The Last Bastion

by Nathan Hawke

  He touched the scar again. She’d marked him on the day they’d met so that everyone else would know he was hers. He’d said that, years later, and she’d laughed and called him a clod, but the twinkle in her eyes had given her away.

  And now she was gone and here was the Vathan woman Mirrahj sitting beside him and suddenly Gallow found he wanted her very much. He turned.

  ‘Deep, that one?’ She didn’t stop him as he unwrapped her blanket and pushed it away.

  ‘Deep.’

  14

  GHULDOGS

  Reddic rolled his eyes and stamped his feet. He was sodden to his boots from walking in the rain and he wanted the dry and the warmth of the caves and their fires. ‘When?’

  ‘Hours ago!’ Arda’s face was red and puffy and her fingers kept curling like claws. ‘I tried to make those other two look for her but they’re worse than mules. So I went myself but she’s gone into the Crackmarsh and I don’t have the first idea which way. And I couldn’t leave the others. Nadric and Harvic and a few of the men went out looking but none of them know where to even start.’ She put a hand on his chest. ‘You do. You live here. Find her, Reddic. Please.’

  The men who’d come with him to Middislet were moving among the villagers, telling them what they’d found. Men and women were already gathering up their furs, their children, whatever they’d brought with them when they fled. They wanted to be home before dark, behind doors and shutters they could bar before the shadewalkers came out from their hiding places. When Reddic talked to the two old Crackmarsh men Valaric had left to watch the caves, they only shrugged. ‘No point looking now,’ muttered one of them. ‘She’s long gone. Ghuldogs might get her tonight or they might not, but you won’t.’ And they were probably right, but Arda wasn’t going to understand the cold logic to waiting. What she’d understand was that, between the rain and the wind and the ghuldogs and the night, there wasn’t much chance they’d find her if they left their search to the morning. So he pressed the old men and they told him Jelira had asked the way to Varyxhun and the two daft buggers had as good as told her how to cross the Crackmarsh to Hrodicslet and that there was a trail up into the mountains from there. And after that she’d gone. Gone looking for Gallow.

  Reddic went back to the mouth of the caves, looked at the sky and reckoned he had three hours before dark. And the rain didn’t look like it had plans to stop any time soon. He sighed and dressed himself as warm as he could, taking a few more furs from the two old men – not that they much liked letting them go, but Arda was about ready to kill them – and left. Him and Arda, while Nadric stayed to look after Tathic and Pursic and Feya and Jelira if she came back. Arda promised to flay the two old men alive if they didn’t help too. She hung on to Reddic’s arm. ‘Promise me! Promise me we’ll find her!’ And she wouldn’t stop, and so he promised and then wished he hadn’t. Valaric was always loud about that sort of thing. A man gave his word to something, he’d best see it through.

  They set off together in the rain, wrapped up in as many furs as they could wear, partly to keep warm and partly to keep ghuldog teeth at bay. The old men had been certain about the trail to Hrodicslet, at least, so Reddic followed the path as they’d described it. They ran, keeping up a steady pace, but after an hour Arda had to stop.

  ‘I can’t keep going like this. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Then you shouldn’t have come.’ Which sounded harsh but he was right. He probably ought to have run off again there and then and left her with not much choice but to follow or get left behind alone in the swamp in the dark or else go back to where she ought to have stayed in the first place. He couldn’t though, and if she’d said he had to go more more slowly then he’d have done that too.

  But she bowed her head and turned back alone, hiding her face so he wouldn’t see the tears. Better this way, Reddic reckoned. Better she wasn’t there if the ghuldogs came, because then there wasn’t much to do except run or fight, and Reddic had been chased by ghuldogs before and had learned how to run a lot faster after that. Better too that she wasn’t there if he reached Jelira after the ghuldogs did. He shuddered at that, and with the light slowly failing he ran on alone into the Crackmarsh. To a man who didn’t know the place, the water meadows and the swamps were a maze, tricky at best and often deadly. You came here and you didn’t know their ways, you vanished, and Reddic could have filled a day with the stories he’d heard of men who’d disappeared. But he was a Crackmarsh man now. He’d lived among them for months and he’d learned their fickleness. He slowed to a walk when the sun set and true darkness came, but he didn’t stop. A few stars were enough light. Give it another few hours for the air to freeze and there’d be a scum of ice over the water meadows, if the rain ever stopped. The ghuldogs didn’t like that. It cracked and snapped under their feet. You heard them coming, if you knew what to listen for.

