The Crimson Shield

by Nathan Hawke

  Gallow looked away. They both knew she was right, though: the other forkbeards wouldn’t even look at him, not with his bare face. He’d done that for her, years ago when she’d thought it would change him, but of course it hadn’t changed anything at all. ‘I ran away,’ he said, ‘with a band of Marroc who were as brave as anyone else. We found horses in the woods with dead men sitting on their backs. This one was alive. We shared the horses between us. I have another.’

  ‘You got two?’ Her eyes flashed. ‘Where are they?’

  ‘Out in the fields.’ Gallow shook his head. ‘There are no riders in the hills, Arda. I came that way myself. Vennic probably saw the two of us in the distance and panicked. You know what he’s like.’ He must have seen the uncertainty in her face. Yes, she did know what Vennic was like, the whole village knew. He looked away. ‘Someone should go to the Crackmarsh and bring the others back.’

  ‘Someone should get those horses brought into the yard before they’re eaten by wolves!’

  Gallow cocked his head at the man asleep on their furs. ‘His wound should be cleaned and stitched closed in the way of the Aulians.’

  ‘And are you going to tend to him?’ Arda let out a scornful laugh. ‘Yes, and I should let you! A fine way that would be to help him on to the Marches. Might as well just use that knife on him.’ She sighed. She didn’t want this other man here but she didn’t want him dying under her roof either. A lot of bad luck that was, and she certainly wasn’t going to open his throat in her own house, however much a part of her would have liked that. ‘Fine then. Since you say he must stay then let him get well or die quickly. When Nadric comes back we’ll see. Until then at least let someone who won’t stitch his eyes shut tend to him. I’ll do it. Go and get those horses and keep them safe!’

  They looked at one another. It was hard to be angry with Gallow for long. He’d never been cruel or unjust, he just didn’t think, that was all. Flesh and blood, children and household, all that came before anything else, and if it hadn’t been that way for her then she would never have married him, never even taken him into her home. ‘I won’t cut his throat,’ she snapped. ‘Much as I’d like to.’

  He gave her a hard look. She threw up her hands in disgust. ‘I swear by Modris and by Merethin’s ghost! Happy?’ Merethin had been Nadric’s son and had fathered Jelira, her oldest. The forkbeards had killed him. She hadn’t thought much of him before he’d gone off to war and had roundly cursed his name ever since, but she always held him up to Gallow whenever she was angry. She scowled. For being from across the sea, that was what it came to. That’s what he’d done wrong. Nothing else.

  Gallow nodded. He put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. He could be kind when he wanted to be, and kindness was something she secretly craved. She didn’t flinch away. ‘I’m sorry I scared you.’

  ‘I wasn’t scared, you idiot! Modris and Ballor! Will you get on and do what needs to be done!’ Scared? Maybe she had been, but she’d die before she’d admit it to a forkbeard, even him. When he’d cut his beard, perhaps he’d thought it would mellow the hardness she wore like armour, just like she thought it might change him, but it didn’t change either of them. It wasn’t fair. She knew that. But it wasn’t fair to see a husband and a brother killed and a home burned by the forkbeards either. The only time she let him see any other side of her was at night. Women had their urges as much as men.

  He squeezed again and then let her be when she almost kicked him away from her. ‘Stupid man!’ Ah, Modris! If he’d seen how she’d squirmed inside when he’d told her he was going to fight the Vathen . . . The thought of losing him, that had scared her, and it had turned out to be a far deeper fear than she’d thought it would be. She’d never admit it though, just as she’d never admit she was pleased to see him back. It all turned to anger instead.

  ‘Off with you!’ She shooed him out of the house and then went to look for her bone needles and some thread. She wouldn’t be too careful, stitching this unwanted forkbeard back together. It would hurt and he’d have a scar. Both would please her, but she’d keep her promise. He wouldn’t die.

  7

  NIOINGR

  Gallow saddled one of the horses and rode it out to the Crackmarsh. In spring when the streams ran fast off the mountains and the Isset was deep and strong the Crackmarsh was fifty miles of water meadow criss-crossed with swamp paths and pocked with smooth bare boulders and little hillocks crowned by stands of stunted trees, a thousand tiny islands breaching the shallow water like the backs of petrified whales. Later in the year it dried out to a huge flat swathe of soft boggy soil between the litter of giant stones and the tufts of trees. Fine growing land if it hadn’t been for the ghuldogs.

