Cold Redemption

by Nathan Hawke

  Gallow struggled to his feet. ‘Just take me. Let her go and take me.’

  ‘No.’

  They stood and faced one another, eye to eye. ‘Why? Let her go!’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Curse you, Beyard, why? It’s me you want!’

  ‘Why? Fate. Memories. Who we once were. Because if I take you meekly back in chains then I’ll have to give you to Sixfingers. Does it matter? All this way and here I am letting you go, but it was hardly fair throwing that hammer. Don’t hide from me too well, Truesword. Come for me when you’re ready.’

  Gallow shook his head. ‘I’ll come for you. I’ll come for both of you.’

  Beyard smiled. He stepped back and raised the red sword in salute. ‘I know you will.’ Then he shook his head and glanced at the sky where the first light before dawn was beginning to grey the night. ‘Medrin’s men will come soon. I’ll keep them away from your precious Marroc. When the time comes, fight well, Truesword.’

  For a long time Gallow stayed where he was. Tolvis and the others were gone but he knew exactly where they’d be. Nadric would lead them to the edge of the Crackmarsh and the caves in the woods, to the place where the villagers of Middislet had always hidden when war swept towards them. He knew the way.

  The sun began to rise. Cocks crowed. The people of Middislet would be waking and Beyard was gone. Gallow bowed his head and turned to the south, towards the Crackmarsh. He walked and ran as fast as he could, determined to find Loudmouth and the Marroc he’d seen in the hills and take them back with him, his own little army, and slay every one of Medrin’s men if that was what it took.

  But perhaps the years had made him careless, or perhaps his mind was too much on Arda or on seeing his children again after so long and what he might say to them. And so he didn’t see the Marroc slip out from among the trees in the darkness behind him with a bowstring in his hand, nor hear him until the string looped over his head and pulled tight around his neck and he started to choke. He threw himself down, but two more slipped from the night and pinned him while the bowstring drew tighter and tighter.

  ‘Well well. Another stinking beardless forkbeard,’ hissed one. ‘Take him with the other one. Valaric’s going to want to see this.’

  Valaric?

  Gallow’s eyes dimmed. But there were probably lots of Marroc called Valaric.

  29

  WHAT HAPPENED TO VALARIC THE MOURNFUL

  After he’d set fire to Teenar’s Bridge and scrambled up the cliffs into the western half of Andhun, Valaric had sat and stared over the Isset and watched the eastern half burn. There was no way to know whether the Vathen had done it or whether it was the forkbeards or whether it was no one in particular and just one of those things that happen when two armies rampage through someone else’s city at the same time. He watched the last of the Marroc boats sail out of the harbour and tried to remind himself that he’d made sure at least some people had had enough time to get away from the slaughter. He’d seen that coming, the vengeful forkbeards. The Vathen, though, he hadn’t seen that. Not that it made a difference. Forkbeards and horse-men fighting each other was just fine. If they could have found somewhere else to do it then it would have been perfect.

  He waited until nightfall to see who would win, but it wasn’t until the next morning that he saw the Vathen moving at the other end of the ruined bridge. Knowing that the forkbeards had probably been killed to the last man didn’t make him nearly as happy as it should have. He didn’t know the Vathen but they weren’t likely to be much better. He made up for the disappointment by turning on the forkbeards who’d been in the western half when the bridge burned. There were only a handful, and by the time the fires had died in the harbour, the western half belonged to the Marroc again. The Vathen wouldn’t be crossing the Isset at Andhun, nor anywhere else on its lower reaches without a lot of boats, but anyone could simply ride and march across the Crackmarsh, so that was where he went, and quickly, gathering men around him as he did. They became a grim band, Valaric’s Crackmarsh men, fighting the bestial ghuldog half-men night after night until they learned to leave them be; and then when the Vathen did finally come their way, Valaric murdered them in every way he could imagine. His men were never far from the Vathan camps. Sentries vanished. Scouting parties sank into the marsh under hails of arrows. His Marroc crept among them at night and spoiled their food and poisoned their water. They crippled horses as often as men. They learned to communicate with the ghuldogs in the most basic way and used them, drawing the ghuldogs to the Vathen, showing the half-men that the Vathen and their horses were easier prey, seeing to it that the Vathen had no doubt the stories were true and the Crackmarsh was full of monsters. It was an ugly bloody summer of murder and knives and honour had no part in it, but the Vathen never crossed the Crackmarsh.