  He stopped and swore. Somewhere he’d taken a wrong turn and now the path was getting muddier and turning him east instead of south. Hummocks rose out of the marsh ahead, little mounds covered in tufts of thick grass that rustled in the breeze. He stared, reaching out with his ears for the distant howls of ghuldogs a-prowl, but all he got was the wind. He knew where he’d gone wrong. Ten minutes back where the path was dry it came to an old tree stump, dead a hundred years. There was a fork. He’d gone right. He should have gone left. He turned around and then stopped again. He knew he should have gone left because he’d walked the track from the Middislet caves to Hrodicslet before. But Jelira hadn’t. If she didn’t know the way, maybe she’d made the same mistake too. In the dark he’d walked straight past it. Too busy thinking about how he wanted to be back in the caves. Jelira would have come past in daylight, though. She’d have seen it, wouldn’t she?

  What if she didn’t?

  He didn’t know. He ought to go back now and he knew it. Come out with others in the morning and all go separate ways, but he couldn’t. He could see Arda’s face, how she’d look if he came back alone. How his own mother had looked the day his sister hadn’t come back. And he could see Jelira too, eyes filled with hope and promise – what if she had come this way without realising she’d gone wrong? She’d follow the path as best she could, wouldn’t she?

  He walked on. After another half an hour the path was gone, no trace of it left. The hummocks that rose out of the water were bigger now. The first stands of stunted trees weren’t far ahead, where the hummocks grew into hillocks and the water meadows grew deeper and swallowed a man who wasn’t careful with his feet. Where would he go, lost and alone and with the light failing? Back, surely, but if Jelira had gone back why hadn’t he found her? What then? What had he done when it had been him? He’d gone for the trees, that’s what. For the shelter they seemed to offer, even though they didn’t.

  He heard a howl far away, and then another. The ghuldogs, talking to each other. Too far to worry about but that didn’t stop his heart racing. Stupid. Trees meant shadows and the ghuldogs liked shadows, and yet the trees called out nevertheless, offering him the haven of their branches, and he almost started running, and never mind that he knew perfectly well that any ghuldogs nearby would be waiting there. And that they could climb.

  A distant scream ripped the night over the steady hiss of rain. Not a ghuldog scream this time but a girl scream. Now he ran. In the dark with the rain it was hard to know which way or how far but it had come from somewhere ahead. Almost at once another ghuldog howl went up, closer this time, the howl of scent found and of calling the pack. Reddic’s heart pounded. He glimpsed movement to his left, something bounding through the water. Not towards him but alongside, slowly converging. He almost turned to chase it off but he didn’t have the nerve. Made him wonder though – how was he going to face down a whole pack of them if that’s what it was? – but he kept running anyway. The ghuldog pulled ahead of him. Reddic let it lead. Thing clearly knew where it was going.

  ‘Jelira!’ He felt suddenly stupid now. And guilty. Guilty for leaving her. ‘They can climb th
e trees!’ People who didn’t know better thought ghuldogs were just big dogs but they weren’t. They had dog-like heads but their limbs were the arms and legs of a man and they had no tails. Man was chased by wolves, man climbed a tree. Everyone knew that, and so men chased by ghuldogs climbed trees too, and then watched in horror as the ghuldogs climbed after them. Not that they were much good at it, but usually it was enough that they could. Truth was, there was wasn’t much you could do about ghuldogs except turn and fight them. They weren’t keen on fire but there wasn’t much chance of that out here, not tonight.

