by Nathan Hawke
Soldiers. Marroc soldiers. A cry of alarm caught in Gallow’s throat. The Lhosir were still hauling their swords and their armour and everything else out of the boats, or were clustered around Medrin. Elsewhere the docks were falling still, Marroc workmen scurrying to safety or else joining Valaric and his band. Something was coming and they knew it.
‘Loudmouth!’ Gallow shouted. But Tolvis was still on the ship, and the devil inside Gallow wanted to wait, wait for the Marroc numbers to swell a bit. A good charge now and they’d break and scatter and that would be that, but if more came . . . He wondered what Valaric was thinking, yet still the Lhosir didn’t see, not until Tolvis finally started climbing out of the boat, helping Jyrdas, who kept trying to push him away, the last ones ashore.
‘Get off me, you sheep!’
From across the beach a Marroc let fly an arrow. It hit Jyrdas and staggered Tolvis enough to make him jump down from the boat. He half caught One-Eye as he fell and they both stared at the arrow sticking out of One-Eye’s side. Jyrdas bellowed in pain. He stumbled back to his feet and picked up the first axe he saw and looked, wild-eyed, for someone to hit. He stared at the Marroc mob and held the axe high. ‘Nioingr! Come on then, if you think you can take me!’
There were forty or fifty of them now, the same sort of numbers as the Lhosir, and the arrow must have been a sign, because even as Jyrdas raised his axe, they howled and ran down the beach, waving clubs and spears. They had shields and helms and some even had armour and swords. The Lhosir drew back around Medrin.
‘Loudmouth! Cut me loose!’ Gallow looked about for anyone to help him, but all the Lhosir eyes were on the Marroc now. Valaric at their van slowed and raised a hand. The Marroc stopped around him, an angry line facing the Lhosir.
‘What you have there belongs to the Marroc, Twelvefingers,’ he cried. ‘Give it here and go back where you belong before I cut you down to six.’
Medrin burst out laughing. ‘How many are you? Fifty? Sixty? And you think to throw me out of my own city.’ He shook his head. With deliberate care he buckled the Crimson Shield to his arm and bent to pick up a seagull feather from the ground. He held it high. ‘When this touches the ground, I’ll have every Marroc still standing in front of me hung by his own spine.’
‘How many are we?’ Valaric laughed right back in Medrin’s face. ‘How many Marroc in Andhun? And how many demon-beards? Take a look around you. The Vathen are coming. Your army has moved outside the walls to face the enemy and we’ve closed the gates behind them. There’s not one of you left inside the walls to save you. So drop your feather and let me kill you or just give me the shield and slink away like a fox before a bear. I’ll have it from you either way.’
Medrin cocked his head. He let the feather slip from his fingers. The Marroc and the Lhosir watched each other as it fell. Nobody moved. Gallow howled again for Tolvis to cut him free but no one was listening. More Marroc had stopped to watch. Valaric’s fifty would become a hundred the moment it seemed as though they might win. And if they did, that one hundred would become five, and then a thousand, and with the Crimson Shield Valaric would turn the whole of Andhun, and its gates would stay closed to both Vathen and Lhosir alike.
And Gallow wondered: Would that be so bad? ‘Cut me free!’ He couldn’t have said, even to himself, whose side his sword would have taken. For Medrin? The thought was bitter. Turn against his own kin? More bitter still. But worst of all was to stand idly by and do nothing, to be cut down by some Marroc who saw only another forkbeard, easy and helpless.
The feather touched the beach. The stillness remained, and then Valaric howled and Medrin screamed and drew his sword, and the Marroc and the Lhosir threw themselves at one another. There was no shield wall, no tight press of men pushed together. They flew at each other, spears and swords and axes fired by fury. Gallow watched, helpless. Valaric and Medrin were trying to reach each other while the other Marroc and the Lhosir tried to protect them. He watched a score of men die on either side, then the Marroc suddenly scattered and ran back across the beach, even Valaric, and Medrin stood by his ships, blood dripping from his sword in one hand, the Crimson Shield in the other, the Lhosir jeering and waving their spears. Bodies lay scattered around them, the dead and the dying. Dozens of them. Half the Lhosir to come back from the monastery were down and no more had appeared. Valaric’s words were true then: the Screambreaker had left the city.
