The Crimson Shield

by Nathan Hawke

Through the trees on the open ground Gallow could see the walls of Andhun and the valley of the Isset, which flowed through the middle of it to the sea beyond. He could smell the city in the air, the stink of human waste and fish. The battlefield was in front of them now. The bodies of the fallen had been cleared away but there were looters on the field still, nervous Marroc folk scouring the trampled grass for swords, shields, helms, anything that might have been dropped in the fight and somehow missed in the three days since. There couldn’t be much left by now.

  The Screambreaker rode a little further, then turned away from the walls of Andhun. He looked hard at the ground. ‘The Vathen came from over there.’ He pointed away from the city. ‘They had horses.’ He climbed down and picked up an arrow half buried in the mud. ‘You had archers?’

  Tolvis grunted. ‘Marroc,’ he said, disapproving. ‘But then they came at us on horseback so they deserved that. We fought them properly after their riders fled.’ He grinned. ‘And we destroyed them. There were a thousand Vathan corpses here when we were done and a few hundred more scattered where they ran. Vris, Ironfoot and Igel lost a few dozen each and Jank took a thumping on the flank. Didn’t get his spears and his shields sorted properly when the Vathen started throwing their javelots.’

  ‘Vris is here?’ For a moment the Screambreaker looked up and grinned. ‘And Ironfoot? Jank was always a bit dim when it came to horses. Whoever put him in charge of anything, he’s the one who needs to be thumped.’

  Tolvis laughed. ‘You can thump Twelvefingers then.’

  ‘Oh, so he’s here at last, is he? Then I will.’

  They walked their horses slowly across the battlefield. There wasn’t much left: the broken shaft of a javelot here, a few arrows in the ground, bloodstains in the mud and the grass. Three crows picked at the remains of a hand and half an arm already stripped to the bone. On the far side Gallow saw half a dozen corpses hanging from the trees. Closer and he could see what had been done to them. They hung, arms and legs dangling loose, each man drooping over a wheel with two stakes driven right through him and emerging from his back. A bolt fastened the stakes together. They were suspended like this from ropes. Below the stakes, ribs had been cleaved from spines, the lungs drawn out and with twine sewn into them and tied to the branches of the trees so the ragged sails of dead flesh seemed to rise like wings. Corvin wrinkled his nose. The men had been hanging there for days; birds had already pecked at them and strips of dried red skin and muscle dangled from gleaming bone.

  Blood ravens. Gallow couldn’t say whether they were Vathen or Marroc, or Lhosir who’d first had their beards cut.

  ‘Deserters?’ Corvin frowned.

  Tolvis shook his head. ‘Vathen. The wounded horsemen. The ones who couldn’t get away. Pretty, eh?’

  ‘What did they do to deserve this?’

  Tolvis shrugged carelessly. ‘Lost.’

  ‘Medrin ordered this, did he?’ asked Gallow.

  ‘Couldn’t say. I was off discovering how hard it is to throw a spear into the back of a man who keeps dodging out of the way.’

  They passed the hanging men and soon came to another cluster of corpses, this time bound upright to the trunks of trees. The bark around each one was scarred with the marks of spears and Gallow understood at once: the Lhosir had taken Vathan captives and used them for spear-throwing games. He’d seen it done with the Marroc once before, years ago, before the Screambreaker put a stop to it.

  In the fields closer to Andhun small companies of Marroc were digging pits and erecting wooden poles. Dozens already stood surrounding the city. Each had a dead Vathan hanging from it. More blood ravens, like the ones around the battlefield.

  ‘Something for the rest of the Vathen to think about when they get here, I suppose,’ said Tolvis.

  The Screambreaker frowned. ‘This is for nioingr.’

  ‘Apparently they’re all nioingr for staying on their horses and throwing javelots at us instead of doing things properly and getting nice and close where we can chop them up with our axes and stab out their eyes with our spears.’ Tolvis shrugged.

  ‘No.’ The Screambreaker’s lips tightened. ‘No. This isn’t right.’

  ‘Well you won’t be the only one who doesn’t think much of it, but Medrin wants it done and there’s a lot of the younger ones who see it his way. Might be for the best. Maybe the Vathen are sheep like the Marroc, easily scared.’ He laughed. ‘Pity if they are though. Be a shame to come all this way only for them to go running back home again.’

