by Nathan Hawke
Oribas struggled to his feet. His legs felt as though they were made of wool. For a moment his head spun. He looked around the room, searching for the woman Achista, Addic’s sister, but she wasn’t there. Then he searched for his satchel for a while before he remembered where it was – hanging from the dead stump of a tree dangling over the Isset. The thought of trying to get it back made him shudder. He fiddled at the pouches on his belt instead while the Marroc watched him suspiciously. ‘The ruins of old Aulia were beset by shadewalkers after the empire fell. There were those who took it upon themselves to hunt them. Shadow-stalkers and sword-dancers. I am neither of those things but I have seen them work.’ He walked stiffly to the fire and threw a pinch of powder from one of his pouches into the flames. The fire flared, leaping out of the hearth and high towards the roof for a moment. The Marroc gasped and recoiled. ‘Creatures like those have their weaknesses. Salt. Iron. Pure ice-cold water. And fire.’
‘He’s a witch,’ hissed Brawlic. ‘Get him out of my house!’
Addic put a hand on the farmer’s arm. ‘He’s not a witch. Are you, Aulian?’
‘I’m a scholar. In my hunt for the monster that destroyed my home, I studied such things. I don’t begin to understand the magic that brought them to be, but I understand how they may be sent back where they belong.’
Addic pulled Jonnic aside. The two whispered to one another while Brawlic stared with open hostility at Oribas. Whatever decision the other Marroc reached, Jonnic didn’t like it. Addic held up his hands. ‘Shadewalkers cross the mountains now and then. When they come, all we can do is step out of their path. Even the forkbeards fear them. Can you defeat one?’
Oribas shook his head. ‘Not alone, for I’m no warrior. But I can show you how.’
Addic started to laugh. ‘You see, Jonnic. And imagine what the people of Varyxhun and beyond will say when a Marroc comes among them carrying the sword Solace and slays a shadewalker. That’s how we’ll have our uprising.’
Jonnic snorted. ‘I say we take it to Valaric the Mournful in the Crackmarsh. Or across it and back to the Vathen. Let them fight the forkbeards.’ He stared at Oribas. ‘You came over the mountains. Across the Aulian Way after the first winter snows. Why?’
Oribas shrugged. ‘It was Gallow.’ He smiled faintly. ‘He wanted to go home.’
5
GALLOW
In the gloom under Varyxhun, in Gallow’s cramped and dank stone cell, Beyard picked up the empty cess bucket. He turned it upside down and sat on it. Gallow squatted in a corner, watching.
‘Seventeen winters,’ said the ironskin. ‘Eighteen soon.’ His voice was like grating metal, not the voice that Gallow remembered, and his face was pale and hollow, his eyes rimmed red and steeped in shadows. But he was still unmistakably Beyard. ‘I heard about you, but not for a long time. No one knew who you were until you stole King Medrin’s sword.’
‘It was never his sword,’ whispered Gallow.
Beyard’s lips drew back. His teeth were a perfect white. He made a noise that might have been a laugh but that came out more like a wet cough. ‘We both have our reasons not to like our king. I never gave away your names, either of you. Look at me now, Gallow. My reward is a skin of iron punishment to atone. For what? For being the only one with the courage to stay and stand fast when we all three broke the old laws? Why did you come back?’
‘I never meant to leave.’ They stared at each other in silence. Gallow took in the man who’d once been his friend, back when they were both filled with boyish bravado. The armour of the Fateguard, the iron strips and plates, covered him from head to toe. The Fateguard were the holy fists who guarded the Temple of Fates and enforced the will of the Eyes of Time, both cursed and blessed. They were rarely seen outside a temple and Gallow had never heard of one taking off his mask. More often than not they were the worst nioingr who would never have any other chance to atone, but that wasn’t Beyard. Beyard had never been a coward. ‘Are you my executioner?’
That wet coughing sound again. Beyard shook his head. ‘Not I. But there will be one, have no doubt. Who will you have to speak you out when you hang?’
‘I doubt there’s a single Lhosir who’d do that now.’
‘Then I will do it.’ Beyard shifted. Metal ground on metal.
‘What happened to you?’
