Cold Redemption

by Nathan Hawke

  ‘You never killed a man, Oribas.’ The forkbeard looked grim. ‘In the year we hunted your Rakshasa, you never once even lifted your hand to hurt another. There were times when you could have, times when perhaps you should have, but you never did, not once. The chase was ended, the bridge cut and gone. Why, Oribas? Why do that? Was there truly a need?’

  The Aulian looked sombre as they trotted along the path in the snow in the wake of the others. His eyes didn’t flicker and his face gave nothing away but Achista slowly realised that she knew the answer.

  He’d done it for her.

  19

  THE BATTLE OF JODDERSLET

  Addic sat beside a fire, warming his naked feet. It had taken the rest of the morning for them to reach Jodderslet, the nearest hamlet amid the isolated valleys nestled in the mountains around Varyxhun. He looked at the sky, hoping for clouds that might bring snow to cover their tracks, but the air was clear and the sun was bright and warm. The Aulian might have swept half a dozen of the forkbeards into the ravine but that still left near a dozen of them on the other side of the bridge. They’d find a way across. Half the little hamlets and farmsteads in the high valleys had never even seen a forkbeard before and it would surprise him if there was a single forkbeard who’d ever heard of Jodderslet, but that would change now. The forkbeards would follow. Forkbeards always did.

  The other Marroc former prisoners were huddled around him, rubbing their icy skin, trying to get warm. They were hardly fighters. The farmers of Jodderslet milled around, bemused as much as anything else by the sudden arrival of so many strangers. They were hardly fighters either and they stared in bewilderment at Oribas. None of them had ever heard of Aulia, never mind seen a man from over the mountains. Half thought he was some sort of monster and made the sign of Modris every time they saw him. But they’d heard of forkbeards, and when Addic said that a band of them would be coming, they were none too happy. They collected whatever might pass for weapons: axes, a few forks, a spear or two and a couple of hunting bows, if you included Achista’s. Addic looked around. Not a piece of armour among them. Not a single shield, not one helm, except on the forkbeard Gallow. Between the farmers and the prisoners there were two or three Marroc for every forkbeard they’d left on the mountainside but the forkbeards were soldiers, armed and armoured, while most of these Marroc were ordinary men who’d never fought with anything more than their fists.

  ‘Maybe they won’t come,’ said one of the farmers, but Addic knew better. When did the forkbeards ever not give chase when a Marroc ran?

  He left the farmers and the other Marroc to pick their weapons. Addic supposed they could keep running instead of fighting, but he and the others from the caves had no boots, only rags for clothes and there was nothing but snow out here. They were half frozen and exhausted already. Better to try and take a forkbeard or two with them. He crossed the barn to Gallow. ‘And what about you? Will you fight your kinsmen a second time?’

  ‘It’s not my fight.’ Gallow’s face was pinched and bitter. He stood by the door to the barn, staring out into the snow, oblivious to the bustle behind him.

  ‘No.’ Addic turned away and then stopped. ‘But it wasn’t your fight back when you stopped me going over the edge of the Varyxhun Road and into the Isset either. You’d make a difference here.’

  ‘By killing more men who were once my friends?’

  ‘By saving those who might become new ones.’

  Gallow stared at him with those ice-blue eyes that jabbed like spears. ‘None of you will ever call me friend, Marroc, no matter what I do. There was only ever one of you who looked past where my forked beard should be. It’s time I went to find her.’

  Addic shook his head. ‘When the strong do nothing, the wicked prevail. Your words, forkbeard, not mine.’ He left Gallow to his gloom and sought out his sister instead, sitting in a corner of the barn with Oribas. The Aulian was drawing in the dirt with a stick and it took a moment for Addic to understand: he was drawing Jodderslet, a map of it. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m no warrior,’ he said, ‘but I studied all the great generals of the early empire – Kunessin, Loredan, Cronan and Allectus. I can’t say it much interested me but we were obliged to study the history of war as much as we were obliged to study poetry and alchemy.’ He poked at the dirt with his stick. ‘The enemy will follow our trail. They’ll emerge from the trees on the slopes above us. They’ll have to cross this open space to reach us. The snow will slow them down. They’ll be exposed.’

