The Crimson Shield

by Nathan Hawke

  ‘We spoke out the Screambreaker. Every one of us. The rest have to wait.’ Horsan’s mouth twitched; as it did, Gallow leaped. The red sword smashed down onto Horsan’s shield and split it in two. Horsan jabbed his spear at Gallow’s neck, but Gallow simply lifted his own shield and turned the spear over his head. He kicked at Horsan’s knees and staggered him. The air hissed as he lunged with Solace. The sword caught Horsan neatly between his hauberk and his helm, driving through the naked flesh of his throat. A great spurt of blood sprayed across the cobbles. Horsan opened his mouth to say something more but all that came out was a river of red. He fell to his knees and toppled over. Gallow turned to face the rest of them.

  ‘So that was the best of you, was it?’ yelled Valaric. ‘You’ve forgotten who you are. Go back where you came from, forkbeards. Go back across the sea and stay there!’

  One or two Marroc among the crowd shouted as well. ‘Go home!’

  ‘So who fights for Medrin now?’ Gallow lowered Solace and pointed its bloody blade at the Lhosir one by one. They each met his eye but none of them moved.

  Medrin’s lips pursed as though he tasted something sour. He cocked his head and turned to the Marroc duke. ‘You’re sheltering a nioingr and a traitor. Hang him.’

  ‘He’s from across the sea, my lord.’ The duke didn’t move. Neither did any of the Marroc soldiers. ‘My men can’t touch him. A Marroc who lifts a hand against a Lhosir shall have that hand cut off, as you have commanded.’

  ‘Gallow? He might have come from across the sea but he stayed and he took one of your women. He’s a Marroc now. Hang him.’

  The duke still didn’t move.

  ‘Hang him, or I will hang you.’

  ‘No, my lord, I will not.’

  Medrin took a spear from the Lhosir beside him, drove it into the duke’s belly and kicked him over. He looked around the crowd and at the Marroc soldiers. ‘So who else wants to be duke, then? I’ll give it to whichever one of you brings me the head of that man there.’ He pointed at Gallow.

  None of the Marroc moved. Gallow felt the tension in the air, unbearable. They were on the brink of turning.

  ‘Marroc! Be free!’ Valaric hurled his spear at Medrin. The prince lifted the Crimson Shield, instinct saving him. Valaric’s spear struck the wood hard, but when Medrin lowered the shield, it wasn’t even scratched.

  A Marroc raised his arm and threw a stone. Then another and another did the same. Medrin howled and the Lhosir burst out of their circle around him. Valaric and Gallow launched themselves forward. The Marroc soldiers lifted their shields and their spears to face the Lhosir, the men and women around the square throwing stones and whatever else they could find. The first Lhosir hit Valaric head on, shield on shield, spear points lunging. Everything narrowed to sharpened points of steel. And over it all he heard Medrin roaring, ‘Kill them all! Burn their city! Leave nothing standing but bare stone walls!’

  43

  OUTSIDE

  Lhosir poured through the gates of Andhun. The Marroc who’d thrown stones lay dead now, broken dolls, limp and ragged, trampled underfoot when Medrin’s men let loose their charge. The rest had fled after the initial surge, and now Gallow and Valaric were side by side, pinned into an alley narrow enough for them to block with just the two of their shields, a dozen Lhosir pressing them.

  ‘What happened to . . .’ Valaric twisted as the Lhosir in front of him hooked his shield with an axe while the next one back jabbed with his spear. ‘ . . . going to Varyxhun?’ He ducked another swing. The man in front of him howled as Valaric stamped on his foot.

  Gallow barely heard. He could see Arda’s face. She was smiling but she looked sad. Pig-headed forkbeard. In his hand Solace felt as light as a feather and the air hummed as the sword cut through it. In Marroc stories the red sword cut through shield and mail like an axe through cheese. The Lhosir still standing in front of him proved the lie of that, but it still moved with a life of its own, as though it was a part of him, and it had already split a couple of badly made shields. He lunged over a shield now, the sword biting at the neck of the Lhosir in front of him. It had a knack, it seemed, for finding the gaps in a man’s armour. The Lhosir lurched away and then came back at him, forced by the press of men behind.