The iron man looked down at himself. ‘To me? See it for yourself. After you ran—’
Gallow bared his teeth. ‘I did not run, Beyard! I would have stood beside you. Willingly. Do you not remember how it was?’
For a moment a light flashed in the Fateguard’s bloody eyes. ‘I remember, Gallow. We each paid our own price for our foolishness. I saw Medrin cross the sea; but fate found him out and I saw him back again with a wound that should have killed him, that left him crippled and for many years but half a man. I saw him rise each day with barely the strength to walk. I saw him fight for every scrap of strength. He came to the temple daily for a time. Suddenly a very pious man when it looked like he might never again lift a sword. Sometimes I wonder how loud he screamed when you crippled him for a second time. Medrin Sixfingers. Perhaps his punishment is finished now. But you? I never told them your name, just as I never told them his. The Eyes of Time searched for you and found nothing. And when neither of you found the courage to step forward, the punishment fell on me alone. I was made as you see me because I wouldn’t betray your names. And because of what we’d done.’
‘We did nothing!’
‘But we had intent. We should not have been where they found us.’
Gallow looked away. ‘I shouldn’t have let you face them alone.’
Beyard rattled and shook with grinding laughter. ‘Then we would both be men of iron. What difference would it have made? Besides, fate has its ways. Fate found Medrin without my help. The Crimson Shield was at the bottom of the sea with the Moontongue by then and its other thieves long forgotten. What did fate find for you, Gallow the smith’s son?’
‘I crossed the sea,’ said Gallow. ‘I fought with the Screambreaker and after a time he named me Truesword. When it was done and Yurlak looked as though he was going to die and Medrin would take his crown, I stayed behind. I meant to cross the mountains into Aulia to be as far away as I could be but I never even reached Varyxhun. Before I knew what had happened, another eight years passed and I was a husband with a Marroc wife and a father with two sons and a daughter.’
‘Truesword. I heard that name but you’re Foxbeard now. I know about the Vathen and how you fought them and how you found the Screambreaker half dead and carried him back to Andhun, how you sailed with Medrin to reclaim the Crimson Shield and how you and the Screambreaker stood side by side in his last battle against the Vathen. They say you killed him there and took Solace, the red sword of the Vathen, from his hand as he fell.’
‘I took his sword when he fell but I didn’t kill him.’
‘No.’ A baleful look settled on Beyard’s face. ‘You turned on your own kind and cut off Medrin’s hand as the Vathen swept through Andhun. I know you threw yourself into the sea and I know it was the Screambreaker himself who hauled you out of it, so I know you didn’t kill him and I know the the Vathen didn’t either.’ Another wet hack of a laugh and Beyard cocked his head. ‘You were meant to come to us, Gallow. You were owed to us, you and Medrin both. Fate granted the Screambreaker a year and a day beyond what should have been his death to bring you back to us. He’d earned it. He dragged you from the sea when you should have drowned and told you your fate, yet you refused it.’
Gallow shook his head. ‘I remember his words, old friend: “It’s the nature of men like us to fight our fates.”’
A coldness filled Beyard’s eyes. ‘I’m not your friend, Gallow. Not any more and not for many years. And you are Lhosir. You should know better than to turn against your fate.’
‘I wanted to go home, Beyard.’ Gallow’s shoulders sagged. ‘To see my sons. To be with my wife. To make more. To work the fields and the forg
e. Simple honest things, building a home. That’s all.’
‘But it was not your fate, Gallow.’
‘No.’ This time Gallow spat out a bitter laugh. ‘The Marroc fled Andhun in a hundred ships. It was a calm day, clear, a balmy sea. And then in the night a storm came and scattered us and when the sun rose we were alone and lost, and ever since, with every step I’ve taken towards my home, fate has carried me ten away. Three years, Beyard. Three years and I’ve crossed half the world.’ He looked around the cell, overwhelmed by despair. ‘And here I am. Three years. I don’t even know if she’s still alive. Or my children, and if they are then they must certainly think I’m dead. She probably has another man. I suppose I hope for her that it’s so. And now I’ll never know, will I?’ He looked up and touched his shirt. Beneath it, against his skin, an old locket hung on a worn chain. A little piece of Arda he’d taken with him into battle when the Vathen had come. The one thing over all that time he’d never lost. That, his shield and the cursed red sword.
