by Nathan Hawke
Gallow pressed into her. ‘No, Mirrahj of the Vathen. These are still my people.’
She reined in sharply, twisted and wrapped one arm around his back then heaved and tipped him sideways so he fell off. It was done with such fast grace that Gallow was on the ground before he knew it. ‘Then get off my horse, forkbeard.’
The Lhosir had gathered again, protecting their wounded with a tight line of shields and spears. They watched but didn’t come any closer. Gallow walked slowly towards them. The one in the middle had a face he knew. ‘Thanni Ironfoot.’
Ironfoot laughed out loud. ‘Well, well. And what should I call you, Gallow? I remember your name was Truesword once, but I’ve heard other names since. I heard you married a sheep. Doesn’t look like a sheep to me.’
‘Call me what you like, Ironfoot. Seems the Crimson Legion has taken Andhun castle. Don’t know that they’re going to hold it. There’s a lot of angry Vathen inside those walls. Best you go and help where you can if that’s what you’re minded to do. Are my eyes still good, Ironfoot? Did I see Medrin in Andhun as the sun rose?’
Ironfoot laughed again. ‘And why would I answer a man who rides with a Vathan?’
‘Tell Medrin something for me, Ironfoot. Tell him, in case he doesn’t already know, that Gallow Truesword came looking for him to finish what he started. Tell him I’ll be waiting for him in Varyxhun if he has the stomach for it. Tell him the Comforter waits there too, if he has the strength to lift it in those crooked fingers of his.’
‘If he’s there, Gallow-who-rides-with-my-enemies.’
‘He’s there, Ironfoot, and you know it. But I’ll not make you lie for him.’
Thanni Ironfoot dipped his spear in salute. ‘The Screambreaker loved you, Gallow. I wonder what he’d make of what you’ve become. Maybe it’s as well he’s gone.’
‘I wonder what he’d make of us all, Ironfoot. What he’d make of a king who deals with the ironskins, who makes war on women and children. What he’d make of those who follow such a king. I wonder that all the time. I’d not head for the gates, if I were you. Not yet. More Vathen there than even you can bite.’
He turned his back on the Lhosir. Mirrahj was still where she’d dumped him off her horse and so he walked back to her. She didn’t stop him from climbing behind her again, though it was hard with his shoulder so swollen and stiff from the blow he’d taken beneath the castle. Ironfoot and his Lhosir watched but they didn’t move.
‘What did you just do, forkbeard?’
‘Told Medrin where to find the things he most desires. Called him to where I can kill him. And then I can go home.’
Mirrahj didn’t reply. After a long pause she turned her horse and rode away leaving the Lhosir behind. She stopped again on the top of a ridge overlooking the river. Long shadows of morning sun streaked the ground now but there was no missing the bodies or the streaks of bright red blood in the whiteness of the snow. Mirrahj dismounted and poked at the dead with her foot. Caught by surprise, half of them murdered in their sleep, throats slashed, the others cut down before they could lift their shields or don a helm. Gallow counted a score of Vathen and there were clearly more. A couple of forkbeards too.
‘They did this.’ Mirrahj was looking down from the ridge towards Ironfoot and his Lhosir, limping on towards the city. In the morning light there was nowhere to hide. ‘This was Moonjal Bashar’s ride. The ardshan’s son.’ She sat heavily among the corpses and closed her eyes and then stood up again and walked among the dead, turning them over one by one and looking at their faces. Gallow left her to it; by the time she was done the sun had risen a hand higher and he’d lost sight of Ironfoot’s men, still heading for the gates. Chances were they’d be dead soon.
‘He’s not here.’ Mirrahj Bashar leaned on her javelot and held her head in her hand.
‘Why didn’t you stay and fight?’ Gallow asked. ‘Your riders were ready for it. Best I could see, Andhun could still go either way.’
