by Nathan Hawke
‘Move!’ The stranger walked straight at them.
‘Piss off!’
Addic didn’t see quite what happened next. One of the forkbeards must have tried something, or else the stranger just liked picking fights when he was outnumbered and exhausted. There was a shout, a red blur and a scream and then one of the forkbeards dropped his shield and bright blood sprayed across the snow. It took Addic a moment to realise that the shield lying on the road still had a hand and half an arm holding it.
‘Nioingr!’ The other three piled into the stranger. Addic wished he had a blade of his own, and if he had might have stayed. But he didn’t, and there wasn’t anything he could do, and so he turned to flee and ran straight into the Aulian.
‘Hey!’
‘Out the way.’ He pushed past. The darkskin had a knife out but obviously didn’t know what to do with it. ‘If I were you, I’d run!’
The Aulian ignored him and took a step toward the fight. ‘Gallow!’
Addic heard the name as he fled. It stuck with him as he ran. He’d heard it somewhere before.
2
ORIBAS
‘Gallow!’ The knife Oribas had was for stripping bark and carving wood, not for stabbing mad armoured men with forked beards, and even if it had been, he wouldn’t have known how to use it.
The man Gallow had saved ran off down the road, back the way he’d come. Oribas watched him go. He ought to do the same – that would be sensible – but he didn’t. It would be nice to think his decision had something to do with honour or loyalty or friendship but the truth was crueller: he simply didn’t have the strength. He could barely even stand, and that was after Gallow had half carried him for the last two days through blizzards and snowfields deep enough to bury a man. Oribas couldn’t understand how Gallow was still on his feet, never mind spoiling for a fight.
One of the forkbeards slammed Gallow with his shield and he stumbled. Oribas wanted to shout at them that it was hardly fair, taking on a man who’d just walked the Aulian Way in winter, but instead he put his knife back where it belonged and sat in the middle of the road and closed his eyes. His legs had had enough. Besides, the forkbeards probably didn’t care about what was fair, not after Gallow had chopped off their friend’s arm – he was lying in the snow, clutching his stump.
They were both as weak as children from crossing the pass but it still surprised Oribas when Gallow went down. A second forkbeard was out of the fight by then, sitting in the road rocking back and forth, holding his guts. But then Oribas saw the red sword fall from Gallow’s hand and disappear into the soft snow at the big man’s feet. He saw Gallow stumble, one of the forkbeards jab the butt of his axe into his face before he could find his balance again, and that was that. The forkbeard who’d knocked him down went to look at his comrade who was now lying still in the road. He wrinkled his nose and prodded the body with his boot. ‘Fahred’s gone. Bled out.’
The other one still on his feet stamped through the snow to Oribas and picked him up by his shirt. ‘The Marroc! Where’d he go?’
Oribas pointed down the road.
‘And you didn’t stop him?’ The forkbeard snorted with contempt. ‘To the Isset with you then!’
He didn’t so much throw Oribas over the cliff as simply let go and push. Oribas stepped back to catch himself, screamed when his foot found only air and kept on going, and down he went, spinning as he fell. The rest happened with blurring speed. For a moment he was looking towards the river far below, seeing that the cliff was actually more of a steep and jagged mess of stumps and skeletal branches and sharp prongs of stone waiting to smash him to pieces. There was a dead tree sticking out below him that probably wouldn’t take his weight but he reached out a hand for it anyway. His satchel slipped off his arm as he hit a boulder, flew down ahead of him and snagged on the tree, and then his fingers closed around the wood and his other arm was swinging around to grasp the bark as well, and his shoulders felt like they were being torn out of their sockets . . .
The wood let out a horrible crack, shifted and shook him loose. Now he wasn’t falling as much as sliding, and a hundred fists punched him in the chest and the thighs as he spread-eagled over the stones and scrabbled for purchase. His foot hit something solid, twisted him sideways and drove his knee up into his ribs, almost pitching him out into the void again. His fingers were like the talons of an eagle, grabbing hold of whatever was there. And then he was still. By some miracle, he wasn’t falling any more.
