The Last Bastion

by Nathan Hawke

  ‘Oh please stop, you clucking old hen!’ Valaric leaned into Gallow. ‘Four gates fell today, Truesword. That leaves two. With their shadewalkers and those iron devils, two gates won’t last us long.’ He glanced again at Oribas. ‘The wizard says someone has to take this sword to Witches’ Reach and kill the creature Sixfingers keeps there.’

  Arda still held his hand. He felt it tighten again but she didn’t speak. Valaric’s fingers closed on Gallow’s shoulder, digging deep. ‘Sixfingers is killing us. Go to Witches’ Reach. Take your cursed sword. The wizard has a way out of the castle. He hasn’t seen fit to share it so for all I know he means to fly, but he says it can be done. There’s a Marroc as can take you through the mountains past the forkbeards. Paths your sort don’t know. You can be there in a couple of days, maybe three. We’ll hold as long as we can but, for the love of Modris, be quick! The wizard says you’re a killer of monsters, Foxbeard, so kill whatever it is Sixfingers has under Witches’ Reach and do it soon. I can’t spare you any men, but if you happen upon Sixfingers while you’re out and about, you’re very welcome to him.’

  ‘Killing Medrin won’t make any difference, not now.’

  Valaric pushed hard on Gallow’s shoulder, levering himself up again. ‘Have some time with your wife before you go, Foxbeard. I’ll never hear the end of it anyway but you might as well.’

  He limped away, leaning on Oribas, arguing with him about arrows and some such. After they were gone Arda let go of Gallow’s hand and turned his face to look at her. ‘Promise me,’ she said with eyes as wide as mountains. ‘Promise me that when this is done you’ll give away that sword and you’ll come back and we’ll live in old Nadric’s house and make wire and nails. Promise me that and I’ll be glad I came all this way to find you again. Promise me, if that wizard’s got a way out, you’ll take us all away when you’ve done this thing, and never mind anything else. Promise me that too.’

  Gallow cupped her face in his hands and kissed her. ‘I already did.’ Somehow it was easy this time. ‘When Medrin’s dead they won’t be looking for us any more.’

  ‘And you’ll leave Valaric to his war and come back home and sod the Vathen too?’

  ‘I made you an oath, Arda. A forkbeard blood oath. I mean to keep it.’

  ‘Good.’ A hint of a smile twitched the corner of her mouth. ‘And you’ll fix the roof in the barn?’

  ‘Leaking again?’

  She wrinkled her face and nodded. ‘You never did it before you left and Nadric was next to useless, and even your old friend Loudmouth couldn’t make it right. Stayed good for a bit but now it needs fixing again.’

  ‘First thing I’ll do.’

  ‘Promise? Most important promise of all?’

  He laughed and smiled and took her in his arms. ‘I promise.’

  For a moment she let him. Then she pulled away and glared. ‘Actually no, I do have an even bigger and more important promise for you. Promise you stay alive. Promise me you send these forkbeards and their shadewalkers and their iron devils all to the Isset and into the sea. Promise me you win, Gallow Truesword.’ Her eyes were aflame.

  ‘You know I can’t promise those things.’ He reached for her again and again she kept her distance.

  ‘You can try.’

  ‘That I can, Arda, that I can. I can promise that much’

  She let out a snort and then a shrug and then let him hold her. ‘Well, then I suppose that’ll have to do.’ She took his hand and started to lead him away. ‘Come on. Your children would like to see you before some forkbeard monster puts an end to you. Let them know why it was all worth it. Work hard on that one, Gallow. Maybe if they believe you then I might too.’

  But Gallow stayed where he was. ‘I made an oath, Arda. I said I’d stay, and so I will.’

  ‘And I release you from it for this one thing. I don’t want to, but Valaric’s too proud to ask if he thought there was someone else. And I know you, Gallow Truesword. You want this.’

  Gallow shook his head and held out the red sword in its sheath and then dropped it in the dirt and took Arda in his arms instead. ‘I do. But I want this more. If I’m going to die fighting Medrin, I’ll die here, on the walls, with you near me. I’m not going to Witches’ Reach, Arda. This time I’m staying here with you.’

  She held him tight. ‘Valaric’s going to blame me for this, you know. You tell him it wasn’t my fault.’

