Cold Redemption

by Nathan Hawke

  ‘Not a move, Aulian,’ the spearman growled.

  The iron man tore off his gauntlets and the mask and crown and clawed at his face. His skin was sallow and greasy, his hair lank and ragged, but he was no shadewalker.

  The spear point dug into his skin. ‘What have you done, Aulian?’

  ‘Salt,’ gasped Oribas. ‘Only salt. I thought he was a shadewalker!’

  The Lhosir roared with laughter and the spear withdrew a little. ‘Salt in the eyes of a Fateguard? Maker-Devourer, but that’s a thing. You have a fierce heart in there, Aulian.’ The Lhosir’s eyes gleamed and the spear waved over his face again. ‘Stay right where you are if you want to keep it beating.’

  The iron-skinned man rubbed snow in his face. He took his time and then slowly replaced his mask and crown and his gauntlets. He turned to Oribas, who squirmed with fear again, not sure which looked worse, the iron man or the spear that would skewer him if he moved. The iron man growled. ‘Let him up, Niflas. If he runs, catch him.’

  Niflas lifted his spear and backed away, laughing. ‘This one? He couldn’t run from a flock of angry birds.’

  ‘If he gets away from you I’ll make a cloak out of your lungs.’ The iron man came closer.

  Oribas stared up as the Fateguard towered over him. ‘What are you?’

  The iron man ignored his question. ‘Aulians don’t come over the mountains any more. You’re the first that isn’t a shadewalker for twenty years. But you didn’t come alone, did you?’

  The Aulian didn’t even blink but Beyard saw the answer in the sparkle of his eyes. He nodded, as much to himself as to anyone. ‘No, I know who you are. You came across the mountains with Gallow the smith’s son, Gallow Truesword, Gallow the Foxbeard.’

  Foxbeard. The Aulian’s eyes flinched and gave him away. So Gallow had called himself Foxbeard, the name King Medrin had given him.

  Beyard looked over his shoulder. They had the second Marroc now. He’d take them inside and deal with them properly: show them their women and their sons and daughters, still alive and unharmed, and tell them exactly what they would have to do to keep them that way. There would be no mercy for the men and they’d know it. Pointless to pretend otherwise, but he’d send them back for Cithjan’s judgment for the sake of things.

  He turned to the Aulian again and held out Gallow’s locket. ‘The Foxbeard. He’s still alive.’ Strange, the flash of glee he felt at that, same as when Gallow had thrown Arithas into the ravine. ‘Why did he come back. Because of this?’ He waved the locket. Wide eyes said yes. Sixfingers would never believe it but Beyard did for he’d seen the same answer in Gallow’s own eyes. All this way for a woman. For his sons, and so that was how Beyard would find him again. He looked at the Aulian, peering hard as if he could look inside the man. ‘And you? Will he come for you?’ The Aulian thought not. Beyard’s eyes bored harder in, searching the twisted skeins of fate that ran though him and finding strangely little. ‘What have you done, Aulian? What is your crime?’

  The Aulian shook his head. ‘None . . . nothing.’

  ‘Then why are you are afraid?’

  ‘You . . . I am afraid of you.’

  Underneath his mask Beyard’s face didn’t change. Of course you are, Aulian. ‘But there’s more. What are you hiding?’ The Aulian shook his head. ‘But I smell a death on you, Aulian. You have killed.’ A strange death, though. Not fresh but old as stone.

  The Aulian closed his eyes. His head drooped as though he was announcing his own death. ‘A shadewalker. I helped to lay a shadewalker to rest.’

  Beyard sat back on his haunches. So it wasn’t the red sword. Killing a shadewalker – that wasn’t what he’d expected at all but the Aulian wasn’t lying. The Fateguard cocked his head. ‘You’re a brave man to face one, Aulian, and a clever one to win. You should be proud, but all I see is fear. Why so afraid?’

  He asked about the red sword but all he got was confusion. The Aulian knew exactly what it was but he had no idea of the where and so Beyard let him be, telling the Lhosir to treat him well. He’d go back to Cithjan with the others, but as far as Beyard could see he’d done no wrong. He might even take the Aulian back to Varyxhun himself and let him go; and then he wondered at that. Why? For the Foxbeard? Yes, but then still, why? Why did Gallow’s return trouble him so?