  They crossed another field, turned onto a road churned to mud and passed two open burial pits. The bodies, Gallow saw, were neither Vathan nor Lhosir. They were mostly Marroc.

  ‘And this?’ Corvin asked.

  ‘Some trouble with the Marroc when we first came off the ships. Apparently a few of them weren’t too pleased at having the son of their king come to visit. They learned to be happy about it soon enough.’

  Close to the city walls black patches of earth and charred stumps of wood scarred the roadside. There had been huts outside Andhun’s gates once but now they’d been burned. Gallow supposed it made sense. If it came to an assault on the walls then the slums here would give cover to the Vathen. Today, though, the gates stood open, inviting them in. Six bored and sour-looking Lhosir lounged around them, picking their noses and sharpening their axes. Over them a row of spikes stuck out from the stonework. The spikes looked new, the mortar around them fresh and lighter than the rest. Each spike had a head on it. The heads wore Vathan helms.

  Tolvis rode up to the guards. ‘Still scratching, Galdun? If it’s a dried-up piece of turd you’re looking for, you’re poking at the wrong end.’

  One of the guards looked up at him and rolled his eyes. ‘Ha ha. At least you’re not riding your horse backwards today, Loudmouth. You’re not supposed to be here until dusk. What happened? Get lost again?’

  ‘Oh, several times.’ Tolvis jumped off his horse. ‘Then I found the Screambreaker and he was kind enough to set me right. Thought I’d better come back with him in case he mistook you lot for a Marroc rabble.’ He punched Galdun on the arm. Galdun puffed his cheeks and palmed Tolvis away.

  ‘You’re full of air, Loudmouth.’ Galdun peered at Gallow and found nothing interesting, and then his eyes settled on Corvin. He frowned and took a step closer and then grinned. ‘Maker-Devourer! Welcome to Andhun, Screambreaker. I knew you wouldn’t be as easy to kill as they said.’ He looked back to Tolvis. ‘And Holy Eyes of Mother Fate, Loudmouth, you actually did something useful. You’d best run along now and make sure everyone gets to hear so it gets remembered. It’ll be first on the list when someone finally has to speak you out. One of your greatest deeds, right up with that one bright day you managed to recognise your arse from your elbow. Pity it didn’t last, eh? Off you go now. See if you can find the Fedderhun road this time.’

  ‘Where’s Twelvefingers?’

  Galdun laughed. ‘Do I look like a soothsayer? He’s either somewhere in Andhun or else he’s not. If he’s not then he didn’t leave this way. Probably he’s in the keep like he always is, but I’d try the square first. I hear him and his Crimson Legion were hanging Marroc again this morning.’

  They rode together through Andhun’s gates. Gallow looked around him. After the Screambreaker had sailed back across the sea with King Yurlak, he’d wandered these streets and taverns, drinking his way through what he’d plundered from the Marroc in five years of fighting. He hadn’t been the only one. Hundreds of Lhosir had stayed at first, helping themselves to whatever they wanted. Every day a few of them had turned up dead, stabbed during the night. The rest drifted away over time. Back across the sea mostly, or else across the Isset, until Gallow had been almost the only one left. When he’d turned his own back on the place at last, down to his last few scraps of silver, it was for the mountains. The Aulian Empire, or the shattered remains of what was left of it. He’d kept his mail and his axes and his sword, kept them all neat and clean and sharp, not traded the
m for ale like a lot of the others, and he’d never found a home for the hunger that five years of fighting had given him. Aulia. Plenty to do for a man like him, mired in blood, and the Marroc from around Varyxhun had said there was a pass that was mostly forgotten but still there, impossible when the winter snows closed in but not too bad in the summer.

  His hand went to the locket under his mail. A tear stung his eye. The salt sea air, probably. Across the sea they’d flog Arda and hang her for what she’d done, but he wouldn’t do that. Couldn’t.

  He’d never reached Aulia, nor the mountain pass, nor even got as far as Varyxhun. He’d managed as far as Middislet on the fringes of the wilderness and found his Arda instead, and it was all so unexpected and unlooked-for. He closed his eyes and squeezed them tight. Varyxhun. What would he do about her when he went back to Varyxhun? Couldn’t do nothing. Did she hate him now? It had always been a fine line between them.