  The rain answered his thoughts, falling more heavily. Over the hiss of it he heard Jelira scream again. A scream for help. They hadn’t got her, not yet, not quite.

  The ghuldog he’d been following reached the edge of the trees and vanished into the shadows. There couldn’t have been more than a dozen trunks but there could have been a dozen ghuldogs too for all Reddic knew. He saw one of the trees shake as the first started to climb.

  ‘Help! O Modris! Help me!’

  The ghuldogs would have seen him by now. And yes, as he looked hard into the shadows he saw at least four still on the ground, as well as the one easing its way up the tree. Those on the ground turned to look at him, one by one. It was Jelira’s scent that had drawn them and so it was her they were after, but it wouldn’t take much for them to change their minds. Reddic drew his shield up in front of him and lowered his spear. Against a Vathan or a forkbeard, a man crouched, hiding himself as best he could behind his shield. Against a ghuldog a man stood tall and broad and made himself as big as he could. ‘You look big enough, they all just run away.’ Although the man who’d told him that was Drogic, who was about as big as a horse. Even bears thought twice when they saw Drogic coming.

  If you were lucky the first ghuldog came straight at your throat and all you had to do was lift your spear a little and watch it skewer itself. Trouble with ghuldogs was they learned. As Reddic came closer, two of them split away from the tree and circled him, one coming from each side. They stopped, letting him know that he wasn’t welcome, that he should leave, that the prey in the tree was theirs and not for sharing. Changed things, that did. A ghuldog in close turned a spear into a useless lump of wood and then it was time for a stabbing knife. Or his hatchet would do. He lifted the spear high, took careful aim at the ghuldog climbing the tree, threw it as hard as he could and ran straight forward. The spear caught the ghuldog in the chest and it crashed out of the branches. Reddic roared at the top of his lungs. The two still by the tree shied away, startled. He turned sharply back. The other two had chased after him as soon as he’d run and the closer one was already leaping. He ducked behind his shield, gripped it with both hands and slammed it into the ghuldog as it came at his face. It bounced off and landed and rolled snarling back to its feet. The other one skittered round behind him and for a moment he couldn’t see it. He slipped the hatchet off his belt and jumped at the first. Keep moving, that was the thing. Keep moving, because when you fought a ghuldog pack there was always always one of them creeping up behind you.

  Modris smiled on him for a moment. The first ghuldog scampered warily back out of reach but the creature from the tree, dead with his spear stuck through it, was right in front of him. He slipped his hatchet into the hand holding the shield and snapped the spear out of the ground. The ghuldog in front of him growled and bared its teeth. Reddic held the spear high up the shaft, disguising its reach, then stabbed out with it, almost throwing the spear and then catching it again by its end. The ghuldog jumped away but the blade still raked its flank and left a long bloody cut. It whimpered and fled.

  Always one from behind. He spun around. The creature was already in the air, so close he had no chance to put his shield between them. He raised his arm to protect his face, dropping the spear as he did. The ghuldog’s fangs closed around his elbow and bit down hard. Reddic screamed. He had no mail there, only furs, and yes they were good and thick, but the ghuldog’s bite was like nothing he’d ever known. Like the blow of a forkbeard’s axe, maybe, only it didn’t stop. He howled and snarled and shook his arm but it didn’t let go. He changed his grip, let go of his shield and brought his hatchet down on the ghuldog’s skull and cracked it in two. The bite loosened but Reddic was past caring and he brought the axe down over and over until the ghuldog fell off his arm. His elbow felt as though the bones had been crushed to powder. In the dark he couldn’t see if there was blood. Blood was bad. Blood meant the ghuldog had broken his skin. He wasn’t sure what happened then, only that the Crackmarsh men whispered that if the wound from a ghuldog’s bite went bad – and they always did – then a quick clean death was for the best.

  There were still two ghuldogs close by. One howled, no more than a dozen yards away, summoning more of the pack. He couldn’t find either his spear or his shield and his sword arm was too hurt to be much use. He looked up.

