The Last Bastion

by Nathan Hawke

  Gallow stood up. ‘I’ll see we’re ready for Medrin when he comes. We’ve lost two gates already. Yes, I’ll be seeing to what needs seeing to, whether these Marroc like it or not.’

  Oribas muttered and kept to his sewing, and of course Valaric woke up when he was only half done and almost jumped straight into the air even though he was lying down, and Oribas had to persuade him back and never mind how much it hurt. At least the wine helped with that, when it came.

  The forkbeards were moving on now, swinging their ram around the elbow in the road. Past the second gate they were already clearing the stones the Marroc had left there to bar the way. A few Marroc still held the top of the second gatehouse, shooting the odd arrow to keep the forkbeards on their toes. It was never going to amount to much, holding the roofs of the gates, but Angry Jonnic still just shook his head when Reddic said they should go and climb on up to the second tier before the forkbeards cut them off.

  ‘Sooner or later Sixfingers is going to come up that road. He’s going to think he’s safe, right until we put a pair of arrows into him.’ Jonnic grinned and drew a finger across his throat. The ram rounded the corner.

  Valaric just about managed to wait for Oribas to finish before he jumped up again. ‘Gently on it!’ The Aulian snapped at him. ‘There must have been something on the shade-walker’s blade. A wound shouldn’t bleed like that. You should rest.’

  But Valaric laughed and waved him away. ‘Rest? You still have eyes and ears to see and hear that army, right? Rest? Don’t you worry Aulian, there was nothing on the blade that cut me. I bleed. It’s just the way it is.’ Stupid thing for a man who’d made his life fighting, but then that wasn’t how he’d ever thought he’d spend his time. A farmer like his father, like his brothers, like his uncles, like everyone he knew, and that’s how it had been until the forkbeards had come and set to their rampaging. After that, knowing every wound would bleed had made sure he’d learned how to fight, how to take the other man down first, fast and hard.

  He made himself forget the pain. Sixfingers was down there somewhere. He took a long look at the forkbeards and their ram and then moved among his men. He knew every one of them. Knew their names and who they were and what had dragged them from their homes and into the Crackmarsh to fight the forkbeards. Some had lost their families or their wives or their sons or their daughters. Others had stood up for themselves. A few had killed. And of course they had men come to the Crackmarsh to get away from Marroc justice too, but the marsh always heard the truth of what a man was running from in the end and when it did, they made their own justice.

  He moved among the men who hated the forkbeards most of all. The ones who’d lost everything. The ones who’d come here ready to die, wanting it even. Men like him. He knew who they were, for they were the ones who looked at Gallow with stony dead eyes. Whose lips stayed tightly shut while their knuckles clenched white as he passed them. They stood together and watched the forkbeards below, threw taunts at them while the Lhosir laughed back from behind their shields and shouted insults of their own. One of the forkbeards threw a spear. Valaric plucked it out of the air and threw it back and it hit a shield hard enough to sprawl the forkbeard beneath across the road. The man wrenched it free and shook his fist. The others around him laughed.

  The ram moved up towards the second gate. Marroc archers still held the roof, sneering at the forkbeards on the road and loosing an arrow now and then. A few men dead but it didn’t amount to much, not unless you were the one with the arrow sticking out of you. Valaric waited until the ram was right up to the gate, until the forkbeards were getting ready to swing it, then he smiled and nodded. This time his stones were in the right place.

  The first fell squarely on the nose of the ram, shattering its frame and smashing the front wheels. It slithered off the wood and into a half-dozen forkbeards and dropped them over the edge to the tier below. Valaric didn’t see them land but he heard the screams as they went. The next two stones landed short. Men were crushed flat and the ram smashed sideways, throwing another few forkbeards over the edge as it slewed. The last stone was perfect. It bounced off the cliff and landed on the front of the ram again, and this time the back end jerked into the air, scattering forkbeards, twisted and then rolled as it landed and slipped over the edge. In a great rumble of stone and cracking wood and howling men, the ram tumbled off the road and smashed itself to pieces behind the first gate below, crushing a few forkbeards more as it did. Valaric picked up a bow and let fly a couple of arrows while the forkbeards were still reeling. After that he told his men to hold their fire and watched to see what the enemy would do. He looked at the siege towers, still where the forkbeards had left them. They’d be back with those, he thought, and that made him start looking for Oribas. Maybe the Aulian could think of a way to bounce a stone straight on top of them from right up in the castle. Save them the bother of all that walking back and forth.

