The Last Bastion

by Nathan Hawke

  Medrin stopped as another rider drew alongside, and for a while Oribas rode between silent guards while the king did whatever it was that kings did when they rode to war. He let the sights of the valley wash through him. The sky was blue without a cloud in sight and the sun was already warm. Not hot like the desert and it never would be, but almost pleasant – he might even sweat later – and then he wondered whether that helped the Marroc of Varyxhun or the forkbeards or made no difference at all. In the morning the castle was in the shadow of the mountain. The forkbeards would prefer to fight in the mornings then.

  His eyes drifted to the river. This far down the valley the Aulian Way ran a little away from the Isset, carved into the lower slopes of the mountains that channelled the water. Between the river and the road lay a steady succession of abandoned Marroc farms, most of them burned. The river ran fast and high; now and then whole trees washed by. The fields were littered with stray boulders, even the trunk of one colossal Varyxhun pine, swept down by the spring floods of years before when the river burst its banks. The Aulians had carefully built their road where the floods wouldn’t reach, carving notches into the mountains where they had to, building bridges over the sharp-sided ravines and valleys between. The Aulians had always liked to dig and they’d liked to build too. The streams under the bridges rushed and hissed and foamed. The winter snows were melting, and it was a pity, Oribas thought, that he wasn’t going to live to see the valley in summer. It was probably a pretty sight.

  It wasn’t until the middle of the afternoon that Medrin came back, and when he did he looked annoyed. ‘Tell me your name, Aulian.’

  ‘I am Oribas, O King.’

  ‘And that Vathan woman?’

  ‘Mirrahj Bashar.’

  The king laughed. ‘Bashar is a title, Oribas of Aulia. Thank you.’ The more Oribas studied the king, the more he knew he was wrong about something. The king had been vexed by Mirrahj’s escape and the loss of the red sword, but no more. ‘I wish I’d met you back then, Aulian. So much might have been different. Do you know how to cure flesh rot?’

  ‘You must cut out the rot. All of it.’

  Medrin laughed again and shook his head. ‘I was the son of a king. No one dared. They took me to Sithhun flat on my back in a cart. The Screambreaker thought it was bad luck to have his prince die in the middle of the army and so he sent me away to die alone instead. Oh, he said he was sending me back to my father but I knew better. Away, that was all that mattered. Flat on my back, and I a proud Lhosir prince.’ He snorted. ‘In Sithhun there was an Aulian wizard. A man like you.’ He turned and looked down at Oribas and smiled. ‘He said I couldn’t be saved but he did his best anyway. I was close to my end. He made potions – I don’t know what they were – and had me drink them. I was delirious. He talked to me as he worked and I told him about Beyard. I don’t know why. Because it preyed on me and because I thought I was dying. I remember how he changed when I spoke of the Eyes of Time. His face, his voice, everything about him, as though he was suddenly a different person. We were in Sithhun among the Marroc. The Fateguard had crossed the sea and taken the Crimson Shield and so they had been seen, but this Aulian knew them by another name, one I’d never heard.’

  Oribas didn’t try to hide his curiosity. ‘Another name?’

  ‘He spoke it but I was delirious and didn’t properly remember it, only that he said it.’ Medrin spat. ‘The Aulian opened my wound and drained it. I remember the stench. It made me want to retch and I thought it was one of his potions and then I realised it was me. I can’t tell you how it feels to smell such a terrible thing and know it’s your own putrefaction. I don’t remember much after that. As far as I can put it together, the few friends I had left heard my screams and ran into the room. When they saw what the Aulian had done they murdered him on the spot.’ He shook his head. ‘We are not reasonable people, Oribas. Perhaps you’ve seen this already. I think what saved me in the end was that they thought that I too was dead. The Aulian had filled my wound with maggots and honey. Do you understand?’

  ‘To eat away the bad flesh.’ Oribas looked up. He’d seen no sign of Achista and not knowing what had happened to her was wearing him down. For all he knew she’d been hanged before they even left. ‘Mighty king, You told your soldiers I should not be killed. You did this for a reason. For the knowledge I—’

  ‘Are you trying to bargain with me, Aulian? After everything you’ve done? Perhaps I want you kept for a very special death.’

