by Nathan Hawke
‘Give it to me.’ Oribas reached out but Jonnic jumped away as though the Aulian was a snake. Eventually the Marroc got a flame going and lit a brand. Oribas took careful steps closer, looking for the line of the salt. Salt and snow. Belatedly he realised how lucky they were that the trees here were dense enough to keep most of the snow off the forest floor. Out in the fields under their blankets of white his circle of salt would never have worked.
The shadewalker stepped back as though daring him to cross. It was watching him. Oribas took a fistful each of saltpetre and powdered metal from his pouch and crossed the line. The shadewalker sprang at him at once but Oribas was ready. He threw the powders in its face and stepped smartly back, stumbling a little as its sword swung past him. ‘Now burn it!’
Jonnic stood frozen. Addic snatched the torch and threw it, straight and true. It hit the shadewalker in the chest and a whoosh of flame shot up. It dropped its sword and staggered, stumbling this way and that, trying to get away from the fire. Oribas picked up a lump of snow and hurled it. ‘Cold pure water.’ The flames were dying already, the metal and the saltpetre enough to scorch it but never enough to set it alight. He’d heard of some people using oil to burn the creatures, and Gallow said the Marroc of Andhun made an oil from fish which ran like warm honey and burned as easily as dried grass, but so far he hadn’t seen a drop of it among the Marroc of the mountains.
Addic gave him a bemused look and then he and Jonnic began to pelt the shadewalker with snow. Oribas filled his hands with salt again. As the shadewalker reeled he stepped back into the circle and threw both handfuls. The shadewalker hissed and crackled, its skin blackening. A terrible smell knotted Oribas’s stomach. The creature’s struggles stopped. It fell to its knees and pitched forward and lay still on its soft bed of fallen needles and sparse trampled snow. The Marroc stared at it.
‘Is it dead?’
‘It was already dead,’ said Oribas. ‘That wasn’t as much flame or salt as there should have been. It must have been weak already. It’ll be still for a while now. An iron sword through the heart will end it for ever.’
Neither Marroc moved. Oribas rolled his eyes. He crossed the line of salt and knelt beside the prone shadewalker and started pulling at its mail. The Marroc just stared and backed away, and it was hard work doing it on his own because the shadewalker was big and heavy and stank enough to make him gag, and there was always the nagging worry that maybe his books were wrong and everything he’d heard wasn’t quite as he remembered it and the shadewalker wasn’t in a torpor that would last for hours, and what, exactly, was he going to do if it started moving again before he was finished?
He rolled it over, tipped another handful of salt over its face and went back to struggling to haul its mail high enough over its chest for someone to stab it through the heart. Addic came to help him at last and then Jonnic, both of them ashen-faced and quivering like squirrels but at least they had an urgency to them. When it was done, Oribas stood up. The two Marroc scuttled back, scuffing his circle of salt to ruin, a carelessness that would have earned Oribas a week of cleaning chores back when he’d been learning his craft. The three of them stood together, looking. Underneath its mail, the shadewalker’s clothes were rotten and ragged and stained.
‘Where do they come from?’ asked Jonnic. Oribas shook his head.
‘Aulia. The end of days, but no one knows for sure how they came to rise. The armour, their swords, their clothes, all these say they were the emperor’s guard at the fall. No one knows exactly what happened. Not the start of it. When the city of Aulia itself died, it was no surprise that the rest of the empire collapsed. But as to how Aulia died?’ He shrugged. ‘As the histories I learned tell it, a black mist fell over the city that lasted for three days, and when it lifted, every single creature was dead. The few who escaped before it engulfed them say the mist swept outward from the imperial palace, but as to its cause?’ He crouched down beside the dead thing, screwed up his face, fingers pushing down into ragged clothes and the cold dead flesh, searching for the gap between the ribs. ‘Aulia was built on the slopes of a volcano. The emperors were ever digging tunnels under their palaces, always deeper. It’s said the last one was searching for an entrance to the underworld, looking for his wife and sons lost at sea ten years before, but the Aulians were always diggers, always tunnelling under the earth. My teacher thought perhaps they broke open a monstrous cave filled with poisonous gas, for such things do occur and there had been times before when the mountain leaked fire from its summit and belched poison from the many caves and tunnels that riddled its flanks.’ He stared at the shadewalker. Fumes, his master had always insisted. Poisonous air from the mountain that found a way from deep inside the earth through the emperor’s tunnels; but Oribas knew of no gas that would make a dead man rise and walk the earth and neither did anyone else. ‘Some say the emperor’s tunnels finally reached the underworld and that a part of the underworld spilled out as a result. A punishment from the gods.’