  Gallow buried his face in her hair. ‘Valaric’s wrong – there is someone else. Not that he’ll like it when I tell him who it is.’

  Later, outside a cell not far from the one where Valaric had held Gallow, Oribas and Valaric stopped. Valaric shook his head. ‘I still don’t like this, wizard, not at all.’

  ‘I know.’ Oribas smiled.

  ‘She’s a Vathan.’

  ‘It’s me who must trust her, not you.’

  ‘You say that and then you ask me to give the Sword of the Weeping God to her? To a Vathan?’ Valaric opened the door. He did it carefully and with several armed Marroc guards around him. The Vathan woman glared, full of fury. She looked at Oribas and cocked her head, and Oribas felt he understood her at once. She was the same as Gallow, the same as Valaric, each of them cut from one cloth and then scattered to fall in three different lands.

  ‘You want something,’ said Oribas, and he held out the red sword and watched her face flush with wonder. She reached for it and he stepped away. ‘You may have it but you must earn it. Isn’t that always the way of these things?’ He handed the sword back to Valaric and waved the rest of the Marroc away and sat down with Mirrahj and set to telling her, right from the start, of Witches’ Reach and the shadewalkers and the ironskins and the Mother of Monsters that had made them. When he was done, he found he couldn’t read her face at all, and she followed him out of the dungeons meek and quiet as a dog, and he had to keep reminding himself that she was more wolf than dog and more tiger than either.

  Valaric kept asking how they were going to get past the forkbeards. To Oribas it seemed strange that he was bothered. The castle had been made by Aulians. Of course there was a secret way out and of course he’d found it. The wonder was that he hadn’t found more.

  28

  THE HUNTRESS

  No one knew who started the rumour but it spread through the castle like a plague: Sixfingers was dead, that was why the forkbeards had pulled back. Not that it meant they’d leave, but for now the Marroc cheered and drank and sang songs and threw taunts down the mountainside to where the forkbeards were building wooden shields to protect the lower tiers from Marroc stones and arrows. Gallow watched. If Medrin was dead then the Lhosir would make the mother of all pyres for him. They might just burn the whole of Varyxhun. They’d speak him out for days too, one after the other, those who knew him telling of his deeds over and over as he walked the Herenian Marches to the Maker-Devourer’s cauldron. And maybe it was all true, and Gallow did see many pyres when he looked down from the castle to the city, but none near big enough for a king. Even so, the Marroc paraded Reddic around the castle walls: the hero who’d put an arrow into the forkbeard king – and maybe he had, and Medrin was just slow to die.

  The Marroc had seen Gallow fight too. They’d seen him stand up to the shadewalkers and stand up to the forkbeards at Valaric’s side. Foxbeard they called him now, and quietly put aside what he was though he made no effort now to hide the fork growing in his beard. The ones who’d seen him hold the shield wall behind the fourth gate all remembered Andhun now as though they’d never forgotten how he and the red sword had turned Medrin Twelvefingers into Medrin Six.

  Oribas found him staring out over the valley as he always did at sunset. Everywhere else it seemed the Marroc were waiting for the Lhosir to give up and go home. But the Lhosir weren’t like that, although no one wanted to hear it and even Valaric called Gallow a sour old man who preferred fighting to being with his family.

  ‘I leave for Witches’ Reach tonight,’ said Oribas quietly. ‘The quicker it’s done,
the sooner the ironskins will trouble you no more.’ He looked furtively around as though afraid they might be overheard. ‘I wish you would come with me. It’s not that I don’t trust this Vathan, but . . .’

  Gallow slipped the belt from his waist, slid the scabbard from the loops that held it there and handed it to Oribas. ‘Take it. Let her keep it, Oribas, no matter what happens.’

  ‘Hunting a monster again. It’ll be strange not to have you at my side. I’ve searched the library but there’s nothing. Salt will bind it, I think, but to make an end . . .’ He nodded to the sword. ‘The Edge of Sorrows. If anything can.’

  Gallow put a finger to his lips. ‘Do your best, Oribas. No one will fault you. Now take a moment to be quiet and watch the sun go down.’

