The Crimson Shield

by Nathan Hawke

  ‘And that makes it somehow better? That you betrayed a man without even knowing his name?’ Gallow snarled and growled and turned his horse. ‘Listen well, Marroc!’ he cried. ‘The Vathen have come to Middislet. You did that, not I. Now two of their soldiers are dead. That? I did that. And Fenaric, you may not have told them who was in my house, but someone did. The Vathen know that the Screambreaker was here and more will come. Go! Hide in the Crackmarsh! Stay there this time and don’t wait for Vennic to see ghosts up in the hills – they will come. If they burn your homes, let that be all you lose. You’re fools, all of you.’ He jumped off his horse, grabbed Fenaric and dragged him towards Arda. ‘Screambreaker, if anyone leaves the barn before I come back, kill them!’

  The forkbeard nodded. He looked distant, as though he was barely listening. His eyes were half closed behind the curve of his helm. Fenaric whimpered as Gallow hauled him along. Modris, but he’s strong!

  Arda looked at Corvin in disgust. ‘He’s half de—’

  Gallow slapped her before she could finish, hard enough to knock her down. Fenaric tried to pull away, certain now that Gallow meant to kill them both as soon as they were outside, but he couldn’t break free. He knew, because Arda had told him, that Gallow had never struck her in all the years they’d been married.

  Gallow didn’t break stride. He tossed his torch among the cringing Marroc and bent down as Arda started to rise. He grabbed her arm with his free hand and dragged them both out of the barn like a pair of naughty children, walked them past the bonfire, threw Fenaric to the ground and drew his sword.

  ‘No!’ Arda at last sounded scared. Fenaric couldn’t find his voice.

  Gallow pointed his sword at Fenaric’s face. ‘Now listen to me. I’ll leave with the Screambreaker tonight. I’ll take the Vathan horses and everything they had. There’ll be no sign they were here but that won’t save you. How far away were they, Fenaric? Closer than Fedderhun?’ Fenaric shook his head. ‘Then you have two days, perhaps three. Arda, for once in your bloody-minded life, listen and do what I say: Fenaric will take you south in his wagon. You’ll take the children with you. You’ll go to Varyxhun. There are two horses tethered beside the workshop. They’re Lhosir horses. Take them.’ He ground his teeth, staring at Arda. ‘Take everything you can from the forge. Take Nadric and his tools. You and Nadric can ride the horses. Fenaric will take the children and whatever from the forge that can’t be replaced in his cart. The Widowmaker thanks you for your hospitality.’ He threw a purse at her feet and shook his head. ‘Why, woman? Why couldn’t you simply do as you were told for once?’

  Arda stared up at Gallow with burning eyes. ‘He’s half-dead. How do you think he’ll stop anyone from leaving the barn?’

  ‘He won’t need to. They won’t dare to try. You told them who he was and that’ll be enough. You’ll wait for me in Varyxhun. Keep my sons safe. I’ll deal with you when I return.’ His glare fell on Fenaric and his sword touched the skin of the carter’s throat. Fenaric scrabbled away but the sword point simply followed until he gave up and wept. ‘I’ll not kill now you, carter, because Arda has need of you, but let it be clear in your mind – that’s all that saves you. I’ve seen the way you look at her. You’ll take her to Varyxhun. You’ll do whatever you must to look after her and her children, all of them. When I return, and I will, I’ll judge you by how well you’ve done this. And if you run from me, Fenaric, or if you touch her, I’ll hunt you. I’ll find you and I will sever your ribs from your spine and pull out your lungs like wings and sprinkle salt on you as you die.’

  Fenaric gagged. The way the forkbeards had hung King Tane’s huscarls along the roads to Sithhun after Tane was driven to the mountains.

  ‘Do you understand, Fenaric?’

  He nodded, weeping with fear. Arda spat at Gallow’s feet. ‘Now you care about your family? Now, when it’s too late?’

  ‘Stay here if you’d see what your caring has done!’

  She turned from him. ‘Go! Take your Widowmaker. Don’t bother coming back!’

  Gallow fixed her with icy eyes. ‘My sons will need a mother a few years longer. Be thankful for that.’

  ‘You never changed, did you? Cut your beard and pretended to be meek, but the forkbeard was always there.’