‘Modris and Diaran protect us,’ whispered Jonnic, and both the Marroc made little signs to ward away evil. Oribas had seen Gallow do the same. He’d always laughed at such superstition, but not now, not with a dead shadewalker right here in front of him.
No, not dead, not yet. ‘You need to finish him.’ Addic handed Oribas the iron sword without even looking at him. Oribas waved him away. ‘I’ve never held a sword in my life save to carry it from one place to another and I do not intend to start. You can do it. A simple thrust.’ He poked himself in the chest over his own heart and then poked the shadewalker. ‘Here. Between the ribs. Drive it deep and hard.’
Addic offered the sword to Jonnic. Jonnic shook his head and backed hurriedly away as though Addic was mad. Oribas stayed where he was, kneeling beside the shadewalker with fingers held where the sword would need to go. His hands were shaking. Addic lifted the sword and held it, point down and his hands were shaking too. He let the tip rest on the shadewalker’s chest.
‘There.’ Oribas backed away. Addic’s knuckles were clenched white. The Marroc muttered a prayer and rammed the sword hard down into the dead thing’s flesh. At first nothing happened. The shadewalker didn’t move or make a sound save for a twitch as the sword drove into it.
‘Is it dead?’ Addic stayed where he was, staring. Oribas found he didn’t know. All he’d learned on shadewalkers and how to bind them and confine them and put them to rest but no one had said what happened afterwards. Some sort of release of the energy that held them between life and death seemed expected.
‘Look!’ Jonnic pointed. The shadewalker’s flesh was starting to darken, only a tinge at first but then spreading rapidly. Its belly swelled up and then collapsed in on itself. Addic reeled away at the smell, the spell broken. Oribas caught a lungful of it and threw up, staggering away, scuffing the circle of salt himself this time.
‘Gods preserve us!’ He threw a handful of snow in his face and drew in lungfuls of clean air well away from the shadewalker. It was the sort of smell he was sure he would carry with him for ever, just a whiff of it, always in his clothes and his hair and on his skin. They gathered themselves together and went back to look, hands held over their mouths. Where the shadewalker had lain was now no more than a collection of bones. A skeleton dressed in rotten cloth and rusted mail.
‘I’d swear that was a forkbeard when it was alive,’ muttered Jonnic, and Oribas wondered if he might be right.
‘Best forkbeard I’ve seen for a while then,’ said Addic. ‘Wish they were all like that.’ He turned and a smile broke over his face and he grabbed Jonnic by the arms and shook him. ‘Look! Look at it! Look at what we did! We killed a shadewalker!’
‘You killed it, you mean,’ said Jonnic. He looked distant and thoughtful, then a smile settled on his face too. ‘We did, didn’t we? We really did.’
Addic grabbed Oribas. ‘They can be killed! They can!’
‘Put to rest,’ said Oribas mildly.
‘Aulian, don’t you see
what this means? We can send the shadewalkers away!’
‘I’m hoping it means you’re not going to throw me into a ravine now,’ said Oribas, and then he smiled too, because the flowering of understanding in another man was always a joy to see, whoever they were. ‘Also food and shelter for the rest of the winter would be nice. Until the snows clear and I can make my way back over the pass. Do you think you could do it again now you know that it can be done?’
They rode back to the half-dozen houses that made up the hamlet of Horkaslet. Since no one would believe what had happened until they saw the evidence with their own eyes, Jonnic dragged the Marroc out of their houses and their barns to come across the fields. And after that, when they’d seen it, they forgot what they’d been doing and broke out the best food they had and got roaring drunk on mead and ale, both drinks that Oribas had never met before and hoped very much to meet again. The Marroc ate until their bellies were swollen. They sang songs and talked the stupid talk of drunk men, about how Addic and Jonnic would ride and rid the mountain valleys of the shadewalkers and then rid them of the forkbeards too while they were at it, until they all passed out in a stupor.