For a time he stayed exactly there, gasping, arms and legs ablaze with the effort of it but not daring to let his grip go even a fraction. His lungs were burning. Waves of pain washed over him. He tipped his head back and rolled his eyes as far as they’d go, looking up, half expecting to see the forkbeard who’d pushed him staring down, ready to drop rocks on him. But there was nothing, only sky. He shifted, trying to get himself more comfortable, then levered himself up onto the ledge that had caught him. The road was about twenty feet above. The boulder that he’d hit was half that. The dead tree would be a mere handspan beyond him if he got to his feet and stretched for it, but a handspan was still a handspan. His satchel hung off the end. It was all so close but all desperately beyond him.
He hugged the ledge, listening, waiting for the forkbeards to see him when they finally threw Gallow’s corpse off the edge too, but they never did. He heard snatches of their talk for a few minutes, taut and angry, but neither came to the side of the road, and then he heard them mount their ponies and move away. He supposed they must have gone, but he waited a while longer to be certain. He had a good long look at the cliff above him. Gallow would have scaled it without a thought, like he was bounding up a flight of steps. Oribas summoned his courage and called out but got no answer. Gallow was dead or unconscious or the forkbeards had taken him then. In his mind he saw the big man lying helpless in the snow, slowly bleeding out. He’d have to climb up by himself. Ought to. Ought to right now. Get up onto the road and see what had happened but his arms and hands didn’t have the strength, his legs weren’t long enough.
He sat and wondered what to do, and after a time he felt the cold creeping in through his furs, making him dopey. He’d fall sooner or later. Even if he kept awake through to nightfall, the cold would kill him before the next morning.
‘Hedge-born forkbeards!’ The shout came from close by on the road, probably loud enough to reach right through the valley. ‘Nioingr! All of you!’
If there was more, Oribas didn’t hear. By then he’d taken a lungful of cold air and was yelling as loud as he could, and he kept on until a face peered over the edge and stared at him in wonder. It was the Marroc the forkbeards had been chasing.
‘You’re alive! What happened to your friend?’ The Marroc’s face was screwed up in confusion. ‘Do you need help?’
‘Yes.’
The man disappeared and came back a moment later. ‘Forkbeard whelps took all my furs,’ he said. He looked at Oribas expectantly.
‘Have you got any rope?’
The Marroc shook his head. ‘No.’
Gallow had been carrying both their packs, had been for days. ‘My friend had some,’ he said. ‘Is he still up there? They didn’t throw his body over the edge. If he is, he has some.’ He closed his eyes and bit his lip.
The face disappeared and then came back for a second time. ‘No, no body up here. Plenty of blood over the snow, but that’s all. Someone got hurt bad. You sure they didn’t throw him over?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then they must have taken him with them.’ The Marroc frowned. ‘Why would they do that?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Why do they do anything? Because they’re forkbeards. Why’d you help me?’
‘I didn’t.’ Oribas looked miserably away. ‘I just stood and watched. As for Gallow? I don’t know. It’s what he does but I never understood why.’
The Marroc peered closer. ‘Gallow? That his name?’
‘Yes.’
&n
bsp; ‘Funny. They were looking for a Gallow in these parts a few years back. Is he one of them? A forkbeard?’
‘A Lhosir. Yes.’ Oribas felt his heart sinking. Neither of them had any rope. This man was going to leave him here because there was nothing else he could do. The cold was chilling him deep now. His fingers and his feet were numb. He could feel himself slowly shutting down.
Another pause. ‘Are you an Aulian?’
‘I suppose, if that means anything any more. Look, there are some trees on the slope above the road. You could cut some strips of bark and make a rope with those if you haven’t got any.’ His hands were turning stiff even stuffed down inside his furs. His legs were going too, not from the cold but just from having nothing left to give after the bitterness of the mountains.
‘I don’t know about that. Actually, I reckon you can just climb up from there unless your arms and legs are broken.’
‘No, I can’t.’
‘Yes, you can. It’s not even that hard.’
Oribas shook his head and turned away. ‘I barely have the strength to stand, my friend.’
