Cold Redemption

by Nathan Hawke

  The last Marroc in front of him spun and fell into Gallow with half his face smashed in by a Lhosir axe. The Lhosir shoved him out of the way and swung an overhead cut. Gallow stepped back and levelled a backhand slash of his own but the soldier saw it coming. He was too unbalanced to get out of the way, but he turned his shield enough to catch it and staggered against the parapet. Behind him three ladders were against the wall and more Lhosir were already hauling themselves up. One fell almost before he could stand, an arrow through his neck from Achista’s archers. Gallow slammed into the soldier in front of him and sliced a low cut at the man’s ankles, shattering bone. The Lhosir screamed and swung back, a wild blow, then fell forward. Gallow shouldered him aside, tipping him off the battlements into the yard below, and moved to meet the next who was already lunging with a spear. On the eastern wall Tolvis was holding the Lhosir back, racing up and down the battlements even with the arrow wound in his side, hacking and slashing and shouting at the Marroc.

  ‘For the love of Modris sound the horn!’

  The Lhosir held the wall in two places now. More were on the battlements in front of Gallow, forcing him back with spears and shields, content to block him while others climbed up behind them. Further round they were sweeping the Marroc aside. Some of Achista’s men had already turned to run. Arrows lashed the Lhosir on the battlements and some fell, but not as many as climbed. One Lhosir vaulted over the ramparts and dropped to the yard below. A spear lashed at Gallow’s face and another stabbed at his feet. He hooked one of the shields facing him with his axe and pulled it back, and if there had been another Lhosir beside him with a spear, a lunge would have gone through the gap and struck home. But Gallow’s men were Marroc farmers and hunters, unskilled in war. Another Lhosir jumped down to the yard and then another, and at last Achista blew the horn and everywhere the Marroc turned and fled, even the swordsmen who were supposed to hold the Lhosir back while the others escaped. The Lhosir howled and pressed forward. Terrified Marroc jumped down to the yard, taking their chances with the drop instead of running for the steps. Battle-mad Lhosir leaped after them. Men screamed as legs twisted and ankles snapped. Gallow stepped back and stumbled over the body of a dead Lhosir. One of the spearmen lunged at his face. He lifted his shield, pure instinct. He knew at once that he’d been drawn into leaving an opening, but before he could do more, he felt a second spear point slam into his ribs and something crack. His mail held. He stepped back again. The dead Lhosir slowed the spearmen too. It gave him a moment. He took it and ran.

  The yard was a horror. Achista had waited too long. Marroc were reaching the tower but more were still leaping from the walls and there must have been a dozen Lhosir already in the yard now, screaming and swinging their blades. Men of both sides limped and hobbled and tore each other down. For now the Lhosir were too consumed by killing to make a wall of shields and charge the steps to the tower. The moment they did that, the battle was lost. Gallow glanced over the side of the walkway but the drop was the height of two men and he didn’t dare, not in mail. He ran for the steps, the last man, half a second ahead of the Lhosir behind him. He turned in the air as he vaulted down, swinging his axe, taking out the soldier’s feet, tipping him over so that the surging men behind tripped and they all tumbled together. An arrow flew past his head – Achista’s archers at the tower door. As he looked back he saw a Lhosir slide to his knees with an arrow in his face and fall dead with a spear still clutched in his hand. Marroc cut off from the tower were being slaughtered but there was nothing anyone could do for them now. A hundred Lhosir were inside the walls, more coming every moment. Gallow reached the steps and found only Tolvis and three Marroc in a wall of shields and spears, holding the way. The wall opened to let him through.

  ‘Here.’ Tolvis passed him a spear so he could stab past their shields. A wild-eyed Marroc ran into them and then another, and then suddenly there were no more and they were facing Lhosir instead. Through the open doors at the top of the steps Marroc archers still fired into the yard.

  Gallow shook his head. He ran up the steps, grabbed Achista and almost snatched the bow out of her hands. ‘Get inside and close the doors!’ He threw her in and glared at the other archers until they turned and then he ran back down the steps. He yanked Tolvis. ‘Just run!’