  They crossed the open cobbled space beyond the gates. More of the wooden frames like the ones in the fields hung over the streets. Dead Marroc dangled from them like grotesque winged gargoyles. The corpses here were fresh, and there were more as they rode up the hill towards the keep and the town square. Marroc townsfolk scurried back and forth, keeping well out of the way of the mounted Lhosir. Their eyes, when they looked at Gallow, were filled with fear.

  Halfway up he stopped. He took two of the riderless Vathan horses and left the other two for Corvin. He would have turned and simply ridden away but the Screambreaker stopped him.

  ‘Two for you, two for me. I killed the man whose horse you’re sitting on,’ said Gallow. ‘Seems fair. I’ve done what I said I’d do.’

  ‘You killed six men. I killed one. You should have five of the horses, not three.’

  Gallow thought about that for a moment. ‘All right.’

  ‘You should stay and fight the Vathen too.’

  ‘I’d like that, and I envy you. But no.’ Gallow looked around at the Marroc dangling from their gibbets. ‘You’ll do well enough without me.’ He took the Vathan horses the Screambreaker had offered, turned and rode away.

  Tolvis watched him go. He shook his head and spat. ‘Bare-beard.’

  Beside him the Screambreaker shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not him. We called him Truesword once, and he was a terrible thing to see. He might have changed his face, but all the rest is as it always was.’

  And he whispered something in Tolvis’s ear.

  16

  MEDRIN

  Prince Medrin Twelvefingers, first son of King Yurlak, Scourge of the Seas and Prince of the Marroc, stared out of a window high up in Andhun keep. The shutters were flung wide, letting in the crisp salt air of the sea. The smell of it soothed him when the wind blew right and wasn’t tainted by the stench of death.

  Below the window a few Marroc dangled in the wind, dead and ripped open, an example to the others. They were a drop in the ocean, but if the Marroc were so determined to hate him then they’d damn well fear him too. When the followers of the Weeping God came he would have the Marroc of Andhun up on its walls, fighting for their city, whether they wanted it or not. Yurlak and the Screambreaker had thought a few hundred Lhosir at Fedderhun would turn the horsemen back. Stupid pride and they’d paid dearly for it. The Vathen had seen a Lhosir army beaten for the first time in more than ten years. Worse still, the Marroc had seen it too, the ones who survived. Some of them had started on the idea that maybe the Vathen weren’t such a bad thing. A chance to rid themselves of their unwanted king from over the sea. Medrin meant to crush that idea into dust.

  A heavy fist banged on the door. Medrin stayed where he was, staring out at the sky. ‘I told you to leave me be.’

  ‘Loudmouth’s here.’ He’d picked Horsan to guard his door because Horsan was huge, about as big as a Lhosir ever got, tall enough to go nose to nose with even old Jyrdas One-Eye, and he didn’t think too much either, just did as he was told. Mostly.

  ‘He’s supposed to be sweeping the roads to the south for Vathan runaways. Tell him to get lost.’

  He heard Horsan chuckle. ‘Lost? He probably already is. Hey, what are you— Whoa!’ The shuffle of feet at the doorway dragged Medrin away from his window. Horsan was backing in, all furrowed brows and confused, and there was Tolvis Loudmouth, a head shorter but shoving him on, poking him with the head of his axe.

  ‘Is the castle on fire, Loudmouth?’ Medrin shook his head. ‘It had better be.’

  A third man emerged from the shadows, stopped Medrin’s ire and killed it dead. If anything he felt . . . he felt afraid. He stared at the old man with grey in his beard. Corvin the Screambreaker. Nodded, working out in his head all the things this might mean, and most of all whether the Screambreaker likely meant to kill him. Probably not, but with Yurlak getting older every year, he was never quite sure that the Screambreaker didn’t mean to make himself the next king.

  No. He hadn’t come here with death in mind. Medrin relaxed a notch. ‘I see you’re not dead after all.’ The Nightmare of the North. With the Screambreaker here the Marroc would be afraid, and they’d fight too – he’d managed to get a legion of them together at Fedderhun after all, for all the good it had done. So it’s good to have him back then. Isn’t it?

  The Screambreaker glowered at him. ‘No.’

  Isn’t it? He wasn’t sure. Yurlak and the Screambreaker were of an age. They understood one another and saw things the same way, and neither was afraid to use blunt words with the other when what they saw didn’t please them. Yes, he’d be useful for keeping Andhun and the Marroc in line, but in the larger scheme of things Medrin found he was happy enough for the Screambreaker to have been dead.

