The Crimson Shield

by Nathan Hawke

  They both laughed. Tolvis wiped the spit from his mouth. ‘Did he ever go any way but his own?’

  By the time they left the tavern, night had long settled over the streets. Clouds scudded across the moon like ghosts. A fresh wind blew in from the sea, warning of storms on the way. Tolvis was too drunk to even walk straight and Gallow was little better. They staggered up the steepness of the hill, holding on to one another, leaning on Tolvis’s horse, both of them still dressed in their mail and carrying their shields and with their swords and axes at their belts. Here and there they had to walk up wide steps, or detour around sheer sides of rock that jutted out from among the houses.

  ‘Need to keep your ears open down there,’ muttered Tolvis. ‘Docks aren’t far. Marroc there aren’t like the ones up near the castle. Got more balls.’ He turned and roared into the night. ‘More balls, I said! Eh?’ He looked back at Gallow and laughed. ‘Don’t like our sort down in the docks, not at all.’

  Gallow picked his way up the next flight of steps, weaving precariously from side to side. ‘After Yurlak and the Screambreaker left, those of us who stayed started to show up in the river. Every day one or two more.’ Gallow shook his head. ‘Andhun and the Isset probably killed more of us than Tane did when we took Sithhun from him.’

  ‘So what was it made you stay, eh? Why didn’t you come home? Your Marroc woman?’ Tolvis peered at him. ‘No? Something else then.’

  Gallow grunted. ‘Is every bastard Lhosir I ever meet going to ask the same thing? Thought Yurlak was going to die. Didn’t like Medrin. That’s why. Good enough?’

  Tolvis hooted with laughter. ‘No one likes Twelvefingers.’

  ‘Then perhaps I didn’t like him more than the rest of you.’ He stopped. ‘He wants to go off chasing after the Crimson Shield, does he? You remember we had it once? It was in the Temple of Fates in Nardjas for a few days. Someone tried to steal it, or that was the story that went round.’

  Tolvis nodded. ‘I was with the Screambreaker, killing Marroc, but we heard eventually, yes. Don’t remember the thief’s name. Bard or something. I know the Moontongue did the job not long after. Always supposed they were together, somehow.’

  ‘Beyard, not Bard. And Medrin was the king’s son. He should have said why Beyard was really there. But he didn’t, and Beyard died. He was my friend.’

  Gallow fell quiet and they walked in silence up the last winding road to the castle. Tolvis led the way to the keep. The doors were open, warm stale air wafting out between them. A pair of Lhosir soldiers waved them inside, yawning.

  ‘Who’s the Marroc, Loudmouth?’ one of them called. Tolvis ignored him.

  ‘For the love of the Maker-Devourer, grow your beard, Gallow. Cut it off again when the Vathen are gone if you must go back to living with the sheep.’ He took them into what had been the Marroc duke’s feasting hall before Medrin had come and the Lhosir had filled it up with furs and straw and snores. He sat against a wall in the gloom, pulling off his mail, his head already spinning, his eyes starting to close. ‘Sleep where you can,’ he mumbled. ‘Like being back home. One big longhouse.’ He lay down on the first piece of floor he could find, a smile on his face. ‘Why did we come across the sea, Truesword? Truly? Marroc beer, that’s why. It’s certainly why I came back.’

  20

  THE WEEPING GOD

  Gallow lay down. Loudmouth was right: the smell of the air and the sounds of men breathing brought old memories out of hiding. This was how it was when he’d been a child out in a homestead somewhere on the coast. One longhouse and a dozen barns and sheds, and at night they’d all slept together. He’d never counted, but there must have been nearly thirty of them. One big extended family, and in winter they’d have the animals inside as well for their warmth. The Marroc did that too, but the Marroc didn’t have winters like the ones Gallow remembered. He closed his eyes. The memories were strong, the smell of straw, of sheep and horses. He could see his father again, as he’d been when Gallow was young, before they’d gone to Nardjas. Yurlak had wanted smiths to hammer the swords and armour for his raids against the Marroc. It had seemed to Gallow that the Lhosir had always been at war, but for a moment he wasn’t so sure.