  He nodded. ‘Yes, Arda. As well you know. And neither of us would have had it any other way.’ For a long moment Gallow stared at her. The look on his face was a strange one, impossible to read. His hand strayed to his chest as if touching his heart. Then he turned back to the barn. ‘When the Screambreaker and I are gone, go and be with our children. They’ll wonder what’s happening. They’ll be afraid. And if you must tell them anything at all, be sure it’s the truth. All of it.’

  He left. Fenaric watched him go. ‘I’m sorry . . .’

  She hissed at him and glared. ‘So was it Nadric who told you, was it?’

  He nodded hopelessly. ‘He said . . . I thought . . . Why did you say it was you?’

  She rolled her eyes at him and shook her head. ‘Pull yourself together and be a man, Fenaric. Go and get your cart ready.’

  He lay still, too weak to move. When he finally found his strength again, he lifted his head in time to see the shadow-shapes of two horsemen vanishing into the night. Arda got up and left him there, and the look on her face was every bit as sharp as Gallow’s sword.

  11

  THE CRACKMARSH

  Years of living among the Marroc put the words on Gallow’s tongue: You did well in the barn. He bit them back. Sitting on a horse while Gallow put the fear of the Maker-Devourer into Arda and that idiot of a carter? Nothing for a Lhosir to feel proud about, no matter how hurt he was.

  ‘Since you’re not about to die, I suppose you might stay on that horse as far as Andhun,’ he said instead.

  ‘I don’t want you riding with me, clean-skin.’ The Screambreaker’s words were weak, his voice at the end of its strength. ‘You want to leave a trail for the Vathen to follow, you do that. I’ll make one too. I’ll make my own.’

  ‘You’ll have to speak louder,’ said Gallow.

  ‘You heard.’

  Gallow sniffed the night air. The trail towards the Crackmarsh was easy enough to follow in the moonlight. He still carried a burning branch from the festival fire and he’d walked the path a dozen times. ‘I think I must have taken a blow to the head in the battle too. Hearing’s been here and there ever since. You’ll have to shout to be sure I don’t misunderstand you. Probably not a good idea in the middle of the night.’

  ‘Go away! I do not want you with me,’ growled Corvin. It wasn’t exactly a shout.

  ‘I think,’ said Gallow, as if he hadn’t heard, ‘that if I were to go back, I might just kill my wife.’

  ‘Do you need me to do it for you, bare-face? For a betrayal like that I’d hang my own brother. You should have dragged her by the hair back into that barn and whipped her to death in front of the rest of them!’

  ‘Your brother’s at the bottom of the sea, Screambreaker, and when he was alive, I think most of us were surprised with each day that passed when one of you still hadn’t killed the other. The Marroc aren’t like us.’ He wouldn’t kill Arda, not for trying her best to look after what was hers. Couldn’t. But Fenaric was a different matter. Fenaric he wanted to hurt. Badly. His blood was up, his axe had tasted the enemy and that’s what Fenaric had made himself: the enemy. ‘Maker-Devourer. I have two sons by Arda and a daughter. They’re too young to ride with us.’

  ‘Good. Then go back and watch over them and leave me be.’

  ‘No, better I ride with you, Screambreaker. I’ll save my rage for cracking Vathan skulls, not Marroc ones. You can show me the road to Andhun, which I might not find were I alone, and remind me why I should grow my beard again. And I’ll return your generosity by hunting food and water for you.’ If he put it like that and made it sound like somehow the Screambreaker was the one guiding them and not the other way round then maybe Corvin would at least shut up about being
left to manage on his own.

  ‘That woman took your beard. Is she why you stayed in Andhun?’

  ‘Not at first.’

  ‘But she’s why you never came back.’ The Screambreaker screwed up his face. ‘I’ve seen how you look at her. And how she looks at you. Women like that make men weak. You forget who you are.’

  ‘You’re wrong, Screambreaker. I’ve not forgotten. I chose to be something else.’ They rode in silence after that. Gallow watched Corvin’s shoulders start to sag and then the Screambreaker slumped in his saddle. They were only a few miles from Middislet but the Marroc wouldn’t start for the Crackmarsh until dawn and probably not for hours afterwards. Gallow reined in his horse. ‘It’s been a long night and I don’t trust these Vathan beasts not to trip and throw me. I’ll stop here and make my camp. I have food and water if you choose to join me.’ He half expected Corvin to refuse, to insist on riding on alone until he fell off his horse, but the Screambreaker didn’t answer. When Gallow stopped, Corvin’s horse stopped too. The old man was asleep. Gallow lifted him down and got a fire going. It had been a long night.