Jyrdas broke away from Medrin’s men and staggered up to Gallow, walking like he was steaming drunk. He still had the Marroc arrow sticking out of his side. His beard and his shirt were soaked in blood. He sat beside Gallow.
‘I lost my sword,’ he said. ‘I killed two of the faithless nioingr and then I dropped it.’ For a moment he looked scared. ‘I can’t pick it up again, Truesword.’ Frothy blood bubbled from the corners of his mouth when he spoke.
‘Cut me loose! I’ll find it for you.’
Jyrdas shrugged. ‘I don’t have the strength. Don’t have a blade. I can see the Marches, Gallow. Don’t let me die without my sword.’
The Lhosir survivors were pushing Medrin’s ship back into the sea now. At the top of the beach Valaric and his Marroc were gathering again. They’d run but they weren’t broken, and Valaric was screaming and pointing. In a few minutes Medrin would have his ship back in the water. He’d sail away and the shield would go with him. If Valaric couldn’t get enough men together with the courage to fight this last handful of Lhosir then perhaps the Marroc didn’t deserve to have it. Gallow hobbled, bent almost double by the ropes that tied his ankles to his wrists, to where the dead lay. With his hands tied behind his back he groped for a sword and hobbled back to Jyrdas. Valaric and a dozen Marroc were starting back down the beach again now, but he didn’t have enough and Medrin’s ship was almost in the water.
‘That’s right!’ shouted Valaric. ‘Run! What’s your word for it? Nioingr! Faithless worthless cowards, that’s what you are!’
Trying to goad Medrin into another fight. Gallow managed to drop the sword into Jyrdas’s lap. ‘If it was you and not Medrin, you’d stop and turn and fight him for that, never mind how many Marroc there were behind him.’
‘He wouldn’t have to call me names. I’d do it anyway.’ Jyrdas groped for the sword. The ship was in the water now, the Lhosir ignoring Valaric. ‘If it was me or Yurlak or the Screambreaker, or any one of us who fought them the first time, we’d never have thought about leaving. Twenty of us, a whole city of them, so what? We fought, they ran, the city was ours. We’d have taken it. Hindhun was taken from a thousand Marroc by fifty of us. We’d win or we died trying, and either way served a purpose.’ Jyrdas closed his eyes. ‘Maker-Devourer take me quickly, before I see a prince of the sea driven from these shores by a rabble of Marroc.’ His brow furrowed and then he stood up and turned. ‘No. I’ll not watch this in silence.’ Up on the beach the Marroc were finding their numbers and their nerve, spurred by Valaric’s taunts. ‘Hoy! Twelvefingers!’ Jyrdas roared. ‘The Marroc’s right. You’re nioingr! You hear me? Running like a sheep? Nioingr!’ He shouted it until the Lhosir couldn’t pretend not to hear. It must have taken the last strength he had; he sat heavily down and the sword fell from his hand again.
Medrin walked quickly over, two men at his back, all of them glancing up the beach towards the approaching Marroc as the ship ground out into the surf. ‘Eat your words and beg for forgiveness, One-Eye,’ hissed Medrin. ‘These men will witness it.’
‘Nioingr,’ whispered Jyrdas again. Medrin whipped out a thin dagger and stabbed him through his good eye. Jyrdas slumped sideways and fell without another sound.
‘Was it really an accident that one of your men took Jyrdas from behind in the monastery?’ Gallow asked him.
Medrin bared his teeth. He backed away, shouting as he ran into the breaking waves and to his ship, ‘The Marroc can have you! Back to your own kind, clean-skin!’
Gallow watched him go. He watched Valaric and the Marroc on the beach do the same and pitied
them for how it must feel, seeing Medrin get away when they had so nearly stopped him. When the only thing that stood in their way was their own fear. How it must feel for Valaric, who had the courage in himself but couldn’t find it in the men around him. Or for the Marroc who were afraid, who knew it was their own weakness that brought their defeat. Terrible to be either. One day the Marroc would find their hearts. One day the sheep would become wolves.
He bent down and fumbled Jyrdas’s sword off the beach and dropped it beside him. It was the best he could do, but the Maker-Devourer would understand.
31
THE PYRE
The Marroc didn’t know what to make of him. The first ones looked at his face, saw no beard, took him to be a Marroc prisoner and cut him loose. When they kicked and spat on Jyrdas’s corpse and Gallow knocked them both to the floor, they wondered what they’d done.
