by Nathan Hawke
Clank clank behind him. He shuddered. Grisic flinched as he rattled on through other irritations that should never have come to Cithjan. More ice wolves. A shadewalker seen in the forests around Haradslet. An irate plea from Tevvig Stonefists at Boyrhun for more arrows, since his previous messages had been ignored and now he didn’t have any left and there were Marroc rebels openly shooting at his men. Yes, of course, three thousand arrows, and by the way what previous messages? But no need to ask Tevvig about that since it happened all the bloody time. A Lhosir messenger alone on the road? By the sound of things, this one had ended up disguising himself as a Marroc woman to get through to the Aulian Bridge and cross to this side of the Isset. Now there was a thing – a Lhosir disguising himself because he was afraid – Sixfingers would have his head if he ever heard about that. So yes, three thousand arrows and fifty armed men from Varyxhun and half the garrison out of Witches’ Reach to make sure the arrows arrived safely, and Stonefists was welcome to keep the men as long as he made sure the Marroc around Boyrhun learned a lesson or two. A hundred of them hung along the roadside should do the trick. Rebels for preference, but any would do because the rebels got their food and shelter from somewhere, right? Grisic did a good job of keeping a straight face at that. He barely winced at all.
Boyrhun was thirty miles away as the crow flew, but since it was across the other side of the Isset gorge, it might almost have been in another country. The whole west bank of the river was virtually in open revolt and there was no pretending that Varyxhun would stay quiet if he left to sort it out. If he marched down the valley, crossed the Aulian Bridge, marched up the other side and set about murdering enough Marroc to make them get the message, then yes, he’d get all that done right enough, and then he’d have a fine view across the river as Varyxhun went up in flames. Sixfingers might put up with a little unrest, but he wouldn’t put up with that.
Clank clank. Did the Fateguard ever get tired? He’d never seen this one rest, or eat, or do anything other than what he was doing right now, standing like an angry statue, putting the shits up everyone.
‘There’s one other thing.’ Grisic’s smile was ashen. ‘You put a bounty on the Marroc bandit Addic Snakefeet.’ Cithjan frowned and then nodded as though he remembered. He put bounties on so many Marroc these days that he’d long ago lost track of who and why. ‘Fahred and three of his men went out to bring you his head. They’ve come back.’
Four Lhosir out on the road? And they’d come back at all?
‘They were set upon and—’
Cithjan rolled his eyes. ‘How many of them are dead?’
‘Just Fahred himself. They say they were set upon by an Aulian and –’ he hesitated ‘– a Lhosir with no beard.’
Clank clank. ‘A Lhosir?’
Grisic was bobbing up and down like a frightened hare. ‘They killed the Aulian. They brought the Lhosir here. They said . . .’ He frowned. ‘They thought you might want to see him. He was carrying a shield of the Crimson Legion.’
Now there was a thing. ‘One of Medrin’s men? Stolen, most likely.’
Grisic bowed. ‘Yes. As you say.’
‘Well we can’t hang him with all the Marroc. Send him to the Devil’s Caves.’
Clank clank. Cithjan turned, ready to snap at the ironskin fidgeting behind him, but the Fateguard had moved around beside him and was leaning over. Cithjan couldn’t help himself from shrinking back. The black iron crown and mask would do that to anyone, wouldn’t they? The ironskin hissed, ‘I would like to question this Lhosir first.’
Cithjan stared at the Fateguard. After a moment he blinked a few times and nodded. ‘Yes. Well. You can do that. If you want.’
Clank clank clank. The Fateguard stalked across the Hall of Thrones, the echoes of iron on stone freezing everyone in their tracks. No one moved. When he was gone, Cithjan let out a deep breath – for some reason he’d been holding it. He stared after the ironskin and then at Grisic. ‘You’d better show him where to go then, hadn’t you?’
The Fateguard in his iron mask strode through the doors of the Hall of Thrones. Eyes cast his way were full of dread. Marroc ran at the sight of him and even Lhosir tautened their faces and gritted their teeth and waited desperately for him to go away; and that was but the smallest of the curses on those who served the Eyes of Time.
