by Nathan Hawke
‘And now he’s gone and you’re laughing?’
‘Because he came from another land and fell in love with a Marroc, just as I did.’
Then Addic smiled too as he understood. ‘We make good women. Will you talk to her? Tell her something about him? They had so little time.’
‘He might not even be taken, Addic, and taken is not the same as dead.’
‘Cithjan sent Oribas to the Devil’s Caves simply for knowing you.’
‘But Cithjan is dead. You killed him. If the Lhosir have him then Beyard will decide his fate, and Beyard isn’t Cithjan.’ Perhaps they should leave the Fateguard as master of Varyxhun castle. Beneath the iron he was still the man he used to be, and that was why Medrin Sixfingers would never have it. Gallow passed the bucket to Addic. ‘Here. Take this to Tolvis. Arda will be there. Perhaps she should talk to your sister. I was lost to her for years so I suppose she has some wisdom when it comes to waiting.’
Addic chuckled. He took the water. ‘Don’t say that to Achista.’
Gallow climbed the steps to the wall. He passed along the walkway over the gates where the mound of ice still lay pressed up against them. If the Lhosir brought up a ram and it was anything short of a whole tree, they’d be wasting their time. But if they knew how many Marroc were inside, they’d bring ladders. One between three. One man to climb, one man to hold the ladder steady and one to hold a shield and throw the occasional spear.
He stopped beside Achista. She seemed too small and young to lead these Marroc, and yet she did. He told her about the ladders, how the Lhosir would overwhelm the wall with sheer numbers by coming at it from everywhere at once. ‘You can’t hold it,’ he said. ‘You don’t have enough men.’
She replied to the wind in a whisper barely heard. ‘Oribas would have found a way.’
‘No. Not even Oribas.’
‘He was a wizard.’
‘He still is.’
She shook her head and started telling Gallow of all the things Oribas had done, of all the miracles he’d worked. Laying a shadewalker to rest, the avalanche outside the Devil’s Caves and the victory at Jodderslet even though Gallow had seen both for himself; then in the woods below Witches’ Reach and opening the Aulian seal, luring Skilljan Spearhoof’s Lhosir into the shaft and burning them there. Gallow understood. She didn’t know it, but she was speaking him out, letting him go in the Lhosir way and reminding the gods of his deeds. When she paused, Gallow took over. He told her of the scared twitchy desperate man who’d found him washed up on a sandy beach a thousand miles to the south of the Aulian mountains. Of the determination that had kept him going after the monstrous Rakshasa, relentless and remorseless and unstoppable as the old Screambreaker himself. How he’d hunted the Rakshasa for year after year and never stopped until even the gods themselves had seen the strength of his heart and answered his prayers. ‘He wasn’t the one who laid it to rest, not at the end,’ he told her, ‘but Oribas was the one who laid the traps, who followed its trail, who saw through its tricks and disguises and in the end fooled it into its doom. I’ve never met a man who was so driven to his end, and the end he’s chosen now is you. He will find a way, Achista of the Marroc. There’s no man in the world who’ll try harder and few better equipped to succeed.’ He could feel the lightening around her, the shedding of her burden. She would still grieve, but it wouldn’t crush her now.
‘It was even his idea to mound up the snow behind the gates.’
‘If he was here now, what he’d tell you to do was take as much snow as you can up to the roof of the tower and as many stones as you can carry.’
‘Why?’
‘Beyard will take the walls tomorrow, and quickly. Ladders won’t help him get into the tower, though. He’ll need to force the door. He’ll have a ram but since the doors are a full man’s height above the ground with steps that come at them from sideways, he’ll have to build a ramp to use it. In time he will, and he’ll get in – don’t be mistaken about that. But the Lhosir with him, they’ll be impatient and looking for a quicker way. They’ll go at the tower door with axes and fire. The snow is for the fires, the stones for the Lhosir who try to light them or bring their axes.’
‘Once they have us penned in the tower, we’ll all die.’
‘You set that to be your fate long before today, Marroc. Oribas may yet outlive us all.’