  No matter, not now. He would get to work on the Marroc. They knew where the sword was hidden and it wouldn’t take long to convince them to share their knowledge. As for Gallow, there was only one place he was going. Fate whispered patience in Beyard’s ear and so he took his time. He settled himself in front of what would have been a pleasantly warm fire for any but a Fateguard and stared at the two Marroc. He still had their women and their children, all well and unharmed, all with their fingers and hands still attached in all the right places and none of them scarred by burns, not yet. He showed the Marroc his mercy and explained with slow and careful patience how their womenfolk and their sons and daughters might stay the way they were, and though the Marroc refused to say a word, in the end they gave themselves away, eyes darting here and there, answering his questions without a sound, looking to the place where the sword was hidden. Beyard had his men rip up the floor, had them pull back the skins and furs and dig in the remains of an old firepit beneath. They didn’t have to go far to find a wooden crate half-filled with bundles of arrows and a few old swords underneath. He looked at the Marroc askance when the Lhosir showed him what they’d found and gave a little nod. The Marroc men had sealed their fate and they knew it. Varyxhun would see two more gibbets.

  The red sword wasn’t in there with the rest, but all he had to do was look from the stash of arrows to the quivering women and children and they were telling him before he even said a word, confession flowing out like he’d broken a dam. Hidden under the hay in the barn, and five minutes later he had it in his hand. He swung it in arcs and listened to the air moan as the red steel cut it. The wailing of ruined souls, perhaps, or maybe simply the way the steel had been forged.

  12

  VARYXHUN

  Her name was Achista. He got it out of her after the second night when they were sneaking into the barn of some Marroc farmer she didn’t like. ‘Forvic has a loud mouth when there are none of you forkbeards around but he’s happy enough to take your coin when he thinks there’s no one to notice. It’ll be a pleasure to make some trouble for him.’ Gallow simply nodded and told himself that he wanted no part in this, that it was none of his concern what Marroc did to forkbeards or forkbeards did to Marroc. All he wanted was to go home.

  He touched a hand to his chest, to the locket he’d carried there for the last three years, only to remember that Beyard had it now.

  ‘Praying to your uncaring god, forkbeard?’ Achista settled into farmer Forvic’s hay. Gallow kept carefully away from her. ‘Or are you looking for your heart? Wasting your time there. You lot don’t have any.’

  She didn’t want to hear his story, not at first, but for some reason he needed to tell her. He said little about the early years, fighting in the Screambreaker’s army, killing Marroc left and right. He’d been the same as the rest of them then. They’d none of them seen any wrong in it – just the way of the world, the soldier’s way, the strong taking from the weak – and he could say he was sorry as much as he liked; it changed nothing about what he’d done and she’d never believe him anyway. So he told her the truth and left it that, and then how after the war was done he’d turned his head towards Aulia; how he’d met Arda on the way and all the little things that sparked between them. How she’d shouted as he’d left her to fight the Vathen, how he’d sailed with Medrin to bring the Crimson Shield of Modris back to Andhun, the bargain he’d struck with Corvin Screambreaker and everything that had followed. Years adrift, and now all he wanted was to go home to Nadric’s forge and make nails and wire and horseshoes.

  He thought perhaps she’d fallen asleep long before he finished and perhaps she had, but in the morning when she looked at him he foun
d her face was softer than it had been the night before and she put a hand on his arm instead of poking a knife at his ribs. He saw the fear in her eyes, the almost-knowledge that they were too late, and that was when she told him her name.

