The Crimson Shield

by Nathan Hawke

  ‘Swamp stink gets worse every time you move.’

  Valaric was watching the Vathen. ‘I wondered why that forkbeard saved your worthless hide back on Lostring Hill. Now I know. Make my life miserable, that’s why.’

  Angry Jonnic braced himself against a tree. He and Sarvic wrapped their arms around each other and heaved. The swamp let go of Sarvic’s foot with a deep belch and a pungent stink of marsh gas. Valaric shook his head and winced at the splash. Jonnic settled himself against a tree. When Sarvic had done the same, Jonnic handed him his bow.

  ‘Wait on me,’ growled Valaric. ‘And Sarvic, for the love of Modris, show me it was worth it.’ It was already clear as the sky on a summer’s day that the only reason Sarvic was riding with them at all was because the filthy bastard demon-beard who’d saved his skin when the line broke on Lostring Hill hadn’t left any of them with too much choice. But he was here now, soaking and mud-covered instead of still on the back of his nice new horse, because he’d said he could shoot a bow. And that, at least, he could.

  Luck was a fickle thing in war. He’d been lucky to live through Lostring Hill. Lucky to find a dozen dead forkbeards and their horses – some good looting there. Not so lucky that twenty-odd Vathen had been following them for a day now. Valaric had ridden off the road and into the Crackmarsh to see if they’d go away but they hadn’t. So now it came to this. Twenty Vathen probably thought they had the easy beating of a dozen Marroc, but that was because they hadn’t met Valaric the Wolf until now. The Wolf made his own luck.

  Valaric let fly when the nearest Vathen were some fifty paces away. He didn’t shoot at the ones at the front. His first arrow flew wide, must have missed the Vathan at the back by a finger. The rider jerked, startled. Angry Jonnic put an arrow in his neck. Sarvic shot the lead rider’s horse neatly through the ear.

  ‘Rat’s piss!’ Valaric strung another arrow. The Vathen were confused but they wouldn’t stay that way for long. One in the middle must have found his helmet uncomfortable and had taken it off. Sarvic cleaned out his ear with a shaft of wood and tickled his skull with a tip of iron. The Vathan was dead before he even started to fall.

  Jonnic and Valaric went for the horses now. The Vathen had worked out where the arrows were coming from, but Torvic and Stannic and Silent Jonnic were leading the rest of the Marroc out from where they’d hidden behind the largest of the nearby islands, splashing their own horses out towards the Vathen while arrows tipped rider after rider off into the swamp. The Vathen had good armour and carried shields, so Valaric had said go for the horses as soon as the first volley was off – drop all that nice heavy armour into the water and the mud and watch it flounder. Now he cursed as each one fell. A fighting horse was worth a good purse.

  One of the Vathen was looking right at him. Open helm. Sarvic shot him in the face. Down three men already, with five more thrashing in the water, the rest of the Vathen thought better of it, turned and fled.

  ‘Save your arrows.’ Valaric watched them go. He unwrapped himself from his tree and strode with slow deliberate steps out into the water. Stannic and the rest got there first. Sarvic was last but at least he didn’t get stuck again. By the time he caught up, Valaric had taken his axe to two of the Vathen and Torvic was in the middle of riding down a third. A fourth was face down in the swamp and hadn’t moved. Which left the fifth. The one who’d been at the front. Valaric picked him up right out of the water, armour and all. ‘And who by the tears of the Weeping God are you?’ He didn’t wait for the Vathan to answer, just threw him back into the water and then went and pulled him out again. ‘I’m Valaric. Every bit as mean and every bit as much of a bastard as any forkbeard. I piss on your name, horse-lover, and I wouldn’t give the wrong half of a dead rat for you or anything about you. Why are you following us?’

  Took a while and a good bit of beating, but it turned out the Vathen were looking for the Screambreaker. Sarvic stood in the water meadow, soaked and smelling of swamp-rot without the first idea what they were talking about, but once the Vathan came out with that, Valaric threw back his head and roared with laughter like he’d just been offered the throne of Aulia.

  ‘Whey-faced weasel!’ He gave the Vathan a kick. ‘Does it look like he’s here?’

  ‘But you found him. Didn’t you?’