The Marroc snake Grisic slithered out of the hall behind him and trotted on ahead, bowing and scraping and beckoning as though he wasn’t quite sure whether he was leading a man or some sort of animal. He wore his mask of servility well, but the Fateguard had blessings to go with their curses, and one such blessing was to see the truth of a man’s heart. Good or evil, kind or cruel, the men of iron cared little, but liars made the ice-cold blood burn in their veins, and this Marroc had a yellow streak of treachery to him.
He ignored Grisic. Varyxhun was an ancient castle, carved out of the mountainside by Aulian miners, comforting in its darkness and its age and its deep old roots tunnelled far into the stone. He crossed the courtyard, past gates that had never been sundered by any foe, not even the all-conquering Screambreaker. Below them, the gatehouse stairs wound down. There were tunnels here forgotten even by the Marroc, tunnels that reached all the way to the town of Varyxhun and perhaps further, as far as the old Aulian fortress at Witches’ Reach or even the Aulian Bridge, the great span that crossed the gorge of the Isset before the river tumbled through cataracts and rapids into the swamp of the Crackmarsh.
The Fateguard embraced the gloom. He took a candle to light his way, but when the Marroc weasel took a torch for himself, the Fateguard gripped it in his iron-clad hand and crushed it out. Gloom and darkness were an ironskin’s friends. They were where he belonged, in the shadows with the shadewalkers; but then he’d been to this place so often he could have done with no light at all. The place where prisoners came and were broken and made to talk, where he would listen and hammer a nail into a man’s flesh for every lie that he heard.
He passed two cells without bothering to look. The smell was of old rot and filth. He stopped at the third. Here was the Lhosir. Beardless, weak and thin and pale and beaten, but here he was.
There’s only one way into the valley of Varyxhun for a Lhosir, and that is to cross the Aulian Bridge. Yet not for you. The Fateguard stared hard at the man in the cell. He had an air to him. A meaning. A significance felt even in the Hall of Thrones, but there was something else, something the Fateguard had not expected. ‘Gallow? Gallow Truesword. Gallow Foxbeard. Gallow the thief of the red sword.’
The Lhosir looked up and stared. He seemed neither frightened nor pleased, merely resigned. Slowly the Fateguard lifted off his mask and crown. Light burned in the beardless Lhosir’s eyes and then at last a flash of recognition. ‘Beyard?’
The Fateguard curled his lip. ‘Hello, old friend.’
4
UPRISING
Oribas had little memory of his last few miles down the Aulian Way. The cold had reached inside him by then, the sunlight was fading and he was as close as he could be to dead without actually dying. He had some hazy notion of being dragged off the road and along a track between the black leafless bones of winter trees, of climbing and climbing, step after remorseless step up some steep winding path, of being hauled through a doorway, of light and heat and a delicious warm fire, and then he’d been asleep.
He thought he might have been asleep for a whole day, but only an hour or two passed before he woke again. Now there were half a dozen Marroc in a big open room that, as far as he could see, was their whole house. A young woman was waving a pot of something warm and delicious-smelling under his nose. Oribas stared at her. Maybe he was delirious with fatigue or with disbelief that he was somewhere warm, but she had the most beautiful elfin face and he couldn’t stop looking at her.
She reddened and looked away. ‘I know you want rest,’ she said, ‘but you need some food first to give you back your strength.’
Behind her, the other Marroc were looking at him. Addic
smiled but the others were less friendly. They were passing the red sword between them, the Edge of Sorrows. His eyes strayed back to the woman. She looked small and young and determined. Her smile, when it came, was a shy fragile thing. ‘Who are you?’ he asked her.
She shook her head. ‘Eat.’
‘You have beautiful eyes. Full of sadness and steel and passion.’
She laughed at him, and he had to smile back at the way her face lit up. ‘And you have a mind addled by the cold.’ She fed him one spoonful at a time, and it very likely wasn’t even remotely the best food he’d ever had, but that was how it seemed.
‘My friend,’ he asked when his eyes started to close again. ‘What happened to Gallow?’ But she only smiled and nodded some more and he wasn’t sure she even heard him, and after that he must have fallen asleep again, because when he woke up it was the middle of the next morning and the house was empty and he felt deliciously wonderfully warm.