  His thoughts lost their focus. They wandered, drifting past the edges of the Herenian Marches and he found himself standing in a great stone hall, far larger than the one in Andhun where he slept. The hall was filled with soldiers, shouting, waving swords and burning brands, but their cries seemed small and helpless, and when he looked to see what it was that made their blood burn so fiercely, he saw another warrior had entered the hall, striding through great gates streaming with sunlight. The newcomer was a giant, head and shoulders above the rest. He strode through them, cleaving left and right with the great rust-red sword he carried. His mail dripped with the blood of those he slew. He carried no shield and yet no blade touched him, and where the red sword swung, shields and mail split and tore apart. He walked and slew with deadly purpose, yet slowly and sorrowfully too, and when the last of the warriors fell to his sword he lifted his helm and surveyed the bodies. Gallow knew him, for the giant’s eyes wept tears of blood. He was the Weeping God, and the sword he carried was the blade the Marroc called Solace, the Vathen called the Comforter, and the Aulians had always named the Edge of Sorrows.

  Gallow saw that the giant wasn’t alone. Beside him was a boy clothed in a golden shift. Diaran the Lifegiver. The boy-god came to stand beside Gallow instead, unafraid as the giant stepped slowly forward.

  I am sorry, the Weeping God seemed to say. I am sorry but there is no other way. All life ends in slaughter. I see it always. Let it end. He lifted his sword to strike the boy-god down. Gallow drew his own, but in his hand all he found was a sapling branch.

  The boy-god beside him looked up and Gallow saw he was Tathic, his own son.

  Don’t be afraid. But how could he not be? He launched himself at the giant but the Weeping God swatted him aside. In his dreams Gallow watched, broken-boned and helpless, as the old-blood blade of Solace swept down, but the blow didn’t land. At the last moment another god stood beside the boy, Modris the Protector with his Crimson Shield, and his shield caught the Edge of Sorrows and turned it away. The old story, as it had always been.

  21

  THE LEGION OF THE CRIMSON SHIELD

  On the next high tide two Lhosir ships eased their way out of Andhun harbour through the many that had come from across the sea and the more that were still coming with band after band of raucous Lhosir eager to fight the Vathen. Medrin had taken only a few dozen warriors in each ship, the rest left with the Screambreaker in case the Vathen marched before Medrin returned with his precious shield. The monastery where the shield was kept wasn’t guarded by an army, just a few crazy monks.

  Medrin captained his own ship, filled with young Lhosir who’d been children when Gallow had crossed the sea. Medrin’s men they called themselves, young and full of vinegar and so desperate for a fight to show their strength Gallow wondered how many would survive. The prince had chosen them and they’d sworn themselves to him as his own Fateguard, the Legion of the Crimson Shield, with their shields painted red. Gallow’s ship was much the same. He looked at the men around him and found few faces he knew. The old soldiers, the ones who’d fought with the Screambreaker that last time round, they’d all stayed in Andhun. These were more of Medrin’s men, all except for Tolvis and their captain, Jyrdas One-Eye, who’d been the one to find the shield in the first place. The young ones had an air to them, an arrogance. They looked at Gallow askance, wondering at his lack of a beard, their eyes filled with a cold disdain even as they pushed the ships into the water and set Andhun behind them. Gallow watched it diminishing, the two hills shrinking away, the castle on top of the taller, the sharp valley of the Isset between them and the line of Teenar’s Bridge slanting over it. Most Lhosir thought the bridge had been built by the Aulians but Gallow knew better. The Aulians had never come this far. The Marroc, when they were left to get on with thin
gs, were good at building. The huge trees that made the bridge had come from Varyxhun less than a hundred years ago, floated down on the river. Maybe the library the Aulians had left behind there had told the Marroc how to do it, but the bridge was Marroc-made.

  ‘Gallow, is it?’ Jyrdas loomed over him as he pulled at the oar. Jyrdas was a hand taller than even he was, barrel-chested and, from the grey streaks through his beard, a good ten years older. His hands were scarred and his face looked as though it had been clawed by some beast long ago. A scar ran across one eye, which was now milky white. The two braids of his beard were long and there were blades woven into the ends. Gallow nodded.

  ‘Jyrdas One-Eye. I remember you.’ Someone like Jyrdas, once you saw him, you were hardly likely to forget.

  Jyrdas spat on the deck. ‘Well, I don’t remember you. You Marroc all look the same to me.’

  Beside Gallow, Tolvis looked up. ‘He’s one of us, Jyrdas. Gallow. Gallow Truesword.’ He nudged Gallow. ‘Jyrdas is rolling in Twelvefingers’ favour right now on account of accidentally stumbling into some Marroc plot or other while he was bashing heads for the fun of it.’

  ‘Huh.’ Jyrdas laughed. ‘You’ve got two eyes to my one, Loudmouth, but I say my one works better. I know a sheep when I see one. Gallow Truesword? Him I remember. You I’m not so sure.’

