by Nathan Hawke
‘I’ve quite grasped the Vathen,’ snapped Jonnic. He glared at Oribas. ‘When I cut a man’s throat, his body goes in the Isset. Won’t be a trouble to anyone. No inconvenience.’
Oribas spared him a smile. ‘Then I shall remain glad that it’s Addic and not you who carries the iron sword.’ He turned away from Jonnic with as much bad grace as his Aulian manners could muster. ‘An iron sword driven through the shadewalker’s heart will kill it. Steel will sometimes work but more usually the creature appears to have been slain only to rise again in the days or weeks that follow. I’ve heard of the same shadewalker being put to rest four times before it stayed at peace, but when you truly kill it, you will know. There will be no doubt.’ Just saying the words made him think of the Edge of Sorrows and all the names that the Marroc and the Lhosir had for the red sword. Was that what it was for? Putting shadewalkers to rest? ‘Shadewalkers were knights once, soldiers of the Aulian emperor. They remember little of who they were but they have not forgotten their skill. Most still carry their old swords and armour.’
‘We know.’ Addic’s lips were pressed tight together. ‘We’ve seen them. Too many of them.’
‘The sword-dancers learn to fight with such skill that they can cut the armour from a shadewalker’s skin and pierce its dead bones with one thrust. The shadow-stalkers learn ways to make a shadewalker so weak that it can barely move. We have neither here, but we will confront it as though we have both. Whoever takes the sword must make the final thrust, but you must also defend us while I weaken it. Where’s the salt?’
Addic jerked his thumb at a sack strapped to the back of his saddle.
‘Addic, if you carry the sword then your friend Jonnic will need a torch and some of the salt as well. The shadewalker cannot cross a line of salt. I’ll trap it in a circle. Once that is done, the rest is much easier. I will throw furnace powders over the creature and Jonnic will set his torch to it. When it flares you must all stand back, but be ready, for it will only burn a moment. As the flames die we throw pure water and more salt. If we strike well, it will fall as though dead, but don’t be fooled. The iron sword must finish the creature. Is your point good and sharp?’
‘You know all this but you’ve never faced one of these creatures?’ Jonnic looked ready to run.
‘I’ve seen it done. Where I come from there were men who would hunt them and bring them to my school just so that we could be shown.’
They entered the trees on foot, the pines packed too closely for mules and so dark that they would quickly be lost. Addic took the lead, Jonnic came at the rear. They moved slowly and with care, squeezing between the branches.
‘You’ll need to lure the creature into open ground,’ Oribas whispered. A circle of salt would be almost impossible amid these trees.
‘And how will I do that?’ hissed Addic.
‘My understanding is that shadewalkers are very easily lured.’
‘Lured how?’
Oribas tried to sound unconcerned, as though he was talking about trapping a badger or a hare. ‘As with any hungry animal, one baits one’s trap with food, Addic.’ They all knew he meant them.
‘Have you ever see a man taken by a shadewalker, Aulian?’ whispered Jonnic behind him. ‘Their faces are . . .’ His words faded. Oribas understood. The faces of their victims were the worst. They were unrecognisable. Thin and stretched as though they’d been sucked to nothing from the inside.
‘Yes,’ he said quietly. ‘I have. I lost a friend once and I’ve seen other victims too.’ The friend had been more Gallow’s friend than his but they’d travelled for many miles and many days together. He’d died in the foothills along the Aulian Way and Oribas hadn’t been there to tell Gallow and his sailors how to fight them. Too busy chasing a monster of his own.
The trees shivered and rustled ahead of them. Too much for a small forest creature and something as large as a deer wasn’t likely to come into a wood like this. A bear? Oribas wasn’t sure but the idea of a bear frightened him even more than a shadewalker. Salt wouldn’t stop a bear. His fingers drifted to his belt, opening the pouches lined with waxed paper that held his saltpetre and the fierce-burning powdered grey metal that came from the alchemists near his old home. Would a flash of fire scare off a bear? He had no idea. Deserts didn’t have bears. From the way Gallow had talked, probably not.