  Around its eastern edge rose a line of low hills scattered with crags and thick groves of trees, guiding the Isset and the Crackmarsh westward out of the Varyxhun valley and the pass that led to the old Aulian Way across the mountains. There were caves here, lots of them. Whispers told stories that the deeper ones ran right across to the mountains, but the deeper ones were always flooded so no one really knew. Gallow found the rest of the villagers there, as Arda had said and he had guessed, bored and fractious and already arguing among themselves about whether they should go back. None of them was pleased to see him. Even Nadric was barely civil. Old wounds had opened with the coming of the Vathen.

  It was almost dark by the time he got back to the forge. Arda had finished with Corvin. Her face was furious.

  ‘You said he was a soldier.’

  ‘He is.’

  ‘I saw his sword. He’s not just a soldier.’

  He could have lied. Men picked up whatever they could find after a battle, after all, but sooner or later she’d find out. The old man would tell her if she ever asked. He shrugged. Better to hear it from him. ‘He’s Corvin Screambreaker.’

  Arda hissed at him, bearing her teeth. ‘The Widowmaker himself? Are you mad? You bring the Widowmaker into my house?’

  ‘I bring a man who is hurt, woman!’ For a moment he almost lost his temper. Arda was good at that. ‘Should I leave him to die?’

  ‘The Nightmare of the North? Yes, you surely should! If I’d known who he was before I stitched his eye . . . Get him out of here!’

  ‘When he’s well enough to travel on his own.’

  ‘No! Now! What if the Vathen come?’

  ‘I told you, woman! The Vathen have moved on Fedderhun. And why would they come here? Unless someone told them of a very good reason.’

  ‘Don’t you woman me, foxborn!’ She leaned into him, red with rage. ‘Never mind the Vathen then – what if anyone else finds out who you’ve got here? The rest of the village. They’ll burn the place down around us!’

  He met her gaze, eye to eye. ‘Then you’d best not tell them.’

  She stormed away out to the workshop and Nadric. In a while Nadric would come inside and tell Gallow that the Screambreaker had to go, and Gallow would say no, and then they’d argue and drink and drink and argue, and eventually Nadric would give in, just like he always did, and Arda would storm away and disappear into the fields just like she always did when they argued and she lost, and then she’d come back in the middle of the night and tear the furs off him and they’d make love like dragons. For a moment, after they were done, he’d see the gentleness that was buried so very deep inside her. But only for a moment. He touched a finger to the locket under his shirt. Maker-Devourer, what scorn she’d pour on him for that if she knew! ‘He stays until he’s well,’ he called after her.

  At the open door little Feya and Tathic peered up at him with their big child eyes. Pursic was probably out in the yard crawling in the mud. Jelira would be watching Nadric in the workshop. Gallow smiled at them and knelt down. ‘Listen to me, little ones. When boys grow to be men they may carry swords or they may not, but every man and every woman carries their own heartsong. It’s not a thing you win in battles. It’s a thing you’re born with and you must always listen to it. It will tell you what
is right and what is wrong. You must look after it too, because if you don’t then one day it might go away, and when it goes it won’t come back. More men lose their heartsongs in their own home than lose it in a wall of shields.’

  They kept staring, too young to understand. Gallow took their hands, one in each of his. ‘There’s a stranger here, in the night room. A man who helped me fight. He was very brave but now he’s hurt. He’ll stay until he’s well. You must leave him alone and you mustn’t tell anyone that he’s here. He’ll be gone soon.’

  Tathic nodded, his face serious. Feya smiled and yawned and reached out to pull Gallow’s nose.

  ‘Do only boys have heartsongs?’ asked Tathic. ‘Jel says girls have heartsongs too, but they don’t, do they?’

  ‘Oh they very much do, little man. Everyone has a heartsong. Boys and girls, men and women, Marroc and Lhosir.’

  ‘Does Ma have a heartsong?’

  ‘Of course she does. Do you not hear it? It’s the strongest heartsong in our house.’

  ‘See!’ Feya pushed Tathic. ‘I do have har-sow!’ She scampered behind Gallow to hide. Gallow ruffled her hair and shooed them back into the yard to chase each other in the twilight. When they were gone he drew back the curtains to see what Arda had done to Corvin. The Screambreaker was sitting up against the wall. His face was ashen but his eyes were clear. He had a gash over his temple and around his forehead as long as a finger and swollen up like an egg. Blood oozed from it. Arda’s stitching hadn’t been kind.

