Cold Redemption

by Nathan Hawke

  In the morning Beyard came to the tower doors, waving a flag of parley. ‘Gallow Truesword! I would speak with you.’ In the yard the Lhosir were cutting away the broken wood of the ramp. New beams already lay in wait outside the gates. When the Lhosir tried to make their repairs, the Marroc would use the last of their arrows and stones. When those were spent, they’d wait because there wasn’t anything else they could do. The Screambreaker had finally got into Varyxhun castle because the last of King Tane’s huscarls had killed themselves rather than be taken. Would that be what happened here? ‘Gallow Truesword!’

  Gallow looked down from the tower roof. ‘Up here, Beyard!’

  ‘Tolvis Loudmouth lies dead. At dusk I send him to the Maker-Devourer as befits the warrior that he was. He died well. Will you come to speak him out, Gallow Truesword?’

  ‘What of the Marroc?’

  Beyard put his hands on his hips. ‘What of them, Truesword? I honour a Lhosir.’

  Gallow paused. What did he know of Marroc burials? Almost nothing. Eight years living among them and he hadn’t much idea how the Marroc made peace with their dead. ‘Bury them!’ That was all he knew.

  Beyard shook his head. ‘No one will bury anyone here, Truesword, not until spring, not unless you want to have at the ground with a pick.’ He turned away. The Lhosir started rebuilding their ramp and raising their ram, and the Marroc went back to throwing stones and shooting arrows made from the crates and barrels in the cellars of the Reach. As the sun dipped towards the horizon, the Lhosir withdrew and Beyard returned. The ram was ready and Beyard stood beside it. ‘Gallow! I mean to burn the dead tonight before I smash in your doors.’

  Achista stopped him. ‘It’s a trap, forkbeard. The iron devil means to snare you.’

  ‘Whatever you think of him, Beyard will honour his word.’

  ‘I will not open the doors for you to do this.’

  Gallow sighed. ‘Yes, you will, because he has Oribas and I will ask for the Aulian’s life.’ He saw her face as she crumbled inside. It was a terrible thing.

  The Lhosir left the yard until Beyard remained alone. ‘Let us understand one another, Marroc,’ he called. ‘I withdraw my men so you may open your doors. This is no truce. When Gallow crosses the Witches’ Reach, we will be as we were. Die well, Marroc. You’ve earned your places in the Maker-Devourer’s cauldron.’ Beyard turned and walked away.

  Achista’s eyes were red. Tears and not enough sleep. Gallow looked for Arda. She was staring at him from across the hall, but when he caught her eye she folded her arms and turned away. The same look he’d seen when he’d left her to fight the Vathen, years ago. Give me a man who has enough of the coward in him to stay at home and keep his family safe. Gallow took Achista’s hands. ‘If I don’t come back, find a place for her to hide and make her stay there. I’ll trade my life for hers and for Oribas if I can.’ He bowed his head. Beyard might give him Arda, but not Oribas, not after what the Aulian had done.

  Two Marroc pulled back the bars, Achista opened the tower doors and Gallow stepped outside. He’d barely taken a step when he heard it slam behind him and the bars grind back into place. It felt strange to be on the outside – as though he’d been set free of something.

  Across the yard at the outer gates Beyard was waiting. The pyre was a little way beyond him, and there they stopped. Tolvis lay atop the wood, arms folded across his chest, eyes closed. His furs were dark and matted with blood. ‘He bought you this day,’ Beyard said. ‘If it wasn’t for him I’d have smashed my way in this morning. So honour him. Tolvis Loudmouth. I never knew him, though I heard his name after what he did in Andhun. Reviled below only yours. Why was he even here, Truesword? Why did you come back, either of you?’

  ‘For Arda.’

  ‘Both of you?’

  ‘Both of us.’

  Beyard shook his head. ‘I’m told my heart stopped beating seventeen winters back. Sometimes in the dead of night when the silence is so thick it’s suffocating, I close my eyes and listen for it. I hear nothing, so forgive me if I don’t understand how a heart works any more. Your Aulian friend showed me a mirror that I should have seen a very long time ago.’ He took off his mask and crown and Gallow saw that his face was burned and scarred as if by fire. ‘You and Tolvis Loudmouth. Two fine brothers of the sea. Speak him out then, old friend, and let us all be back to killing each other.’ He sounded sad, like the Beyard that Gallow remembered.