‘Drink.’ The woman was squatting beside him. She must have woken him again. His head felt clearer now, sharp and focused, not all blurry like the night before. He remembered what he’d said and cringed and felt stupid.
‘I’m sorry.’ He sat up and looked at her, properly this time. She was offering him a warm bowl of something brown and lumpy and full of grease, and even if it was the same as whatever she’d given him yesterday, a night over the warm embers of the fire hadn’t done it any favours. He wrinkled his nose and tried not to gag; he was hungry, though, and he ached all over. And she was pretty, in a boyish sort of way.
‘Addic says you were in the mountains.’ She shook her head as though at an errant child. ‘In the winter? You’re lucky the cold didn’t take you.’
‘I know. But there were two of us. What happened to my friend?’
‘Addic’s outside.’ She smiled. ‘I’ll tell him you’re awake once you’ve eaten.’
‘No. My other friend.’ The food wasn’t so bad when he managed not to think about it, not to look at it and not to let it linger in his mouth any longer than necessary. ‘The one who came with me across the mountains.’
‘Like you?’ She touched his cheek and it took him a moment to realise why – she’d never seen someone like him before. ‘Where do you come from?’
‘Somewhere far away. I lived in a desert on the other side of what was once the Aulian Empire.’
‘Then it must have been something very important to make you come all this way and cross the mountains.’ Somehow, without realising it, he’d emptied the bowl.
‘I came because my friend asked me to.’
‘I’ll find Addic.’ She rose and left him and he watched her go, eyes following her to the door with an unexpected longing until she was gone. Fate had carried Gallow all this way with her sweet false promises of family and friendship, and Oribas had followed; now he was trapped by the winter in this land with nothing and no one, and Gallow was surely dead. Cruel and unkind to bring a man so far and then cut him down so close to home.
Three Marroc came in. Two had knives in their hands. A broad brawny one with a straggly beard and a thin-faced clean-shaven one with a mean look in his eye. The third was Addic. The brawny one grabbed him by the arm. ‘Aulian, I should cut your throat!’
Addic put a hand on the brawny one’s arm. ‘This one’s not a sorcerer, Brawlic. He didn’t summon the shadewalkers.’
‘Three already in one winter and the forkbeards do nothing!’ The thin-faced one tutted and shook his head. ‘No wonder people are so restless. I’m sure they’d love nothing more than an Aulian they could call a sorcerer, just so they could hang him in Varyxhun square.’ He walked slowly to the corner of the room and picked up the Edge of Sorrows from where it stood, propped against the wall. They had no scabbard for it – that was still hanging from Gallow’s belt, or perhaps some other Lhosir now. The thin-faced one lifted the sword and swung it a few times. The air whistled and moaned as it parted before the rust-red steel. He looked at Oribas. ‘So you came over the mountains with a Lhosir with no beard who fought some of his own on the Aulian Way and saved Addic’s life. That right? Addic says you called him a name: Gallow. What was his deed name, Aulian?’
‘His what?’
Addic stepped between them. ‘Forkbeards give themselves names. What was the rest of his name?’
Oribas blinked, confused. ‘He said he was Gallow Foxbeard among his own.’
The thin-faced Marroc turned to the other two. He brandished the sword and his face had a greedy gleam to it. ‘The Foxbeard. Then you know what this is, Addic? You know . . .’
Addic held up a hand but his eyes had a hungry glitter to them too. Yes, he knew all right. He crouched down beside Oribas. ‘The forkbeards came here hunting one they called Gallow the Foxbeard three summers ago after Andhun fell to the Vathen. They were after a sword. Did he ever call this sword by a name?’
Oribas shook his head. He felt weak and stiff but his wits were back where they should be now and they were saying that they didn’t much like the looks on any of these Marroc faces right now. They knew the red sword for what it was, or they thought they did. The Edge of Sorrows if you were Aulian. Other names to others.