‘You should know better than to fight fate.’
‘Medrin is king now, is he?’
‘Yes. King Medrin One-Hand. Medrin Sixfingers. Medrin Ironhand, or Silverhand if you prefer. Yurlak scoured the world before he died for any who could make his son whole again. An Aulian came, a dark one, but it was the Eyes of Time who gave Medrin the hand he has now, one of iron and silver. A poor substitute for flesh and bone. Yurlak lived long enough to see it and then he died.’ Another wet laugh. ‘Yurlak scoured the world for you as well, Gallow Foxbeard. I swear it was his fury that kept him alive so long. But Ironhand? He means to cross the mountains and rebuild Aulia itself. He sees himself an emperor.’ Beyard shook his head, a savage snarl on his face. ‘Medrin, eh? Fool he is, but he’s not the man either of us knew. He’s a leader as his father was before him. A king with an iron hand.’ Beyard rose. He picked up his mask and crown. ‘I’m glad, Gallow, to have set my eyes on you one more time. I’ll not tell Cithjan who you are. He’d send you to Medrin in chains and Medrin would bring down every world of pain that he knows upon you. He’d find this wife and these sons of yours and make blood ravens of them while you watch. So no, I’ll not tell Cithjan. You were a better man than that. You will be Gellef Sheepstealer and you will merely hang for the two men you killed.’
‘Two?’
‘The other will die in a few days. I am ironskin, so I know his fate.’
‘What of the Aulian who was with me?’
Beyard put the mask and crown back over his head. ‘You should know how it is with our kind. They threw him into the gorge of the Isset.’
Which left him with nothing. Gallow held his head in his hands. ‘All this way. I brought him all this way. I told him he didn’t have to follow.’
‘A man can’t escape his fate. I’d plead for you, for the sake of the friendship we once shared, but you turned on your kin, Gallow. You should not have done that.’ Beyard stood in the door of the cell and turned, face hidden now behind bars of iron. ‘Does the red sword swim beneath the waves below the cliffs of Andhun? Did you lose it on the other side of the world?’
Gallow froze, head bowed and eyes filled with tears for those he’d never see again. The sword. Solace, the Comforter, the Peacebringer, all those names the Marroc and the Vathen had given it, and it had done nothing but mock him from the moment he’d held it in his hand. Oribas called it by its Aulian name: the Edge of Sorrows, for the Aulians had always seen the truth of the curse it carried. ‘I never lost it, Beyard,’ he said, slowly looking up as he did. ‘I carried it out of the sea of Andhun and I carried it across the world and back again. I carried it across the ruins of Aulia and along the length of the Aulian Way. The men I killed? It tasted their blood.’
Beyard stiffened. ‘It’s here? In Varyxhun?’
‘If the men I fought didn’t think to bring it back then it’s lying beside the Aulian Way. In a place where only I will find it.’
The Fateguard stepped back inside and stood over Gallow, eyes boring down into him. ‘Where, old friend? Where is it?’
Gallow shook his head. ‘I’ll not give it to Medrin. Not for nothing.’
Beyard’s iron-gloved hands reached around Gallow’s neck and tore the locket with the snip of Arda’s hair away from him. ‘I will find them. Whoever they are. I will punish them until you show me.’
Gallow met his eyes, unflinching. ‘Will you? You were my friend once and a far better man than that. Has the iron skin of the Eyes of Time taken the Beyard I knew?’
‘I am Fateguard,’ Beyard hissed, but his eyes flicked away in a flash of shame.
‘All I ask is to know whether my family lives.’
‘And what use is that knowledge? If you find they’re all dead, if your woman has another man, if your children are scattered and gone, will you go to the hangman more easily? For these are all likely things. Or if you find that they wait and still mourn after all this time and all is as it was and could be again, will you die at peace?’
‘Let me see them and I’ll show you where the sword is hidden.’
Beyard shook his head. ‘Take me to the sword and you’ll live until you have what you came here for.’
‘For your blood oath, Beyard, I’ll do that.’
Again Beyard shook his head. ‘I’ll swear to you on the Fates themselves. For my kind that is an oath cast in iron, but I cannot give you a blood oath. I am Fateguard, Gallow. I have no blood to offer.’