  ‘And will you bring the mountain down on them again?’ asked Addic sourly. The Aulian shook his head. Achista shot her brother a sharp look.

  ‘No. But General Tullinus lost a thousand men crossing a swamp against savages armed with little more than knives and bows. While they’re in the open . . .’

  ‘We have two bows; the forkbeards will advance behind their shields and we have no time to dig pits or built barricades.’ Addic turned away and left them to it and went back to look for Gallow, to ask the forkbeard to at least leave them his sword, but the big man was gone and Addic couldn’t find him. After that there didn’t seem much to do except sharpen his axe, wait for the forkbeards and warm himself by a fire. Might as well be comfortable before he went out into the snow to die.

  Achista watched him. Her brother, whom she loved more than any other man. He thought that by staying here they were all going to die, and he was probably right. She touched Oribas on the back of his hand. ‘You should go with your forkbeard friend,’ she said, ‘before he leaves without you.’

  Oribas shook his head. ‘Gallow has a reason to go; I have a reason to stay.’ Her hand was still touching his. He took it and squeezed it, and since Addic was likely right and they were going to die today, Achista leaned across the Aulian’s maps and kissed him.

  ‘For what you did at the ravine.’

  Oribas turned away and let her hand go. He looked sad. Ashamed even. ‘I feel no pride in that. Gallow is more right than he knows. Until today I’d never killed, neither man nor beast. I’ve slain monsters and showed others how, and I will show you, as best I can, how to fight the Lhosir when they come. But I’m no soldier and nor do I wish to become one. What I did at the ravine I did for my own reasons. Give me a spear and I’d probably hold the wrong end and stab myself in the foot.’

  ‘You have no reason to be ashamed.’ She spat. ‘They were forkbeards! Every forkbeard who died in that ravine is a forkbeard who won’t be coming here to spill more Marroc blood.’

  Oribas touched his fingertips to her face. ‘Victories that last are not won by blood but by words and by forgiveness, Achista.’

  ‘Then find your words, Aulian, and make the Foxbeard stay. Make him fight for us!’

  Oribas shook his head. ‘The gods sent him to me to defeat the terror that gripped my home. Perhaps they’ve sent him here to defeat yours now, or perhaps not. But either way we must all choose our own fates.’ He leaned over and whispered something in her ear.

  One of the farmers brought out a cask of ale. Addic and the other Marroc from the caves drank eagerly, lighting a little fire inside their bellies and talking among themselves of the tiny victories each had scored over the forkbeards before they’d been caught. A purse cut here, a horse stolen, a household made ill with rancid milk, a drunkard felled with a bottle and kicked in the street. None of them had ever killed. None of them had stood face to face with a forkbeard and taken up arms against him, nor even stared down the shaft of an arrow. Those were the men who hung from the gibbets in Varyxhun or lurked like angry shadows in the deep woods and the snow. These men were the ones who might have been branded or whipped or perhaps put to work as slaves back when the lord of Varyxhun had been a Marroc. Now the forkbeards simply got rid of them.

  ‘Forkbeards! They’re here!’ Addic jumped up and looked for his sister, but she was gone and Oribas too. He ran outside. The forkbeards were coming out of the wood higher up the slope, just as the Aulian had said. The snow there was dee
p, up past their knees. Deep enough to make them wade and stop them from mounting a charge as they came in among the houses. Addic took a fork. That would do. Close enough to a spear. He stood. ‘Face them!’ he roared and farmers and prisoners alike came and stood beside him, near thirty men against about a dozen. They were going to die but they’d do it defending their homes and their families. ‘Don’t fear them!’ he cried. ‘They’re just men! They die like any other. They have their armour and their shields but there’s more of us, so grab them and take them down and be in at them with your knives. If you have the courage to stand then you can win!’ He almost believed it himself. He looked around for Achista and the other Marroc who had a bow but they were nowhere to be seen. On a roof out of sight if they had any sense, waiting for the forkbeards to get close so they could pick their spots. Make each arrow count.