  Oribas sidled closer. ‘Sixfingers isn’t dead. I know this.’ Gallow turned sharply, but before he could speak Oribas leaned in and whispered in his ear, ‘There were always ways in and out of this castle, my friend. Aulian ways. Achista has been to the Lhosir camp. I will tell you where. Decide when it is right for others to know.’ He stepped back and shook his head. ‘There is still a secret to this place, old friend. Something I haven’t found. I feel it. Look for it if you can while I’m gone.’

  ‘You can’t wait to go. Why?’

  Oribas shrugged. ‘Since I came here, I have watched men fight one another. I have led many to shameful deaths and I am made small by what I have done. This creature, though? It gives me an honest purpose once more.’

  For a while Gallow said nothing. They stood together and watched the sun set until the last brilliant crescent of orange slipped behind the mountains on the far side of the valley. As that last light died, Oribas nodded and turned to Gallow and clasped his arm. ‘And so now I go. Farewell, friend. We each have our monster to face.’

  Gallow took his arm and held it fiercely. ‘And we’ll slay them, wizard, and I’ll see you again, if not here then in Middislet, a little past the Crackmarsh in Nadric’s forge. Look for me there.’ He smiled. ‘But if you want your welcome to be a warm one then come filled with stories and not more adventures! Fare well, Aulian.’

  ‘Fare well, Lhosir. I vow I will not die first.’

  ‘Aye and so do I, and that’s one of us an oath breaker right here.’ Gallow pushed him away and watched him go, then turned back to the darkening sky across the valley. After a little while he left that too to be with the people who mattered most of all.

  A quiet fell over the castle after sunset. Men slept or kept watch. The forkbeards were skulking at the foot of the mountain and Addic was limping his way to the kitchens. He went there every night after dusk and struggled his way to the cool caves deep in the mountainside that passed for pantries and cellars. He leaned on a staff that had once been the shaft of his spear but now had a crook on the top from which he hung a lantern. Short of sitting on the battlements dropping rocks on forkbeards, there wasn’t much else he could do. So he came every night and counted the sacks of grain and the barrels of onions and beans and the hams to make sure all was as it should be. They had food for weeks and everyone had full bellies but he liked to be sure. And to be useful.

  Now he caught the flash of a lantern ahead, quickly hidden, and stopped. That people might take to stealing food was why he came to do his counting; but that he might catch them at it was something he hadn’t imagined and now he wished he had – that, and that the shaft of his spear still had a point on the end instead of a lantern and that he could still walk without it.

  He took another step. ‘Who’s there?’

  The lantern ahead flared into life again and started bobbing towards him. The air was cool after the stuffy warmth of the evening outside, although night would swiftly bring its chill. ‘Addic?’

  ‘Achista?’ He stopped as she came into the circle of his light and he saw her. ‘What are you doing here?’ He smiled. ‘You’re not stealing food, are you?’

  Achista came closer and stopped in front of him. ‘How’s the leg today?’

  ‘Like it’s on fire, just like it was when you asked this morning.’

  ‘Oribas says you should rest it. You should listen to him.’

  ‘Oribas says that to Valaric too. Do you see him listening?’

  She smiled but he could see that something was wrong. ‘Pig-headedness a disease now, is it? Suppose it must be.’

  There was a rustle and a scrape from the caves further on and then the glow of another lantern, and slowly two more figures emerged from the shadow – Oribas, who spent half his time in the castle library carved high into the mountainside with its balcony and its hundred long thin doors that let in a glory of light when they were opened. And then the Vathan woman. Last he’d heard she belonged in the dungeons. They both had sacks slung over their shoulders.

  ‘What are you all doing here?’

  Oribas frowned at him. ‘I told you to rest that leg. Does no one in this castle listen? Do I speak the word badly? Rest? R-e-s-t. Is that not correct?’

  The Vathan woman shook her head and tried to push on past but Addic hopped into her way. She glared at him. ‘Getting food for our journey, Marroc.’

  Ah. He looked at his sister Achista. ‘What journey’s that?’

  Achista took the staff gently out of his hand and passed it to Oribas, then put his arm over her shoulder and led him back to the kitchens. ‘Oribas has something to show you.’ A spikiness crept into her voice and he knew that whatever it was, he wasn’t going to like it. ‘There’s a passage under the gates that runs beneath the Aulian Way right to the bank of the Isset. A way out. And Sixfingers isn’t dead.’

