The Last Bastion

by Nathan Hawke

  And he was right. Mirrahj settled uneasily into the far corner of the room and slumped against the wall, the red sword close to hand. When a pair of forkbeards burst in on them, she stayed very still as they stopped with the sunlight streaming behind them and squinted into the gloom and shook their heads. They left the door open and so now and then she saw others hurry past, back and forth for a while with noise and commotion all about, and then the noise faded and no forkbeards came past any more, and when the three of them finally emerged, hours after dawn, the army was all gone, marching up to the castle and Varyxhun was almost empty. Mirrahj led them from house to house, shadow to shadow, until she reached the edge of the river, and there Oribas stopped her. He looked up to the column of forkbeards steadily climbing the mountain road. ‘Find a rope.’ He looked her up and down and then poked her in the hip. ‘And a stout piece of wood that stands this high off the ground. And be quick.’

  *

  Sarvic drew back his bow and took aim. ‘Don’t say a word, forkbeard. Not a word.’ His voice was harsh and hoarse. He let the first arrow fly and it struck one of the Marroc in the chest. Sarvic drew another. Medrin was climbing the last tier now, about to pass through the fifth gate and in range of the boiling water and the stones, yet nothing was hitting his human shield. At least there was no hearing the screams over the shouts of the Lhosir and the Marroc on the walls.

  Sarvic shot another arrow. It struck a second Marroc in the throat. A good clean kill. Gallow squinted, trying to see if Achista or Mirrahj or Oribas was a part of Medrin’s shield. Under the rags and the dirt and the crusted blood it was hard to be sure.

  Sarvic fired again. As Medrin’s banner passed beneath he killed the last of the screaming Marroc, threw down his bow and ran along the battlements, howling at the top of his lungs, ‘There! Down there! Sixfingers! Never mind the rest of them, he’s the one! Kill him! Kill the forkbeard king. Look at him! Look!’ He picked up a stone as big as his head and staggered under its weight, hefted it up to a merlon over Medrin’s banner and tipped it over. It bounced off the wall and smashed into a corner of the shield. For a moment the back end wavered and sank. ‘Kill him! Use everything!’

  The Marroc went wild. Arrows flew at every opening, no matter how small. Men ran up and down the battlements with stones and pots of boiling water, slopping it, burning their hands and scalding their feet but they didn’t care. A torrent came over the wall down onto Medrin’s roof and banner. Another great stone hit square in the middle and snapped the beam that held the shield together. Smaller stones pinged off the sides and it was riddled with arrows. As Gallow watched, the roof began to break apart. The Marroc cheered but now Gallow wasn’t looking at Medrin’s banner, he was looking everywhere else. There was too little Lhosir in Medrin to stand beneath his own banner come what may, and yet just enough for him to be here somewhere. And he was looking for the Fateguard too because there had to be one. He could see small rams carried under the following roofs. Nothing big enough for the gates of the castle as they were, but rust their hinges to dust and . . .

  Another whoop and a cheer went up from the Marroc on the sixth gate and a cloud of grey showered down. The roof at the front of the Lhosir army tipped sideways and lay on its edge, about to topple over the cliff onto the tier below. Lhosir soldiers hastily lifted their shields and cowered. Medrin’s roof was almost at the front of them now, bent in the middle and sagging but still carried onward. Sacks and sacks came over the gatehouse, each of them ripped before they went. The air was suddenly thick with salt but still Medrin’s banner came on. Then with a great shout from the gate, a stone block the size of a man toppled from the wall. Gallow watched it plunge into the front of what was left of Medrin’s roof, shattering it. The spear flying his banner snapped and exploded into shards. The roof disintegrated, the Lhosir crushed beneath it trapped screaming while others scurried for shelter, pressing themselves against the walls. Everywhere the Marroc cheered and hooted. ‘For King Tane!’ ‘Go back to your sheep, forkbeards!’

  Gallow peered frantically among the forkbeards who’d come up behind Medrin’s banner, looking for the one Fateguard who had to be among them to rust the last gate. Looking and not seeing, and then he caught a glimpse: Medrin. A flash of him almost at the front, with his helm and the Crimson Shield in his hand, and then he was gone again, hidden among the press of men.

  ‘He’s not dead!’ He pulled Sarvic to the edge of the wall and pointed. ‘He’s not dead, Sarvic. He’s there.’