  He rose again at dawn. The fire was down to embers but they were enough to light some kindling and start a new one. He roused Corvin with warm water and soft bread and the smell of roasting meat. ‘Breakfast, Screambreaker. Make the most of it. We won’t eat like this again until Andhun. I’ve got food for another day and then we’ll be foraging in the Crackmarsh. You’ll not get another fire either, not with Vathen on our trail.’

  ‘Go home, Gallow.’ That was all he said, but he didn’t spit out the water or throw Gallow’s food away. Arda would howl about the meat, the only piece of it they’d had for weeks. She wouldn’t have forgotten when he found her again in Varyxhun either, but they’d be doing well if that was the worst they had to scream about by then.

  ‘We’ll be at the edge of the Crackmarsh long before the sun peaks,’ he said as they rode. ‘We’ll head west when we reach it. Once the sun is high we’ll rest a while. We’ll make it as obvious as we can which way we went. Maybe the Vathen will be too eager for our blood to stop and hunt for a handful of Marroc.’

  The Screambreaker laughed. ‘Shall we scare away the wolves and the bears and the bandits for them? Perhaps the foxes and the badgers too? Their teeth are sharp, after all, and their claws can leave a nasty scratch.’

  Gallow ignored the scorn in the Screambreaker’s words. ‘Outlaws might lurk in its fringes, but the Crackmarsh is no place for food and shelter. The wolves and the bears know that and yes, the foxes and the badgers too. The only things that hunt there are the ghuldogs. You can try to scare them away if you like. Likely as not they’ll come for us.’

  They rode hard through the morning; when they stopped, Corvin didn’t so much climb off his horse as fall. The Screambreaker waved Gallow away, made angry noises and then fell asleep. While he snored, Gallow wandered the edge of the woods and the broken stones alone. The Marroc would go to the closer caves a few hours east of here, but if the Vathen came in any numbers then caves and trees wouldn’t save them. He’d left a trail that anyone could find so far. Later he’d take that trail into the Crackmarsh. They’d disappear – almost impossible not to in the marsh – but the Vathen would know by then exactly where they were going. Andhun. He had a two-day start, at least, given how long it would take for the Vathen to find reinforcements. Easy enough.

  ‘Why did you face them in the field, Screambreaker?’ he asked when the Screambreaker was awake again. ‘Why make your stand on Lostring Hill? They were five times our numbers, maybe ten.’

  ‘More than ten,’ Corvin said. ‘But Fedderhun has no walls, bare-beard. The battle would have destroyed the town and the Vathen would have won all the same.’

  ‘They’re only Marroc. Isn’t that what you used to say?’

  ‘I did, and there’s little enough glory in hiding behind Marroc soldiers on the battlefield, never mind their women too.’

  ‘Little enough glory in riding your enemy down from the back of a horse or slaughtering them with arrows from far away,’ muttered Gallow, ‘but the Nightmare of the North did both in his time.’

  ‘The Marroc got too good at running.’ The Screambreaker spat. ‘They wouldn’t face us any more. As soon as a man runs, he’s no longer a man. Makes him the same as an animal and there’s neither honour nor dishonour in killing an animal, it’s simply a chore. A bear or a boar, they’re a different matter, but they won’t run if you fight them one against one and don’t hide behind an army of spears and shields.’ He turned away. ‘Yurlak kept falling ill. See how his strength came back when he returned across the sea to his home? These Marroc sapped the life out of him. The fighting had to end. We needed to go home.’ A thin smile settled on his lips. ‘Andhun will be different. Andhun has walls and even the Marroc can fight if you give them a wall to hide behind. Varyxhun showed us that. The Vathen won’t get past Andhun. We’ll smash them in the field and the Marroc will hold the walls.’

  Gallow helped him onto his horse. That was the Screambreaker. He’d let the Marroc hold the walls of Andhun because he didn’t trust them in the field, but give him a few thousand Lhosir and he’d face the Vathen in the open no matter how great their numbers. Five thousand Lhosir had beaten an army of Marroc said to be thirty thousand strong. That had been the height of the war before Sithhun fell, before Gallow had crossed the sea, and so all he’d heard were the stories. Corvin had earned his names that day. Widowmaker to the Marroc, Screambreaker to the Lhosir.