  They ran. The Lhosir bellowed and charged after them. The last defenders skittered into the tower through the closing doors and hurled themselves down to slide across the stone floor to the feet of a dozen Marroc archers with bows drawn. As the Lhosir threw themselves after the Marroc the archers let fly and the Lhosir fell back. Everyone inside raced to the doors, stabbing at the Lhosir, pushing them back or pulling them in and dragging them down, and then at last the doors were shut and the bars were dropped. They shook as the first Lhosir threw themselves against them.

  ‘Up!’ bawled Gallow. ‘Up to the roof!’ He led the way, a dozen and more weary Marroc following in his wake until they’d climbed to the open roof of the tower where Achista had had snow and stones piled as he’d asked. ‘Bows! Shoot them now! While they’re in their frenzy.’ It wouldn’t take the Lhosir in the yard long to gather themselves and hide behind their shields but every one the Marroc killed now was one fewer for later. Not that it would make any difference to the end.

  He left the Marroc to their arrows, ran to the stones and picked a decent-sized one, peered over the edge and dropped it on the head of one of the axemen hacking at the door. They stopped after he felled a second; and then suddenly all across the yard the Lhosir were falling back to the wall, raising their shields. Achista yelled at the archers to save their arrows. The Reach fell still, the air quiet enough for Gallow to clearly hear the last screams and wails of the men left dying in the bloody snow. There were dozens of fallen in the yard and most of them were Marroc. He had no idea how many Lhosir they’d taken with them out of sight beyond the walls. He saw a few scattered in the snow below, but however many Lhosir were dead, half the Marroc defenders were dead too, the walls were lost and they hadn’t even reached their first sunset.

  Down in the yard a dull glint of iron caught Gallow’s eye. Beyard. He walked among the fallen Marroc, lifting each one as he reached them. One moved as he approached, hauling himself away on his arms and leaving a wide smear of blood in the snow. Beyard reached down and picked him up. He looked at the tower roof – straight, it seemed, at Gallow – and drove a knife into the dying Marroc’s neck. ‘Quick and merciful,’ he cried. ‘I promised you that.’

  He moved on to the next.

  45

  CAGED

  Just as they did before the attack, the Lhosir took their time. A dozen of them made a wall of shields while others took it in turns to hack away the ice behind the outer gates. Once they had the gates open they left, and all Gallow and the Marroc saw of them for the rest of that day were a few scouts and sentries, watchers left on the walls behind barricades of shields and out on the trail down the mountain. That night they heard scrapings beyond the Aulian tomb door in the cellars and the steady strike of pickaxes on stone. None of them slept much.

  The Lhosir were quiet the next day too except for the pickaxes in the tomb. When Gallow asked how thick the stone door was, none of the Marroc seemed to know. Addic thought about a handspan and it was hard stone too, but the Lhosir would be through it in another day. Outside the tomb, the Lhosir were busy in the woods, felling trees and cutting planks.

  They broke through the Aulian stone that night and Gallow and most of the Marroc were waiting for them. As the first crack came and the stone began to crumble, the Marroc archers drew their bows. A large piece of the door fell away and a dozen arrows flew through it. Then Addic and others threw pots of oil through the hole. The next volley of arrows were flaming ones, and the space beyond the door where the Lhosir were at work lit up. The Marroc shot more arrows and poured in more oil and the Lhosir withdrew. When they were gone, Addic took a pick of his own and hammered at the door until the hole was large enough for the smallest of t
he Marroc to climb through and keep watch. When the Lhosir came again a few hours later, the Marroc set the last of their oil alight and poured it on the men climbing up the shaft. Beyard didn’t try a third time.

  ‘I still don’t want to know.’ Gallow wanted to tell Arda about the years he was away but she wouldn’t listen. Something had changed inside her, something that had stood between them that was now gone. She slept curled up beside him, and when they found a place to be alone they made love the way they always had. She sat for long hours with Tolvis too, nursing him, and Gallow found no jealousy there any more, no envy, only pity for his friend, whose wound had been worse than any of them had known and who seemed to have lost the will to fight it.