The next thing he knew, snow was falling around him and the Marroc was climbing down. He made it look easy. A moment later he stood beside Oribas on the ledge. ‘See. Stand up.’
‘I don’t think I can.’
‘Then how were you going to climb a rope?’
Oribas shrugged forlornly. The Marroc shoved him sideways, almost tipping him off into the river. Oribas swore. ‘Are you mad?’
But for a moment he’d forgotten how tired he was. The Marroc nodded. ‘Better. Now how about you either stand up or I push you off this ledge and into the river. Either your legs get you up there or I do you a mercy.’
It was the sort of thing Gallow would have done and it made Oribas feel pathetic and stupid. The Marroc coaxed and cajoled and threatened him until he wrapped his arms around the Marroc’s neck and his legs around the man’s waist, and then the Marroc climbed the slope for both of them as though he was half mountain goat. He swore a lot and called Oribas all sorts of things that Oribas didn’t understand and a good few that he did, and it took what felt like most of the rest of the day; but he did it, and when they got to the top they both fell onto the snow-covered road and lay there panting and sweating.
‘Thank you.’ Oribas had lost count of how many times he’d already said that.
‘Your friend saved my life. Modris put him there. He wouldn’t look very kindly on me leaving you after that. You all right now?’
Oribas sat up. Standing was too difficult. ‘I will be. I just need a moment.’
‘Lhosir turd-beards.’ The Marroc wandered around the churned and bloodstained snow where Gallow and the Lhosir had fought. He chuckled to himself and shook his head. ‘You and your friend were heading for Varyxhun, were you?’
Oribas nodded.
‘That’s another three or four days on foot. Those forkbeards came all this way looking for me and then they let me go and took your friend instead. What happened?’
Oribas told him as best he could remember it. By the end the Marroc was grinning. ‘Took two of them down, did he? Good for him. But what were you doing out here?’
‘Gallow was on his way home. He never said much about it.’ Which was a long stretching of the truth but he didn’t know this Marroc who’d saved his life, not yet.
The Marroc was poking around in the snow. ‘There’s a few farms between here and there. You should get to Brawlic’s place before it’s dark. Knock on his door and give him a penny and tell him that Addic pulled you off a cliff and sent you to him. He’ll put you up in the warm for the night and feed you a bowl of something. You look like you could do with it.’ The Marroc paused and began digging in the snow. ‘Hello, hello? What have we here?’
Oribas felt himself rocking back and forth. He didn’t mean to; it was just . . . happening. And though he tried to look up, his head kept dropping towards his chest. The Marroc was burrowing into the bloodstained snow where Gallow had fallen. ‘O sweet Modris!’ He lifted out something long and dark that looked a lot like a sword, but now Oribas couldn’t lift his eyes to see properly. ‘Your friend. Gallow, was it? He ever call himself anything else?’
Oribas nodded. His eyes slowly closed. Then the Marroc was shaking him, hauling him up, propping him under one shoulder. ‘No no no, Aulian, you don’t go and stop working on me now.’ He slapped Oribas with a handful of snow. ‘Fine. I’ll take you to Brawlic’s farm myself. Good a place as any to go. This sword, is it what I think it is?’ There were a lot of names for the sword he had in his hand. The red sword. Solace. The Comforter. The Edge of Sorrows. Oribas might have added a few of his own but he only shrugged and started to slip to the ground. The Marroc lifted him up again. ‘What were you doing out here anyway, Aulian? What were you really doing here?’
‘Oribas,’ said Oribas. ‘My name is Oribas. It’s a very long story.’
‘I want to hear it, Aulian. All of it.’
3
THE LORD OF VARYXHUN
Cithjan of Varyxhun rose late. He dressed himself in Marroc finery and stroked the two braids of his forked beard and drank a bowl of warm honeyed milk that a Marroc serving girl brought to him. She had a frightened face, but so did all the Marroc in Varyxhun these days. He paid no attention as she took out the chamberpot from beneath his bed. When he was good and ready to face the day, he left his room and walked out into the dark passages of the castle. As he left, the iron-masked Fateguard that King Medrin Sixfingers had sent to watch over him fell in behind. The Fateguard made everyone nervous, even Cithjan. The iron-skin almost never said a word but you always heard him coming, clanking in all that iron he wore. And then he’d stop and become utterly silent, and that was when you knew he was right behind you. Cithjan shivered.