She laughed, a harsh broken sound. ‘Oribas will arrive on the back of a dragon that he’s awoken with some ancient Aulian spell to burn the forkbeards? Perhaps the dragon buried under Varyxhun!’ She shook her head. ‘No. It’s done. We’ll fight and shed our blood and die, all of us, and it will be the telling of our courage that will live on. We won’t win, but our story will eat you forkbeards one by one, until none of you are left.’ She twisted suddenly to meet his gaze. ‘Why are you here, forkbeard? How is this your fight?’
Gallow stared down at her. So fierce. ‘I had a dozen angry brothers of the sea chasing me and you lowered a ladder for me to climb and so here I am. When they come, I’ll hold your wall for you as best I can. If the chance comes, I’ll seek out Beyard and we’ll finish what we started. I don’t expect to live either, but perhaps he’ll spare my Arda. Would you believe me if I told you he’s a good man? Brave and honourable.’
Achista laughed and turned away. ‘The iron devil of Varyxhun? He’s a monster.’
‘Can he not be both? He’ll be fair, Achista. If he offers you mercy, at least listen. He’ll be good to his word. Better than most.’
‘There’ll be no mercy.’ Her eyes settled back on the Lhosir camp. They’d been busy with their axes today. They’d built a pyre for Cithjan and burned him, but Gallow was sure they’d built other things too. She was probably right. Beyard might give them quick clean deaths to honour their courage, but not mercy. That wasn’t what the Fateguard were for.
‘Tomorrow you’ll need small groups of men around you, Addic, Tolvis and me. Four to each of us, the best swordsmen or axemen you have. Station the rest of your men evenly around the walls. We’ll go to wherever the fighting is most fierce, wherever the Lhosir get a foothold on the battlements. It will come to us to try and drive them back. Someone must take charge of calling a retreat to the tower. These same four groups of men will keep the Lhosir at bay. Tell your Marroc that when the call comes to abandon the walls they must do it at once. They must turn and run as fast as they can with their bows to the tower and then stand at the doors. The Lhosir will take the walls faster than you can imagine. Those with swords will keep them back long enough for the men with bows to get to the tower but they’ll not hold for long. Then the bowmen must hold the Lhosir in turn while the men with swords withdraw. Many will die when the walls fall, but if your Marroc don’t understand that they must run like the wind when the signal is given, the Lhosir will take the tower too and it will all be done and gone in a day. You need to last. To be seen.’
‘As long as we can. Will they really take these walls so quickly?’
Gallow looked out over the encamped Lhosir. ‘Yes. There’s only one thing you have in your favour.’
‘One thing?’ she asked.
‘Beyard.’
‘The iron devil?’ She turned to glance up at him as though he was mad.
‘He’ll do his best to break you and he will win. But I think he’d be pleased if you somehow beat him.’
The Marroc woman shook her head. Definitely crazy. And maybe he was, and Beyard too, and all the old Lhosir who thought that way. Gallow raised a hand to slap her shoulder, one soldier to another. Paused, as he remembered she was a woman, then did it anyway.
‘Rest well tonight,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow they come.’
43
THE WOLF
Valaric rolled his eyes. The Marroc was the third messenger from the idiots in Witches’ Reach to get to him. There might have been more, but if there were then they’d fallen to the forkbeards watching the Aulian Bridge or the ones who patrolled the fringes of the Crackmarsh near Isse
tbridge or, most likely of all, to the ghuldogs. Valaric had no idea how many ghuldogs lived in the Crackmarsh but it was probably thousands and he only had a few of the packs tamed. The wild ones suited him. They all had their territories, loosely marked and understood, and Valaric’s was more or less in the middle. If the forkbeards got ideas about coming in after him they’d have to pass a night amid the wild ghuldogs first. So far that had been enough to keep them away.
Eventually the messenger finished. In a grudging way Valaric admired the man. A Marroc who’d stood up to the forkbeards, who’d fought them and won and more than once. From what the man said, whoever was leading at Witches’ Reach was a true Marroc hero, even if he was doomed. Valaric forced back a laugh. Trapping the forkbeards in a cave and then burning them? No wonder they were like angry hornets.
‘I admire what you’ve done,’ he said. ‘But a horde of forkbeards is about to fall on your stronghold. You ask for my help yet at the same time the forkbeards are strengthening their garrisons all along the Isset valley, from the Crackmarsh to Andhun. The Vathen are mustering. In the spring they’ll come again and the forkbeards know it. They might leave me alone in my swamp but they’re all around it. They’ll know if I come out.’