  He winced. The wound was going to be a bother. He could tell that now.

  26

  THE THIRD GATE

  They felt the gate shake as each stone hit the road above then shudder as the ram crashed beneath them. Jonnic was grinning like a snake. Reddic could hear the Marroc up above shouting and forkbeards shouting back, but from where he lay he couldn’t see much of what was going on. Later Jonnic moved across the gatehouse roof until he was overlooking the road up from Varyxhun. By then the fighting had moved on. A while later still, he cackled. ‘You know what I see? I see a banner coming up the road.’

  The forkbeards from the siege towers opened the second gate from behind and then held their ground wherever they found shelter from the Marroc above them, yelling taunts and insults up the mountain. Gallow stood on the fourth tier now, looking down. The men around him threw rocks when they thought they saw something they could hit, but for the most part the battle had gone quiet. In places the two armies were only a few dozen paces apart, but as the sun came round the mountain, even the insults stopped. The Lhosir crouched behind their shields and the Marroc archers taught them the hard way where was safe and where was not. Gallow understood exactly what Medrin was doing. He could have drawn his men back to the first gate until they were ready but he was trying to make the Marroc waste what missiles they had before the charge came.

  Down below, the forkbeards lifted something up to the road behind the second gate. ‘Another ram,’ said Oribas.

  Gallow frowned. ‘They’ll not split one of these gates with something that size.’ He squinted, trying to make out what it was for. There were a score of forkbeards pushing it, maybe half a dozen on the ram itself, the rest with huge shields to keep the Marroc arrows at bay. Then as it climbed the road, a figure stepped out from the huddled mass of shields behind, an ironskin, and as the Fateguard rounded the corner of the road and passed the men with their ram, it suddenly broke into a run and raced for the third gate. A storm of stones and arrows flew at it until Valaric screamed at his men to stop. They were all wasted on an ironskin and besides one Fateguard could hardly take a castle gate. It wasn’t even carrying an axe.

  The Fateguard ran to the gates and slid to its knees. It spread its arms wide and pressed its hands against the wood and iron and didn’t move.

  ‘Salt!’ shouted Oribas. ‘Rain salt on him!’ Gallow was puzzled. Just another way to make the Marroc waste their arrows? Around him the Marroc pointed and laughed. Then fracture lines of rust spread out over the Fateguard’s iron skin like water freezing on glass. The lines of rust spread across the iron of the gate too, to its bars and bolts and hinges. Oribas was still shouting, hurling salt over the edge of the road, the Marroc still laughing and taunting the forkbeards. The ironskin stayed where it was, perfectly still, until it finally fell under a barrage of stones from above and broke into pieces as though its iron armour was all but empty. And then the forkbeards charged.

  Sarvic had a little line of stones each the size of a man’s head lined up on the top of the third gatehouse. He stood poised behind one,
waiting for the ram. The forkbeards hadn’t even bothered to build a roof over it and they were going to suffer for that. He had a torch and his buckets and pots of fish oil too, ready to set alight and drench the forkbeards and burn them back down the mountain. He felt a strange elation. The forkbeards were doomed. They had their shields against the rain of stones and arrows, but here and there he saw men fall, arrows finding their way through the gaps, and Valaric still had his stone slabs to smash the ram off the mountainside.

  The first blow of the ram hit the gates under his feet. The Marroc threw their stones and their burning oil. Sarvic watched the pots burst on the shields below and rivers of fire flow over their sides and pool on the road. Men screamed and the smell of fish and burning hair rose around them. The smell of victory. And then he heard the cry behind the gate, and when he ran to look the Marroc there had already turned and were fleeing up the road, waving their arms and screaming, ‘The gates! The gates!’ And the gates hadn’t simply been split; they’d been smashed right down, their hinges shattered. They lay on the road now, twisted and askew on the rubble the Marroc had piled behind them and forkbeards were already scrambling through. They left bodies, plenty of them, and their ram. A score and a half of dead maybe, but Sarvic’s heart pounded and filled with dread as he saw how many were still alive.