  He paused for a moment and then marched to the door, punched the Screambreaker firmly on the shoulder and clasped his arm, welcoming him as a friend.

  ‘Found him coming up the road from the south,’ said Tolvis, ‘so I brought him back here. The Vathen are long gone.’

  ‘Thank you, Tolvis.’ Medrin tried to smile. It was hard with Loudmouth. And there was another thing: the old ones who called the Screambreaker a friend and thought that made them special. Thought that meant they could say whatever they liked. ‘Now go back and watch the roads, Loudmouth. I won’t have the Vathen slipping through the hills and coming at me from the south.’

  ‘No, you won’t, because there aren’t any of them there,’ grumbled Tolvis.

  Medrin glared. ‘See it stays that way!’

  Loudmouth left, sulking, down the stairs. Medrin was getting a lot of that. Stupid men who wanted nothing more than to fight and get drunk and gave no thought to where the Vathen would strike next.

  ‘And they will, won’t they,’ he said as soon as Tolvis was gone.

  The Screambreaker stared at him. ‘Who will what?’ Two months ago, when Medrin had seen him last, the Screambreaker had been about to set sail in the vanguard of the Lhosir army. He’d been getting fat and had a sleepy look to him, but all that was gone now. Now, if anything he looked thin, as though he’d wasted away in this filthy Marroc air. He had a great gash on his head, terribly stitched and with a bruise that reached around his eye and down to the top of his cheek, all purples and yellows. His mouth twitched with impatience and he didn’t look sleepy at all. Medrin stared at the bruise.

  ‘And what happened to you?’

  ‘A Vathan.’ He stood there, still and at ease as if he was already bored.

  ‘Well, that’s who and what. You don’t need to tell me it wasn’t their full strength we faced.’

  The Screambreaker shrugged. ‘Tolvis said you faced five or six thousand so I’ll assume it was more like four. They have another twenty or twenty-five thousand men and horse somewhere between here and Fedderhun. Unless they’ve had enough and gone home.’

  Medrin clenched his teeth. Unless they’ve had enough and gone home. His father had had enough ten years ago. Yurlak and the Screambreaker had conquered a whole country and now, give it another few years, the Marroc would have
it back. Not because they’d fought and pushed the Lhosir into the sea, but because his father and the Screambreaker and everyone like them simply couldn’t be bothered with keeping the place in line. Medrin would have had them crossing mountains to Cimmer and the Aulian Empire and yes, the Vathen too, but Yurlak wanted none of it and the Screambreaker would be the same. He could already see it in the old man’s face, the disapproval.

  The frown flickered to half a smile. ‘You bloodied them well, Twelvefingers. Better than I did.’

  The compliment took him off guard. ‘So did they have it with them at Fedderhun?’ he snapped.

  ‘Did they have what?’

  ‘The sword. What do they call it? Peacebringer?’ Although it had other names, as he’d come to learn not all that long ago. Much more important names.

  ‘Solace. No, they’re waiting for it. When it reaches them they’ll come.’

  ‘To Andhun?’

  The Screambreaker gave him a hard look. ‘Unless they mean to carry the Sword of the Weeping God all the way from where Tarris Starhelm buried it just to see how it looks in the sunset over the sea at Fedderhun instead then yes, of course to Andhun. Where else?’ The old man sniffed. ‘I see a lot of winged corpses hanging over the streets. Marroc giving you trouble?’

  ‘No.’ Medrin couldn’t hide the sharpness in his words. ‘Nor will they.’ He clenched his teeth and pressed a hand to his chest, to the old Marroc spear wound.

  The old man was smirking at him. ‘I met another soldier after Lostring Hill. One who never came back from the last time. Gallow.’

  ‘Gallow?’

  ‘Gallow Truesword. I remembered him, eventually, from Varyxhun and other places. Fierce in his time but he’s shaved his beard and lives with the sheep now. He seemed to think he knew you.’ The hardness was still there in Corvin’s eyes. ‘I think perhaps he did.’

  Gallow! Medrin pursed his lips, trying to keep his thoughts out of his face. ‘Gallow? I thought he was dead. I thought he died in your war. But yes, I did know him, or of him at least.’ He put on a grimace for the Screambreaker. ‘Maker-Devourer, but that was a long time ago. Before either of us crossed the sea. You’d taken Sithhun.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘You’d taken King Tane’s palace. You remember his shield?’