‘Then what’s the point of you?’
Valaric stiffened. The messenger limped from a cut on his leg that was slowly going bad. Likely as not he faced a slow and miserable death. Maybe that was what gave him courage. ‘The same point as you, you daft bugger, except I’ll still be here a month from now and you won’t.’ He heard Sarvic mutter behind him and wasn’t sure whether it was a murmur of disapproval or of agreement. ‘How loud do you suppose the forkbeards would cheer if they can get rid of all of us before the Vathen sweep across the Isset again?’ He sighed and beckoned the Marroc closer. ‘Do you think I want to sit idly by and do nothing? No, but between me and Witches’ Reach lies the garrison of Issetbridge and then the river itself. I have spies of my own, and what they tell me is the forkbeards have been watching the bridge like eagles ever since you started leaving their severed heads littered about the place. There’s no other way to enter the Varyxhun valley. The forkbeards know this. I’d have to fight past whatever men they put on the bridge and with the Issetbridge garrison at my back. I’d be out in the open. They could slaughter us all. Not one of us would reach you, and then what?’ He shook his head. ‘Do you have a way to take word back to your friends in the tower?’ The Marroc nodded. ‘Then I’ll do this much for you. I’ll take the fight to Issetbridge. That might draw some of them away. If I find the bridge clear, I’ll consider crossing it.’ Not that there was any chance of that.
The messenger didn’t like what he was hearing but it was all he was going to get. Valaric sent him away to be fed and watered and to have one of the Marroc who knew about herbs and things see whether his leg could be saved. The next morning they guided him to the edge of the Crackmarsh, which was as far as Valaric’s men went. The leg, it turned out, was beyond help. In a way that made Valaric feel a little better about what he’d just done.
‘Issetbridge then,’ growled Sarvic eagerly after the Marroc had limped away.
‘Don’t be an idiot. They’ll know we’re coming and they’d shred us.’ Sarvic looked confused. Valaric sighed. Sometimes Sarvic could be a little slow. Brave and deadly these days but still not so bright. ‘Sarvic, how’s he going to get across the Isset, if he even gets that far?’
Sarvic sounded surprised. ‘Across the bridge of course!’
‘Yes. The bridge. The one the forkbeards are watching like eagles. That bridge, and he can’t even run. Maybe he’ll get back to Witches’ Reach but more likely the forkbeards will get him. Not that we’re going to Issetbridge anyway.’
‘But you said we—’
‘Yes, I lied.’ Valaric smiled at Sarvic. Such a lot still to learn, but he’d come a long way in the three years since they’d fought the Vathen at Lostring Hill and then the forkbeards in Andhun. ‘I’ll send a dozen or so men with a pack of ghuldogs to make a nuisance of themselves. See if we can’t provoke the wild packs to come out after us and stir something up. Maybe that’ll draw away as many of the forkbeards as they think they can spare.’
‘And then we’re going to sit here and do nothing?’
‘No. Go back to Fat Jonnic and tell him to muster his men. I’ll be waiting for him at Hrodicslet. I’ll tell Stannic and Modric the same. No, we’re not going to do nothing.’
‘But?’ Sarvic screwed up his face. ‘I thought you said . . . So we are crossing the bridge then. Are we?’
‘No, Sarvic, because that way into the Varyxhun valley will just get us all killed, fun as it might be to have a good old spat with the forkbeards out in the open. But we don’t have to go that way any more, do we? Because Gallow said there was another way: out from Hrodicslet and up into the high valleys and across and through some caves.’
Sarvic just stood there looking stupid. Valaric sighed again and shook his head. ‘Just go and tell Fat Jonnic to get his men to Hrodicslet, will you?’
‘Oh!’ Understanding lit up Sarvic’s face. ‘So Gallow came down a different way from the mountains?’
‘Yes.’ Valaric shooed him away. Gallow had come down a different way and had gone back again, and he hadn’t been the only one either. That had probably slipped Sarvic’s mind, but then a lot of things did.