  Months passed. Summer turned to autumn. The Isset fell to its lowest and the Vathen tried one last time. They lashed together a fleet of rafts into a giant floating bridge, but by then the forkbeards had come back. Even in the Crackmarsh they knew that Yurlak himself had crossed the sea. Marroc fought alongside the forkbeards now, but not Valaric. He sat in his marsh and watched, waiting to pick off the winner.

  The battle, when it came, made the slaughter outside Andhun look like a skirmish. Valaric didn’t see it but he heard soon enough: the Vathen had beaten Yurlak. Then they beat him again and this time they killed him for good measure, but by then the winter was setting in and the Crackmarsh men had turned the ghuldogs into their own horde. There were thousands of the feral creatures, half dog and half man. Valaric led them out of the marsh one late autumn night and they swept in secret along the banks of the river, the ghuldogs sinking into the Isset in the daylight, the Marroc vanishing among the trees. They caught a new Vathan horde crossing the river, so many it would take them days. On the first night Valaric sent the ghuldogs into the camp of the Vathen who’d crossed while he and his Crackmarsh men cut loose the rafts that made the bridge and set them adrift and then melted away back to their swamp. Stories trickled to them of how the Vathan camp had been turned into a bloody horror. Ghuldogs took a man down, they ripped him apart and usually partly ate him, and even the men who got away with only a bite generally died or even worse. They were only stories, especially that last part, but living in the Crackmarsh Valaric came to know the truth.

  The ghuldogs didn’t come back – they stayed along the Isset, preying on whatever came their way – but the Crackmarsh was huge and there were always more.

  The Vathen fared badly that winter. When they came again in the spring, Medrin Sixfingers was waiting for them, and Valaric wished he hadn’t crushed the Vathen after all, for Medrin loved his blood ravens and hated every Marroc ever born. He came with more forkbeards and this time he came to stay. He hanged every Marroc who said a word out of place and drafted the men he didn’t murder into his army. He wasn’t like the other forkbeards. Valaric heard that much. He only cared about the winning of a fight, not the way of the winning, and he won that year against the Vathen on the back of his Marroc archers.

  Some said it was the year after that the horror began – after Sixfingers broke the Vathen and drove them back across the Isset at last and set his mind to ruling his new kingdom – but Valaric knew better. The Crackmarsh began not far from where the Isset tumbled out of the Varyxhun valley gorge, close to the Aulian Bridge and Issetbridge. He knew that Medrin had sent the very worst of his forkbeards into the valley looking for the Sword of the Weeping God and for Gallow the Foxbeard. He knew about what they’d done there, the blood ravens. Varyxhun became as Andhun had been, as the rest of the old kingdom of the Marroc would become once Medrin finished taking out his hate on the Vathen. Sixfingers never forgot that a Marroc had nearly killed him once. It was a while before Valaric learned that it was Truesword who’d taken his hand and a while longer still before he heard the stories of how Medrin had had a new one made of iron crafted by the cold spirit of the Ice Wraiths, gifted to him along with the iron-glov
ed servants the forkbeards called their Fateguard but the Marroc knew by other, crueller names. The forkbeards called him Medrin Ironhand to his face, other things behind his back. Valaric called him worse and quietly carved Medrin’s name into an arrowhead and kept it on a thong around his neck.

  He was fingering it when Sarvic came and stood nearby in that lurking way he had where he never quite got around to saying anything, just stood closer and closer to wherever Valaric was sitting until eventually Valaric just wanted to stick a knife in his leg to make him spit it out. He never did, though. Sarvic had been at Andhun, and Andhun had turned him cold and hard. And he could shoot an arrow into a man’s eye at fifty paces.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Messenger from Fat Jonnic. A couple of forkbeards just wandered in from Middislet.’

  ‘Well now they can just wander to the bottom of the swamp then, can’t they? Feed them to the ghuldogs. They’ll be hungry this time of year.’ He frowned and looked at Sarvic hard. ‘Why’s Fat Jonnic bothering to tell me this?’

  Sarvic shuffled his feet. ‘One came with a handful of Marroc. They say the iron devil that crossed the Crackmarsh went to Middislet.’

  Valaric stopped fiddling with his arrowhead. ‘Middislet?’ A smile spread slowly over his face. ‘Nice and close. We might have to do something about that after all. Did they say how many men he’s got?’