  Gallow spoke of Tolvis then, of the life he’d led, of the battles he’d seen and the deeds he’d done. Of his years when he’d fought in the Screambreaker’s war. He’d been there at every turn as the Marroc were crushed, and now he was dead so that a handful could live another day. As Gallow spoke, Beyard took a torch to the pyre and lit it. A few other Lhosir paused and stood, listening sombrely. Maybe they were old warriors who’d known Tolvis once, or maybe they simply respected the old way of speaking out an enemy who’d died well in battle. ‘We’re lessened by his passing,’ breathed Beyard when Gallow was done. They were the old words for bidding farewell to a fallen friend but Beyard gave them a weight as though he truly meant them. ‘Tonight we will be lessened by yours. I will speak you out myself.’

  ‘I have a favour to ask, old friend,’ said Gallow. ‘Oribas.’

  ‘The Aulian.’ Beyard shook his head. ‘He killed, Gallow. Many men and in bad ways. I’ve sent him back to Varyxhun to be hanged.’

  But by now Gallow was looking at the mountainside beyond the pyre. In the twilight it seemed that it was moving.

  A dozen Crackmarsh men hung back, armed with bows to take down any forkbeards travelling the Varyxhun Road from higher in the valley – messengers, perhaps, from the castle. The Marroc would shoot the horses out from under the forkbeards to stop them, whether one came or a hundred. Valaric took a handful of men ahead in case any came the other way. The bulk of the Marroc travelled in between, moving down the valley in secret. Surprise was a weapon Valaric couldn’t afford to lose. An hour up the Varyxhun Road from Witches’ Reach he stopped and left the vanguard with Sarvic and led his main force up the mountainside instead. It was slow going through the snow. The air was bitter, a harsh biting cold far worse than wintering in the Crackmarsh. He hadn’t meant to, but Valaric saw now that he’d brought his men to a choice between victory or death. They’d either overrun the forkbeards and their camp and relieve the Reach or they’d die in the night, frozen in their boots. He called a halt on the side of the mountain as the sun began to set and they caught their first sight of the Lhosir camp. The Marroc couldn’t light any fires of their own but the sight of so many enemies was enough to keep them warm. They strung their bows and sharpened their swords and their spears and their axes; they tightened the straps on their shields and their helms and rubbed their hands and paced back and forth. There were no fine words, not from Valaric. They all knew what they’d come for, why they’d gone to the Crackmarsh in the first place, and here it was.

  The mountain darkness came quickly. A pyre burst into flame up by the gates of Witches’ Reach. It was a sign, Valaric decided: Modris telling him that now was the time. There was no great shout, no wild charge, but as one the grim-faced Marroc of the Crackmarsh poured down the mountain towards the Lhosir below.

  Beyard faced Witches’ Reach. He had his back to the mountain where the shadows had come alive. Gallow slowly drew his sword. ‘Can we not settle this between us, old friend? One against another?’

  Beyard looked sad. ‘But I will win.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘What do you ask, Gallow? Beat me and I will let these Marroc go? I cannot. And what do you offer? If I bring you to your knees, will they meekly open their gates? No. Those days are gone.’

  Gallow shook his head. ‘They’re not gone for as long as we remember them, old friend. For as long as we live.’

  Beyard laughed, bitter as poison. ‘Did your Aulian not tell you what I am?’ He looked at Gallow’s confusion and shook his head. ‘I am dead, Gallow. The Eyes of Time
took me in the Temple of Fate. The Fateguard sent me to the Ice Wraiths and the Eyes of Time gave me this.’ He beat his fist against the iron he wore and looked up at the mountains around the Reach. ‘I have liked these mountains ever since I saw them. Their cold unforgiving majesty reminds me of the last journey I took as a man, with blood that ran warm and a heart to beat and a soul that burned.’ Venom filled his words. He took off one iron gauntlet and drew out the red sword, but instead of coming at Gallow with it he slid the edge across his palm. The flesh beneath his pale skin was dark but no blood dripped into the snow melting around Tolvis’s pyre. He sheathed Solace and stared at his hand. ‘I feel no heat from these flames, nor do I have warmth inside me.’

  Abruptly he picked up his mask and crown and put them on his head. He paced back and forth and then drew Solace again. ‘There’s no happy outcome here, but an outcome there must be. Let’s be at it, old friend.’