‘Because I’m sick of it, forkbeard, that’s why.’ She rounded on him. ‘Did you count the size of my ride when we entered Andhun? There were eighty of us. I knew them all. More than just their names. I know the names of the children they left behind when they followed the Weeping Giant across the plains. I know the names of their wives who’ll never see them again and of the brothers they once rode with who are nothing but bones now. We don’t belong here, forkbeard. This isn’t our land and none of us wants to be here, but we have no choice any more. We brought the Sword of the Weeping God here and then we lost it and now we can’t go back. We just can’t. Were you lying in Andhun or was that the truth at last?’
‘The truth.’ A pall of smoke was rising over the city now.
‘Then take me to it and I’ll take it back where it belongs and every Vathan for five hundred miles will follow me. We just want to go home, forkbeard.’
The words touched him deep enough to make his eyes swim. ‘Three years I carried that burden.’
‘Three years.’ Mirrahj nodded. ‘And more for those who followed the Weeping Giant and his dreams in the early days before he had all the clans drawn to his banner. The start wasn’t so bad. Riding and riding and riding across lands almost bereft of anything but grass and wind. We smashed a small Marroc army at Fedderhun and we felt the calling in our blood. And then Andhun. Bloody Andhun, and yet we took everything this side of the river in the end, but what it cost us . . . What you forkbeards did to us.’ She shook her head and wiped her eyes. ‘I was just a rider then. I had a man, a bashar himself, though I dare say I wouldn’t have kept him long. But he was strong and wild, and you took him from me, you and yours, like you took the sword. After that nothing was right.’
Gallow watched her. He might have offered her the comfort of an arm but she was his enemy and he was hers, even if the pain they shared was deeper than any race or creed. He forced himself to look away. ‘Many died at Andhun. Why did you come back looking for me?’
‘Because without you I’d never find the sword.’
‘But I’m a forkbeard.’
‘But you know where the red sword rests.’
‘And now I’ve told you, shall I be on my way?’
Mirrahj laughed. ‘I took you, forkbeard, and you didn’t care. There was no fear in you, no anger. All I ever saw was relief. And it took me a while, but by the time we reached Andhun I understood – I understood why it sang to my heart. Whatever it was you were fighting, it was over, and you were glad, because in the end there was no victory to be had, not really, and you’ve known that for a long long time. And I saw that in you and I saw that in myself, and the moment I did I was no longer fit to be the bashar of my ride. That’s why I let Josper have his way. Are you done now, forkbeard, or shall I show you my other scars? I have plenty.’
He couldn’t answer that. She was right. He’d never have seen it for himself, only ever felt the relief that nothing he did would matter any more, and yet this Vathan woman, a stranger to him, had put it into words. That was why he’d gone after Medrin instead of fleeing. To die. To make it all end. The knowledge made him shiver.
‘Take me to it and I’ll take my people home.’
Gallow shook his head. ‘It’s just a sword.’
‘The Sword of the Weeping God, forkbeard! Older than the world.’
‘I carried it for three years, Mirrahj Bashar. It’s a sword with a strange colour to its steel and a very hard sharp edge, and that’s all.’ He sighed. Home. They all wanted the same, really. The Marroc of Varyxhun busy hanging forkbeards. The Vathen. Even the Lhosir, most of them. He’d seen it in Thanni Ironfoot’s face clear as day, just as he’d seen it in the eyes of all the Screambreaker’s men a dozen years ago before they’d finally sailed back across the sea. Home. Peace. To built their houses and farm their land and raise their sons and daughters. For a moment Gallow wasn’t sure who was left who wanted anything else. Medrin? The red sword itself perhaps? Hard to see why they were all still fighting.
Mirrahj threw do
wn her javelot with a snort and vaulted into her saddle. She rode away along the ridge, out of sight, and was away for so long that Gallow wondered if she was coming back. When she did she was leading another Vathan horse. ‘Can you ride, forkbeard?’
Gallow nodded.
‘I mean actually ride, not just sit there tight as a drum and hope you don’t fall off like most of you forkbeards do.’
‘I learned across the sea.’
‘Then she is yours.’ She handed him the reins. ‘Treat her well. Which way to the sword?’