  ‘You know what us forkbeards are like: can’t resist a good fight.’ Gallow stepped back. The Lhosir in front of him stumbled forward, lowered his shield for a moment to support himself and died as the red sword tore out his throat. ‘I came to tell you to run away.’ He lunged as the next Lhosir came, reached over the man’s shield and stabbed, slicing his cheek.

  Valaric ducked and stabbed beneath the next man’s shield. He sheathed his own sword and snatched the dead man’s spear as he fell. ‘They’ll get behind us soon.’

  The next Lhosir didn’t have a helm. Stupid, and Solace quickly split his skull. ‘Then this will become a very bloody alleyway.’

  ‘Hold them for a moment.’ Valaric lunged and then leaped back and ran down the alley, leaving Gallow facing two at once. They pressed in on him hard then, swords stabbing around his shield while the men behind lunged with spears. A Lhosir learned to fight as soon as he was old enough to stand and hold a weapon. They learned to guard one another, how one man could hook away a shield and make an opening for another to lunge at unguarded skin, sometimes the man beside them with a sword or an axe, but more often the man pressed up close behind with a short spear. They learned how three or four together, if they worked as one, could kill almost any number of enemies until they tired, and now they turned that knowledge against Gallow. His own childhood had been the same: after the hook came the lunge, after the jab the thrust and then the swing. He knew where the spear thrusts and sword cuts would come, had honed all these in five years of war with the Marroc, but against four Lhosir, even ones who’d never faced a real enemy before the Vathen, he could barely keep them at bay. He retreated back down the alley, one step at a time, one lunge after another.

  ‘Valaric!’

  No answer and he couldn’t look back. Didn’t dare.

  ‘Valaric?’ A spear point sliced the skin of his neck. ‘Valaric!’

  Then he heard a roar behind him. For a moment the Lhosir faltered and then Valaric barged into the back of Gallow and splashes of something hot spattered his arms. ‘You bastards like what comes out of the Grey Man’s kitchens so much?’ yelled Valaric ‘Have some!’ He hurled a cauldron past Gallow’s head. The Lhosir bellowed and recoiled and the air filled with steam and the smell of boiled cabbage. For a moment Gallow was free.

  ‘Run!’ Valaric pulled his arm. Gallow bolted down the alley on Valaric’s heels as he raced for an open door. Valaric’s spear was propped beside it; Valaric snatched it up, turned and hurled it. The first Lhosir dived sideways and the spear hit the one behind him, clattering off the side of the man’s helm, the shaft spinning through the air. The last two Lhosir batted it aside but by then Gallow was through the door and Valaric was closing it behind them.

  ‘The table!’ Valaric rammed his shoulder to the door. They were in a kitchen. Gallow dragged the table from the middle of the room. The door shuddered as the first Lhosir outside kicked at it. Valaric let them force it open a hand’s width and then stabbed his sword through the gap. The Lhosir backed away a moment, long enough for the two of them to push the table against the door and wedge it against a wall. ‘Come on!’ Valaric ran for a different door.

  ‘What were you doing out there?’ They ran out into an empty tavern hall.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Valaric stopped and shouted, ‘Hoy! Any Marroc still here hiding away! Now’s the time, lads! The forkbeards are here and they’re burning our homes. Take up your arms!’ The tavern remained empty and still. Valaric shrugged and ran to the far door. ‘Good enough. The docks, Gallow. That’s where we’ll be. That’s where we make our stand. We knew this was coming. We’re as ready as we could ever be.’ He pushed open the door and ran almost straight into another band of Lhosir.

  �
�Maker-Devourer!’ roared Gallow, raising his shield. The Lhosir ran at them, but as Valaric and Gallow turned their backs and fled, the Lhosir stopped, laughed and turned into the Grey Man instead.

  ‘They’ll regret that later when we rip their drunken bellies open,’ snarled Valaric.

  ‘What were you doing at the gates? Did you think Medrin was going to fight you?’

  ‘No.’ Valaric darted into an alley that ran steep down the hill towards the Isset, so narrow they had to squeeze along it with their armour and their shields scraping the walls. The buildings either side blotted out the sun, casting them into gloomy shadow.

  ‘Well? Then what?’

  ‘I thought I was going to die.’ Valaric’s words came out through clenched teeth. ‘If your prince was the sort of man to stand up and fight for himself when another man called him out . . . But he isn’t and he never was, and I knew that. I went there to give myself up to him. Take as many of you with me as I could but let him have the nasty Marroc who’d stood up to him on the beach. You were right, what you said there. I thought if he had me then he might not burn the whole city. So much for that.’ The alley opened into another street. It was empty: no Marroc, no Lhosir. Shouting came from further down the hill, the sounds of men fighting. The tang of smoke tainted the air.