  From the roof of the tower Achista peered towards the pyre. She watched Gallow and the iron devil stand beside it. She saw Gallow, lit up by the flames, draw his sword, and the iron devil too, and watched them begin to circle. The forkbeard wouldn’t be coming back. Nor would Oribas. Most of the Lhosir were further down the ridge, sitting around their fires, warming themselves for the fight to come. She ran down the stairs that circled the inside of the tower, shouting to the Marroc to rise. Thirty men perhaps, no more, against five hundred forkbeards, but when she called them to arms they followed her gladly, the weight of waiting lifted from their shoulders, a burden pulled away. They threw down the bars and hurled open the doors and spilled into the night onto the Lhosir ramp, voices strong and clear, swords and helms gleaming in the light of the torches that lit up the walls of Witches’ Reach. They would die but they would not be meek.

  47

  MEN OF FATE

  Gallow and Beyard circled each other. Neither carried a shield and so there were no rushing charges to knock the other man down. For once they were wary. Gallow’s eyes stayed on the edge of the red sword. So many names among the different people of the world – Solace, the Comforter, the Peacebringer – but the Aulians had the right of it: the Edge of Sorrows. For all the sharpness of its terrible blade, it carried a curse.

  He put his back to the pyre and sprang, arms wide, sword out to swing at Beyard’s head, and then changed into a chop to the hip where Beyard’s armour seemed weakest, but the iron man held out the red sword like a spear, pointed at Gallow’s chest. He stepped aside and Gallow had no choice but to cut at the sword or else impale himself on its tip. He’d seen it shear through mail in a way no sword should ever do.

  Beyard whipped Solace at Gallow’s legs. Gallow jumped away and turned, and now it was Beyard who was looking down the slope of the mountain saddle towards his camp. Shouts echoed up the ridge. Beyard took a step back. For a moment his head craned forward as if he was trying to see what was happening. Gallow flung himself at the iron man and brought his sword down as hard as he could. Beyard, half off guard, brought up Solace, but too slowly, and Gallow’s blade cracked into the iron armour around his collar, into the space between shoulder and neck. Gallow felt it strike, felt the edge of his steel bite into metal, felt it stick and wrenched it free before the sword was torn out of his hand. He jumped away. Beyard swayed. Where Gallow had struck, his armour was cracked and misshapen, a large dark scar cut into it that ought to have cracked bones and drip with seeping blood. For a moment the two of them stared at one another. Then Beyard bowed his head.

  ‘A well made blow, old friend.’ He looked past Gallow towards the camp, towards the sounds of fighting. ‘I wish I’d known you for longer.’

  He took one step closer and then another, an iron-gloved hand held out before him, the red sword raised and poised. He snarled and the steps turned to a charge.

  The Crackmarsh men slammed through the forkbeard camp like a herd of charging bulls. Valaric screamed at them to keep running, to smash down the forkbeards as they rose from their fires. Some stopped anyway, pausing to finish a forkbeard they’d dazed and left helpless, and Valaric was happy enough with that. Others stopped to fight other forkbeards who hadn’t been knocked down and got themselves caught in duels, one against one, two against one, two against three. Keep moving, that was the thing. Tear through the forkbeard camp. Scatter them. Fight them in ones and twos, and whatever you did, don’t let them gather together. He had no illusions about his men. They were hard and bitter fighters but they weren’t forkbeards. If the Lhosir formed ranks behind their shields then the battle would be over.

  He scooped up a burning branch from one of the fires and hurled it at three forkbeards standing together, then charged into them, battering one man down, veering away before the other two could stab him with their spears. He wheeled and ran straight into a forkbeard fighting toe to toe with one of his Marroc. Valaric rammed his spear into the back of the forkbeard’s thigh and ran on. A pair of Lhosir with axes were racing across the camp, coming his way. He dropped into the shadows of a tent, stuck out his foot and tripped one and then surged up and brought his spear down with all his strength, splitting the mail that protected the back of the forkbeard’s neck. He yanked his point free, blade dark with forkbeard blood. The second axeman skidded to a stop and spun to face him. Valaric bared his teeth. Modris, but it feels good to be doing something at last!