  Tolvis shrugged and turned back to Gallow as Jyrdas left. ‘See? Please the Maker-Devourer, Truesword. Grow your beard.’

  They rowed hard, pushing against the wind, which kept everyone busy for a while, and then One-Eye held up a finger to test the air and scowled and waited a while longer than he really needed to before he called in the oars and raised his sails. As the wind caught them and Andhun drifted into a haze on the horizon, Gallow felt a hollowness inside him. He wandered to the stern, watching the land fade, and touched the locket around his neck.

  ‘I will come back,’ he whispered to the wind. ‘On my word. On my life. Tell her that.’

  ‘Missing the stink of your city already, Marroc?’ A Lhosir whose name he didn’t even know shoved into him. ‘What’s a sheep doing here, eh?’

  Gallow couldn’t pull his eyes off the horizon. ‘You’ve chosen a bad time, friend. Go away.’

  ‘Marroc nioingr.’

  A savage fury stabbed him. At the word, yes, but more at being pulled away, at the shattering of his thoughts of home. He spun round and shoved the young Lhosir away and then looked him up and down. Painfully young, an untried blade full of bile and piss like most of the rest of them, but there wasn’t really any going back from this. ‘Nioingr? Do any of you even understand what that means any more? Eat your words, boy, before I cut your beard and shove it down your throat.’

  ‘Kyorgan!’ One-Eye had spotted them. There was plenty enough warning in his voice, but the young Lhosir chose not to hear.

  ‘You can try, nioingr.’ Kyorgan snarled and laughed, but he glanced around too, looking for allies, checking to see who was with him and who wasn’t. The other Lhosir had quietly stopped what they were doing. They’d watch but they all knew better than to intervene. Gallow felt sorry for him. He was barely a man. ‘Kyorgan of Beltim,’ he said loudly, as though it mattered. He looked around again. ‘I’ve killed—’

  Gallow split his skull with Tolvis’s axe. Kyorgan stood looking stupid for a moment, then realised he was dead and fell over. Gallow looked down at him. Half the other Lhosir hadn’t even seen him move. ‘You’ve killed a few sheep in Andhun, is that it? Butchered a few who gave you sour looks in the street?’ He shrugged and pulled his axe out of Kyorgan’s head, then looked at Tolvis. ‘Nice edge you put on that. Sorry if I’ve blunted it.’

  Tolvis shrugged. ‘A few scrapes with a whetstone and you’ll have it back as good as ever. Keeps well that one.’ He didn’t even look at Kyorgan. Gallow took his time to look at the rest of the crew, to meet their eyes one after another. At least they didn’t look away, but he knew now which ones were Kyorgan’s friends. One in particular. When Gallow stared at him, he stared back. He had that blood feud look on his face. The rest . . . most of them just looked shocked. As they should.

  And then Jyrdas was standing next to Kyorgan’s friend, bending down and whispering loudly in his ear. ‘If you say anything, Latti Draketongue, if you even say a word, you’ll answer to me.’

  ‘I’ll say—’

  Jyrdas jabbed him in the face with the haft of his axe and cracked his jaw. He glared at Gallow. ‘I’ll be thinking I’m on a whole bloody ship full of nioingr soon. Waste of a good helmet that, bare-skin, and this is my ship and so you can clean up that bloody mess you made. Strip his stuff and hang him out. We’ll burn him when we hit land. I’ll even let Latti speak him out if he can make his mouth work with his head instead of his balls by then. And that’s the end of it. The rest of you can watch your manners and save it for the Luonattans. All of you. Even you, Loudmouth.’ He turned away, muttering to himself.

  In the end Kyorgan started to stink before they reached land and so they sank him into the sea, offering him up to the Maker-Devourer. He’d died a good death, after all, cut down in battle. The Maker-Devourer didn’t care if you were stupid. If anything, Gallow thought, he preferred his soldiers that way. So he watched Kyorgan sink, dressed up in his mail and with his sword and his shield tied into his hands, and felt nothing very much at all about what he’d done. Latti’s jaw was swollen up so bad he could barely say a word that anyone else could make any sense of, so One-Eye spoke Kyorgan out before they dropped him in the water. Recited his deeds, what he was known for, good and bad. Not that it added up to much. Years of living with the Marroc made Gallow feel a bit sorry for him by the end. But only a bit.

  ‘Waste of good steel and a good shield,’ muttered Tolvis. ‘At least it made him sink quick. Did you have to kill him?’