‘Valaric knows me,’ he said, ‘and any who fought at Lostring Hill. They’ll vouch for who I am. One way or the other.’
‘Lock him up. We’ll deal with him later,’ said Valaric when they brought him to Gallow. ‘He’s not one of us and he’s not one of them. He’s half and half and you never really know which half it’s going to be.’ He looked Gallow up and down and stared hard at the sword Gallow held – Jyrdas’s sword. ‘You coming nicely or do we have to have a fight at last, you and I?’
Gallow glanced at the bodies on the beach. ‘Is Marroc justice to a Lhosir any better then Medrin’s was to you?’
‘Maybe. Maybe not.’ Valaric stared out at the sea, at Medrin’s ship ploughing through the waves. ‘He won’t go far. And he’ll be back, and it won’t be long either.’ He nodded to himself and then his eyes came back to Gallow.
Gallow looked down to Jyrdas. ‘I’ll ask one thing of you, if you want my surrender.’
Valaric laughed. ‘You don’t get to ask for anything, forkbeard, you get to thank me for not killing you.’ But he followed Gallow’s gaze.
‘Give him a proper Lhosir pyre. Burn him.’
Valaric prodded Jyrdas with his boot and rolled him onto his back. ‘I know him. Jyrdas One-Eye. A right bastard. I should hang him up over the gates like he did to us.’
‘A proper Lhosir pyre or I’ll kill every man who comes near him until you take me down, Valaric.’
‘So be it.’ Valaric drew his sword. There was no anger in his eyes, no glee, no joy, only a cold sadness. ‘I wasn’t going to kill you, Gallow, but it does make everything that bit easier.’
‘Jyrdas didn’t hang your people, Valaric. He hated it. But if you want a reason, I’ll give you one. After Medrin broke you and he was about to sail away and you and your Marroc were standing at the top of the beach not finding the courage to do anything more than bawl names at him, did you not hear him? He called Medrin out for running away. He had an arrow in him; he could barely stand, and he shouted and shouted it for everyone to hear.’
Valaric’s lips tightened. A slight nod. ‘Nioingr. Yes, I heard. What of it?’
‘Until even Medrin couldn’t ignore him and came and stuck a knife in his eye to shut him up. You all saw that.’ He looked up at the houses and streets of Andhun. ‘And if you’d had even one man like him in this city then Medrin would be dead and you’d be standing in front of me holding your precious shield. You know you’ve just brought doom on the whole of Andhun, don’t you?’
Valaric glowered. ‘Shut your hole, forkbeard.’ He snarled, looked away and took a deep breath as though struggling with something. ‘Go on, burn him then,’ he said at last. ‘You do it. You can make his pyre and you can light it and watch him burn and not one Marroc will lift a finger to help you. Then you can go. Get out of my city and get out of my sight. Go and fight the Vathen. I never want to see you again. If I do, you’re just another forkbeard to me and that’s all. Now give me your sword.’
Gallow blinked. He reversed the sword and held it out. ‘It’s not mine, Valaric. It’s just a blade I found and it belongs to Jyrdas now. But I think he’d be happy for me to give it to you. Please take this sword, the sword that Jyrdas held in his hand as he died, as his thanks for honouring him as a valiant foe.’
Valaric took the hilt and lifted the sword. He shook his head. ‘You Lhosir are demented.’ He left and the Marroc moved around Gallow, collecting the weapons and armour and the food and plunder that Medrin’s men had unloaded from their ships and then abandoned on the beach. Gallow took an axe to the ship that had been left behind, Jyrdas’s ship. It seemed only fitting that it should make his pyre. He took its oars and chopped out its rowing benches and collected pieces broken by the storm, but he left its hull and mast alone. It was still a good ship. He worked into the night and then slept on the beach in the shelter of its hull, and in the morning, when the rising sun woke him, he took the time to carve a name onto the ship’s prow: The One-Eyed Hunter of the Sea. He carved it deep and large. If ever it sailed again then it would take Jyrdas’s memory with it.
Afterwards, as he began to build his pyre, a Marroc came down onto the beach. Sarvic. He didn’t say anything, just started to help pile the wood. They worked until the middle of the day and the pyre was done.