A branch cracked. A shape emerged from the gloom ahead, ragged clothes hanging over rusting mail, an old round wooden shield, scarred and stained, and a long notched sword almost trailing in the blanket of needles that covered the forest floor. Face as pale as the snow, eyes wide open, skin taut over the bones of its face, the shadewalker came towards them at a steady pace, without a sound save for its footsteps and the whip of a branch now and then as it brushed across its shield. In front of Oribas, Addic froze.
‘Modris protect us,’ he croaked.
‘Diaran!’ cried Jonnic behind them. He took a pace back and then another. As the shadewalker advanced, he turned and ran. Jonnic, who held the torch and so their fire. Oribas stumbled as Addic backed into him.
‘What do I do?’ the Marroc quavered.
Oribas backed away too, grabbing a fistful of salt from the bag over his shoulder. A man could always outrun a shadewalker if his legs were good. Why were these Marroc so afraid?
The shadewalker lifted its sword as it came closer, one of the old blades of the Aulian emperor’s guard. Fine swords if you could find one in good repair and they reminded Oribas of the long-bladed Edge of Sorrows. The Marroc had left the red sword at home and he thought now they might wish they hadn’t. Addic lifted his shield to defend himself, but he was still backing away and he was white with fear.
‘It’s just a man who forgot when to die,’ hissed Oribas. He stepped around Addic and threw a handful of salt at the shadewalker’s face. It rained down in a fine dust. The shadewalker stopped and hissed; for a moment its guard was down but Addic was too gripped by fear to strike at it. Oribas threw down a line of salt across the earth between them. ‘It cannot cross!’ He shifted around between the trees, laying down more salt, trying to encircle the shadewalker.
The creature cleared its eyes. It advanced on Addic again and then reached the salted earth and stopped. Its head whipped around to Oribas as though it understood exactly what the Aulian was doing.
‘Get your friend Jonnic back here!’
‘Jonnic!’
The shadewalker turned. It walked quickly now, straight at Oribas, swinging its sword in its hand. Oribas laid another line of salt. ‘Can you make fire? Do you have what you need?’ He watched Addic fumble in his bag and then shake his head. The shadewalker stopped abruptly again a few feet from Oribas, held by the salt a second time. Its eyes were white and a blue like water from a glacier. Oribas hadn’t even known what a glacier was until Gallow had dragged him over the mountains, but he’d seen eyes like these before. Gallow had them. Ice-man eyes they called them in the desert, always had, even long ago, and now he wondered: where had these shadewalkers come from, these men who’d once guarded the old emperors of the world? Too tall and broad-shouldered to be Marroc, too pale-skinned to be Aulian. Or did the pale skin and those eyes simply come as a part of what made them?
They stared at one another. When Oribas walked toward the end of the arc of salt, the shadewalker moved with him. It kept moving, stepping gingerly along the line until it found its end and looked up. Its dead face didn’t change but perhaps its eyes gleamed a little brighter as it sensed its victory. It advanced quickly. Addic cried out, turned and ran while Oribas simply stepped over the line of salt to be on the other side. The shadewalker came at him, stopped abruptly at the salt and began to walk along the line again, looking for a way past. Oribas tracked the arc of salt he’d laid out, slowly and carefully, trying not to look at the shadewalker stalking the edge of his barrier. He moved from one end to the other and laid down another line. The shadewalker ignored him until it found a way through, but Oribas stepped calmly over the salt
a second time and then stood and waited. The arc was three quarters of a circle now. ‘One more dance, restless one?’
As soon as the shadewalker started looking for a way past again, Oribas ran, dropping salt as he went. When he was done he stepped back and watched. For a time the shadewalker followed the line. After it had gone round the inside of the circle three times, it stopped and turned to stare at him.
Oribas bowed. ‘Can we both agree that you will wait here while I find my friends?’
7
THE RAVINE
Beyard demanded Gallow’s oath not to run away and so Gallow gave it to him. Now he was in his mail and with his shield and helm, sitting on the back of a borrowed horse with the ironskin and a dozen Lhosir around him. Two were the men he’d faced on the Aulian Way – Arithas and Hrothin – and they stared at him with open hatred and spat at his feet and growled nioingr to his face. Gallow wondered at the return of his mail and his shield and helm, but those were in case of Marroc archers hiding in the woods. It seemed that among the villages in the high hills the Marroc were almost in open revolt.
