The Crimson Shield

by Nathan Hawke

  ‘I’ve not forgotten, Gallow. We’ll settle it after the Vathen are defeated.’

  ‘And if I want to settle it now?’

  ‘I’ll say no and remind you that you’re a Marroc and have no voice here. If I call you nioingr, so what?’ He turned sharply, before Gallow could reach for a blade. ‘Hold your hand, Truesword. Fight the Vathen. Fight beside me as I know you can and I’ll concede that the words I spoke were wrong.’

  ‘Concede it now!’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why?’

  The Screambreaker stood up and faced Gallow squarely. ‘I remember you from the old days, Truesword. You were fierce and terrible, without mercy or remorse, and I was proud to have you fight among my men. I saw you fight the Vathen on the way to Andhun and I saw the man I remembered. But you’ve changed. Your beard is gone. You’re either more or less than the man I once knew and I don’t know which it is. Do you, Gallow?’

  Maker-Devourer! But this was the Screambreaker, who never gave ground, not to anyone and not for anything. Half a smile crept onto Gallow’s face. ‘I’m me, old man. Born every part a Lhosir but Marroc too. So yes, I’ll fight beside you if that’s what it takes, and if I have to kill three Vathen for every one of yours to prove what I say then so be it. But when you take back your words, you’ll owe me a boon.’

  ‘True enough.’

  ‘Then I’ll ask you for it now, so that if I die you’ll know what to do. When the battle is won, Medrin will call for Andhun to be sacked. Deny him.’

  ‘This isn’t my army, Truesword. Twelvefingers can do what he wants.’

  Gallow laughed in his face. ‘It’s every bit your army, Screambreaker, and if you give them victory today, they’d follow you even if old Yurlak himself was here to tell them otherwise.’

  ‘Twelvefingers is Yurlak’s son. You’re asking me to defy my king and my friend.’ The Screambreaker sniffed. ‘The Marroc of Andhun gave their word that they would open the gates to us if the Vathen are defeated. If they honour that, I see no reason for any reprisal. But the Marroc who attacked Medrin and killed One-Eye, I’ll not spare them. They made their fate and they’ll be punished for that without mercy. They’ll hang in the streets. For once I agree with Twelvefingers. I’ll not move on that, Truesword.’

  Gallow met his eye. ‘Then if the gates open, let the punishment be theirs and theirs alone. That’s the boon I ask.’

  ‘Done.’ The Screambreaker scowled and flipped a knife from his belt. He made a shallow cut in his arm a little above the wrist and offered the blade to Gallow, who took it and did the same. They clasped their arms together so their blood would mingle. The Screambreaker looked at the men around him. ‘Witness this, my friends. This man Gallow Truesword claims I have slandered him. If he fights well today, he will have proved he is right and I will have spoken poorly of him and unjustly so. If he is right, there shall be no plundering of Andhun after the Vathen are broken, and if others say otherwise, I stand against them.’ He let Gallow go. ‘I’m only one man, Truesword.’

  Gallow snorted. ‘No, you’re not, Widowmaker. You’ve not been that for a long time.’

  ‘Either way, you have to prove me wrong first.’

  ‘That I can do.’

  For a moment the Screambreaker smiled. ‘Yes. The man I remember could do that.’

  ‘I have another boon to ask.’

  The general laughed. ‘Against what debt?’

  ‘None.’ He took the purse of silver off his belt and held it out. ‘But if I die, I’d have this taken to my family. To my wife Arda in Varyxhun.’

  The Screambreaker shook his head and waved him away. ‘And what if I die, Truesword? Who will take it then?’

  ‘You’ll never die.’

  A dark look crossed the Screambreaker’s face. He turned away. ‘Don’t be so sure, Truesword, not today.’ He snatched the purse. ‘But very well. I’ll find a way. If you die and I live, I will have it done. If I die and you live, it will find its way back to you.’ He sighed and leaned forward. ‘The truth is, Truesword, that perhaps I do owe you a boon. Do you want a reason to live through his battle? Perhaps I have one for you. It was not your wife who betrayed me to the Vathen. It was the old man.’

  For a moment Gallow stared into nothing. ‘What? What?’