  Oribas bowed his head. ‘I do not take you for a wasteful man, King of the Lhosir.’ He took a deep breath. ‘The Marroc woman from the tomb. She was nothing but a guide. I will give—’

  ‘Don’t lie to me!’ Medrin bared his teeth. ‘You’ve been in that tomb before and have no need of a guide, and besides which she was with you when we met on the road and you turned back my ironskins with your circle of salt. I know exactly who she is, and you’d failed before we even spoke if you meant to hide what she means to you. You’ll give me all your knowledge but only if I let her go, was that it? But I won’t, and you’ll give it anyway if that’s what I want from you. I’ll keep her. Cage her and never hurt her but always let you be very sure how thin is the thread of her life. Yes. And you are right, of course: maggots to eat away the bad flesh. My stupid friends couldn’t bring themselves to touch me and so the creatures were allowed to do their work. For two days I lay there, pickled in the Aulian’s potions and eaten by his creatures but by the end the rot was gone. I didn’t die. I suppose I started to recover, though it hardly felt it at the time. It took a very long time before I could even walk without gasping for breath.’ He patted his side, just under his left breast. ‘It’s not a pretty sight. It had spread a long way.

  ‘When I could speak again, I asked after the Aulian who’d cured me. When I had the answer I sent the men who’d killed him to seek out his family, but he had none. Later, when I looked for myself, I learned this Aulian was not such a pleasant fellow after all. He had a fine house in Sithhun. A palace almost, yet none of the Marroc would go near it. They said he was a witch. In time I went to his house myself and there were strange things there – few that I understood – and even now no one goes to that Aulian’s palace unless I say they must. I heard he had a woman, a wife perhaps, and I heard that she fled after he died and that the Marroc caught her and tore her to pieces. I don’t know if that’s true but I never did find her – either in one piece or many. What I remembered, though, was how he’d changed when I spoke of the Fateguard. How he asked questions about them, about where they came from. He even spoke the name of Witches’ Reach, although it wasn’t until years later that I learned of the fortress that guards the Aulian Way. I spent a long time in Sithhun in that Aulian’s palace. The Screambreaker was off fighting his war and I was recovering my strength from a wound that should have killed me, and when I had that strength again, I found I had no desire to fight beside a man who’d sent me away to die alone. So I stayed in Sithhun until I had my answers, and when I thought I understood how to destroy the Eyes of Time, I went home.’

  Oribas looked up sharply and found Medrin was looking at him again, smiling faintly. ‘That never occurred to you, did it, Aulian? Not once. Admit it. Not that I once wanted the same as you want now.’ He smiled wryly at some private memory and nodded. ‘One thing for which I thank my father – that he forced me to learn to read a little Aulian as well as our own tongue. The Aulian’s books called it the Edge of Sorrows, and so that’s what I looked for, Oribas of Aulia, and found nothing because I knew only its Aulian name. Other matters occupied me: the Screambreaker and his war, my father falling ill, the Screambreaker eyeing his throne.’ He was laughing out loud now, shaking his head. ‘And then after Andhun and the Vathen I found to my amazement that someone had walked this path before me. No less than Farri Moontongue, the Screambreaker’s big brother.’

  He might have said more, but that was when a shout made them both look up and back to where a Lhosir was pointing up t
he mountain. When Oribas squinted, he picked out a lone figure leading a horse along a trail hundreds of feet above them. It took a moment to realise that the figure was standing still, looking down at them, and a moment more to realise that the figure had a bow.

  King Medrin snorted. ‘From all the way up there? He can’t possibly hope to hit anything.’

  Oribas judged the angles and wasn’t so sure. The archer was a long way away but he was a long way up too.

  ‘What’s he shooting at? Us?’ Medrin had stopped to look. He didn’t sound at all concerned.

  ‘I can’t see, O King.’

  ‘He’s shooting at something in the road ahead but I can’t see what. Look.’ Medrin pointed. A moment later Oribas saw a puff of dust from the middle of the road some fifty yards ahead of them. ‘What is he doing?’

  ‘That is Mirrahj,’ said Oribas, too quietly for Medrin to hear, ‘and she is finding her range.’

  32

  MOONTONGUE

  ‘Farri Moontongue.’ Gallow lay slumped in the castle yard, too tired to even yelp with pain as Arda washed his wounds and bound them. The yard was full of exhausted and battered Marroc, some still bleeding but all savouring the evening quiet. A moment of bliss. A moment to make peace with Modris, a moment to laugh, to remember or perhaps to forget. Some men stared, eyes far away. Others wept.