They made their way through the snow along the bank of the Isset. Gallow’s thoughts wandered as they rode. He’d been lost when the Marroc threw him out of Varyxhun, but not any more. Medrin would come after him, and Medrin would come after the sword, sure as the sun rose each morning, and there’d be no peace until he was dead, and killing him wasn’t going to be easy, even if it was what had to be done.
‘I’ll take you to the sword,’ he told her when they stopped by the river to drink and rest. ‘But I can’t give it to you. You’ll have to fight to make it yours and then you’ll have to fight a deal harder to keep it. And then later you’ll wish you hadn’t.’
He turned away from the river when they mounted again, heading to the south and east toward the distant Crackmarsh. He’d come this way once before.
12
THE CRACKMARSH CAVES
The Crackmarsh had been full of Marroc when the winter began. Most had left with Valaric. He’d taken every about man he could spare; but when he wasn’t called Valaric the Mournful, he was Valaric the Wolf – so the old Marroc knew him – and he’d always known that one day the forkbeards might drive him back and so he’d prepared for that. A few men stayed behind then, left to watch the hideouts, keep the tame ghuldog packs in line and to watch what the forkbeards were up to nearby. The old men, the injured, the crippled, the ones who couldn’t fight and a few that Reddic thought Valaric had left behind just to spite them.
The two old men left to keep watch over the Crackmarsh caves near Middislet might as well have been a pair of blind goats for all the good they did. Arda led the mules along the hill path and through the woods at the frozen edge of the water meadows and right inside the caves before either of them even knew she was there, and when Reddic woke them up from their snores, they were obviously both drunk as lords. He left them to it. They had half a night of darkness before them and the air was as cold as death’s fingers.
‘We’ll be needing a fire.’ Arda was bad from the cold. She’d been the last to dress and she hadn’t put on enough. Her hands were blue and her head kept sagging. The children weren’t much better, their sobs of exhaustion long since fallen silent. Only fear kept her going. Truth be told Reddic wasn’t much better either, what with the nights he’d had after Stannic’s farm, but he was the man among them now and so he made his shaking fingers rummage through the bags lying open beside the snoring watchmen. He found tinder and then their stash of dry cut wood and painstakingly blew on the embers of their old fire until he had a flame again and lovingly carried it to a new spot. Nadric was already asleep by the time he got it burning and Arda was fussing with the children, settling them around him, wrapping them all in the furs off her own back to keep them warm. ‘Any more blankets here?’ she asked after Reddic had been staring at the fire for a few minutes, rubbing the feeling back into his fingers, and he could have kicked himself for not thinking of that before. He ran off to look but came back empty-handed.
‘Sorry.’
She’d found some straw from somewhere and piled it as close as she dared to the fire. Now she was sitting cross-legged on it, hands stretched out to the flames, shivering. Reddic took off his cloak and laid it over her and then took off his mail and sat beside the fire on the other side, watching her shudder and curl up tight and rub her hands and blow on her fingers. He’d spent the winter in the Crackmarsh, a good few nights in places with no fire at all. He’d seen men shiver like this and fall asleep and not wake up again, the life stolen out of them by the winter. Fire or no fire, without his furs he was already cold. Nadric had all four of the children wrapped around him, bundled up so tight that Reddic couldn’t have said how many were in there. Arda had given them too much – or rather she hadn’t left enough for herself.
He got up and came round the fire and lay down beside her, wrapping his fur tightly around both of them, pressing up against her, giving her his warmth. She was cold, just a thick woollen shift and a thin linen dress underneath the fur cloak she wore, and beneath it her skin was like ice. He wriggled closer and wrapped an arm around her. She never moved or said a word. Within minutes they were both asleep.
His dreams were strange that night in the cave. He was paralysed and there were shadewalkers everywhere. He was in the cave and they were shambling around him, talking. Then he was back in Middislet. He watched them tear open doors and drag women and children out into the snow and the air was full of screams. He never saw what they did, but he knew anyway because he kept seeing Torvic with his face bitten off, walking about the place. Then they were coming for him too, and he could run, only these shadewalkers could run too. They chased him for what felt like for ever until he reached the edge of a cliff and had to stop because there was nowhere left to go, and they were all around him and they closed in and dragged him down and tore off his helm. He was about to die but suddenly he was somewhere else, somewhere warm. Now he wasn’t seeing a horde of hungry shadewalkers but Valissi, the girl he used to see in Tarkhun washing clothes by the river, only now she was leaning over him and she was naked and she had one hand pressed between his legs.