  ‘It was the old man who told the carter that I was in your house. The old smith. Nadric? Was that his name?’

  ‘Nadric, yes. But . . .’ All the feeling drained out of Gallow’s face and his fingers, as though his heart had stopped pumping blood and was keeping it all to itself. ‘How do . . .’ He shook his head.

  ‘How do I know?’ The Screambreaker’s lips twitched into a thin smile. ‘Because when you dragged the carter and your wife out of the barn, every man and woman there, me included, was quite certain you were going to kill them. The old man blabbed then. Said it was him. Wailed and howled and kept clutching at my foot until I had to kick him in the face to shut him up. Wasn’t at my best then, if you remember. I’ve seen a lot of begging and wailing in my time, Truesword. I know the ones who are telling the truth. He meant it. It was him, Truesword. Not your wife.’

  Gallow couldn’t move. ‘And you thought I was going to kill her, and you didn’t stop me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And you didn’t tell me. All the way to Andhun and you never thought to tell me.’

  Rage was boiling up inside him. The Screambreaker looked him in the eye. ‘For a while I thought you had killed her and the carter. It’s what I would have done, and if you had, I didn’t think you’d want to hear. After that, I wanted you back in Andhun.’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘I wanted you here, Truesword. I wanted you at my side against the Vathen. And against Twelvefingers, if it comes to it. So live through this day, Truesword, and then go back to your Marroc wife and your sons when it’s done. And ask, if you must, why she didn’t tell you either. But I think we both know the answer. Now go away. Eat and rest. We have a hard day before us. Find yourself a spear and a sword and an axe to go with that shield. We have plenty.’

  The Screambreaker turned away. Gallow watched him go. Why? Why didn’t you tell me? But the Screambreaker was right, the answer obvious: because in his anger he would have murdered Nadric there and then, and there would have been no going back from that. And so she’d lied to him and trusted to the truth that she was the one person he could never hurt.

  He closed his eyes and thought of her. Arda. She hadn’t betrayed him after all and everything would be as it was.

  The two of you are the same, she seemed to whisper. You dress it up in valour and glory, but really you just like fighting. He thought that if he listened hard enough, there might have been a smile somewhere in there.

  He settled himself among the Screambreaker’s men, keeping among them and away from others who might recognise him. He filled his belly and armed himself as he was told, and then he sat, quietly waiting for the Vathen to come, touching the locket under his shirt.

  I have to make my life a good one, he told her.

  You might find it easier if you didn’t try so bloody hard, she answered, and he smiled and sat easily, waiting for the Vathen to come, full of all his memories of her, of all the scoldings and the rolling eyes and the rare twinkle that now and then lay behind them.

  34

  THE VANGUARD

  Gallow stood shoulder to shoulder with men he barely knew. The Screambreaker faced them from the back of his horse, proud and noble and fierce. He was the best. The Lhosir knew that. He was invincible, they were invincible, and the Vathan numbers would be no use to them. They’d stumble over their own dead as they ran and the slaughter would be terrible.

  ‘For Andhun,’ Gallow whispered to himself. ‘For all the Marroc. And for you, Arda. Please understand why I must do this.’ He held his shield firmly in one hand, a spear in the other. At his belt he carried an axe and a sword. He stood loose, not tense like the younger men. His mail felt old and comfortable like a long
-missed friend and his helm seemed to whisper words of calm into his ear. The mail at least was still his own, good solid metal plundered from a dead Marroc a decade ago, and he trusted it now as he’d trusted it then. He’d been here before, more times than he cared to count. He remembered how it felt, the tension, the blood running fast and hot.

  ‘Look at them!’ the Screambreaker shouted. ‘Look at them! See how many they are and rejoice, my warriors! Feel how it will be, for they will break upon your shields like water on the rocks and die writhing upon your spears like fish caught helpless in a net. You will stand fast and they will see you there, waiting for them with your shields held strong and your spears held high, helms bright, and they will come up this hill and every step will sap their strength. Their legs will ache and their souls will quiver. You will scream Yurlak’s name in their faces and fall upon them, and they will quiver like women and they will break! And as each slaughtered rank turns and flees they will spread your terror and their numbers will count for nothing! We are Lhosir! We have the strength of the bear, the fangs of the wolf and the speed of the hawk!’