  They looked, both of them, but all they saw now were Lhosir shields, and then three Lhosir ran for the gates and behind them the rest began to move again. ‘There!’ In the middle of the three. Medrin.

  Sarvic let fly. His arrow hit the Crimson Shield. He tried again but it was as though each time Medrin saw the arrow coming and lifted his shield to catch it even though he never once looked up. He reached the gate, crouched down and raised a hand to touch it, the iron hand that the Eyes of Time had given him, and the shields of the Lhosir closed around him. Almost at once a cry went up from the men in the castle yard. ‘The gates! It’s happening!’

  ‘Stop him!’

  But how? The Marroc had thrown all their stones and the Lhosir had Medrin wrapped in shields to catch their arrows and the ground was already white with salt and their oil had gone. Gallow bowed his head. He gripped Sarvic’s shoulder. ‘Stay here, friend, with your bow and the best archers you have. When the gates fall they may drop their guard in their rush to kill us. Use your arrows well and then come. I’ll hold a place in the line for you.’ His lip curled. ‘I promise there will be plenty of them left.’

  He left the battlements and walked with a steady stride down into the yard, to where the Marroc soldiers waited with their shields and their spears for the gate to fall. When they did, the Lhosir would be there, and Medrin would be at the front and Gallow would call him out, and Medrin would have no choice, in front of all his men, but to accept.

  Oribas and Mirrahj and Achista ran along the banks of the Isset. The forkbeards were up on the road, marching on the last gate, and the rain of stones and arrows from the Marroc had already started. Oribas could hear the shouts wafting from the mountain on the breeze. He bounded down the path with Achista behind him. Mirrahj followed, carrying their rope and the piece of wood. He ran into the cave and the winding tunnel, and if there were any forkbeards watching then he never saw them. He reached the water and ducked under the surface and felt his way through to the inner cave.

  It was dark, utterly dark, and so it took a long time and a great deal of cursing before they found the hole in the roof of the cave and poked their stick through and stuck it fast. Mirrahj shinned up the rope and then Achista, then Oribas last of all, hauled up by the others. They started to climb the shaft.

  ‘Where’s Sarvic?’ A runner from the gates looked up at him. Sarvic looked back.

  ‘Here.’

  The runner gave him an arrow. ‘Valaric says this is for you.’ The runner darted away again. Sarvic looked at the arrow and then peered more closely at the tip.

  The arrowhead had Medrin’s name scratched into it.

  34

  THE CRIMSON SHIELD

  ‘I understand it!’ In the blackness Oribas scrambled up the shaft, feeling his way one hand at a time. Achista and Mirrahj climbed behind him. ‘The Dragon’s Maw behind the bars. The gates that no one can enter!’

  ‘That cave has a dragon?’ Mirrahj snorted with derision.

  ‘Yes! A water dragon.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’ Achista kept grabbing at his feet. He was slower than either of them.

  ‘The stories! When the Aulians built the castle, they dug into the mountain and awoke the dragon, and the dragon in its anger flooded the valley and the river rose to the walls of the castle itself and wiped everything away. And the dragon will come again to devour whoever breaks the sixth gate!’

  ‘There are no such things as dragons.’ Mirrahj spoke with a flat certainty.


  ‘No, but—’

  ‘My people killed them.’

  Oribas cackled to himself. ‘No no, there’s no dragon hiding here that no one has seen for two hundred years, that is true. But what if the water was real? What if there really was a flood?’

  It was Achista’s turn now: ‘The Isset rises every spring, but up to the castle walls? That’s not possible!’

  ‘But what if it was not the river!’ Oribas was shaking with excitement. ‘What if it was . . .’

  ‘The lake!’

  ‘Yes. The tarn above the castle.’ He felt the change in them after that, both of them, as the possibility coursed through their thoughts. Aulians had built the castle. Aulians liked to dig. They’d burrowed into the mountain and they’d dug their tunnels, tunnels like this one. But somehow they’d hit the underside of the lake or some flooded cave beneath it and the waters had rushed out of the Dragon’s Maw and through the sixth gate and down the mountainside and washed away everything in their path. The whole lake, emptied into the Isset in one single torrent. And because they were Aulians, they went back into their tunnel after the waters had subsided and they built a wall. And slowly the lake had filled again. He could see it all as though he’d been there.