  ‘None.’

  Valaric frowned. He’d let the devil cross his swamp without trouble because none of them quite knew how to kill one, but what was he doing in in Middislet? ‘Fat Jonnic did right. We’ll go and see these forkbeards and ask them a question or two before we chop off their beards. And maybe pay a visit to Middislet. There’s Vathen about this side of the river again. Forkbeards could get into all kinds of trouble in a place like this.’ He raised an eyebrow, then saw that Sarvic wasn’t rushing off to grab a fistful of swords and axes like he ought to but was doing his shuffling thing again. Valaric sighed. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Fat Jonnic got names out of the forkbeards, Valaric.’

  ‘I hope he doesn’t imagine I care. Unless one of them happens to be called Forkbeard Ghuldog-food, which I suppose would be funny.’

  ‘No.’ Shuffle shuffle.

  ‘Oh what, Sarvic, what?’

  ‘One of them said his name was Gallow. Gallow Truesword.’

  Valaric shook his head. ‘That Gallow’s gone. Died in Andhun. But we can have some extra fun with whoever this forkbeard really is for that.’

  ‘Thing is, Mournful, Fat Jonnic says the Marroc family say the same. They say they’re his family. From Middislet.’

  A numbness crept out from the inside of Valaric’s head and crawled across his face. He nodded. ‘Then, Sarvic, I think you’d better come too.’ He watched Sarvic go and slowly shook his head. Gallow Truesword? Back from the dead?

  30

  OIL AND WATER

  The first Lhosir to come to Witches’ Reach didn’t come up the track from the Varyxhun Road the next morning, but the one after. There were twenty of them from the garrison at Issetbridge below the mouth of the valley. Oribas and Achista watched together as the Lhosir crossed the bridge and rode up the Varyxhun Road, long before they turned onto the track up to the Reach. Achista smiled and took his hand. ‘They’re coming for us. They’re coming to see.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I just know.’

  The Marroc moved quickly. By the time the Lhosir reached the fort the gates hung open, the fire pits were stamped out and the Marroc were hidden away, the tower seemingly abandoned, all to lure the Lhosir inside. And they came, but they walked into the trap with their eyes wide open, with two men on horses outside the gates and two more further down the trail, and when the Marroc surged out of their hiding places and cut the Lhosir down with their arrows and their axes, the riders on the trail both got away. Oribas found himself busy again, stitching up more holes in the Marroc who’d been hurt. That night he heard the gates open and he knew that Achista was taking Lhosir bodies down to the bridge again to leave them where they couldn’t be missed.

  ‘Perhaps we’ll have a day or two more before they come again,’ she said, but they didn’t.

  By the middle of the next day, Addic had joined them from wherever he’d been with news that the forkbeards of Varyxhun were on the move. He’d watched them as long as he dared and then he’d ridden like the wind. They’d be at Witches’ Reach the next morning, some fifty or sixty of them and perhaps more coming on behind. More still once Cithjan heard what had happened to the forkbeards from Issetbridge. Addic wandered the fortress with Achista, along the walls and in and out of the sheds and the forge and the halls inside the tower to the kitchens and the cellars and the old Aulian tomb below. Oribas left them to it. He stared at the mountains, up the Isset gorge to the snow-covered peaks around Varyxhun and beyond to the old Aulian Way. It didn’t seem all that long ago that he’d thought Gallow dead and all he could think about was the spring and crossing back the way he’d come, away from all this cursed cold. Now? Now the thought simply wasn’t there any more. When he looked for it, he found it didn’t even make sense. There wasn’t anything waiting for him back in old Aulia. No family, no friends, no people. The Rakshasa had taken those years ago. He could name three people on the other side of the mountains that he might have called friends in a pinch, the other survivors of the great hunt; and when he’d left them behind to cross the mountains with Gallow it had seemed impossible that he wouldn’t come back, that they wouldn’t be a band together for ever, fearless and unstoppable, hunting down shadewalkers and things far worse and sending them to their rest. Now he saw all that for the illusion it was. He couldn’t imagine going back. He couldn’t even imagine seeing the spring. He’d bound himself to these Marroc without seeing it happen, and now all of them were doomed. Perhaps it was as much an illusion as the one he’d left behind but that didn’t matter. From where he was, it felt the most real thing in the world.