  A chill ran all over Sarvic as he remembered the dead Lhosir in the wood, and Valaric was still there, laughing away. ‘Yes, horse-lover, we did. We certainly did.’ And then Valaric spun some wild-arsed story about the forkbeard who’d dragged Sarvic down the hill and the two of them finding the Widowmaker still alive and Valaric letting the forkbeard take him – didn’t ask where and didn’t care – but most likely they were nicely on their way to Andhun by now. And then after all that, after they’d stripped the Vathen of anything they might sell, Valaric kicked the last one up the arse and let him go, and they all watched and laughed as the skinny little viper splashed and ran and splashed and fell his way across the Crackmarsh, getting himself away from them as fast as he possibly could.

  ‘They do look different when they’re not on the back of their horses,’ muttered one of the Jonnics.

  ‘Was any of that true?’ Stannic and Torvic didn’t look too pleased at the thought. Valaric nodded and Stannic rolled his eyes. ‘Sweet Modris. The Widowmaker? We had the Widowmaker and you let him go?’

  Valaric shot a look at Sarvic. ‘A life for a life,’ he said. ‘Now shut it!’ He bared his teeth at them all and swung himself back onto his horse. ‘If you’re all done stripping the bodies, boys, we’d best be gone before it’s dark and the ghuldogs come sniffing.’ No one was going to argue with that.

  When Sarvic tried to move, his foot was stuck again.

  13

  THE ROAD TO ANDHUN

  It was a quiet splash at the edge of the water that woke him, but Gallow had his axe in his hand even before he’d finished opening his eyes. In the gloom a shape was crawling out of the Crackmarsh. It had arms and legs like a man, scrawny and thin, but it crawled out of the water on all fours and its head had a pointed snout like a dog. It crouched where Gallow had guided their horses onto the island and sniffed. Behind it another snouty head poked out of the water. A second creature emerged and then a third.

  Ghuldogs. Gallow let out a shout, half fear, half fury, and charged through the trees. Three heads whipped round to stare at him. The nearest sprang, leaping straight at him, jaws wide to rip out his throat. Gallow smashed the beast with his shield and battered it away. The other two crouched and stared. Moonlight shone in their dead eyes; then one jumped for the arm that held his axe while the other snapped at his feet. He blocked low with his shield, twisted out of the way and brought his axe down on the creature’s skull. Bone crunched and blood and brains spattered his arm.

  The first ghuldog was up again; it threw itself at his throat; he dodged, but not enough and its teeth clamped down, tearing at his shoulder through his mail. The second one seized his shield; he dropped that and let out a gleeful howl and swung again, shearing the creature’s spine between the shoulder blades before it thought to let go. It fell twitching at his feet.

  The last one still had his shield arm. He bashed it with the haft of his axe, cracking its nose. It shrieked and let go, snarled, and before it could think to spring again Gallow split its head in two. He stood over the corpses, fighting for air, watching the light fade from their eyes and looking around for any more. His shield was at his feet, the hand that would have held it pressed to his chest, to the locket and the little piece of Arda he still carried with him.

  ‘Stupid, stupid . . .’ Who or what, he didn’t know. When no more ghuldogs came, he picked up the shield. His arm hurt, aching and throbbing. The bite of a ghuldog was poisonous and rumoured to be cursed, but he didn’t dare take off his hauberk to see if its teeth had broken his skin, not now.

  The Screambreaker was still snoring where Gallow had left him. Gallow sat beside him, rested his axe across his knees and leaned his shield against h
is arm. There’d be no more sleep tonight. He touched the locket again and looked at the old man sleeping. ‘You’d never understand, old man. You just wouldn’t. It was a convenience to start with, that’s true. Nadric was growing too old to wield the hammer. Arda with a child by a man lost from the fighting. And I . . . Well, I had my reasons for not sailing back across the sea with the rest of you. I was off to Aulia across the mountains, but truth was I just needed a place and a thing to be. We sheltered each other.’

  The Screambreaker mumbled something and shifted in his sleep. Gallow pressed the locket hard against his skin. ‘I wish you hadn’t broken that, old man. I was happy with that life.’

  He sat watch until dawn and then shook Corvin awake. ‘Ghuldogs,’ he said shortly. ‘Guard yourself.’ The bodies by the shore were gone when he looked. There must have been more then. They’d be out there in the water now, watching and waiting for the next twilight. He went back to Corvin once the old general was up and moving and took off his hauberk and the leather jerkin underneath. The mail had held. His shoulder was sore and scraped from the mauling but the ghuldog’s teeth hadn’t found a way through. There’d be bruises and some stiffness but nothing worse.