  The forkbeards started down the slope. They walked quickly at first, shields loose by their sides. Then the one at the back pitched over into the snow and the one beside him cried out and turned and they all stopped and looked behind them. Addic counted. Thirteen of them. Twelve if you passed over the one who’d fallen. He didn’t look like he was getting up again.

  At the top of the slope, out of the trees, two figures emerged holding bows. Addic’s heart skipped a beat. Achista! And the forkbeards were between them! Oribas appeared beside him. ‘Out in the open, Addic. Exposed. Now they have to wonder how many more of you there might be waiting in the trees.’

  ‘One dead forkbeard hardly makes a difference, Aulian.’ The forkbeards were on the move again, coming down the slope more slowly now, their shields raised behind them against the two archers. They clustered together.

  ‘Every battle must have its first man to fall. If only we had some fire.’

  The forkbeards came on. Achista and the other archer followed them down, keeping their distance but still shooting arrows now and then, pinning them in their tight circle of shields and keeping their heads down. ‘Work in twos and threes,’ Addic told the others. ‘Pick a forkbeard and pull him down. One of you takes his sword hand and holds it fast, one of you pulls away his shield, the third one goes in with the knife. Brothers together! Fathers and sons! It’s like bleeding out a pig. Midwinter was just days ago. You do that?’ There were was a murmur among the farmers he took to mean yes. ‘Just the same! Best way to think of it.’ And they could win, they could! If they held their nerve and didn’t mind a few of them dying, the way the forkbeards never seemed to care.

  At the bottom of the slope the forkbeards broke their circle and started to run. Another fell to an arrow and then they were close, and Addic felt the Marroc around him waver. ‘Don’t!’ he cried, beginning to despair. ‘Don’t run! Stand!’

  But beside him Oribas turned and fled. ‘Don’t listen to him. Run after me!’ And the Marroc were only too eager as the forkbeards reached the edge of the deep snow and picked up speed. They turned and ran and Addic had no choice but to run with them, and they all fled together among the houses and barns of Jodderslet. The Aulian led the way. He kept glancing back as if to see whether the forkbeards were still there, as if something might have happened to make them change their minds. As if such a thing was possible.

  They reached the space in the middle of the hamlet where the farmers let their pigs, their chicken and geese out during the summer. The Marroc scattered. Addic bolted past a house with a howling forkbeard right behind him, only to have a door open almost in his face. A stick holding a pot of steaming water swung out. The forkbeard ducked the stick but not the scalding water that poured over his head. He screamed and slowed, clutching his face. Addic turned. He didn’t have much but he had his fork and now he swung it. The forkbeard lurched away, getting his shield up barely in time. A woman came out, still holding the stick with the pot on the end of it. She swung it at the half-blind forkbeard, cracking it across his helm and staggering him again. He stabbed at her wildly and this time Addic caught his arm and the three of them fell down into the snow together. They wrestled, and now the shield and the helm and the mail that were a soldier’s friends in war became unwieldy weighty things that kept the forkbeard from rising. All three of them were howling and cursing and screaming in each others’ faces. Addic had the forkbeard held down but now he couldn’t move and the woman was bashing at the forkbeard with her stick and doing nothing more than making him even angrier than he was. Addic looked up for any other Marroc. Out in the open two forkbeards were fighting a third. It took him a moment to realise the one fighting alone was Gallow.

  Another forkbeard ran towards him. Addic stared up helplessly, but the man staggered and fell with an arrow in the back of his leg. Before he could get up, another Marroc appeared, one of the prisoners. His rags were bloody and he had a pitchfork in his hand. ‘Need some help?’

  Addic nodded, and grinned because he finally saw. The Aulian had drawn the forkbeards apart. He’d made them scatter and destroyed their invincible wall of shields before it was ever made. And the Marroc were going to win.

  20

  PARTING WAYS

  Gallow watched as the Marroc broke and ran. He felt pity for them because that was what Marroc always did. The Lhosir charged without thought to how many they were and how many stood against them and the Marroc wavered and broke. It was the same every time.