  ‘People will remember us for what we did today.’ Valaric sat beside Gallow, trading bawdy jokes with Sarvic and a few of his Crackmarsh men. ‘We turned the forkbeards back. We slew the iron devils, every one of them, and when they come tomorrow the sixth gate will stand closed and that’s how it stays. And you’re sitting there thinking of some old forkbeard dead the best part of twenty years?’

  Gallow said nothing. He’d seen the Moontongue once. He’d been ten summers old and there was no way to tell whether the dead thing he’d killed today had been the same man. The Moontongue he remembered had been a thundercloud filled with storms and lightning but also with laughter.

  ‘All I know is he stole the Crimson Shield from your iron devils and then sank into the sea. Pity I can’t say the same for the rest of you.’

  ‘He was the Screambreaker’s brother and they were the bitterest rivals. Yurlak favoured the Screambreaker and Moontongue thought he was better. That’s about as much as I know. I only saw him the once before I crossed the sea but that was enough. He wasn’t the sort of man you forget.’

  ‘I heard he was tight with Neveric the Black. Neveric would turn on Tane and then the two of them would turn on you forkbeards and Neveric would sit on the throne of Sithhun and the Moontongue would be king across the sea. So Moontongue stole the shield and then Neveric turned on him and they all died and good riddance to the lot of them.’ Valaric snorted. ‘Neveric was always a bastard. Still, it’s easy to tell tales of the dead. If it’s all the same to you I’ll keep my mind on thinking what tales they’ll be telling of us.’

  Gallow flinched as Arda poked a graze on his shoulder. ‘Doesn’t need stitches but I’ll be dropping some brandy on that.’

  ‘No, you won’t!’ said Valaric and Gallow at once.

  Arda snorted and did it anyway. ‘It’s what your wizard would have done.’

  The next arrow came straight at Medrin. The first Oribas knew of it was when the Crimson Shield suddenly shifted and the king jerked in his saddle. For a moment Oribas thought Medrin had been hit.

  ‘Maker-Devourer!’ When Medrin lowered the shield Oribas saw the arrow. Medrin looked at it. ‘That’s a Vathan arrow meant to pierce mail.’ He laughed. ‘No, wizard! This is some trick of yours. I’ll not believe your Vathan woman is up there with a bow now, already ahead of us! No.’ He pulled the arrow out of the shield and closed on Oribas. ‘This arrow isn’t real. And the archer on the mountain? Not real either. What are you doing, wizard?’ He grabbed Oribas by the shoulder and stabbed him with the arrow’s tip. Not deep or hard but enough to draw blood. His face changed: the smile fell away and left a cold hardness beneath. He shook his head. ‘No, Aulian. Not your Vathan woman. Just some Marroc.’ He kicked his horse to a canter and sped away, a dozen Lhosir at his heels while more began to climb the slope towards the archer. A soldier took the reins of Oribas’s horse and led him away too. The last time Oribas looked back he saw several Lhosir still labouring up the slope. The archer hadn’t moved. He had no doubt at all that it was Mirrahj.

  They slept in the open that night. Oribas dozed now and then, wondering what the Lhosir king had done with Achista. Twice he jerked awake to shouted alarms from the Lhosir sentries but the commotion never came any closer. In the morning they dragged him to his feet and hauled him back to his horse, and then Medrin took him to the edge of the camp to where a gang of surly Lhosir soldiers were dragging a bound Marroc by a rope. The king shouted at them to stop, and it dismayed Oribas how his heart jumped when he realised who the Marroc must be even before he saw her face. She glared at King Sixfingers and spat into the dirt in front of his horse. Medrin laughed.

  ‘See, Aulian, she still has all her arms and legs and most of her blood on the good side of her skin. She has nothing I want, so how long she stays that way lies with you.’ He turned to the Lhosir. ‘Beat her though, for her disrespect. Aulian, you may stay and watch or ride with me now, as you prefer.’ Oribas didn’t want to watch but he knew he had to, and so he stayed as the Lhosir punched his Achista to the ground and then kicked her half to death.