  Valaric watched the third set of gates shatter. The iron devil had done this. He glanced at Oribas, who looked aghast. More forkbeards were coming already, their shields raised high, hiding something in their midst. When Valaric looked hard, he saw what it was: two more of the iron devils. They ran past the abandoned ram as stones and arrows showered them. A rock the size of a man’s head hit one of the fork-beard shields, flattening the warrior who carried it, breaking a dozen bones and knocking the man beside him down into a pool of burning oil. The flames embraced him. As he screamed and rolled, three arrows hit him and he lay still. Another forkbeard fell and then another, and then they were climbing through the rubble behind the gate and Sarvic was screaming at his men to stop them. Another head-sized rock hit one of the iron devils, knocking it down and crushing its shoulder and arm but it hauled itself back to its feet and carried on. Stones and arrows pinged off its armour. The men on the gate were throwing everything they had at this one handful of forkbeards, and Valaric wanted to scream at them to stop because they’d have nothing left when the rest of the army passed beneath them.

  The forkbeards and their iron devils were through, onto the open road past the third gate, to the elbow where it turned back on itself and rose towards the fourth. Sarvic was already shouting up to Valaric for it to be closed. Fat lot of good that would do if the iron devils got to it, Valaric thought – might as well leave it open and fight them on the road. Around him his Crackmarsh men were milling about, not sure whether to stay and throw stones at the forkbeards below or to form up behind their shields and face the ones coming up the road or whether to simply flee back to the fifth gate now. For a moment Valaric didn’t know what to do either, and then Gallow came and stood beside him like an unwelcome ghost. ‘The red sword, Valaric. The Edge of Sorrows will put an end to your iron devils.’

  Valaric pushed him away. He knew he couldn’t fight that many, not when he was limping with a bleeding hole in his leg.

  ‘I’ll do it.’ Gallow held out his hand. ‘Give it to me.’

  ‘And if you do and then Sixfingers’ forkbeards take you down and take that sword, what then?’ He barged past Gallow. ‘Oribas? Aulian!’ The Aulian was arguing with Sarvic, the two of them bawling up and down the mountain at each other. A shout went up from the forkbeards below and they started to move again, surging for the third gate. ‘The ram!’ Valaric bellowed. ‘Smash that ram down there off the road for a start.’ He looked up towards the fifth gate but the Marroc behind it couldn’t hear, not from so far away. He’d just have to trust them to drop rocks on the forkbeards as they came. Not too much of a worry. Fat Jonnic was up there. He’d be good for that.

  Oribas was yelling at him: ‘Salt! Salt will stop the Fateguard. But it takes only one Lhosir to scrape it away.’

  Cursed leg was hurting like buggery. Everywhere around him people were shouting, wondering what to do. ‘Go to the fifth gate, Aulian. Put your salt there, everything you’ve got.’ More and more forkbeards were coming up the road, hundreds and hundreds of them. Arrows flew, whether Valaric wanted them to or not, and stones too, and Sixfingers had to be in among them somewhere, didn’t he? Yet Valaric was damned if he could see where. The Marroc of Varyxhun were starting to edge away, turning in dribs and drabs to run back to the fifth gate. His own Crackmarsh men were on the edge too.

  He felt a door close inside him, and then another and another until only one option remained. He nodded quietly to himself, pleased with where it led him. ‘Sarvic!’ Oribas was halfway up a rope ladder to the top of the fourth gate, a sack of salt over his back. ‘Sarvic! Sarvic! Come up from up down there and go up to the fifth gate! Close them and then put every piece of stone you can find behind them. Tell Fat Jonnic to smash any ram off the road the moment it turns the elbow. Then get as many arrows as you can find and bring them here.’