  They reached the edges of the Crackmarsh. In the distance mountains darkened the southern horizon. Varyxhun nestled somewhere on their edges where the River Isset emerged into the hills. A canyon channelled the water, funnelling its energy, and then spat it into a great flat plain two score miles wide and circled by hills. The Crackmarsh, and here it was. Water everywhere.

  It rained that night and they rose stiff and miserable in the morning. Corvin’s face was glassy-pale. He didn’t complain but then he wouldn’t, not until he fell off his horse stone dead and probably not even then. As soon as they set off, Gallow steered their course deeper into the water meadows. The changes came slowly. The ground became wetter, the undergrowth darker and denser and more tangled. Their horses’ hooves began to sink into the earth. By the middle of the day they were walking through ankle-deep water that stretched ahead as far as either of them could see. Islands hunched out of it – hundreds of them – some bare, most clustered with dense stands of trees. Here and there some grew out of the water itself. They stood on thick tangles of roots and their branches were twisted and ancient. They looked sickly.

  ‘That Vathan who escaped, he’ll have reached Fedderhun by now.’ In the distance, away from the mountains, Gallow could see the hills on the far side of the marsh where the land rose and then sloped towards Andhun and the sea. ‘With luck we’ll be across the marsh before they get here.’

  He tied Corvin to his saddle in the afternoon when the old warrior finally lost his battle with sleep and succumbed, and pushed them on hard and far. One night in the Crackmarsh would be more than enough. As the daylight began to fade he chose an island that looked big enough to shelter two men and their horses. He tried to light a fire, but between the rain and the marsh everything was too wet.

  ‘The Marroc have a story about this marsh,’ said Corvin. Gallow grunted. He’d thought the old general was asleep.

  ‘They have several.’

  ‘They used to tell me that the marsh was cursed and haunted. They told me there were hills here once long ago. The Aulians crossed the mountains and built a great city in the middle of it. They catacombed the hills with tunnels to bury their dead, just as the Marroc do now. They liked to dig, the Aulians. Then the city was struck by plague and there were so many dead that the living couldn’t make new tunnels quickly enough, and so one night the dead got up and dug tunnels of their own. They dug an enormous labyrinth, huge and vast and so far and so deep that one day they reached the river. The
water rushed under the hills and brought their tunnels down, and the hills and the city on top of them as well, but the dead didn’t know any better and so they kept on digging. They’re still there. Still digging. The ghosts and spirits that haunt this place are Aulians.’

  ‘The Aulians never built a city here and there aren’t any ghosts or spirits.’ Gallow lay down and closed his eyes. ‘The Marroc around Fedderhun say there used to be a fine valley here until a witch came to live in it. The witch was so wicked that the one day the river changed its course to wash her away and scour the land of every trace of her. That’s why nothing good grows here. Witch’s taint.’

  ‘That’s quite a witch then.’

  ‘Oh, she was a very powerful witch and very wicked.’ Gallow laughed. ‘Aren’t they all? And have you ever met a real one?’

  ‘If a witch is an old crone then I’ve met many. But one who talks to the spirits of the Herenian Marches?’ The Screambreaker spat. ‘Witches or the dead of some ancient plague scratching away under our feet? Ghosts and goblins. Stories for frightening children.’

  ‘The ghuldogs are real enough.’

  ‘Then you watch for them, bare-beard.’

  ‘I will.’

  By the time he’d stripped the horses, the general was already snoring again.

  12

  IRON AND STEEL

  For the third time in as many hours Sarvic’s boot stuck in the mud of the Crackmarsh and he couldn’t pull it out. The water on top was only ankle-deep, but the mud would swallow a man whole if he stood still for long enough.

  ‘Shit on a stick, Sarvic!’ hissed Valaric. ‘You’re worse than a forkbeard. Special shoes, is it?’ He crouched low in the swamp, motionless amid the tree roots. Sarvic took the bow off his back and handed it to Angry Jonnic. Every movement had to be painstakingly slow. The Vathen on their horses were close. Trouble was, slow and careful wasn’t going to get his boot out of the mud. Angry Jonnic wrinkled his nose.