathen, clustered up close to a fire. The cold was a blessing, Ironfoot reckoned. Man stood around for long away from a fire on a night like this, he froze and died. So the Vathen were beside their fire, two snoring like old drunks while the third sat on a log, head drooping and jerking back up again. Ironfoot got close enough to hear the Vathan’s breathing. The Vathan’s head jerked up one last time. Ironfoot came from behind and covered the space between them in three long strides, clamped a hand over the man’s face and opened his throat with a long-edged knife. He held the Vathan good and tight well after the blood stopped spraying out towards the river. He’d done it quietly enough, but by then the other Vathen had stopped snoring. They’d stopped breathing too. The Lhosir cleaned their knives and ran on.
A mile out of Andhun they slowed. The banks of the river grew steeper as the Isset closed in on the sea, as though the land itself had risen to try and keep the water back and the river had simply cut deeper and deeper. A steep ridge rose in front of them and Ironfoot smelled smoke. He crept closer and saw a Vathan down by the bank, awake and alert. He threw a stone. The Vathan looked the other way and Ironfoot ran silently up behind him and split the back of his neck with an axe. Then he waved the men running behind him to a halt, made a circling motion and pointed to the ridge. He took a moment to catch his breath and then led them away from the river at a fast jog, following the bottom of the slope until they’d covered a good half a mile; then they climbed it, quiet as thieves. The men with the best legs went on over and down the other side to keep on to Andhun; the rest followed him, creeping back along the top of the ridge. He had no idea how far behind the little boats were by now, but no real distance.
Close to the river again he could finally see what he was dealing with – fifty or sixty men, so surely at least one other sentry watching the river and probably two. He waited for his Lhosir to get ready. They looked at one another and closed their eyes and muttered words to the Maker-Devourer, then went forward on their hands and knees, silent as owls. Close up he could hear the Vathen talking, the handful who were awake – away on the side of the camp looking down over the Isset. Half his men spread out behind him and got on with the business of slitting sleeping throats. He led the rest himself, just four, creeping silently through the night like shadows, closer and closer to where the Vathen sentries—
A shout broke the silence behind him. What or why made no difference and he didn’t look back, just rose and rushed forward. The Vathen turned. They saw him coming, but only so the surprise was still written on their faces when he ran his spear into the belly of the first and buried his axe in the face of the next. The other two sentries cried out before they died but it made no difference now. The Vathen were waking up faster than his Lhosir could kill them. Then again, his Lhosir were in mail and furs and had their spears already in their hands. Made for an interesting fight for a while. Short, maybe a hundred heartbeats before it was done, but tense as a drawn knife.
When they were finished, Ironfoot looked out over the river where the Vathan sentries had sat. He could see the first shapes in the water, silently drifting with the current towards Andhun. Hard to see what they were without a moon, but then he didn’t need to see to know they were the boats.
When the first shouts woke him, Moonjal Bashar jerked upright to see the dark shape of a man standing over him. The man had a spear raised ready to run him through. In that moment Moonjal couldn’t have said whether the man was a Lhosir or a Vathan or a Marroc but the sight was enough. He threw himself sideways, rolled as far and fast as he could and tipped himself off the side of the ridge. He tumbled and bounced down the slope and landed in a thicket beside the river, too winded to do more than lie still.
‘Where are you, bandy-legs?’ When he looked back he could make out the shape of a man coming cautiously down the slope after him. The words gave him away: a forkbeard. Moonjal stayed exactly where he was, still as a mouse. The Lhosir wouldn’t see him unless Moonjal moved or the forkbeard trod on him. The man had
a shield as well as his spear and he probably had a sword or an axe on his belt. Moonjal had all of these things too, only they were lying on the top of the rise next to the furs where he’d been sleeping.
He was shivering already. That was what was going to give him away. Or the mist of his breath. Cursed cold!
The forkbeard wasn’t stupid. He was coming at a steady pace, not rushing, keeping his shield low to guard his legs, poking his spear into each clump of grass. He was heading the right way too. ‘Come on, horse boy. Come and play.’
Moonjal’s fingers touched the haft of the knife strapped to his calf. It was a nice knife, an old piece of Lhosir steel sheathed in Aulian gold and looted from Andhun. Strapping it to his calf had been to make sure no one stole it but he’d not say no to luck, however it came. He bent forward now, fingers closing around it, as slowly and gently as he could, trying to stay invisible.
A twig snapped beneath him as the knife came free. The forkbeard’s head whipped round, looking right at him. The man growled under his breath. ‘That you, horse boy?’ He was coming straight at Moonjal now, crouched low, shield covering almost all of him, spear jabbing. Moonjal froze. If he moved a muscle, the forkbeard would see him now, or hear him. If he tried to get up and make a dash for it, the forkbeard would run him through with his spear. If he tried scrambling deeper into the thicket . . . He had no idea how thick the undergrowth was. He might get away or he might not, but the forkbeard would still be after him and he’d still be on his hands and knees.
The Lhosir eased in closer. Moonjal stayed absolutely still, hoping the forkbeard didn’t tread on him. A snapped twig. Could have been an animal. The forkbeard stopped with his feet so close they were practically touching Moonjal’s arm. The Vathan heard him breathing, slow and harsh, the long deep breaths of a stalking hunter. He was whispering to the air, ‘Where are you, Vathan?’