  ‘It was the Aulian of Sithhun who set me on the path, and you’re an Aulian too. That’s really the only reason I haven’t made ravens out of both of you.’ When the army was ready to march, Oribas found himself led to Medrin’s side once more. ‘You deserve it for what you did. Burning men like that, their bodies sunk into water where no one will ever speak them out.’ He spat. ‘You think I want the red sword, don’t you? Three years ago I wanted it more than anything. Not any more.’ He shook his head. ‘The Vathen came and my father was too old and fat to lead an army. It fell to me to go to Andhun, to be the king of the Lhosir across the sea whether I liked it or not. In Andhun I learned that the sword the Vathen carried to war was the Edge of Sorrows. I learned, at last, its other names.’ He chuckled again. ‘I wanted that sword, Aulian, and if Gallow had ever stopped to wonder why, if he’d ever asked me, perhaps all of this might have been different, perhaps we might have sailed side by side to the frozen wastes and the Iron Palace amid the Ice Wraiths and put an end to the Eyes of Time, each of us with one hand on the sword together. I just wanted to avenge Beyard and if he’d known, he’d have had a piece of that too, I think.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘I never even knew the Eyes of Time had made an ironskin of Beyard. I just thought he was dead all those long years ago.’

  He unbuckled the Crimson Shield from his arm and held up his iron hand. ‘For running away that day in the Temple of Fates, Gallow cut off my hand with that sword in Andhun. I was Medrin Twelvefingers before. Now I’m Sixfingers, Medrin Ironhand. I should have died. Gallow should have killed me, or the wound he gave me should have done it. But for a second time I lived.’ He tapped the shield and strapped it back to his arm. ‘The Vathen took Andhun and everything east of the Isset. My men took me back home. Yurlak took one look at me, flew into a rage and rushed across the sea to put down the filthy Vathen or Marroc or whoever had had the audacity to damage his son.’ Medrin spat again and there was an edge of bitterness to his words. ‘Never mind that it had been a Lhosir, never mind that I might die, he crossed the sea and got away from the sight of me as fast as he could. He died within the year and I shed no tears. He’d done what was needed. He’d outlived the Moontongue and the Screambreaker and that was all I was ever going to get from him. And while everyone else was fighting, I spent my time at the Temple of Fates and looking for the Screambreaker’s fortune.’ His face wrinkled into a suppressed smile. ‘All those years of fighting and winning should have made him as rich as a king but he never took much. He did it for . . .’ Medrin shrugged. ‘I really don’t know. But by the end of my
looking it was the Moontongue I came to understand. They say the Moontongue stole the Crimson Shield as a gift to Neveric the Black of the Marroc, that he meant to betray his brother and his king and that Neveric betrayed him in turn, but Moontongue had a sea more ambition to him than that. When I understood, Aulian, for a moment I was in such awe of him that I forgot to breathe. I had found a Lhosir I could finally truly admire, safe in the knowledge that he was dead. You see, the Moontongue stole the Crimson Shield for himself, not for some Marroc, and he stole it because he believed it could make the Eyes of Time into his servant. He believed he would see the future, know all things before they came to pass, and with that knowledge he would crush Yurlak, grind his brother to dust and lead a conquest the like of which the world hasn’t seen since the glorious days of Aulia. He wasn’t killed by some renegade Marroc. It was ironskins who sank his ship.’

  He sighed. ‘I took salt with me, Aulian, and other things, and I took the Crimson Shield. I took the knowledge I found in the house of the wizard of Sithhun and in the secret letters of the Moontongue.’ He smiled again, although his smiles never touched his ice-blue eyes. ‘Of course, nothing was what I thought. I was more careful than the Moontongue perhaps, but still ignorant.’ The king lifted his iron hand. The fingers flexed and Oribas jerked in his saddle.

  ‘How . . .?’

  ‘The Eyes of Time made this hand for me. Through it the Fateguard obey me. I learned quickly enough why I was so favoured. I did the same as you – I threw salt. Now when I do that, I burn too.’ Medrin slipped the shield back over his arm. ‘I keep it hidden. I already have a finger more than most men and there are limits to how much witchery a brave Lhosir warrior will take. I found I couldn’t make the Eyes of Time my slave, but with the shield nor could I be easily dismissed. We bargained. In the end, for this hand I gave my blood oath that I would search for two pieces of iron armour, lost for hundreds of years somewhere near the mountain crossing to Aulia. I knew, as I gave it, that I would never find them.’