  ‘I fought the Vathen at the Screambreaker’s side. I saw him fight their champion. I saw him take the Sword of the Weeping God.’ He held the blade up so Valaric could see it clearly. ‘I was beside him when the Vathen broke our line and he fell. Medrin let it happen. He turned the tide of the battle with his men but he waited for the Screambreaker to fall before he did.’

  Valaric stared. ‘The red sword? That is the Comforter?’ His face went tight, almost as though he was afraid of it. ‘Modris preserve us!’

  ‘Solace. The Peacebringer.’

  Valaric took a step away. ‘Oh, I know its names. The Edge of Sorrows. The Unholy Comforter. The blade of the Weeping God that struck at Diaran the Lifegiver and would have killed all men had not Modris the Protector taken the blow on his shield.’ He shook his head and backed further away. ‘That’s a cursed blade, Gallow, and it brings death wherever it goes. You should never have brought it into my city!’

  ‘It’s just a sword, Valaric.’ Gallow frowned but Valaric was still shaking his head, fists clenched.

  ‘No. You know the tale of the Weeping God. You know how he became what he is but it comes from that sword. It’s a pitiless thing. It serves no one, or perhaps everyone with an even-handed faithlessness. Blood follows that blade, Gallow. And now you’ve brought it here, and look around you.’

  ‘The Vathen brought it here, Valaric, not me.’

  Valaric seized Gallow by the shoulders. ‘But you brought it into Andhun. Take it away! Ah. Modris preserve us! Forkbeards again!’ He let go of Gallow and ran down the street towards the harbour. The Lhosir who’d gone into the Grey Man were coming out again. Gallow ran after Valaric for a few paces and then stopped and turned another way. He didn’t believe in cursed swords just as he didn’t believe in Modris and Diaran and the Weeping God and the rest of them. Stories, that’s all they were. Some swords were better than others, no more. The skill of the smith and the quality of the metal he worked saw to that, but in the end they were all made from the Maker-Devourer’s cauldron just like everything else.

  But Valaric was right – there was a better place for this sword to be.

  He turned his back on the docks where Valaric’s men were waiting, and headed towards the keep on the top of the cliffs.

  Medrin.

  44

  THE SCREAMBREAKER’S MEN

  By the time Tolvis and the Screambreaker’s men reached Andhun’s gates, whatever had kicked off the fighting was done and over. Lhosir still trickled into the city, chasing with eager feet and hungry eyes after the scent of plunder and blood. A few of them loitered sulking around the gates, ordered to keep them open.

  ‘And where are the Vathen?’ Tolvis asked them but they only shrugged.

  ‘Fled in the night,’ they said. ‘It’s the Marroc against whom we hold the gates.’ They weren’t happy about it either, denied their share of plunder. Men who’d done something to earn Twelvefingers’ disfavour. Tolvis passed on into the city. The cobbles were littered with bodies. Marroc mostly, from the looks of them, but there were Lhosir here too. A few of the bodies were soldiers, freshly dead in their mail, even with their swords and spears still lying beside them. Most of the Marroc wore simple clothes, the ordinary folk of the city in the wrong place at the wrong time. Many had been cut down from behind, stabbed in the back. Only a few had found the courage to die facing their fate.

  He found the Marroc duke. When he turned over the bodies of the dead Lhosir to see their faces, he found Horsan. He laughed. So much for you.

  Smoke wafted in wisps from the streets that led down towards the harbour. The Lhosir who came in after Tolvis and the Screambreaker’s men headed that way. A few stopped among the dead, taking a spear if they didn’t have one, or a sword or a helm. A couple were crouched down, stripping bodies of their mail. The stragglers weren’t Medrin’s men or anyone else’s so Tolvis paid them no mind. They could head off down the hill towards the harbour – so much the better if they did – but he was aiming for the castle. Twelvefingers wasn’t stupid. You couldn’t come into Andhun and murder their duke and burn the place down without making sure you had the castle first, not if you were planning to stay. The plunder would be down in the harbour, but Medrin would be up there.