  ‘I think my sister is in love with you,’ said Addic quietly. The words were so in tune with his own thoughts that the Marroc’s silent arrival didn’t even make him flinch.

  ‘And I think I am in love with her,’ Oribas replied.

  ‘She’s not had eyes for a man for a while. There was a farmhand a couple of years back. A good man, I thought. They might have been married but the forkbeards killed him. After that I think she wedded her bow instead.’ Addic shook his head and then pulled a satchel off his shoulder. ‘I have something for you, Aulian.’ Oribas stared and then smiled. His satchel. His satchel. The one he thought he’d lost when the Lhosir had thrown him over the edge of the gorge back on the snowbound Aulian Way. ‘One of Brawlic’s men went and got it before the forkbeards killed him. I don’t know how he knew it was there. He must have overheard some talk, I suppose. He was probably in Varyxhun to sell it but I got to him first.’ He handed the satchel to Oribas, who looked inside. Someone had been through it, that was obvious, but everything that mattered was still there.

  ‘Thank you.’

  Addic leaned over the tower walls and stared out at the gorge. ‘My sister wants to close the Aulian door so the forkbeards can’t come in as we did. She’d seal us in here.’

  ‘With me on the outside to open the door when she asks.’

  ‘But she won’t ask. And nor will I. You know that, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘What I mean to say, Aulian, is that we should make the very most of the days we have left, all of us. Make her happy. Make both of you happy. You have my blessing.’ He put an awkward hand on Oribas’s shoulder and walked away.

  ‘I had a thought. About the shaft and the way in through the caves . . .’ Oribas began, but Addic was already gone and his own thoughts were in too much turmoil. It was slowly dawning on him what Addic had meant. He stood and looked out over the river a while longer. The steep craggy sides of the gorge struck him as stern and majestic now instead of forbidding. The Aulian Bridge gleamed and the
water sparkled in the bright winter sun. The Isset falls were a mile away and out of sight, but from the walls of Witches’ Reach Oribas could see beyond the sudden end of the mountains to the flat brownish haze that the Marroc said was the Crackmarsh, and to the shapes of the dales beyond and around it. He tried to imagine the hills and the mountains covered in lavish green and dappled with the colours of spring flowers. Strip away all this snow and he could see that the Varyxhun valley would be beautiful. Still too cold, though. He climbed down from the walls. The Marroc were none too keen on opening the gates to let him out and made no promises about letting him back in again, but there was always the cave and the old Aulian tomb for that.

  It took him a while to walk down to the forest and the old forest camp and find what he was looking for. By the time he got back to Witches’ Reach, the sun was sinking. He found Achista among the wounded, bright-eyed as ever and listening to their stories, bringing them water and soup from the kitchen below. He watched her a while, marvelling at how she seemed to lift each one of them. It seemed a shame to ask her to stop and so he waited, simply looking at her until the sun kissed the hills outside. Then he touched her on the shoulder. ‘I have something important to show you,’ he said, and when she turned to smile at him, he led her away to the very top of the tower and its open roof. He pointed to the orange sun as it straddled the western mountains across the gorge.

  ‘I’m a stranger from a strange land.’ He took her hands in his. ‘It makes me sad that I know so little of the customs of your people. Where I come from there is a proper way to this. I have no doubt there is a proper way among your people too, one that’s different. I hope you understand. This is the Aulian way. One day you’ll teach me the Marroc way. I have three gifts for you.’ He let her hands go and forced himself to look at the sun and not at her. ‘The first is this sunset and the memory of it, for the sun is always the most radiant thing bar one in any life, and that one thing that eclipses it in mine is you. When the sun sinks beneath the horizon, I will remain bathed in the light of knowing you, of being beside you, of remembering you and of the possibilities you bring.’ He swallowed hard, knowing those possibilities were likely few and short, and knowing too that it no longer mattered. He reached into his satchel and drew out three of the blue flowers from the forest. ‘The second are these flowers.’ With delicate fingers he lifted off her helm and slipped one stalk over each ear and twined the last into her hair. ‘The left is for the past we shared. The right is for the future. The third is for what matters most of all, for the now.’ Last of all he offered her his gloves. He smiled and laughed. ‘In my own land I would have offered you the most exquisite silk, woven with patterns of gold and silver thread. All I have here are these, which I have worn for months and are old and battered. They have served me well. They’re a part of me. I offer them now to be a part of you. As I offer myself.’