The three stayed another day and spent that evening doing more of the same before Addic decided they ought to be going back. They took their time about leaving, and as their mules plodded down the valley, Addic asked all manner of questions. He asked where to get the powder that made them burn – which Oribas didn’t know, this side of the mountains, but he described the fish oil, and Addic nodded – and about shadewalkers and what had made them and about Aulia and about what other magic Oribas knew, until Oribas had to tell him there was no magic to it at all, but if they could find a way to get back his satchel from where he’d left it hanging over the Isset then he’d be happy to show them a trick or two.
They sheltered for the night in another barn with another farmer who knew Addic and Jonnic well enough but laughed heartily at their stories of killing a shadewalker. He told them they should drink less and looked askance at Oribas and his strange skin. After they left him, Addic was sombre. ‘Three, this winter. Three seen already and the real cold hasn’t come yet,’ and Oribas had no answer to that; but later another thought crossed his mind.
‘There’s one thing I would ask of you. I’d like to know what happened to my friend, the Lhosir who saved your life, Addic. I would like to know if Gallow is still alive. Is there a way, do you think, to find out?’
9
BRAWLIC’S FARM
Beyard led the Lhosir from Varyxhun back down the high mountain pass. He rode at the front and now and then stopped and got off his horse and knelt down in the snow and pushed his face towards it and sniffed. Men left traces. Not only the tread of their boots but a deeper mark. It was said among the Lhosir that no one could evade the Fateguard once they had the sight of the Eyes of Time upon them, and it was true. Beyard closed his eyes behind his mask and touched the iron to the snow and knew, without knowing how, that two men had passed this way days ago, the two men that he was following. The essence of their presence remained.
He did it over and over again until he lost count of how many times, but as the light was starting to fade he did it once more and found they were not there, and knew that they’d left the Varyxhun Road. He turned the grumbling Lhosir around and led them back until he found a winding twisting track where men had passed since the last heavy snows. He sniffed again. This was the way.
He knew where they were going now. The track wound back and forth over a ridge and down into one of the higher valleys. From the top he saw smoke a few miles away. Chimney smoke. He stopped and pointed. ‘That’s where we sleep tonight.’
The Lhosir moved with purpose now, hurrying down the ridge before the day ended and plunged them into the deep quick darkness that came after a mountain sunset. They wove between stands of towering Varyxhun pines, across the uneven ground and the thick drifts of snow. They lost sight of the smoke, and when the last rays of the sun sank below the horizon they started to mutter among themselves. All of them knew how cold the mountainsides became at night and how quickly any warmth faded. Beyard snarled at them. Cold? He felt nothing else. Out here in the snow and ice and the falling dark, or in a warm summer meadow with the sun blazing down, or standing in the flickering orange glare of a funeral pyre. Always the same. Always cold.
He whipped them with words and it wasn’t quite full dark when they spied the farmhouse ahead of them again, large and welcoming with its warmth, firelight flickering between the cracks in the shutters and sparks rising into the night from the chimney. One house for one family of Marroc, a couple of barns for the animals. Beyard felt the mood around him change. An easy fight, a full belly, mead and a warm place to sleep – yes, the Lhosir weren’t muttering now – they were eager, but the coldness inside Beyard only bit deeper. None of those pleasures were his any more. Pleasures were forgotten things among the Fateguard. Cold and iron and the weave of fate were all he’d know for the rest of time. The Beyard of long ago yearned for something else, but that Beyard was a distant voice now, all but lost in a blizzard of howls.
The Lhosir dismounted and left their horses far enough from the farm not to be heard. They argued about what to do with Gallow, whether to leave him with a couple of men to watch him or to take him with them; and in the end they took him because they couldn’t agree on who’d stay behind to do the watching. Beyard undid his bonds and tied him again, this time with his hands behind his back. ‘So you don’t throw anyone into something that’s not good for them, nioingr.’
‘That’s the second time you’ve called me that, old friend.’ Gallow’s voice was as cold as the snow. ‘A third time and it’s axes and shields.’ Under his mask the old Beyard stirred at that. Might even have smiled. Axes and shields. The right way to settle matters, not some spiritless hanging.