‘For what you did on Lostring Hill and the debt I owe you,’ said Sarvic when it was finished. ‘Not for him. He was a bastard.’
There were still helms and hauberks and shields. Gallow took one of each for Jyrdas and carried them to the pyre. The rest he piled beside the ship for Valaric to take away. The Marroc of Andhun would need them, one way or the other. After that he carried and dragged Jyrdas across the beach and lifted him up onto the pile of wood, then looked at the sky. Clear and bright with no sign of rain, and so he sat waiting for twilight. Jyrdas would burn as the sun went down, dressed in mail, carrying a shield. Pity about his sword, but he could take an axe with him, the one Gallow had used to chop the wood.
The sun crept lower, the day wore on and a small crowd of Marroc began to gather. They didn’t do much except stand and stare but Gallow felt their hostility. Once or twice he saw Valaric moving among them, pushing and shoving and snapping at them. As the sun reddened and sank and its light began to fail, Gallow took the last mail hauberk he’d left hidden on the ship. He polished up his helm and his shield, and walked up the beach. The Marroc shouted and jeered at him, but they parted as he came.
A rock pinged off his helm. Not a big one, but he stopped and turned and stared at them anyway. Sheep, Jyrdas called them, but that was hardly fair. They were fishermen and weavers and bakers and housewives. People content to spend their time building a life for themselves, laughing and singing and making more happy Marroc. He stared at them and saw the same thing he saw in Middislet, in the eyes of the villagers. Muted after all these years but it was still there. They were afraid. Afraid of him because of what he was. Because men like Jyrdas would have tried to take an entire city from them with just a few dozen warriors and wouldn’t have given a fig of a thought for how it might end.
He snatched a torch from one and walked back down the beach to the pyre and stood before it, the brand held over his head. They could shoot him if they wanted too. They’d shot Jyrdas, after all, but it didn’t bother him. If that’s what they did, then that was his fate. A sadness settled over him. To the Marroc he was always a forkbeard, to the Lhosir always a sheep. To Arda, he’d just been Gallow, and that had been enough and right, but she’d betrayed him and now it was gone. Choose one or the other, said the voices in his head, but in the final reckoning he’d always chosen her and never mind the rest. Without her he didn’t know who to be any more.
Most songs for the fallen that he knew were rowdy bawdy things because that was how the Lhosir dealt with death. The Maker-Devourer cast them out of his cauldron to live a life however they saw fit to live it, and when they died the Maker-Devourer took them back again and he only ever asked one question: Did you live it well? And he’d look into the eyes of the newly dead and see into their souls and know the truth of their answer, and if they answered yes and the
y believed it in their hearts, he’d take them back no matter what they’d done; and if they answered no then they were cast straight back to live a new life again, one that would be harder and more testing than the last, over and over until they found their courage. The ones who answered yes but knew in their hearts that it was a lie, best not to dwell on those. Nioingr. The true meaning of the word. Liars of the worst sort. Self-deceivers. They were ones who were devoured, their bones and shredded ghosts left to roam the Herenian Marches. Thus was the Maker-Devourer’s brew made ever richer and stronger.
He held the torch high and began to speak out the deeds of Jyrdas One-Eye, both the good and the bad as far as he knew them. He spoke them loud and clear, straight to the pyre, with the thought that they would find Jyrdas as he waited for the Maker-Devourer’s question, and remind him of anything he might forget. Everything that had made him. Everything that would be remembered.
‘Jyrdas will make your cauldron.’ He threw back his head to the dying sun and began to sing, the ‘Last Lament of Pennas Tar’, until something jabbed him in the side.
‘For the love of Modris, stop howling!’
He turned, ready to tear apart whoever had interrupted this moment, and there was Valaric, holding a sword. The one he’d just poked into Gallow’s mail. Gallow turned back to the pyre. ‘Go away, Marroc.’
‘The Vathen will be here tomorrow or the day after. The Widowmaker took his men out of the city. Every single one. To save Andhun from the Vathen. They can hardly launch an assault or dig in for a siege with the Nightmare of the North and four thousand Lhosir at their backs. The duke has his castle again and he’ll open the gates for whoever wins. If it was me, I’d keep them closed. I’d fight either of you. Both of you if I had to.’
‘Spoken like a forkbeard, Valaric. Now go away.’