  The Screambreaker glared at him. ‘I’m hungry.’

  ‘Good. You’ve hardly eaten for days.’

  They shared the last of the food from the village and set off again through the marsh. In places the water was still ankle-deep but more often now it came to their horses’ knees and sometimes they were almost swimming. Late spring – the Isset was in full flow and the marsh water was as deep as it would get. Ghuldog territory, although in daylight the ghuldogs wouldn’t trouble them as long as they kept going. He stopped them once around midday to let the horses rest a while – Corvin was asleep again – and after that they pushed on until dusk. They were slow, though, and as the light began to fail they were still in the marsh. He’d hoped to be out by now – between the Ghuldogs and the Vathen they weren’t short of reasons to press on hard – but it was what it was.

  ‘You sleep; I’ll watch. In the middle of the night we’ll change.’ He gave the Screambreaker the harder watch, the one through the small hours before dawn, but the Screambreaker didn’t complain, and he didn’t mention it when Gallow didn’t wake him up until the sky started to lighten again. There were no ghuldogs this time, at least. He slept for an hour while the Screambreaker sat beside the horses, grumbling on about being hungry.

  They reached the edge of the Crackmarsh in the early afternoon, pushed on over the first brow of the wild grassy hills until they were out of sight of the wetland, and there they stopped. Gallow dismounted and fell into the grass with a smile and a sigh. ‘The horses need to rest,’ he said. ‘They haven’t eaten for two days either. They need to graze and so do I.’

  Neither of them would say it but the Screambreaker needed to rest too. He was already taking off his boots and rubbing his feet. ‘So have you got any food?’

  ‘No, and you know it.’

  ‘Fat lot of use you are then.’

  ‘How about you find us some.’

  ‘You’re the Marroc. Have you not got a bow? Didn’t they teach you?’

  He wasn’t a Marroc and he hadn’t learned much since he’d crossed the sea, except how, maybe, it didn’t matter as much as he’d always thought whether you were Marroc, Vathan, Lhosir, Aulian or what. But the Screambreaker could barely move and so he took a Vathan bow and a quiver of arrows from one of the horses and lost nearly all of them shooting at rabbits until he got one. More a stroke of luck than skill, but he wasn’t going to shake his fist at it. After the last few days he reckoned he was due a bit of luck. With the rabbit in his hands, he walked back up to the crest of the last hill and looked out across the Crackmarsh. Miles and miles of water glittering still in the sun, pockmarked by islands like boils on a pox victim’s skin. The wind blew in his face, bringing the smell of rot. The Vathen, if they were following, would be on the other side of all this by now. From here that looked pleasingly distant. With a bit of luck they wouldn’t be ready for the ghuldogs either.

  He stretched his aching back. Eight years working in a forge and his muscles had forgotten all about riding a horse.

  Corvin was asleep and the horses had strayed when he returned so he skinned the rabbit and let it hang for a while and dozed. As darkness fell he set a fire. The rabbit was cooked and eaten and he and the Screambreaker sat licking their fingers.

  ‘I remember days like this,’ Gallow said. ‘Scouting these hills, looking for traces of the Marroc so you could fight them.’

  ‘You were a scout?’ Corvin snorted.

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘I do remember a Gallow,’ he said after he’d stared at the flames a while. ‘A good fighter.’ He tugged the braids of his beard. ‘Why did you shame yourself?’

  ‘I chose to stay.’ Gallow shrugged. ‘I thought cutting my beard would make me more a part of them.’

  ‘But in the name of the Maker-Devourer, why would you want that? They’re sheep! The man I remember didn’t belong here. I remember a warrior. Fierce. A whirlwind and a wolf. Men looked up to you. Or maybe I have some other Gallow in mind. Gallow Truesword, he used to be called. Killed a lot of Marroc. Never wavered.’

  ‘I did kill a lot of Marroc.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘More than I can remember.’

  The Screambreaker lay back and stretched out his arms. ‘So why did you stay, Truesword?’

  ‘I told you – I didn’t care for Twelvefingers and it looked like he was about to become our king.’