  He stood in the centre of the hamlet and watched it happen. The track out of the valley was marked with cairns of stones. If he followed it for long enough, it would take him to the little town of Hrodicslet. Three days in summer on a mule, the Marroc had told him, although they weren’t so sure about in winter and on foot because none of them ever left their farms once the snows set in. Hrodicslet was on the far eastern fringe of the Crackmarsh, which meant it was a way out of the mountains without crossing the Aulian Bridge over the Isset. He knew Hrodicslet. Fenaric the carter had gone that way a few times. A week winding through the hills would take him home, but if he crossed the Crackmarsh he could be there in two days as long as the ghuldogs didn’t get him.

  Yet even though he knew the way, he didn’t leave, not yet. He watched Oribas, perhaps his last friend in the world. The Aulian was here because he’d sworn an oath – sworn that if Gallow helped him to kill the Rakshasa then he’d take Gallow to the Aulian Way which crossed the mountains to Varyxhun. And after he kept his oath, he’d still stayed even though Gallow had tried to send him away. Where shall I go? I have nowhere else to be. Crossing the mountains had almost killed them both and yet now here he was, holding hands with a Marroc woman. So perhaps it was right that Oribas had come to this land. Perhaps it had always been his fate to find Achista and her people, as it had been Gallow’s to wash up on that far southern shore where Oribas had found him; as it had been fate for Beyard to find him and for one friend to be the end of another.

  Oribas wouldn’t leave her. He’d fight for her in his own way, a thing Gallow understood above anything else. So he stayed as the Lhosir emerged from the wooded hill and smiled at the Marroc archers harrying them from behind, and then the smile faded as he watched the Marroc turn and run and an old bitter sadness welled up inside him. The weight of who he’d become. Always just one more battle before he could go home. He waited for the Lhosir to pour into the space in the middle of the hamlet; and as they did he stepped out from the open barn and roared out his challenge: ‘I am Gallow Truesword! The Foxbeard! Fight me if you dare!’

  The first Lhosir ran after Marroc prey but the next one slowed long enough to realise Gallow wasn’t just another one of their own. Gallow put an end to the question by hurling his spear straight into the Lhosir’s face. A spear was fine in a battle line, but up close and spread out like this he much preferred an axe or even his sword. Something short that struck from the side instead of a straight thrust.

  ‘You!’ Two more Lhosir were striding towards him. He charged them down, right in the middle of the farmhouses where everyone could see, and swung at the first, hard and fierce. ‘All I wanted was to go home!’ Ther
e was an anger inside him now, growing with every blow. Anger at the Marroc for needing him, for not standing on their own just one time. At the Lhosir for being here where they didn’t belong. At Beyard for having once been his friend and at Oribas for killing him. At himself for not letting things be and leaving the Marroc on the Aulian Way to fall to his death. But most of all at fate. Fate had cursed him from the moment he’d picked up the Edge of Sorrows. Fate that had sent storms and pirates and demons and hurled him so far from his home. Fate that had taunted him year after year and pretended to relent only to spit in his eye. Beyard had known him. Other men had seen him. In time Medrin would learn that Gallow Foxbeard was back, the man who’d taken his hand, and then Medrin would turn the world on its head to find him and he wouldn’t know one single moment of peace until one of them was dead. Fate.

  His axe bit into a shield so hard that the Lhosir almost wrenched it out of his hand. Gallow snarled. Beneath the cliffs of Andhun the Screambreaker had fished him and the red sword out of the sea, and as he’d opened his eyes and coughed and spewed out the water that filled his lungs, the Screambreaker had offered him a choice. The Vathen had shouted and cursed and thrown their spears and shot their arrows, which splashed in the water around the Screambreaker’s little boat but never struck true. The Screambreaker hadn’t seemed to notice. He’d held out the red sword. ‘No use to me. Not where I’m going.’ And he’d looked at Gallow hard and then away to the Marroc ships fleeing from burning Andhun and then last to where a single Lhosir ship was setting sail from the shore. ‘You didn’t think you really got away all those years ago, did you?’ His lips had curled and, for perhaps the first time, Gallow had seen the Screambreaker smile. ‘But then it’s the nature of men like us to fight our fates. I’ll let you choose. After all these years I’ve earned that and so have you. Which way, Truesword? Which way will it be?’