  ‘She said I was cut to the bone.’

  ‘You were lucky to live.’

  ‘Where am I?’

  Gallow sat down beside him. ‘You’re in the house of Nadric the Smith in Middislet. About three days’ walk inland from Fedderhun.’

  Corvin closed his eyes. He took a deep breath and moaned. ‘Marroc.’

  ‘Yes.’ The pain must have been bad for Corvin to let it show. ‘No one outside this house knows you’re here. Best it stays that way. The Marroc still curse the name Screambreaker.’

  ‘I thank you for your hospitality.’ The words were forced between his lips, empty of feeling. ‘Send your wife to me. I will thank her to her face even if she spits at my feet. In the morning I’ll take my horse and be gone.’

  ‘To where, Screambreaker? Fedderhun is surely fallen and Andhun is a week’s ride across unfamiliar country along paths you won’t remember. You’ll not get any help from any Marroc, not looking as you do. You’ll die before you get there. You’re feverish already.’

  The Screambreaker snarled. ‘Who are you to tell me what to do, no-beard? I’ll be gone in the morning and that’s the end of the matter, and if I die before Andhun then that’s my fate and the Maker-Devourer will have me. I’ll not lie here like some invalid in the bed of a downy-cheeked nioingr.’

  The blood rushed to Gallow’s face. If he’d had a knife he might have pulled it. As it was, he grabbed Corvin’s head in his hands and forced him to meet his eye. ‘I didn’t save your life to kill you here, but your tongue will not travel with you to Andhun unless it learns some manners. You’re in my house, under my roof. I followed you into battle for years. I’ve fled from the enemy twice and twice alone. At Selleuk’s Bridge and now from the Vathen, and so you’ll take those words and swallow them!’

  The Screambreaker met his eyes and bared his teeth. ‘I will eat them when you show me your beard, clean-skin. I still remember some of those who never came back across the sea. Nioingr, all of them.’

  ‘I didn’t stay because of any shame, Screambreaker.’

  ‘Then why?’

  Corvin didn’t flinch from him. Gallow let go. ‘Because Yurlak was sick, that’s why. We all thought he’d die. Medrin would have followed him, and I’ll not serve a king I’ve seen turn and run while his friends stood fast.’

  The last words earned him a glare. ‘You call the king’s son a coward?’

  Gallow shrugged. ‘It was fourteen summers ago that I crossed the sea. The Medrin I left behind, yes, I call him a coward. Perhaps he’s changed. He must have a beard now.’

  ‘Long and fine, unlike yours.’

  ‘If you say it’s so then I shall believe you.’

  ‘What you believe is nothing to me, clean-skin. Send your wife so I may thank her for her attentions. I will be gone in the morning.’

  Gallow rose and left. Outside the door Arda took his arm and pulled him away across the yard and into the workshop where Nadric was sitting by his anvil.

  ‘We’ve decided.’ She looked him in the eye. ‘We’ll ransom him.’

  Nadric nodded slowly. Gallow shook his head. ‘No.’

  ‘Yes!’ Arda hissed. ‘He’s nothing but grief and another hungry mouth, and we can barely feed the ones we have. What happens if anyone finds him here? The Vathen will kill us all and burn our homes. They’ll burn the whole village! If any of the others find out he’s here, they will go to the Vathen. They will be rewarded and we will be killed. There’s no other way that makes sense. We sell him to the Vathen. It’s decided.’

  ‘No.’ Gallow looked at them both. ‘If you do this then I’ll burn our home myself with both of you inside it. He means to leave in the morning. No one will know he’s here and he’ll be gone before any Vathan could get here. Think on how that will seem. No. He’ll leave us a fine horse and the spoils it carries to keep us fed and we’ll have done what was right. Let that be enough.’

  ‘Your Prince Medrin is in Andhun,’ said Nadric. He tried, when Gallow and Arda set against one another, to be the voice of reason, always a thankless task. ‘Could we not ransom him there instead?’

  Arda spat. ‘Why, when we could give him to the Vathen and he could get what he deserves?’