  The Vathan woman growled. ‘I mean to change that.’

  ‘He keeps a monster in Witches’ Reach,’ said Oribas quietly. ‘The mother of the iron devils. We must kill it.’

  Addic almost laughed. ‘I see. A wizard and a Vathan. And what, sister, will you do?’

  ‘Someone has to show them the secret ways.’

  ‘The Aulian knows them, or he knows enough.’ But he was wasting his breath and he knew it. She was going so that she could be with him, one way or the other. To keep him alive or die by his side, and he had the sudden sense that he was never going to see her again, a horrible sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach worse than the pain in his calf when the iron devil had cut him open. And now that it mattered the most, he couldn’t think of a thing to say, because nothing would change anything.

  Achista led him down into the cisterns where fresh water from the tarn above the castle drained through a series of tunnels and channels. They hobbled together to the far side where the water lapped at a hole in the wall not much bigger than a man.

  ‘The water makes its way down to the Isset.’ Oribas sounded smug. ‘It took me a while to work it out, but if you squeeze through the tunnel quickly widens. There are steps. I think it goes down the mountain under the gates but I suppose it hardly matters how it gets there – what matters is where it ends.’ He knelt down by the hole and squeezed into it, feet first, dragging his satchels behind him. ‘I told Gallow where it is before we left. Since I know you will now tell Valaric too, make sure he posts a guard here. The Lhosir may see us. It’s best to be sure, and though I have not yet found them, there may be others.’ He vanished into the gloom of the hole. The Vathan woman followed him. She had a sword now, Addic suddenly realised. Someone had given her a sword even though Valaric had forbidden her from carrying one. And then he looked again and saw what sword it was. He backed away and shook his head.

  ‘What are you doing, Achista? What are you doing?’

  She took his hand in both of hers. ‘We go with Valaric’s blessing, brother.’

  Words dried up and stuck to his tongue. ‘The Vathan. The sword. Does he know?’ He stared at her and saw it in her face. Yes, he did. And he hadn’t said a word.

  Achista turned away. She’d never been able to lie to him. Then she turned back and embraced him. ‘Goodbye, brother. And good luck. Modris watch over you.’

  �
��Over you too, little sister.’

  She let him go, handed back his staff and his lantern and slipped quietly into the hole without another word. Addic stayed where he was, watching long after she was gone. There were tears in his eyes.

  Eventually he turned his back and hobbled up through the castle to the room that Valaric the Wolf had taken for his own.

  29

  THE WIZARD’S WAY

  Valaric stormed around the castle. Gallow watched him hobble in a fury from one battlement to the next, taking it out on anyone who happened to be near and swearing at Gallow now and then. For his own part, Gallow shrugged it away. So the Aulian had given them a way out, so what? It was all the better, wasn’t it? When Medrin broke through the last gate, maybe they could slip away.

  ‘A fine gift,’ Gallow said, which only made Valaric storm even louder, but by the evening he’d limped down to see the tunnel for himself, cursing and snapping and snarling at his injured leg.

  ‘And what does one do with this gift, Gallow Foxbeard?’ he snapped when he’d seen it. ‘If I had a new leg I’d be out there in the middle of them in the small hours of the night, wreaking havoc.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘You know forkbeards better than any of us.’

  There were plenty of Marroc who could have gone instead of Valaric, but with Addic crippled, Achista gone and Angry Jonnic dead, Valaric was in a mood for arguing. Maybe it was his way of getting his own back for Gallow refusing to go to Witches’ Reach, and maybe even Arda felt a twinge of guilt for that because when Valaric told her what he wanted, she only closed her eyes and nodded. By the middle of the next night, Gallow was at the bottom of the shaft with the last of Achista’s Hundred Heroes behind him, a handful of the Marroc who’d seen him fight at Witches’ Reach and a few Crackmarsh men who’d heard of the Foxbeard of Andhun and believed in him enough to follow him into a fight. There should have been more, and if it had been Valaric with the red sword leading the way then every Marroc in the castle would have come. But it wasn’t, and despite what he’d done in front of them all, there weren’t so many Marroc ready to fight beside a forkbeard, not here in Varyxhun.