‘We know about you, nioingr,’ snarled Hrothin.
‘That’s twice, Hrothin. Call me that a third time and you’ll have to give me a sword and let me kill you,’ said Gallow coldly. Beyard snarled and the two Lhosir backed away, their surly glances raking over him.
‘Those two will be your watchers.’ Beyard watched them go. ‘One of the men you killed was Hrothin’s brother. He has a blood feud with you now.’
‘You’re going to hang me, old friend. Hrothin will be disappointed.’
Beyard dangled Gallow’s locket in the air between them, the one with a snip of Arda’s hair inside. ‘A feud is settled between families, Gallow, not just the men who start it. I can give him yours if I choose.’ There was little of Beyard’s face to see through the iron mask and crown he wore. Certainly not his eyes. ‘They’re only Marroc.’
Gallow’s voice dropped. ‘The Beyard I once knew would never sully himself like that.’
‘But I am of the Fateguard now. I serve other ends.’ Was that a glimmer of resentment lingering in there for whatever the Eyes of Time did to make the servants of fate as they were? ‘I know you didn’t slay the Screambreaker, as so many say you did, but you still led Marroc men against their king, you struck Yurlak’s son and took his hand and now you’ve killed two of your kinsmen without cause. What would your old friend say to that, Gallow?’
‘He’d ask why I did each of those things and he’d listen as I told him. Perhaps he might even agree I was right.’
They spent three long days plodding up the Aulian Way through ice and trampled snow. The fourth took them up into the start of the mountain pass where Gallow had first met Addic. The snowfalls since had been light but it still took hours of searching to find where Gallow had killed Fahred, walking their horses slowly along the road, Hrothin and Arithas pointing to features of the landscape here and there – No, it was further than this; I remember that stone on the way back; No, too far – but it was the horse tracks that settled it, for the Lhosir had dismounted to fight and no one else had been foolhardy enough to take a horse up the narrow path of the pass in deep snow. They found the place where they’d run up the slope after the Marroc, the snow still pockmarked by their steps, and then the scar in the white where the Marroc had fallen and slid and almost gone over the edge. They found where Gallow had killed Hrothin’s brother and, as they burrowed into the snow, the stains of his blood.
Gallow watched. There were other tracks here. Someone had come back after the fight. Hard to say whether it was one man or two, certainly not more, but the way the snow had been scattered about made it clear they’d been looking for something. The Lhosir poked about until Beyard pushed them all away.
‘Back! Before you make it worse!’ He turned to Gallow, face hidden behind his mask. ‘Are you lying, Foxbeard? Was the sword never here?’ But he knew better. Arithas and Hrothin hadn’t paid it much thought at the time but they’d noticed the blade he’d drawn was longer than they were used to and remembered it falling into the snow. They’d been there and they’d seen it, even if they hadn’t known the Edge of Sorrows for what it was.
The Lhosir untied him from his saddle and pulled him down and Gallow walked up the road, tracing the fight in his head. Arithas and Hrothin had beaten him down where Beyard was sniffing at the snow. One Lhosir had come further past, a few yards on to where Oribas had been. The snow there was churned and trampled, most of it pushed over the edge. A struggle, perhaps. The Marroc they’d saved must have run but Gallow couldn’t see any other prints. He’d run through his old tracks then, which made sense because he’d have been quicker that way too.
Gallow looked over the edge. Trails of snow lay in broken lumps down the side of the ravine, but when he looked up the snow was pristine. It had fallen from the road then. Someone had gone over. Oribas, as Beyard had said; and then he saw the Aulian’s satchel still hanging from the dead branch of a broken tree, a dozen feet below him.
When he turned, Arithas and Hrothin were right behind him. He looked them up and down. ‘Which one of you threw him over?’