  The fourth gates stood closed. The forkbeards were almost on them, one iron devil in their midst. Arrows and stones rained uselessly on their shields. Valaric closed his eyes and took one long deep breath and then another. Enough. And when he opened them again, his voice was changed. Calmer now, more certain. Sooner or later it had been coming anyway. He raised the red sword over his head and stood atop the rubble behind the fourth gate. ‘Marroc of Varyxhun! Shields and spears!’ Maybe some of them had heard the orders he’d given to Sarvic, maybe not. ‘Marroc of Varyxhun! Sword and axe!’ If they had maybe they’d know the fifth gate was about to be sealed and that they were on the wrong side of it, that there was no going back. ‘Marroc of Varyxhun!’ Now he had their attention, he jumped from the rubble. With the tip of his sword he drew a line in the dirt across the road. ‘When that gate falls, this is where we stand. Sixfingers comes no further!’ He stood in the middle of the line and turned to face the gate, crouched behind his shield, the red sword ready to spike the first forkbeard who dared come close. Two hundred Marroc fighting men in stolen mail and helms with forkbeard swords and shields and spears all of their own. Ten abreast they’d bar the road. The iron devils would break these gates as they broke the last, and when they fell, the forkbeards would come though, and these men would either turn them back or else they’d die.

  The first man to stand beside him was Gallow.

  Angry Jonnic moved suddenly. He looked at Reddic and nodded. ‘Get your bow ready and some arrows. Nice sharp ones. Easy now. Don’t let anyone see us. That banner’s coming closer.’

  Reddic risked a peek between the merlons. There were a dozen or so forkbeards on horseback and everyone on the road was getting out of their way. ‘Sixfingers?’

  ‘How many banners do you see in this army?’

  ‘Just the one.’

  ‘Well then, who else?’

  It still took him a moment to get his head round it. The forkbeard king himself, and he and Angry Jonnic were going to kill him. He found himself a good sharp arrow as Jonnic had said. One of the ones they’d made from Nadric’s arrowheads, the narrow Vathan ones for poking through mail.

  The Fateguard was almost at the gates. Oribas watched it. Its head was tipped back as though it was looking right at him.

  ‘Well, wizard?’ Sarvic was up from the third gate, twitching like a mouse who’d seen a hawk and then suddenly lost track of it.

  ‘Salt and fire and iron.’ Salt and fire and iron killed shade-walkers. He was fairly sure they’d work on the ironskins as well. Fairly sure. ‘Can you shoot well enough to put an arrow though that mask?’

  Sarvic laughed. ‘I can shoot as well as any man, but that? That’s luck.’

  ‘Make sure one of your archers is lucky then.’ Oribas closed his eyes briefly and ducked back behind the battlements, letting the Fategua
rd come a few steps closer before he rose with a pouch of salt in his hand and emptied it straight down onto the Fateguard’s upturned face. His old masters had never taught him to lift a sword but everyone learned to throw: salt, water, holy oil, a dozen potions and powders. The salt burst over the Fateguard and it froze and then staggered as if blind. Oribas picked up the sack he’d carried over his back and hacked it open with his knife. He hefted it over the battlements, shaking more salt over the Fateguard and where it stood. The Marroc around him lit pots of fish oil and poured them over the wall. A choking stinking smoke of burning flesh and fish wafted up amid the screams of pain and the howls of rage.

  ‘Arrows!’ Sarvic fired first, his arrow pinging off the Fateguard’s mask. The next arrow missed completely and the next bounced off its armour. Amid the cries of burning men, more Lhosir pressed up the road. The ram was coming.

  Another arrow struck sparks from the Fateguard’s mask. The ironskin turned its head away. Oribas swore, but then an arrow came up from the roof of the third gate below. It struck the Fateguard in the face, straight through its mask. For a moment Oribas was transfixed, and then the iron devil toppled back, wreathed in salt and flames, and Oribas screamed with glee. It could be done! He ran to the edge of the gate and looked down to see who’d fired the arrow but a spear struck the stone beside him and he cowered instead. Another hit the Marroc next to him in the throat.

  The forkbeards charging up the road. He’d almost forgotten them.

  Achista watched the Fateguard fall. She drew out another arrow and nocked it to her bow and waited for another one of them to make a mistake. Sooner or later they always did.

  Reddic risked another look over the edge. The riders were trotting up the road and there weren’t as many as he’d thought. Seven. Six iron devils, four at the front and two at the back, and one man in the middle carrying a bright shield that could only be the Crimson Shield of Modris the Protector, the holy shield of the Marroc which had stood in King Tane’s throne room until the forkbeards had pillaged it.