He pushed the Foxbeard on, letting the other Lhosir lead the way. The deep twilight was perfect. The Marroc would be inside and huddled around their fire. They’d probably eaten and they’d be sleepy. Might be as many as a dozen living here but only a handful would be fighting men. If it came to that then it would be bloody and short and swift, and the women and children would answer his questions, not the men. The women always knew all the secrets; and they always talked when you held their children over a fire for long enough. And once they’d talked, Beyard let them go. Lhosir didn’t make war on women and children.
They were almost at the house, creeping through the snow, voices dropped to whispers, swords already out of their scabbards. The Lhosir at the front were creeping around the wall towards the door, peeking in through the cracks in the shutters when Gallow turned. ‘If the Aulian is here, he’s done nothing wrong, Beyard.’ He stopped.
Beyard pushed him on. ‘There was an Aulian. Arithas threw him into the ravine.’
‘Two men came down the Varyxhun Road. There was only one Marroc that day. Oribas knows Solace for what it is. He’d know to take it and hide it.’ The Foxbeard didn’t believe in his own words though. It was hope without conviction.
‘Your Aulian is a witch, is he? A man who can fly?’ But Beyard frowned under his mask as he spoke. No way to know who made the tracks he was following, but it was a long way to climb just to go back for a sword unless you knew exactly what it was you were looking for. And how would some Marroc know the Comforter when he saw it? ‘Did you truly bring it back?’ He didn’t need to ask, not really. In the snow where Gallow had said to look, he’d felt the residue of something that wasn’t a man. The remains of a strand of fate that belonged to something other.
‘I did.’
‘Why?’
The Foxbeard looked at him as though the question had never crossed his mind. ‘What else would I do with it, old friend? Who else should carry its curse?’
The Lhosir were at the farmhouse doors now, waiting for his signal. ‘Kneel.’ Beyard pressed Gallow down into the snow. He took another piece of rope and bound Gallow’s wrists to his ankles. �
�I have your oath that you won’t run.’
‘You do.’
‘What does your Aulian look like?’
‘Like an Aulian. Short and dark to our eyes.’
Beyard looked up and down the valley. Even if Gallow broke his oath there was nowhere for him to go. Hobbled as he was he’d never get back to the horses, and out here at night a man would freeze to death and Gallow wasn’t strong, not now, not after crossing the mountains. ‘If I don’t find you here when I come back then I will hunt out your family. If they’re still alive, I’ll give them to Hrothin.’
He left Gallow there and headed for the farmhouse, waving at the Lhosir to break in. Dressed in all his clanking iron, a Fateguard was never good for stealth. Being noticed was what they were for after all; and so he left the other Lhosir to smash in the door to the Marroc farm and start the shouting and the screaming and, even though he ran after them, by the time Beyard crashed in, they were almost done. Three Marroc men lay dead or dying. Women wailed. One of them ran for a window and hurled herself at it, bursting through the shutters. A big man with an axe threw himself at the Lhosir going after her and got himself skewered for his troubles. The last man went down a moment later and Beyard was left with a couple of Marroc women huddled quivering in a corner together and four children. The dead men scattered around the farmhouse floor were armed too well to be mere farmers.
‘Bordas, Torjik, go and get the woman back. She can’t have gone far. Niflas, go with them. Bring the Foxbeard in here before he freezes.’ He turned to the cowering women and children and crouched in front of them, the iron mask of the Fateguard looming in their faces. They were terrified and they were right to be. ‘Listen well, Marroc. Tell me what I want to know and I’ll leave you be. Deny me and I will turn my back and let my soldiers do as they will. Two men came here some days ago. One of them may have been hurt.’ He paused, watching their eyes, all of them. There was always one face to give the truth away; and yes, they knew the men he meant. His eyes settled on the one who gave away most. A boy a few years short of being a man. ‘They had an unusual sword. Long and with a touch of red to its blade.’ Yes. Solace had come here. ‘And was one of them perhaps a stranger? A foreigner? A darkskin?’ Yes to that too, but something was wrong. There were no glances towards the bodies as he asked his questions. The men and the sword had been here, that was clear, but now they were gone?