  Gallow turned away. In their eyes he’d brought an enemy into their house. He understood that. They were Marroc, and Corvin was the Screambreaker from across the sea who’d led armies against their people and conquered their king in the name of his own. What they thought hardly mattered though. The Screambreaker had said he would be gone, and so he would, and that would be that and he’d either reach Andhun alive or he wouldn’t.

  They slept in the main part of the house that night, leaving the Screambreaker the night room with the curtains closed around him. In the early hours before the dawn he woke them all with a scream, wild with fever. He was not gone in the morning, nor the one after, nor the one after that. Each night Gallow thought he would die. Each day Arda prayed for it, and yet she tended to him as she would have tended to her own children, even as he denied her and his heart kept beating. As far as Gallow could see, no one said a word of it outside his walls. The Marroc of Middislet looked at him just as they always did. With disdain, a sneer and a little fear.

  8

  VIDRIC

  The Vathen gathered around the dying Marroc. There wasn’t much left of him. Just a bloodied sack of flesh and bones hung from the branches of a tree by his wrists and ankles. They’d tortured him, beating and flaying him with bundles of wiry sticks. They’d been doing it for hours. The sticks were vicious, splitting the skin like whips as often as not.

  ‘He’s done.’ Gosomon threw his bundle away. ‘He’s got nothing more to say.’

  The rest of them nodded. The air among them changed. Hostility ebbed and a question grew in its place. Eyes shifted from the dying Marroc to Krenda Bashar. And?

  ‘The Screambreaker isn’t with them.’ Krenda Bashar nodded to himself. Nodded to the gods who’d dealt him this pot of shit. He grabbed the dying Marroc by the hair and pulled up his head. ‘There was a Lhosir with you when you fled the battle. You found a clearing and the remnants of a skirmish.’ The Marroc had had a gold-handled Lhosir knife tucked into his belt when they’d taken him. Krenda waved it under his face. ‘You found Beymar Bashar’s ride, all of them dead, and plenty of dead forkbeards too. You had a fine old time looting the bodies. Afterwards the Lhosir who was with you suddenly wasn’t there any more. You have no idea whether he took a horse. You have no idea if he took
anyone with him. You have no idea whether he found another forkbeard alive or took away one of the dead. You don’t even know who he was except his name. Gallow. You have no idea where he went or why. Am I missing anything? Oh, and this all happened two whole days ago, so by now he could be pissing anywhere!’ He didn’t wait for the Marroc to answer. With a sudden jab, he stabbed the Lhosir knife into the Marroc’s neck and let him bleed out. ‘Mollar and Feyrk!’ he cursed. ‘Gosomon, take your ride and go after the rest of these Marroc. Maybe one of the others knows more. Find where this Lhosir went and who he is.’ Andhun, surely. Where else? ‘If he’s gone to ground, it’ll be in the Crackmarsh. That’s about a day’s ride straight south. Huge mess of a place. Mostly under water this time of year. You can’t miss it, but if he’s hiding in there and you somehow manage to find him then I’ll have you made the next ardshan.’

  Gosomon snorted as Krenda Bashar climbed back into his saddle. ‘Going back to Fedderhun are you, Bashar? Back to your woman? A couple of soft nights while we sleep in the mud?’

  Krenda Bashar’s face turned sour. ‘I’ll join you again in a few days, Gosomon. Gulsukh won’t like it, but if the Screambreaker is on his way to Andhun then maybe he can get there first if he moves fast. He’d want to know that. But find him for me, Gosomon. Make me look less stupid that I am, eh? I tell you what – you find him, you can have Mirrahj for your own wife, if she doesn’t knock you out first, and I’ll take a woman who’s still got a use to her – how about that? Oh, and if you pass any Marroc, have the sense to ask.’ He patted the little bag of silver hanging from his saddle. ‘Show them a little of something that shines.’

  He kicked his horse into a canter and turned for Fedderhun.

  9

  THE FESTIVAL OF SHIEFA

  Vathen or no, Fenaric the carter and his sons headed off for Fedderhun as they did every year before Shieftane. The whole of Middislet came out to watch them go, clapping their hands at their bravery or else shaking their heads at such foolishness. Gallow thought they were stupid, so of course Arda thought they were brave and pointedly went out to tell them so before they left. A week later they were back, alive and well. They even had what they’d gone looking for, barrels of Fedderhun beer. Fenaric drew up his cart in the middle of the village and stopped and waited while everyone gathered around him.