  The sixth gate shuddered under the blows of the ram and with each one the rusted iron flaked and cracked. Gallow stood tense and ready. When the gates finally broke and fell they might tumble onto the Lhosir. In that moment of confusion the Marroc would fall on them, charging out of Varyxhun castle before Medrin’s warriors could form their wall of shields.

  The pounding stopped. The gates still stood, a haze of dust clouded behind them. At Gallow’s back lay the cave, with its bars too thick to break and too close for a man to enter. He’d have given a lot to put some Marroc archers inside that cave and never mind the dragon of stories. He stood with his spear poised and waited. On the battlements above, the Marroc fell quiet. The gates creaked and groaned and one seemed to sag a little. A tension seized them – even the Lhosir fell silent now. The gates groaned again and then one of them began to fall, twisting under its own weight. The bars that held them closed caught it for a moment, but then the rusted iron that held the bars wrenched and tore and split. Corroded metal shattered in bangs and puffs of dust and retorts that Gallow felt through his feet and then the first gate hit the ground. The second was already falling, and outside on the road he saw that the Lhosir had moved back and had already formed their wall of shields and spears. One man alone stood in front of them. Medrin raised the Crimson Shield high and Gallow could see that the arm that held it ended in a ragged stump – the shield was not held but was strapped to his arm. Medrin looked right at him. ‘See this, Foxbeard?’ he cried. ‘You did this.’ He gestured at the castle, a sweep of his arm that took in Marroc and Lhosir alike. ‘You did all of this.’

  An arrow flew at him. Medrin caught it on the shield. Then he lifted his spear and lowered his head and started to run, and behind him the other Lhosir ran too and a great howl went up from them. The Marroc on the battlements screamed and threw their remaining stones and Gallow roared a battle cry of his own, and all around him the Marroc of the Crackmarsh lowered their spears and braced their shields to receive Medrin’s charge.

  Warm distant light poured into the shaft like liquid honey. Mirrahj knew at once where they were – the cisterns of Varyxhun. The Aulian was a slow climber and the ascent felt as if it had taken the whole morning though she knew it must be far less. The light drew closer. The shaft reached the cisterns and went on past, rising steadily into the mountain. Oribas kept on climbing. Mirrahj stopped. ‘Aulian, where are you going?’

  ‘To the water dragon, Vathan.’

  Mirrahj shook her head. ‘There’s no dragon, Aulian. Only stories and their ghosts.’

  ‘Wait and see.’

  ‘I have a creature of my own to kill. One that’s real.’ She turned and pulled herself through the hole where the cisterns drained. Medrin Sixfingers was near. The sword knew it.

  *

  They took the Lhosir charge and met it, staggering a half-pace back under the crashing impact. The Lhosir pressed with a frenzied strength and the Marroc fought back with the wild abandon of men with nowhere left to run. Gallow looked for Medrin in the press of shields but the crush of bodies was too thick. He lunged with his spear and sliced open a man’s arm and then stabbed him in the face. He barged with his shield and reversed his spear and stabbed the next Lhosir in the foot. But the Marroc, for all their heart, never fought together as a wall of men like this. When Gallow tore a shield aside, no spear thrust came from behind to finish the man he fought, yet when the Lhosir did the same, that thrust came fast and deadly. The Marroc to Gallow’s right had his shield hooked by a Lhosir axe and pulled down and instantly a spear slashed his neck. The Marroc on the other side lifted his shield to hold off a barrage of blows and a spear plunged into his knee. He lurched, screaming, and another took him in the throat. Slowly the Marroc line fell back.

  A shout went up from the sixth gate and another rain of missiles fell on the Lhosir from Valaric’s Marroc, stones and arrows and boiling water and the last sacks of salt. The Lhosir fought with mad desperation to press away from the gate and for a moment the Marroc found a new heart. Gallow lost his spear, bitten in two by a Lhosir hatchet. He drew his own axe and rained blow after blow on the enemy before him, battering them back, beating them to death beneath their mail and shields. Another Marroc fell beside him. For a moment he felt something give, the whole line falter. He stumbled, forced by the press of the Lhosir to step back, and for a moment he felt the Marroc about to turn and rout – but then a cry went up: ‘The Wolf! The Wolf!’ And though Gallow couldn’t see, he knew that Valaric, crippled or not, had come down from the gates to pick up his sword, and at the sound of his name the Marroc found their courage again. They held with bitter resolve while the Lhosir pressed like a storm. And now, at last, Gallow saw Medrin, sword raised high, driving it into the Marroc ahead of him, blow after blow after blow.