  They reached Horkaslet late in the afternoon to find that the Marroc and their strange Aulian friend had left the morning before; and since there was only one trail to be followed for the last few hours to Horkaslet and they hadn’t crossed paths, they both knew it was pointless to go in pursuit. They did anyway, Achista’s face tight with grief amid the joyful Marroc of Horkaslet, still drunk at the slaying of their shadewalker. They rode on into the night and found the farm where Addic and Oribas had stayed only the night before, and in the morning they rose with the dawn and set off for the mountain trail over the ridge into the next valley and Brawlic’s farm. Their Lhosir horse fell lame that afternoon and so they walked the last of the way along the mountain stream, back to the farmstead they’d fled together three nights before. Perhaps the walking was as well, for by the time they saw the gibbet they were both too tired to run. Achista stared while tears ran down her cheeks. Gallow’s stomach clenched with an old anger. At least the hanged man hadn’t been ripped open to have his lungs splayed like wings from his back. Then she ran and Gallow turned his head, not wanting to see any more. Beyard had done this. His oldest friend had hanged this man and Gallow couldn’t bring himself to see what else he’d done inside. He wished he had a sword with which to follow her in case Beyard’s Lhosir had lingered; but in time she came out again and there were others with her, Marroc women and children, and they stopped at the threshold and stared at him. They were too far away for him to read their faces but he felt their hate.

  ‘Go!’ Achista snatched the reins of the horse from his hand. ‘Filthy forkbeard. Just go!’

  Gallow stared at the hanged man. ‘This is why I did what I did. This and far worse.’

  Achista spat at him. ‘That was Brawlic. This was his farm. Those are his sons and his daughters. Would you like to see them weep for him?’

  ‘I’m sorry about your family.’

  A useless thing to say but he couldn’t think of anything else. Her stare was a hard one and he deserved all of it. She shook her head. ‘They weren’t my family, but Brawlic was a good man. Then again, he’s not the first good man you forkbeards have murdered and he won’t be the last either. The iron devil of Varyxhun has taken my brother Addic and your Aulian friend too and I will avenge them, and if you see him before you die, you tell him that.’ She spat again, at his feet this time.

  ‘Where?’

  Achista turned away, leading the Lhosir horse towards the barn. Grief had made her older.

  An animal growl built in Gallow’s throat. He went after her, grabbed her by the shoulder and spun her around, and for a moment she was afraid of what she saw in him. ‘Where? Where did he take Oribas?’

  She pulled herself free. ‘You don’t change, do you? Forkbeards for ever, whatever you say. Addic and your Aulian friend were here the night before last. The iron devil left for Varyxhun with a dozen forkbeards at first light this morning. Two days from now they’ll be in Varyxhun castle. The day after that Cithjan will hang them. They’re dead, Gallow. Your friend. My brother.’

  Half her face cried out to him in pain. The other half saw just another forkbeard and looked at him full of furious murder. She walked away, and Gallow knew better than to follow.

  ‘Varyxhun.’ He nodded to himself. ‘Very well, old friend. I was heading that way anyway.’

  They’d left the Marroc women and children alive and untouched, and that, Beyard knew, was right and decent. The Lhosir didn’t make war on women and children but the Marroc men were a different matter. He hanged the farmer and had the others bound and hooded. The Aulian he allowed to ride free. The Aulian, as best he could see, had done nothing wrong and the man made him curious.

  ‘Gallow was a friend once,’ he said, but the Aulian always had eyes full of terror and dread whenever Beyard looked at him and he soon gave up. No one ever had words for a Fateguard, only screams.

  The road up to Varyxhun castle split from the Aulian Way a mile from the city gates and zigzagged back and forth up the mountainside, six tiers of it, through six impassable gates beneath six murderous walls. There Beyard handed over his prisoners for Cithjan to do as he wished, for they were his problem now. Gibbets for the Marroc at the very least, but the Aulian seemed valuable and, as far as Beyard could see, innocent; and so it came as a surprise some days later when he found the Aulian had been sent off to the Devil’s Caves with all the rest. The waste troubled him but he had other business.

  ‘So many years, old friend, but we are not ones to forget.’ He took off his iron gauntlets, opened Gallow’s locket and sniffed at the tiny snip of hair that lay inside. ‘I will find them, old friend. I will be waiting.’

  13

  THE CRACKMARSH

  Reddic ran fast through the cold muddy water meadows of the Crackmarsh. The sunlight was fading. His lungs burned and his legs too, but he ran anyway because no amount of pain was worse than stopping, not with what was following him. He’d come into the swamp with an axe on his hip and a shield on his arm and two other men he barely knew. All those were gone now. The ghuldogs were all that was left.