He woke with a start. There’d been enough nights when Reddic had been huddled up like this with others of Valaric’s men trying to keep warm, and there was no accounting for dreams. There were no women in the Crackmarsh. He’d seen men disappear together now and then, and they all knew what happened, said nothing and looked the other way.
His hand was pressed into Arda’s breast with her own hand clasping it. He could feel the nipple, hard as stone, and when he shifted his legs, trying to find a more comfortable way to lie, she followed him, her buttocks pressing into his crotch. He had no idea whether she was awake or asleep.
He twitched. Couldn’t help himself. He tried closing his eyes, tried to think of other things, even made himself think of the shadewalkers and Torvic with his face ripped off, but it wouldn’t go away. He kept seeing Arda’s face and Jelira’s too, seeing for the first time how alike they were. Without even realising he was doing it, his hand slid off her breast and slipped downward. Arda’s hand stayed with him. As his fingers slipped between her legs she let out a little whimper and twisted slightly towards him. Her legs opened and his hand went on under the fur, feeling along her thigh until he found her skin and then reaching underneath the wool and linen and round to the inside of her leg and sliding back again; and then he shifted himself and pulled up his own shirt and pushed down his trousers and pressed his hands between her legs, pushing them apart from behind. She shifted now and then. Little movements but all to make it easier for him. He slid inside her and thrust hard. His hand ran up her skin, reaching for her breasts. He grunted with each push but Arda didn’t make a sound, only perhaps breathed a little harder, and then came and was still. She shifted once or twice more as he twitched inside her, then a moment later he was asleep.
The morning woke him, late winter sunlight bright through the stunted trees at the mouth of the cave. He was still wrapped in his own fur but Arda was already up. She sat across the re-kindled fire, boiling a pot of water and chewing on a strip of black bread, and there was a bewilderment of people around him who hadn’t been here the night before. He stared at them, wondering who they were and how they were here and why he didn’t remember them. Most were still huddled under their furs but a few were shuffling about or squatting by the fire. When he grunted, Arda shot him a sharp look.
‘If those two in that other cave are supposed to be your look
outs, I’d have a word with them if I were you. Still snoring fit to bring down mountains, they are. I dare say there’s forkbeards standing right across the Crackmarsh with their ears tipped to the wind wondering what they’re hearing. We had a look around, found where they kept their breakfast and helped ourselves. Hungry?’
‘We?’ Reddic was still staring at the other Marroc. It was as if they’d appeared by magic in the middle of the night while he’d slept.
‘Did you think everyone else in Middislet was just going to stay there?’ She snorted. ‘These caves were ours to hide in long before your Valaric came along.’
Reddic nodded. He wrapped his fur around him and came closer to the fire. ‘What if the shadewalkers come here too?’ He leaned in, peering into Arda’s pot, but before he could see what was cooking she smacked him across the knuckles with the stick she’d been using to poke the fire.
‘Then we go somewhere else. Mother not teach you manners, boy?’
He stared at her. That was exactly the thing his mother had done before the forkbeards had killed her. ‘She died last summer. And yes, old mother, she taught me some.’
Arda poked another stick into the pot and stirred it. ‘Well I’m sorry to hear she’s gone. Been a lot of people dying these last few years and not many of them for much of a good reason, if you ask me. Still no excuse for having no manners. Even little Pursic knows better and this is barely his fifth winter.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Reddic sat and looked at her and opened his mouth and closed it again. Fidgeted and opened his mouth a second time. ‘About—’
‘Manners, boy,’ she said again. ‘Manners.’ Her voice softened very slightly. ‘You did nothing wrong, if that’s what you were wondering. And you did good with those shadewalkers.’
Reddic shook his head. ‘No, I didn’t. I practically shat myself, I was that scared.’