  The Vathen were crossing the bottom of the valley, the first rank now marching steadily up the hill. So many, but they’d been marching all day, and now it was the middle of the afternoon and they’d be tired while the Screambreaker’s army was fresh.

  The Screambreaker turned his horse and cantered away. He’d be back. Back to the centre where his own small band of Lhosir stood waiting for him, Gallow among them. The men he’d brought back across the sea with him for one more fight. They wouldn’t break. They were soldiers who’d seen ten years of war, who’d fought in a dozen battles like this and won all but one.

  Either side of the advancing Vathan centre black swarms of horse scattered towards the flanks, ready to envelop the Lhosir and come at them from the side and the rear. Pits filled with spikes waited for them, and hidden clusters of spearmen with shields and javelin throwers lurked at the edge of the trees. Archers, even a few hundred of those, from the few Marroc who’d come out to fight. There were more than Gallow had thought and Valaric would be fuming if he knew, but this was right, wasn’t it? Lhosir and Marroc together, fighting for their land.

  The Vathen were a hundred yards away when the Screambreaker returned. He walked slowly between the two armies as though the enemy was barely worth his notice and took his place in the front line in the middle of his men. They made space for him with an easy movement practised for years.

  Fifty yards and the Marroc archers behind the Lhosir line let fly. They were shooting long, Gallow saw, over the top of the Vathan shield wall, raining their havoc on the lines behind where men couldn’t see what was happening around them. The arrows would bring confusion and despair. Men would raise their shields over their heads so as not to be scythed down, and then they wouldn’t see anything except the man standing in front of them. This was how the Screambreaker fought his wars, with fear and panic as his sword and shield.

  Thirty yards and the black-painted Vathen let out a roar and charged. The sky grew dark as the ranks behind both lines of shields hurled javelins, clubs, sticks, stones, anything they’d been able to carry into battle. Men screamed and fell. Gallow raised his shield, hiding his face, shielding the man on his left as well. A javelin almost split the wood right in front of his eyes. A stone glanced off his helm. The Lhosir on his right howled as blood fountained from his ripped-open neck.

  ‘Get him out! Get him out!’ Gallow smashed the javelin out of his shield and then the Vathen and the Lhosir crashed together. A spear came at his face. He ducked and jabbed his own point at a Vathan, caving in the man’s teeth, slicing open his cheek and ripping the back of his throat.

  The Lhosir beside him finished dying. He sank slowly down with another spear through his face, pointlessly killed for a second time. Another stepped up from behind. They’d be standing on each others’ corpses soon, but better that than fall. Anyone who fell was dead. Men screamed as they tried to kill each other and men screamed as they died, and soon the screams all sounded the same. A Vathan swung an axe. It turned off the mail on Gallow’s shoulder and then hooked his shield, tugging it away. Gallow stabbed the man with his spear. The crush was suffocating. He ducked another thrust. Ribs cracked from the sheer press of men. His shield was pressed hard into the Vathan in front of him, so close he could see the whites of his eyes, but the crush made them both almost powerless.

  Another spear point glanced off his helm. He pushed his shield forward, hard and sudden, made a momentary inch of space and lunged his spear straight down into the foot of the Vathan in front of him. The Vathan screamed and dropped his guard and the Lhosir behind Gallow jabbed a spear into his face. Gallow watched the Vathan die, a terrible glee inside him. A dead man trapped in front of him meant he could strike more freely, and so he did, thrust after thrust. Most of the Vathen were down to knives and axes now, but the Lhosir had learned to keep their spears. The battle turned slowly to slaughter.

  A horn sounded. The Vathen broke off and stumbled away. The Lhosir line took two paces forward, unable to help themselves. A few cheered, the young ones who didn’t know any better. For a moment Gallow had to brace himself against his own men so as not to be pushed forward down the hill. He was breathing hard and the battle had barely started.

  A cloud moved across the sun, stealing its light and its heat. He was grateful for that. He sucked in the spring air, the smell of grass and flowers and trees now tainted by the sweat of men and the tang of steel and blood. The sun was too hot for a heavy leather coat and mail but he held back the urge to take off his helm and cool his head. That was how men died. He’d seen it.