  ‘You were wrong.’

  ‘Yurlak was stronger than any of us thought.’

  The Screambreaker stretched again and groaned. ‘It did him good to be home. The air is different here. Stifling. The air across the sea is cold and crisp and smells of mountains and the ocean. It tastes of salt. Here it tastes of nothing. See?’ He sniffed. ‘Medrin made mistakes when he was young, that’s true. Coming across the sea to fight the Marroc changed him. That wound he got. Everyone thought he was going to die, but he didn’t. Made him stronger on the inside as well, when he finally got over it.’

  Gallow sniffed. ‘They’ll need you in Andhun.’

  ‘There are already two thousand of us in Andhun and more on the way.’ Corvin laughed. ‘They don’t need me.’

  ‘The Vathen still outnumber you ten to one. You saw how many there were.’

  ‘It didn’t help King Tane.’

  ‘Perhaps not, but the Vathen aren’t the Marroc either.’

  They sat in silence for a while, watching the fire die. ‘Grow back your beard, Gallow,’ said Corvin. ‘Stay in Andhun. Fight with us.’

  ‘I have a wife and family who’ll be waiting for me in Varyxhun.’

  ‘You still have a wife?’ The Screambreaker snorted. Gallow couldn’t answer that, not easily. Yes. He did. But . . .

  He shook his head. ‘I have sons, Screambreaker. I should abandon them?’

  ‘Tell me, Gallow, would you see them grow up as Marroc or as Lhosir?’

  He had no answer to that. Both.

  ‘Go and fetch them. When the Vathen are broken, bring them back across the sea and raise them as they should be raised. We’re your people, Gallow, not these sheep. You can’t escape that. I saw you fight the Vathen outside your home. You made me proud. You were a warrior.’ He laughed. ‘I’ll not quickly forget how we sat on our stolen horses, mailed and with sharp iron in our hands, the two of us and all those Marroc circled around, scared out of their wits. I could barely keep my head up. Sheep, Gallow. You live among sheep and yet you remain a wolf.’

  ‘They do make a good ale though.’

  ‘That they do.’

  They slept under the stars. In the morning Gallow carefully lifted a sod of turf and buried the remains of their fire and the bones of the rabbit beneath it. He pushed them on as hard as he dared, stopping only for water and to hunt with the last of the Vathan arrows. Another day took t
hem to the edge of the hills. The Screambreaker was getting stronger. Three or four more would see them to Andhun, and then . . . And then to Varyxhun. To Arda. He’d have to face her and face what she’d done. He dreaded it.

  At the top of the last rise before the plains he stopped. Andhun was out there somewhere, beyond the horizon haze. ‘I tell you one thing, Screambreaker. There’s simplicity to battle. Sometimes having a family feels like having to run kingdom in a court where no one listens to a word I say.’

  The Screambreaker laughed. ‘I can’t offer you any kingdoms but I can find you a fight or two if that’s what you’re after.’ He pointed out over the plain to a plume of smoke a few miles away, too large to be a campfire. ‘What’s that?’

  Gallow squinted. ‘There are Marroc farms and villages here. Nothing else. Andhun is that way.’ He pointed off into the haze. ‘Another three nights.’

  ‘And will these Marroc farms and villages have food for us? My belly rumbles and you’ve used up all our arrows with your poor shooting.’

  ‘The Screambreaker I remember could catch a rabbit with his bare hands.’

  Corvin laughed. ‘I could never do that. I did see a man kill a rabbit with his axe once. A fine throw.’

  ‘A lucky one.’

  ‘I thought so, but it was Jyrdas One-Eye back when he had two, and so I chose to hold my tongue.’

  They sat on their horses, watching in silence as the smoke rose.

  ‘That’s too big for a campfire. That’s a house burning, or else a barn,’ said Corvin. ‘That means Vathen. How many down there, do you think?’

  ‘More than two.’ Gallow wrinkled his nose. What were the Vathen doing this far from the coast?

  ‘There might be some of your precious Marroc to save.’

  ‘Doubt it. For all we know the whole Vathan army could be between us and Andhun by now. The wise thing would be to avoid them. Stick close to the edge of the hills and circle round. Come at Andhun along the valley of the Isset.’ Then again, the Isset valley itself could be crawling with Vathen looking for a place to cross the river.