  ‘Medrin! Nioingr!’

  Over the noise of screams and howls Medrin turned and saw him, and then each pressed towards the other, pushing and shoving friend and foe alike aside until they were close enough for their swords to touch.

  Oribas barely noticed Mirrahj go. He climbed on because he was an Aulian and he knew how an Aulian thought, and what an Aulian thought was that any good thing served more than one purpose. The tunnel from the cisterns was a way for men to escape, and that was one thing, but why then tunnel up as well as down? The anticipation gave wings to his thoughts. It was a way for water to escape without flooding the castle and so it must be that the water that might make that flood would lie at its top. And when he reached that top he stopped and tried to see, but there was no light at all, not the tiniest bit of it. With a reluctant huff he reached into his satchel and fumbled for his lamp. Nothing was where it was supposed to be – Medrin had clearly gone through his powders while they’d been riding – but eventually he found it and lit it and held it high so that he and Achista could see what they’d found, and it was enough to make Achista sigh with wonder in his ear. A rift ran up and down the inside of the mountain before them, too deep for his light to penetrate, wrinkled twists of tunnels and chasms vanishing in all directions. From where he stood, steps carved hundreds of years ago climbed the wall of the cave. From somewhere ahead he heard the hiss of water. The air was damp.

  Achista rested a hand on his shoulder. ‘Is it here?’

  ‘I think so.’ He started to climb the steps, creeping on his hands and feet.

  ‘Oribas, if it is, I have to go. Valaric needs to know.’

  He turned awkwardly and held her briefly. In the darkness he grinned. ‘Tell him his dragon waits for him.’ He watched her go and then returned to the steps. They wound around the edge of the cave wall, carved into it, narrow and old and slippery, and then spiralled up into an inverted funnel. The sound of hissing water grew stronger. Now and then he felt a waft
of spray on his face. The steps took him to a ledge where the stone above closed into a narrow shaft clearly carved by men. Its walls were flat and slick and as he stepped closer, dripping water spattered his face, so much that he had to shield his lamp. Down beneath his feet was nothing but a dark void. He looked up. Above, at the limit of his light, the shaft was blocked shut. Stone blocks pressed against one another so tight that no knife blade would slip between them, and yet from the cracks ran a steady trickle of water, drips in some places but in others tight hissing jets of it as though squeezed through the very stone itself by an irresistible pressure from above.

  He giggled. So there it was. The Aulians had tunnelled into the mountain and struck the bed of the lake that lay above the castle. And after the flood they’d sealed the hole the way only Aulians understood, with an arrangement of stones that would only grow stronger as more and more weight piled onto it. And as with the gatehouse he’d described to Valaric back when the Lhosir had first come, somewhere would be a single stone that held it together. A single stone that, if it was pulled away, would cause the entire structure to collapse.

  His eyes gleamed. There would be a chain. And there was, hanging right down in front of him, and that was when he remembered the other part of the story he’d told to Valaric.

  The fighting stopped around them. Gallow and Medrin faced each other amid a ring of men, half Marroc, half Lhosir. In the middle of the fiercest battle they would ever see men set on killing each other stepped away to make space and lowered their blades.

  Medrin cocked his head and lifted the Crimson Shield. ‘Marroc! Look at me! You call upon your god Modris to protect you, yet here is his shield. His shield! I am your king and I am your protector, and yet you’ve turned your back on me and so Modris spurns your names.’ He looked at Gallow and bared his teeth. ‘And you, Foxbeard! You were supposed to be here waiting for me with the Sword of the Weeping God! With Solace, the Comforter, the Peace-bringer, the Edge of Sorrows. Our clash would have been of titans, a myth made flesh. But no, you sent the sword away with some Vathan. Was that to spite me?’ He cut an arc with his sword, pointing at the Marroc around Gallow. ‘I came to Varyxhun not for some strange blade, nor for some faithless nioingr. I came to crush these men to bloody dust so that all Marroc might understand that we are now one. One kingdom, one crown, one people.’ He smiled. ‘You! Look at you, Gallow Foxbeard! A Lhosir living among the Marroc, and you fight me, and yet that is what I offer: Lhosir and Marroc together, side by side. Why not?’