  The black-painted Vathen front line melted away down the hill. The next line waited just out of javelin range, shields raised against the Marroc archers. He could see the enemy – from the brow of the hill they all could. The last ranks of the Vathen were at the bottom of the valley now, still crossing the stream there. The rest were massing on the lower slope, taking their time.

  So many.

  It started to rain. An hour earlier and that might have changed the battle, made the hill into a sea of mud and crippled the Vathan advance. Too late now, but the cold water was still delicious. It wouldn’t last. Five minutes, maybe ten, and then the cloud would pass and he’d have the sun on his back again.

  ‘For Yurlak!’ shouted the man beside him. ‘For the Screambreaker!’ The Lhosir was quivering. He still had his shield, but his spear was gone and all he had now was an axe. Gallow watched the Vathen. The next line of them was painted bloody red. They didn’t move. Very slowly, without taking his eyes off them, Gallow moved his spear to his shield hand. He carefully crouched and leaned forward, reaching for a spear that hung from the belly of a dead Vathan. The rain was coming down hard now, dripping into his eyes. His fingers closed around the haft of the spear. He pulled it slowly towards him and then jerked it free and passed it to the soldier beside him.

  ‘They bleed like any others,’ he said. The rain was already easing.

  ‘Don’t they just.’

  The Vathen lowered their spears, pointing them straight at the faces of the Lhosir. Gallow felt the soldiers around him tense, bracing for another fight, but the Vathen held their ground, and then through the midst of them came a giant in blood-red mail. His shield was black, but when the giant drew out his sword, the blade was a deep red like his mail, with an edge as long as a man’s leg. The air fell still, the voices of the Lhosir and the Vathen alike quiet. The giant held out his sword and swung it this way and that. As he cut the air, the sound it made was like the shivering moans of lost souls.

  ‘The Sword of the Weeping God!’ The Lhosir beside him raised an eye. ‘So they really have it then.’

  ‘And we have the shield,’ said Gallow. He stared. The sword he’d seen in his dream of the Weeping God, before he’d left Andhun, and again after Gorrin had hit him on the back of his head under the monastery. ‘It’s just a sword, no better or worse than
the man who wields it.’ Today he said it as much for himself as for anyone else.

  The soldier grinned. ‘Aye. And that man is no Lhosir!’

  The giant walked up to the Lhosir line, batting aside a hail of missiles with his shield or simply letting them bounce off his armour. When he reached them and the first Lhosir tried to stab him, he caught the spear in the sword’s guard and wrenched it away. He took another blow to his shield, this time from a sword, and then Gallow couldn’t see anything, but there were screams and the giant was bellowing something; and then there was the Screambreaker, out in front of the Lhosir.

  ‘Here!’ he cried. ‘Here I am! Corvin the Screambreaker. Widowmaker! Nightmare of the North!’ He threw down his spear, jamming the point into the ground, and drew his sword. ‘I have no god-touched blade or shield, but I will still bleed you. So face me if you dare, Vathan!’

  The giant turned. He pointed the red sword at the Screambreaker and roared. The second Vathan line raised their spears and charged, the hail of stones and javelins began again and the giant and the Screambreaker vanished into the swirl of swords and spears. At the front of the shield wall, crushed by friends from behind and the enemy in front, barely able to move, Gallow had no eyes for either. The flash of swords and spear points became all that mattered. He stabbed the Vathan in front of him in the foot, same as he had the last, and the man behind Gallow, a stranger, finished the job just as he had before with a sure understanding for him even though they’d met only minutes ago. Blood flecked Gallow’s face and spattered his helm. His arm screamed with the effort of holding up his spear but he shut out the pain and stabbed and stabbed until this line of Vathen fell back like the last, leaving their own new litter of corpses behind.

  The giant with the red sword was still standing. He prowled between the lines, bellowing challenges. The Lhosir answered him again with stones and javelins, and the giant shrugged them aside in disdain. Again the Screambreaker stepped out to face him and again the giant ignored him. The Lhosir jeered. Another line of Vathen assembled down the slope.