  ‘Jelira, where are you?’ He heard a voice. His foot trod on something hard and he almost stumbled. His spear! ‘Can you see me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Take this then.’ When he looked up he could see her as she moved. She was good and high, well out of reach of the ghuldogs if they jumped. He waved the spear at her. ‘You know how to use this?’ He looked about for the other ghuldogs and then jumped at the tree, hauling himself up fast with his one good hand and scrabbling feet, driven by a surge of fear. ‘You stab it at their faces. Brace well and use both hands and pull quickly back so they don’t grab hold of it. Strike hard and fast and don’t be afraid to hurt them.’

  He was gasping for breath. Maybe a braver man would have got her down from the tree and walked them home in the night and seen the ghuldogs off, but Reddic wasn’t that man and, besides, his sword arm flared in agony whenever he moved it. Now he was up in this tree, he was staying.

  He sat in the crook of a branch with his axe in his lap, and when more ghuldogs came he slashed and kicked at their clambering muzzles and Jelira stabbed with his spear until they’d bloodied three and the rest gave up. It was hardly what anyone would call heroic, but when the sun rose they were both still alive, and that was what mattered.

  15

  SCARS

  Gallow and Mirrahj lost themselves in each other’s skin. The night passed and then another day. They fingered each other’s scars and stroked each other’s hair and touched one another’s faces. Gallow’s lovemaking was angry and insatiable; Mirrahj was hungry and fierce. In between, lying naked around the fire, Gallow licked the salt off her skin and she drew his eye to the longest scar of all, a slice low across her belly. She’d had a child once then, and they’d cut her to get it out. An Aulian birth.

  ‘I had a son and I had a husband. I lost my son not long after he was born but I lost my husband on the day they cut me and he came out. They said I’d never carry another child, and what use is a woman who can no longer make sons? He left me to go and serve with the Weeping Giant, and I followed because I could fight as well as any man I knew, and we went with the ardshan to the disaster of Andhun and there he vanished. I suppose some forkbeard killed him but maybe he ran away. By then I could beat him at everything by which a man measures himself. I learned to wrestle among the warriors of his ride. I learned ways to beat men who were bigger and stronger than me. It was to humiliate him after what he did in leaving me behind. He tried to throw me away and I wasn’t going to have that. I don’t know why the ardshan raised me to become a bashar after Andhun but I was a good one. You’ve been wondering that since the day we met – how is it that a woman leads men into battle?’

  ‘But I watched and I learned the answer.’

  ‘As no man’s wife I could never have another Vathan. If I gave myself to a man then I would have belonged to them. So I didn’t, because I wanted my ride, and men laughed at me and eyed me askance but they did what I said. Several tried to take what they couldn’t freely have. A rightful challenge of my strength, they said, and so it was equally rightful when I killed them with the
ir own knives. Josper was the first one I let live. I beat him to within an inch of his life in front of the rest of the ride. When I was done with him he could barely move for days, but I was careful not to break him. It was a lesson to the others. Mostly it stopped after that.’ She pulled Gallow closer and clutched his head. ‘You’ll take me to the sword, forkbeard. You will. And then I’ll take my people home.’

  ‘I’ll take you to where I left it.’

  ‘Why is it that a bashar who is a man can take as many women as will have him and be admired and envied by his ride, yet I could not take even one man to be mine? Where’s the justice in that?’

  ‘A woman’s place is raising children.’

  ‘And a man’s place is in the fields, flapping his arms to scare away the crows.’ Mirrahj bit his ear. ‘I carried one child, Gallow of the forkbeards. I know that pain. I’ve had an arrow through my arm and I can tell you that hurt a good deal less. Remember that when you go back to your Marroc wife.’ He tensed and she laughed. ‘Oh you will, forkbeard, and she’ll have you too. You’d be stupid not to and so would she. Stay alive, do what you need to do, go back to her and never leave her again.’