  The Lhosir brought up wooden shields and started work on a platform for the ram that would smash in the tower door. The Marroc sniped at them with arrows and stones, but they were short on both and the last oil had gone on burning the Lhosir in the shaft. The Lhosir were still down there too, the light of their torches and the sounds of their voices floating up now and then. For two more days Beyard’s men worked on their ram and on the ramp that would let them drive it at the raised tower door. Now and then a few of them came with axes or tried to set a fire, and the Marroc on the tower roof threw rocks and snow and the last of their arrows until the Lhosir withdrew or Beyard came and ordered them back with his iron voice.

  ‘Do you feel the death in the air?’ Addic stood on the roof beside Gallow as the two of them stared at the Lhosir below. Beyard’s shields kept the Marroc arrows at bay but they could see well enough what he was doing. Once the ram was in place it would smash the tower door to splinters and crush anyone caught behind. Beyard worked as though he had all the time in the world. The Marroc of Varyxhun hadn’t risen after all.

  Gallow nodded. They were going to die here, in vain, and everything would return to the way it was. Despair was a disease spreading among them, sapping their will. If Beyard hadn’t gripped them so tightly, most of the Marroc would have run by now. He could hardly blame them.

  ‘Is this what you came back for, Gallow the Foxbeard?’ Addic laughed bitterly.

  ‘No.’ He’d come back for Arda, and now he had her that made every second worth living.

  ‘I envy you.’ Addic smiled as though he’d read Gallow’s mind. ‘This is how you forkbeards want to go, isn’t it? Down fighting.’

  ‘I’d prefer to grow fat and old watching my children, hammering ploughs and horseshoes.’

  ‘I wish the Aulian was here with us. He’d find a way to win. Or a way to slip out at the last.’ Addic laughed. ‘Let the Lhosir smash their way into an empty tower.’

  Gallow looked at the enemy below. ‘Even Oribas couldn’t find a way where there is none.’

  ‘He would. He’d show us how to fly.’

  ‘I wish he was here for your sister. But not for him. He’d weep, knowing there was no trick to escape this cage. Beyard will finish his ram tomorrow or the next day and then he’ll smash our door. All that’s left is to give a good account of ourselves before we fall.’

  Addic spat over the edge of the tower. ‘Doesn’t it make you angry?’

  ‘It’s fate, Addic. Rail against fate if you will, but in the end it makes no difference. I spat at fate once, and all it did was tear me away and torment me for years in the wilderness and then throw me back right where I would have been anyway. Perhaps if our deaths are bright enough you’ll light a fire in the hearts of your Marroc at last.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Addic didn’t turn away from the Lhosir below. ‘But who will know, Gallow? Who will know?’

  All told there were some five hundred Marroc hiding in the Crackmarsh. A surly bitter lot, Valaric’s kind of Marroc, the sort of men who’d spit in a forkbeard’s eye as soon as they saw him. Men who’d lost a little, men who’d lost a lot, all of them with nothing left but a hunger for forkbeard blood. Valaric waited for them in Hrodicslet and made the little town his, and then he marched them up the old track into the mountain valleys. They stopped at farms and the Marroc there gave what little they had. Not much food to spare, not with winter setting in, but a little, and most of all they pointed out the trail. At Jodderslet there weren’t any forkbeards waiting for them, but Valaric was a cautious man and so he left the others to wait and took a handful of his best along the track up into the ravine and out again, across the mountain slope and into the back of the Devil’s Caves. Still no forkbeards, so he sent a runner for the rest of his men. The caves made a good place to hide.

  The messenger from Witches’ Reach had had the right of it. What use was he sitting in the Crackmarsh, a whispered name and nothing else?

  Addic left Gallow on the roof of the tower and went back inside. He crept down to the Aulian tomb and looked at what was left of the Lhosir supplies. He searched for anything that might burn the forkbeard ram and the ramp they’d built but they’d used all the oil driving them out of the shaft. He found rope, though, still a lot of that, plenty enough to climb down from the top of the tower and out to the mountain slopes if the forkbeards hadn’t been keeping such a tight watch on them.