Addic smiled but the glitter in his eyes was made of daggers, not of laughter. ‘I’ll tell you what I’ve heard of Gallow the Foxbeard, Aulian, and then you can tell me if this is the man who kept me from falling into the Isset and stood and fought four of Cithjan’s bastards. He was a forkbeard who never went back across the sea after old Tane died. When the Vathen swept out of the east with the Sword of the Weeping God, he was there when the forkbeards met them outside Andhun and they slaughtered each other. The forkbeards say the Widowmaker slew the Weeping Giant and took his sword, and that Gallow was at his side when he fell and that he stole it for himself. They say it was because of him that Andhun fell to the Vathen and that he’s why their king is Medrin Sixfingers where once he had twelve. Most tales say Gallow drowned in the seas below Andhun’s cliffs, but others whisper he came this way, looking for the Marroc family he’d left behind. Either way, neither his body nor the sword were ever found.’ Addic bared his teeth. ‘Is this the Gallow who crossed the mountains with you, Aulian? Because if he is then we’ve all heard a great deal of his deeds, good and ill. And this sword is Solace, the red sword of the Vathen, taken by the Widowmaker and whose edge our forkbeard king greatly desires.’
Oribas licked his lips. ‘I’ll tell you of the Gallow I knew. Decide for yourself if he’s the same Gallow Foxbeard of whom you speak, for I cannot say, and he never called his sword by any name that I recall. I come from a desert at the far edge of what was once the Aulian Empire—’
‘You speak our tongue,’ interrupted the thin-faced one.
‘Where I came from I was a scholar. I learned many tongues. Many years ago a monster came to my town. It wore the guise of a man, though it was not, and we didn’t know it for what it was, not for many weeks. It brought ruin and murder and much worse. You speak of the ghosts of the old empire, of the shadewalkers. This creature was a thousand times more terrible. Rakshasa, it was once named. When finally it was revealed, it left us all but destroyed. I followed its trail but I could never find it, nor find a way to destroy it. In my despair I prayed to the old gods in a place we call the Arroch Ilm Daddaq, the Tainted Well. They sent me a vision and I followed that vision to the shores at the end of the world, and there I found Gallow, washed up from some shipwreck with others of his crew. He told me he had come from a place the Aulians knew long ago as the Glass Isles, to which the gods sailed after Mouth Catht split asunder. I understood: now the gods had sent him back to me. They had listened to my prayer after all and here was their answer. Together we hunted the Rakshasa that destroyed my town. We hunted it for many months and in the end we found it and put an end to it. All these things you speak of?’ He shrugged. ‘The gods sent Gallow to me. All he ever asked of his fate was to be allowed to return to his home across these mountains. He told me he was once the Gallow Trueswor
d who fought beside the Screambreaker, but that that man was long gone.’
‘What about the sword, Aulian?’
‘I have a name, Marroc. I am called Oribas.’
Addic nodded. ‘And I’m Addic. My surly friend here is Brawlic and this is his farm. His wife Kortha has cooked the food you’ve eaten and my sister Achista has fed it to you. My other friend here is Second Jonnic.’ He laughed. ‘The last of six brothers, Second, and his poor father ran out of names. There are some who call him Vengeful Jonnic instead, though, and with good reason.’
Second Jonnic watched Oribas coldly. ‘My brother who shared my name was killed by the forkbeards in Andhun.’ He turned to Addic. ‘He’s only telling us half the truth. He knows more and I’ll have it out of him.’
Addic raised a hand. ‘Brawlic has given him food and shelter and the forkbeards would have thrown me into the Isset were it not for this man and his friend. He’s no enemy.’
Oribas looked from one to the other. ‘I thank you for your kindnesses. If there is a way to repay you, I will do what I can.’
Jonnic spat. ‘If the forkbeards get hold of him, they’ll find out about all of us now.’
‘I’ve no wish to be a part of any of your troubles.’ Oribas kept his voice calm and quiet. ‘If you could tell me where the Lhosir will take Gallow . . .’
‘Your friend is certainly dead. And once they know who he is, the forkbeards will be back, looking for this sword.’
Addic shook his head. ‘If they killed him then how will they know his name? And if they don’t know his name, how will they know there’s a sword to find?’ He grinned.
Jonnic ground his teeth. ‘All the more reason this one can’t stay where the forkbeards might find him. We know perfectly well what the best thing would be.’
‘I do, but he’s clearly not fit to cross the pass again, not in this state.’ Addic’s eyes narrowed on Oribas. ‘You hunted a monster worse than a shadewalker? And defeated it? How?’