6
THE SHADEWALKER
The Marroc let Oribas rest for three days, eyeing him watchfully, talking among themselves in careful huddles while Oribas took care never to pry and spent his time staring into the fire and helping around the house as best he could – simple chores that needed little strength or skill. They fed him plenty of greasy stew and he held his nose and smiled and tried not think too much about the delicate care that his own kin put into the feasting tables of his homeland. The big Marroc Brawlic still made the sign of evil when he thought Oribas wasn’t looking and the thin one still wanted to murder him. Sometimes Oribas caught Achista looking at him and then looking quickly away with a smile, but she was rarely in the house and it was the older woman who brought him his food now, Brawlic’s wife Kortha. But on the third evening when Achista came into the house, she looked at him and didn’t smile and instead pulled Addic and Jonnic away from the fire where they’d been whittling wood. The three of them talked in urgent whispers until Addic nodded and slipped his whittling knife back into its sheath. Then he came and sat beside Oribas. ‘Aulian, there’s a shadewalker.’ He stared at Oribas hard. ‘It’s been seen again. Near Horkaslet. If you still say you can lay it to rest, then you and Jonnic and I can leave to hunt it in the morning.’
Oribas stretched out his hands. When the Marroc talked to him, they talked of little but shadewalkers and sometimes the Edge of Sorrows and what he knew about both. They’d been waiting for this. ‘Salt? Iron? Water? Fire? You have these things?’
‘You have the fire. Water is all around you. Iron and salt we have. Jonnic?’
Jonnic disappeared outside. When he came back, he was holding a sword in a scabbard crusted with snow. He looked Oribas in the eye and leaned into him and drew out the blade. It was old but clean and meticulously oiled. ‘Not a forkbeard sword, this. An old Marroc one. Hard iron.’ He slammed it back into its scabbard and handed it to Addic.
They left not long after the next dawn on the back of three mules, ploughing a path through the fresh snow down the little valley from Brawlic’s farm, following a small fast river until it turned to run between two peaks towards the valley of the Isset. Jonnic led them to a place where one of the great Varyxhun pines had fallen across the water. He dismounted and gingerly led his mule across the giant trunk. Oribas and Addic followed, and together they climbed a steep twisting trail that rose up the other side of the valley towards the next ridge. The Marroc didn’t talk, and by the end of the day they were across a high snow-bound pass and into the next valley a
long. They spent the night in the barn of some farmer that both Addic and Jonnic knew, the Marroc leaving Oribas with the mules while they went into the house. Addic came back out with a bowl of stew despairingly similar to the ones Oribas had so happily left behind. They slept not long after sunset and rose again early in the morning, reaching a hamlet by the middle of the day that was little more than a dozen houses and barns. Addic talked to one of the Marroc, who nodded and pointed and made a sign against evil, and Oribas didn’t need to hear a word to understand perfectly. Shadewalker. That way. So they set off across snow-covered fields, all of them more upright in their saddles now. Jonnic held his head craned forward, making little jerking movements from side to side. Addic’s foot twitched. About a mile from the hamlet they stopped at the edge of a dense stand of pines, black against the mottled mountainside, and Addic pointed. ‘It’s in there.’
‘I’ve never faced a shadewalker before,’ Oribas told him. ‘I know what they are and I know what will stop one but I’ve never faced one.’ Shadewalkers preferred dark places. Places with no sun, which was why they rarely came to the desert.
‘You should have told us that before we left, Oribas.’ Addic slipped off the back of his mule.
Jonnic stayed where he was. He spat. ‘If we were going to get rid of this Aulian, here would do. Far enough away from old Brawlic that the forkbeards would never suspect even if they found him.’
Addic snorted. ‘And bring them down on Ronnelic and Jonna and Ylya and Massic and the rest? Why, have they done something to offend you?’
Oribas yawned with a careful precision. ‘In Aulia it is considered impolite to discuss a man’s murder while he’s standing right in front of you. I would hate to inconvenience your friends with my death. Perhaps it would be more convenient for us all if I were to stay alive?’
Addic laughed. ‘I’m sorry about Jonnic. He hasn’t quite grasped the idea that there are people in the world who are neither his Marroc friends nor forkbeards out to hang him.’