44
THE BLOODY WALLS
The Lhosir came at first light with their ladders. They didn’t try to hide. They spread out, picking their way across the steeper slopes to the northern and western faces until they’d made a ring around Witches’ Reach out of range of the Marroc bows. It took them almost until midday and they arranged themselves slowly and carefully as though they were in no hurry at all. Little fires sprang up here and there. The smell of cooking meat wafted in on the breeze. An old trick, although not much use when the Marroc had such a storehouse beneath their feet. As the sun reached its zenith, Beyard walked out from among the Lhosir barring the road and strode clanking to the gates.
‘Marroc!’ he cried. ‘I promise you one thing. There will be no ravens. You have been brave and I will honour you for that. Your deaths will be quick and sure. Make peace with your gods, Marroc of Witches’ Reach. I know of your tunnels and your caves and I am not interested in your surrender.’ He turned to go and then turned back. ‘Are you in there, Gallow? If you are, we weren’t finished two nights back. Face me as you did then and I’ll let your woman live. I’d do the same for your Aulian friend but he has Lhosir blood on his hands now and so he must hang.’
As he walked away, Achista sprang up behind the battlements over the gates. ‘May you wander the Marches for ever, iron devil!’
Beyard didn’t look back. He raised a hand as he went, and when he dropped it again a horn sounded over the valley. A great roar went up from the Lhosir, and on the western and the northern slopes they began to move, clambering through the rocks with their ladders and shields. The advance swept around the tower like a slow wave. On the steeper slopes they came with caution, taking cover behind the stones and boulders there from the archers on the walls, shields held over their heads. On the flat ground to the east and the south they yelled their battle cries and charged.
Arrows flew from the walls to meet them, but these were warriors in mail, with iron helms and broad round shields, and only a handful fell. The Lhosir reached the walls and the ladders came up. The Marroc pushed them back, but every Marroc pushing at a ladder was a Marroc not shooting a bow and the rain of arrows eased to a drizzle. The Lhosir put more of their men to holding the ladders and fewer to holding shields. They started to climb. As the first man crested the battlements, Gallow howled and raised his axe. The Lhosir lifted his shield to catch the blow and Gallow kicked out instead, blooding the warrior’s face and sending him sprawling down the ladder into the men below. A few feet further on he knelt and heaved with two Marroc at another ladder. A spear stabbed up at him. Its point hit the stone beside his
face and struck sparks across his eyes and then the ladder fell back into the sea of men around the walls. Another Lhosir screamed at him and then Gallow had that ladder falling back too, the Lhosir still clinging to it as he fell into the snow. He floundered and the Marroc archers saw an easy target. An arrow hit his head and creased his skin in a flurry of blood. A second hit the snow an inch from his face but then a wall of shields closed around him.
A hand reached up and grabbed a Marroc by the belt, pulled and hurled him over the wall. He screamed pitifully as he fell; a moment later a Lhosir warrior was scrambling onto the battlements. A Marroc swung an axe. The Lhosir caught the man’s arm, twisted and tipped him off the wall. Gallow roared and charged, shield up, axe over his head. The Lhosir saw him coming and the two of them crashed together. Gallow twisted and tried to swing his axe round the Lhosir’s shield. The blade caught the Lhosir on the shoulder, digging into his mail, and Gallow felt him flinch, and then a Marroc came from behind and rammed a spear into the Lhosir’s back, shoving him into Gallow. If he wasn’t already dead, Gallow’s axe smashed into his helm and made sure. The man’s eyes rolled back, his knees buckled, and he tipped sideways off the wall into the yard below.
The air stank of hot pitch. On the far side of the gates the Marroc were scattering. Lhosir carrying bladders on ropes crested the battlements. They hurled the bladders at the nearest Marroc and splattered them with steaming tar. On the western wall soldiers had topped the battlements and were holding Addic and his men at bay while more climbed up. More pitch-throwers climbed over the parapet, threw, and then and barged into the Marroc with their shields, drawing their swords. Gallow yelled at his band to follow and raced to stop them. He spared a glance for the tower steps, where Achista and three Marroc archers were watching for any Lhosir who reached the yard, all the time shooting at the Lhosir on the walls.
‘The horn!’ Gallow cried. ‘Sound the horn!’ The walls were lost. There were so many Lhosir on them now that hardly any Marroc could use their bows any more, and without arrows to keep them under their shields, Beyard’s men were swarming over.