  After that he walked among the Marroc. When the forkbeards smashed in the door, the Marroc were going to die. They knew it. He picked two men he trusted and made them each an offer: still a way to die but a different one, one that served a bit more of a purpose. He waited until dark and climbed up to the roof to join the watchmen there, made sure his rope was carefully tied and lowered it over the edge and watched the others go, one and then the other, climbing barefoot. He’d be last down, the one most likely to be seen, but as he reached for the rope a shadow came across the roof. At first he thought it was Gallow but it turned out it was the other forkbeard instead. Tolvis put his hand on Addic’s shoulder.

  ‘I can shout for your sister to come and scream at you,’ he said, ‘or I can go in your place. You choose.’ And for a long moment the two of them stared at each other, and then Addic let go of the rope because here was a forkbeard who looked like he was wanting to die.

  The wound in his side was a constant pain now but Tolvis Loudmouth ignored it as best he could. The two Marroc were almost down. He followed quickly. No mail because mail made noise. No swords or axes to scrape against the stone as they climbed down. No boots, even. They went barefoot, muffled in furs, each with a knife between his teeth. They didn’t go over the north side of the tower because the Lhosir kept watch out there on the mountain slopes. Not the south side either, because that was where the gates were. Over the east side, where the tower cast a shadow in the moonlight, and when he reached the walkway of the wall below with no cries of alarm, Tolvis knew they’d almost done it. He slipped like a shadow down from the wall to the yard and crept behind Beyard’s wooden shields. The two Marroc had already set to work, knives sawing at the ropes that held together the struts and beams that the Lhosir had built. Tolvis cut a rope and felt a piece of wood shift. He went to another.

  ‘Who’s there?’

  He ignored the challenge and kept on cutting. The light of a torch flickered nearby. He shifted. Stopped for a moment, crouching in the shadows, gasping at the pain in his side. ‘Oi! What are you doing?’ The sentry had seen one of the Marroc. Tolvis darted from his hiding place, knife ready, but he was too late. ‘Marroc! Marroc under the ramp! To arms!’

  Tolvis silenced him anyway, taking him from the side and opening his throat. The Lhosir sentries around the Reach were already coming, calling out, rousing others. Tolvis took the dead man’s axe for himself. No need for subtlety now. He swung the axe into the wooden pillars of the ramp.

  A Lhosir ran at him. He let the man come, dodged aside and swung his axe again, still hacking at the wood, then ducked around it. ‘I was Tolvis Loudmouth!’ he bellowed. Ducked and swung again. The wood was starting to split. More Lhosir were coming. He saw one of the Marroc up and fighting, saw the other one fall. ‘The Screambreaker named me. I fought at his side for five long years. I’ve done many things, some that were good and som
e that were bad, and all that time I’ve stood by—’

  A spear plunged through him from behind, deep between his ribs, and ripped out again. He spun round. Blood flowed out of him like a river and the axe fell from his fingers. The Lhosir who’d killed him was hidden behind an owl helm. Not a man Tolvis knew. For a moment they stared at one another, then the Lhosir drove the spear into Tolvis again, into his belly, twisting hard. Tolvis staggered. His hands reached out and grabbed the man who’d killed him.

  ‘By what was right,’ he gasped. With his last strength he dragged the Lhosir over, throwing them both against the wooden beams beside the ram. As his eyes closed for the last time, he heard the crack of splitting wood, and then a great and sudden weight pressed down and he heard nothing more.

  46

  FLAMES AT TWILIGHT

  A corner of the platform in front of the tower doors sagged, then cracked and fell. The sounds woke Gallow, but when he climbed to the roof to look he felt no joy, only a heaviness. The Lhosir were swarming like ants around their ramp and everyone knew that the Marroc who had gone down there wouldn’t be coming back. He heard the last one scream, ‘For King Tane!’ He’d walked this valley years ago with Screambreaker, chasing that old Marroc king. In the years since then he’d come to think that it was the Lhosir who’d changed, that they’d somehow lost what had once made them noble, and perhaps there was some truth to that, but mostly what he thought now was that they’d never been all that noble in the first place. Savages who fought better than the rest, that’s all they were.

  He never heard Tolvis fall. What did his life buy? Another day?