He broke his fast with warm bread and cold meat and more honey, too much of all of them which was why he’d been getting steadily fatter ever since he’d crossed the sea to serve his new king after old Yurlak had finally died. The Fateguard stood behind him, silent, watching. You couldn’t argue with him as a bodyguard, but Cithjan quietly wondered whether the ironskin needed to be there all the time. It meant no one ever wanted to talk to him, and that wasn’t particularly useful when he was supposed to be the governor of a province permanently on the brink of revolt. The ironskin was almost certainly a spy, too. King Sixfingers was always watching. The ironskins had stayed in their temples before Yurlak had died. Then Sixfingers had gone and struck his bargain with the witch of the north and now, for whatever unholy reason, they were his.
Once Cithjan was done eating, he took his time walking to the Hall of Thrones where old King Tane had held his court for a few weeks, back when the Screambreaker had been whipping his Marroc arse all the way from the sea to the mountains. Varyxhun was as impregnable a place as Cithjan had seen, layered up the side of a mountain in tier after tier of walls and gatehouses over a single winding road, and that was before you got to the castle proper. If the old Marroc king had held fast, Cithjan reckoned the Screambreaker would still be outside, trying to winkle him out. But Tane had headed off down the Aulian Way looking for Maker-Devourer-knew-what. He’d cut himself and the wound had gone bad and he’d died.
The Hall of Thrones was a big room, gloomy and foreboding. The way it picked up and echoed every noise had everyone walking around on tiptoe and talking in whispers as though someone had died. It was like that all the time, every bloody day.
‘Well?’
The Marroc they’d given him to deal with all the other Marroc slid up to the throne and fell to his knees. Cithjan had given up telling him not to do that.
Clank clank. The Fateguard standing at his shoulder shifted slightly. The Marroc seemed to shrink into himself. Grisic. He was a weasel. You never knew with any Marroc quite where their loyalties were, and Cithjan had dark suspicions about this one and so he set little tests now and then. Grisic hadn’t given himself away yet, but maybe that accounted for his nervo
usness.
‘There are two farmers from Pottislet, your highness . . .’
Cithjan rolled his eyes. Highness. Another habit the Marroc refused to break. ‘Governor.’
‘Yes, sir. Governor, sir.’ Fawning creep. ‘Two farmers from Pottislet come to beg for your aid your high— Governor. They say that ice wolves have come out of the mountains and are ravaging their herds.’
Ice wolves? Had anyone ever seen an ice wolf? ‘Really? Another feeble effort to lure Lhosir soldiers out into the wilderness where they can quietly disappear?’ Maker-Devourer knew they’d had enough of that.
‘They beg you—’
‘Send them away, Grisic.’ They were under siege here in Varyxhun. Men vanished every few days, just disappeared without a trace, but everyone knew exactly what happened to them. If they were Lhosir they had their throats cut and vanished down the Isset into the Crackmarsh. If they were Marroc the options were more varied: some simply vanished down the Isset like his own men did; others turned out to be alive and well and living out in the wilds where they happily murdered Lhosir if the chance came their way; a few of them had been hauled off to the villages deep in the hills where no one gave a stuff about threats and reprisals and had been ripped to pieces by horses for being collaborators – or, as Cithjan looked at it, for having gone on with their lives as best they could without murdering anyone. A few, the really lucky ones, got to be strung up in Varyxhun Square itself in the middle of the night. Each morning they were waiting for him. If his eyes hadn’t started to go a bit dim, Cithjan might have been able to see them from the castle walls. It took time to erect a gibbet and hang a man and cut his belly for all his entrails to dangle out, and yet no one ever saw or heard a thing. They’d done it to a Lhosir once last summer. Cithjan had seen to it that they never did it again. Do what you like to each other. Touch one of us and you all pay dear. It was a simple message.