Arithas sneered. ‘He didn’t even—’
Beyard had tied Gallow’s hands in front of him so he could knot them to his saddle. Gallow grabbed two fistfuls of Arithas’s furs and dropped to his knees. He drove his head into the Lhosir’s groin and pulled, hard. Arithas doubled up and pitched forward onto Gallow’s back. Gallow straightened, pulled him off his feet and let go. By the time Arithas even knew what was happening, he was over the edge. He shrieked once and then Gallow heard the crack of him hitting a boulder and the rattle of falling stones over the echoing hiss of the Isset below.
Hrothin grabbed him. ‘And over you go too, nioingr!’
Gallow’s fingers closed on Hrothin. ‘Third time. Shall we go together then, brother?’ he hissed. They were face to face, nose to nose.
‘Hrothin!’
Beyard was too far away, though, and Hrothin’s blood was up. ‘Filthy nioingr!’
‘Fourth time.’ Gallow spat in his face. ‘You have to stand by those words with steel now.’
‘I have to stand by nothing for you, Marroc!’
‘Hrothin!’ This time Beyard’s shout was so loud and deep that it seemed to rumble through the ground itself and at the same time shake the air. Beyard was stamping through the snow towards them.
‘You must get cold out here under all that iron,’ Gallow said.
‘Where’s Arithas?’
Hrothin snarled. ‘The nioingr threw him over the edge.’
The iron mask turned to Gallow. Beyard’s voice shook with cold fury. ‘You’ll hang for what you are, Gallow. A nioingr. No one will speak you out. No one will say your name. You’ll be spat upon and dogs will eat the scraps of you and you’ll be forgotten. You’ll not cheat that fate. I’d thought you a better man, but Ironhand was right to name you Foxbeard. Leave him, Hrothin. Arithas was an idiot.’ He pushed the two Lhosir apart and then punched Gallow in the face, the iron gauntlet smashing his nose and jarring loose a tooth. Gallow hardly saw it coming. He staggered back. As he did, Beyard stooped and snatched one foot from under him, tipping him over onto the road. The Fateguard dragged him by his foot through the snow and dumped him by the other Lhosir riders.
‘Two men came here after the fight. They’ve already taken what we’re looking for. They walked down the road and now we’ve trampled their tracks. One of them was hurt. He was leaning on the other.’ He drove a boot into Gallow’s ribs. ‘Put this one back on his horse and tie him to it. We’re hunting for Marroc now. If he gives any more trouble, cut off a foot. Or a hand. Yes, a hand. The king would like that.’
Gallow spat blood into the snow. ‘I gave no oath about not killing your men, my friend. And that one murdered Oribas.’ But quietly he wondered. Two men walked away? One of them was surely the Marroc. But the other?
8
THE BURNING
&n
bsp; Oribas took his time leaving the wood, partly to give his heart a chance to stop beating so fast, and in part because he managed to get lost on the way out and wander through a lot more trees than he had on the way in. The Marroc were waiting in the middle of the field, sitting on their mules, watching like a pair of scared starlings ready to take flight the moment anything came out. They looked at Oribas in amazement.
‘I have it trapped,’ he said as he reached them. ‘I’ll need your help to kill it. Fire and cold iron. I’ll need your sword.’ When neither of them moved he poked Addic in the leg. ‘Well? Shall we put a shadewalker to rest or shall we wait for the next rain or snow to take away my salt and let it go?’
Addic dismounted. Jonnic stayed where he was at first, but when Oribas reached the edge of the trees, he got down and followed. They let Oribas lead the way this time and he heard them whispering, cautiously but not cautiously enough, in the stillness under the trees. What if he’s leading us to it? But that’s exactly what he’s doing! But what if it’s a trap? Have you lost your head? I mean he’s an Aulian too: what if he’s in league with the shadewalkers? Idiot. At least there was no talk of throwing him into a ravine this time.
The shadewalker was where Oribas had left it, standing as still as a statue as though it had grasped the futility of trying to break the circle of salt and was simply waiting for it to go away. Addic and Jonnic crowded behind Oribas, who still wondered at their fear: if his circle of salt had failed then the shadewalker wouldn’t be here. The hard part came when one of them had to step inside to finish it.
‘Now what?’ asked Addic.
‘Light a torch.’
Jonnic fumbled with a tinderbox, dropped it, picked it up, struck a few sparks and burned his hand. He couldn’t take his eyes off the shadewalker.