  Gallow looked out across the sea. The other ship had stopped to watch and Gallow thought he caught Medrin staring at him from across the water. He imagined a wry smile on the prince’s face. As yet Twelvefingers had managed to avoid him, or else the fates had kept them apart. Probably for the best. ‘Won’t say I didn’t want to. But if it wasn’t him then it would have been one of the others, sooner or later. Best to get it over with quick, I thought.’

  Tolvis shook his head. ‘Grow your beard, Truesword.’

  ‘What if I don’t want to?’

  ‘Then go back and be with your sheep.’

  Gallow laughed. ‘Remind me, Loudmouth, who it was who dragged me back to Andhun in the first place.’

  One-Eye, it turned out, had been to Gavis a good few times and knew where there were beaches for landing. As they sliced through the surf, the monastery was visible in the distance. It sat on the top of a rauk, a pillar of rock cut off from the land by the sea and surrounded by crashing waves. The Lhosir were still drawing their ships up onto the shore when the first warning beacon lit up, perhaps only a mile away.

  ‘Bollocks!’ Jyrdas threw a stone across the beach as hard as he could in the direction of the smoke.

  ‘Thought you’d have been glad,’ said Tolvis. ‘You’ll have a fight now.’

  ‘No, I won’t. Problem wasn’t ever going to be the killing. It’s the getting inside in the first place. They’ll all run back behind their walls and close the gates and that’ll be that. We can stay outside and throw stones and call them cowards all we like, they won’t come out. There’s a bridge, but you won’t like it when you see it.’

  ‘We’ll build a ram and smash the doors in.’

  Jyrdas cocked his head in scorn. ‘Been here before have you, Loudmouth? You do that. See how far it gets you.’

  They left a party to watch the boats, Latti and a few others. That was Jyrdas keeping the two of them apart, and Gallow might have thanked him only One-Eye would probably have spat in his face.

  ‘This would never have happened with the Screambreaker.’ Tolvis ran with Gallow as they left. ‘Would the Screambreaker need some old relic of a shield to beat the Vathen? No. He’d just
go up and thump them and be done with it.’

  ‘He already tried that once.’

  Tolvis rolled his eyes in exasperation. ‘Well, then maybe Twelvefingers has a point, eh? Maybe he’s not stupid after all.’

  Gallow looked away. ‘I never said he was stupid.’

  They ran at a steady pace along the coast towards the monastery, up the cliff paths and along their tops. For much of the time the headland was lost behind the ups and downs and the thick heathers that grew beside the sea. In the final cove the Lhosir reached a village in time to see the last stragglers desperately running ahead, carrying chickens and chasing pigs. Medrin let out a cry and raced after them, through the abandoned houses and on. As he closed, the last islander turned. He wasn’t even armed but he threw himself at Medrin, crashing the two of them back into the others. He came up fighting, swinging his fist and landing a good blow before someone spitted him on the end of a sword and hurled him back down the path. Jyrdas took the lead and promptly took a stone to his face, splitting his cheek just beneath his helmet.

  ‘Sheep buggerers!’ he roared. ‘I was only going to eat your women and rape your men until you did that!’ The next man tried to break from the path into the heather and went down with a spear in his back. ‘Fall on your knees and we’ll let you live! A bit.’ A pig came charging down the path into the middle of them, squealing in terror. Jyrdas brought his axe down on the back of its neck and kicked it into the heather. ‘Roast hog tonight!’

  They passed blankets, pots, pans, loaves of bread, squawking chickens, all thrown aside in desperation. But when Gallow ran past a small squalling bundle, he stopped. A Lhosir woman would have turned and fought them to the death for her children. Arda too.

  He reached into the heather. The baby had been put there with hurried care, perhaps in the hope that the Lhosir wouldn’t see; perhaps in the hope that it would somehow still be there and still be alive when the Lhosir were gone. He picked it up and unwrapped it. A girl. That made it easier. He wrapped her up again and tucked her under his arm and followed the others, past three more bodies, and then the path flattened out and widened into a field of long grass. He could see the monastery again now. Its walls weren’t particularly high or thick or strong, but the twenty-odd feet of empty air that separated the rauk from the rest of the island cliffs might as well have been a steel curtain. The bridge, Gallow saw now, curved and then curved back, narrow enough that a horse would have trouble crossing it. A clever design. The gates were black and bound with iron – still open, but a man who tried to run at them risked falling over the edge and a ram would be almost impossible.