  He reached a small island, a low hump of sodden earth rising out of the shallow water, a few sickly old trees clutching it tight among a withered web of roots. He stopped for a moment, had no choice any more, just couldn’t go on without a moment to rest, leaning against hard wet bark before his legs gave way beneath him. Back through the haze of rain he couldn’t see anything except dull grey water and the scattered ghost shapes of other tree-crowned hummocks like watching sentinels. The ghuldogs were there, though, not far. Following him, steady and patient. Waiting for the dark. Waiting for his strength to fail. Waiting with their cold clammy limbs and their heartless rending claws and biting fangs.

  A splash whipped his head round, desperate eyes searching for the source of the sound and finding nothing. He whimpered and pushed away from the trees, back into the water to run again. The clouds grew darker. The sun behind them sank further. The rain grew heavier. He was soaked. Freezing water ran against his skin and down into his sodden boots.

  ‘Modris!’ The wail burst out of him as his legs failed. He stumbled and slip-sprawled into the water. They were behind him, close, and they’d eat him if they caught him, and so he forced himself onto his hands and knees and looked up. Somewhere there had to be strength left in him.

  Shapes moved through the haze. Bent and hunched. Two, then three, then half a dozen. They came slowly, sniffing him out. They fanned around him and he knew this was the end. He had nothing left. When he tried to stand, he couldn’t. On his hands and knees he watched them and wept his misery out. The ghuldogs sniffed closer. Cautious now that he wished they’d simply take him and be done with it. The closest of them stopped a stone’s throw away, near enough to see it clearly through the rain. The relic of a man, sallow and gaunt, but with the head of a savage wolf, patches of mangy fur clinging to its skull, eyes burning red, fangs bared, saliva dripping from its jaws into the swamp. It took a pace closer and then another, each step slow and delicate and precise. Stalking him, though the time for stalking was long past.

  Reddic closed his eyes. He fingered the sign of Modris the Protector hung on a loop of leather around his neck. Begged the god of the Marroc to save him though there was clearly no salvation to be had. A haunting hooting cry rang through the wind and the rain. Something between the howl of a wolf and an anguished cry of despair. He waited for the end.

  A hand took his shoulder. He flinched and whimpered and screwed up his eyes, but the hand was just a hand – no talons, no fangs – and when he opened his eyes and looked up it was a man standing over him. A hard-faced Marroc man in mail with a spear, and when Reddic rose shaking to his feet, he saw that the man wasn’t alone, that there were a dozen more in a cautious circle. The gh
uldogs were still there as well, shapes in the rain-haze, watching.

  The soldier helped him to his feet.

  ‘I was looking to find Valaric’s men.’ Reddic couldn’t keep the quaver out of his voice. ‘I want to fight.’

  There and then he didn’t sound much like a man who’d picked up his axe and left his home to join the last free Marroc in their stand against the forkbeards but the soldier only nodded. There might even have been a hint of a grim smile. ‘Well, you found us. Welcome to the Crackmarsh, Marroc.’

  14

  THE DEVIL’S CAVES

  Oribas had told Gallow a lot of things when they’d crossed the desert together. More were forgotten than remembered but Gallow knew that the Aulians had come over the mountains once. Oribas said they’d never reached far into what were now the Marroc lands because the mountain valleys were too cold and wet for their liking, but they’d made their mark. Gallow had seen their work for himself: the fortress of Witches’ Reach at the far mouth of the gorge, the impossible span of the Aulian Bridge across the Isset beneath it, the road that reached as far as Tarkhun, halfway to the coast, and of course the unconquerable stone of Varyxhun castle, etched into the bluffs that overlooked the city.

  They’d built the first town of Varyxhun too but there wasn’t much left to see of their handiwork now. It hadn’t ever been much to the Aulians, but then the Marroc had come to the valley, drawn by the peace the Aulians had brought, and the town had grown. Gallow passed silently through the open gates. Aulians had stood here once, and later King Tane’s huscarls, but now the soldiers who leaned on their spears and glowered at everyone who passed were Lhosir. They stared openly at Gallow’s shaven chin and he heard their muted growls. Nioingr. One of them spat at his feet as they passed. He let it go. Had to. For Arda. For Oribas.