  Gallow stepped aside as the iron man hurled himself forward. He struck Beyard in the side with all the strength his arm could muster. Beyard turned and stood for a moment, lit by Tolvis’s pyre, armour gleaming, shoulders rising and falling with each heavy breath. He came more slowly now, with the patient purpose of a Fateguard, driving Gallow back towards the heat of the fire. The red sword arced and swung and the air moaned under its blade. Gallow raised his own sword to defend himself. Sparks flashed as steel touched steel. Beyard lunged, driving for Gallow’s heart. Gallow leaped sideways, almost falling into the pyre in his desperation. He hurled another swing at Beyard but the Edge of Sorrows caught it easily and almost wrenched his sword out of his hand. Beyard swung and lunged again. This time Gallow stepped inside the blow and barged Beyard with his shoulder, staggering him back. He lifted his sword to drive it between the bars of the iron man’s mask, but Beyard smashed the blade aside. The ring as the two swords struck sounded oddly dull. The red sword slashed at Gallow’s face. Gallow stumbled again, and this time when the red sword came down and he blocked it with his own, his blade shattered. Gallow rolled away, snatched a brand out of the pyre and jumped to his feet, waving it at Beyard’s face. The iron man caught it in his fist and held it. For an instant their eyes met, the fire burning between them, then Beyard punched Gallow with the hand that still held Solace. As he reeled, Beyard pushed him to the ground. A moment later the tip of the red sword rested on the back of Gallow’s neck.

  ‘Yield!’ rasped Beyard.

  The Marroc raced out of the tower, howling and screaming, hacking at the ramp the forkbeards had built, drawing them from where they stood watch. They came slowly, distracted by the fight at the pyre, but they came, and Achista and the Marroc fought them as hard as they could. But there were dozens of them, soldiers born and bred, and slowly they drove the Marroc back into a tight circle of shields and spears just outside the gates, pressing in, killing them one by one with no way out.

  Valaric took the forkbeard’s axe on his shield and rammed his spear point into the man’s belly – maybe not hard enough to pierce mail but hard enough to wind him. As the Lhosir doubled over, Valaric lifted his shield and smashed its rim into the back of the forkbeard’s head. He went down.

  ‘Next!’ In the darkness, amid the litter of campfires and the scurrying of men here and there, it was impossible to tell who was who and who was winning. It was everything Valaric had wanted though – a wild swirling melee with every man for himself. The forkbeards hadn’t formed their wall of shields because he hadn’t let them. He crouched down in the shadows. A Lhosir ran out in front of him. He sprang and brought him down, ba
nging the forkbeard’s head into the frozen ground and holding it there until his struggles eased enough for Valaric to get out a knife and open his throat. Not ten feet away a Marroc was fighting another forkbeard, the two of them locked together, grunting and swearing, the forkbeard slowly bearing the Marroc down. The forkbeard wasn’t wearing his mail though, so Valaric ran to them and knifed him in the liver.

  ‘Look!’ The Marroc pointed up the slope towards the Reach. In the dim light around the gates Valaric saw fighting. ‘They’ve come out for us,’ said the Marroc.

  ‘Crazy fools.’ They were surrounded. He could see that even from here. He could see the pyre as well and two men fighting around it, and as he watched, one of the men fell. A savage growl prowled inside him, looking for an escape. ‘Round up some others,’ he snarled. ‘Not too many. But we came here for Witches’ Reach.’

  ‘Yield.’ Gallow was kneeling now. ‘Yield and I’ll give you a clean death.’

  ‘Let the Marroc go. Let Oribas go. Let all of them go. End it all, old friend.’

  ‘Look around you. It’s ended already.’

  ‘Yet still I will not yield.’ Gallow started to rise.

  The tip of the red sword pressed into his neck. ‘Your Marroc are beaten, old friend.’

  Gallow kept rising though the sword’s edge cut into his skin. He could feel the blood trickling down his back. Beyard could kill him with a flick of his wrist yet he didn’t. ‘No, Beyard. Lost is not beaten. You’re Lhosir. You of all of us understand the difference.’ He walked away and picked up the jagged stump of his broken sword. ‘I’ll fight you until you kill me, old friend.’

  Beyard kept the red sword held out before him. Gallow walked calmly towards it. He swatted the Edge of Sorrows aside with his half-sword. Beyard stepped away. ‘Stop,’ he hissed. He sounded hoarse. ‘Just go, Gallow.’

  ‘I will not.’

  ‘I don’t want to kill you, old friend.’