  There were going to be some problems later, when it came to explaining to King Yurlak why he’d taken it on himself to hunt down the king’s only son and stick his head on a spike. The Screambreaker told me to probably wasn’t going to be good enough. Ah well. He could think of an excuse later.

  Valaric ran through the streets to the first barricade. The Lhosir thought the Marroc were sheep and maybe they were; maybe they didn’t have the madness in their blood that the men from over the sea called courage and bravery and honour. Didn’t make them stupid, though.

  ‘Valaric!’ Sarvic was there keeping watch, ready for the forkbeards to sweep down the street.

  ‘You heard then.’ Valaric stopped in front of the barricade. Sarvic nodded. ‘How many men have we got down here?’

  ‘Hard to say. We had two hundred this morning before you left. When word came of what you did and how it went with the forkbeards . . .’ Sarvic shook his head. ‘It’s gone through the docks like fire. Most people are running for the sea. There’s boats already leaving.’

  Valaric winced. ‘I’d hoped . . .’ But what had he hoped? That thousands of men and women who’d never raised a hand to another soul in their life would suddenly take up arms against an army of rampaging armoured monsters? Of course they were running for the boats.

  ‘A few are staying. Hard to know how many.’

  ‘You told them what they have to do?’ Sarvic nodded. Valaric looked around. Enough men to hold the barricade for a few minutes. He looked at Sarvic long and hard, remembering Lostring Hill and the scared man he’d seen there. He nodded. ‘Go to the harbour.’ He pointed to three more of them, men he didn’t know, but all soldiers in mail with shields and axes. ‘Go to the boats. If there are men down there who think they can take everything a family has to let them onto a ship, show them your steel and explain to them why they’re wrong. Give them a choice: They can keep their weapons and use them on the forkbeards or they can give them to someone else who will. I’ll not have Marroc turning against Marroc.’

  The other three turned and left without hesitation, glad to be let go and not to face the forkbeards. Sarvic didn’t move.

  ‘Well, go on then.’

  ‘No.’ Sarvic shook his head. ‘I don’t want to run.’

  ‘Everyone who stays is going to die. Our lives buy time for the others, that’s all.’

  ‘I said I don’t want to run.’ When Sarvic’s eyes didn’t falter, Valaric clapped him on the s
houlder.

  ‘You want to kill forkbeards? Then come with me. Not long now.’

  Tolvis looked over the litter of bodies in Castle Square. Marroc mostly. They’d put up some sort of fight in the end. Too little too late though, because there were hardly any Lhosir among the dead and the men at the castle gates had forked beards and waved at Tolvis as he came forward. Half a dozen of them. They looked tense, stamping their feet, eyes constantly roving. Tolvis grinned at them. He recognised this lot. Medrin’s men, every one of them.

  ‘A fine morning for sacking a city!’ He waved back as he got up close. ‘Wish you were down there, eh?’

  The gate guards snorted. Who wouldn’t really? Nothing to do up here. They’d had a great big fight yesterday and they’d won, but they’d all lost friends and half of them had lost family, some cousin or other at the very least, and what came after a big fight was a couple of days plundering to make up for it. And here they were, missing it. Tolvis nodded. He understood perfectly.

  ‘The Maker-Devourer sends you some luck then.’ He nodded back at the men he had behind him. Fifty or so Lhosir. The Screambreaker’s men, what was left of them. Men who’d fought a dozen battles and lived through them all. ‘We’re here to relieve you. Go and have some fun. Kill some Marroc and get drunk.’

  He had their attention now. He could see the thoughts running through their minds. That would be nice, but Twelvefingers told us to guard the gate. ‘Prince Medrin ordered us to stay,’ said the first man doubtfully.

  Tolvis shrugged. ‘Stay then. When the other guards on the inside come out to go off a-looting don’t take it too personal if they laugh at you.’

  The man shook his head. ‘That won’t happen. You can’t go inside.’

  Tolvis took his time over his next words. ‘Thing is, you see, that is where we’re going. Sure you don’t want us to take over at the gate here? It was the Screambreaker himself said we should. You’ve seen enough over the years. Let the young ones have their share of the plunder. Or something a bit like that anyway.’ Tolvis laughed. ‘Me? I’m so old and bashed around the head, I can’t remember exactly what he said. I probably couldn’t remember how to plunder a Marroc city either. Best you lot get on and do it. Make a proper job of it.’