The Last Bastion

by Nathan Hawke

  The bushes rustled and shifted above Moonjal as the forkbeard lunged with his spear. Moonjal held his breath. The spearman took another cautious step. His foot came down on Moonjal’s leg and slid sideways. Moonjal jerked – couldn’t help it – and for a moment the forkbeard lost his balance. He grunted in surprise. Moonjal rammed the knife into the forkbeard’s thigh, nice and high under the skirts of his mail, and hacked hard. The forkbeard staggered back, tripped and fell. For a moment as he toppled over they were face to face in the blackness, but then the forkbeard was down and Moonjal was hauling himself to his feet and never mind the thorns that shredded his hands. He started to run but then realised the forkbeard wasn’t moving. When Moonjal went back to look, the forkbeard was dead. The grass around him was sticky and wet with blood.

  Shouts rang out from the top of the ridge. He crouched beside the body for a moment and looked up. The slaughter was still going on but no one else was coming down. Good enough. He stayed with the forkbeard long enough to help himself to the man’s shield, helm and spear, but by the time he’d armed himself, the sounds of fighting were dying down. He could hear voices, forkbeard voices, which meant his ride was destroyed or fled and the forkbeards had won, and that was when he realised he had no idea how many of them were here, just a short march from the walls of Andhun, in the middle of the night and on the wrong side of the river.

  He dragged the dead forkbeard into the thicket and started to strip him. He was mostly done when the first of the boats began to drift by. At first he couldn’t imagine what the large misshapen lumps were, then he saw one of them move, saw a forkbeard head poke out from under the furs at the front, and understood. But by then it was too late.

  King Medrin Sixfingers, king of the Lhosir and the Marroc and bearer of the Crimson Shield of Modris the Protector, peered at the walls of Andhun rising ahead on either side of the river. The Vathen had spent three years making sure he couldn’t simply build a fleet of boats and cross the Isset into the eastern half of the city and now only a fool would try an assault from the river. There were walls along the eastern bank and lookout towers and simply nowhere for boats to land short of the harbour. There were a dozen sentries, all carefully protected from arrows and archers in walled-in posts that could only be reached through long stone passages from as far away as the city gates, and each lookout had a bell and a small fire to light, both of which could raise the alarm. Three full rides of Vathan warriors had their barracks along the river defences, armed with thousands of javelots. The ardshan’s Aulian tinker had shown the Vathen how to make little stone throwers and ballistae to fire their javelots harder. They had a good collection of Marroc fish oil too, for throwing into the river and setting the water alight. More to help their eyes than to burn Lhosir maybe, but to the Vathen watching the river either was as good as the other.

  For three years Andhun had been split in two like this, and for three years Medrin had waited, but no more. He gave the word, and the little boat that carried him turned towards the shore still a full half-mile from the city walls. Behind him a hundred other boats did the same.

  Only a fool would try an assault from the river.

  At the edge of Andhun harbour, among the rocks and the breaking waves at the foot of the cliffs, a handful of men encased in iron rose out of the water and clawed their way to the shore. No one saw them come. There were caves at the bottom of the cliff and some of them led up into the castle. A few of the iron-skinned men clambered into them, but most crept and scraped along the foot of the cliffs. The passages under the castle were no secret any more. They’d be guarded and the ironskins had other duties tonight. They walked around the cliff paths, fourteen of them clinging to the shadows. Now and then they stopped, pausing as idle eyes awake in the middle of the night swept across them. They were no ordinary men, these warriors. They were the Fateguard, servants to the Eyes of Time, all Lhosir once but something else now, thieves and murderers and rapists and traitors, the worst nioingr, outcasts handed over in chains to the white ship that sailed now and then to the land of the Ice Wraiths. Now they had come back.

  The Eyes of Time had not made them to be subtle tools but they had instincts beyond those of ordinary men. They slipped through the edges of the lower city, away from the castle, away from all the places where the Vathen might keep watch, sidling through the darkest narrowest alleys where the Marroc lived. Once they saw a Marroc thief coming the other way. The thief saw them too. He squealed and ran to cower in the darkest place he could find. They let him go – he’d not warn any Vathen, after all. They climbed steep and narrow alleys, closer and closer to Andhun’s gates, past the door to the Grey Man inn and along the very same alley where Valaric and Gallow had once held half an army of Lhosir at bay long enough for the Marroc to flee to their ships and boats – or so the story was told among both the Marroc and the Lhosir in their very different ways.

  There wasn’t much to be done about the gatehouse itself. There were Vathan guards outside the doors, standing close to their braziers and rubbing their hands, and then there were the doors themselves, thick iron things held shut and barred from the inside. The Fateguard entered the square. They walked quickly now, keeping to the shadows for as long as there were shadows to be had, then brazenly out in the open.

  ‘Stop! Who goes there?’

  The Vathen were quick to pick up their spears and shout the first alarms. When one turned and ran, a Fateguard threw his spear and brought him down. The guards screamed and threw themselves forward. The Fateguard barely slowed their pace. They shattered spears and bodies and bones without a thought and then the Vathen were dead or fled and broken.

  One of the Fateguard stood before each iron door and placed a palm against it. Fingers of brown rust spread across the iron like cracks in glass – across the door and across the skin of the Fateguard alike. The fingers spread in fast fits and starts, fattening as they went until both the doors and the skin of the Fateguard were crazed with brown cracks.

  Alarms sounded up and down the city, then finally a bell from the castle itself. More Vathen came but they were too few and too late. The Fateguard ringed the gatehouse doors, their iron skins turning aside the Vathan spearheads, their swords striking with the deadly speed of snakes. A dozen Vathen died, their blood spreading in dark puddles across the stones. The last few backed away, fearful yet entranced. The iron doors were flaking and so too were the two Fateguard whose magic was eating them. Both were pitted and cracked. Dead leaves of corroded metal peeled away and snapped and fluttered to the ground. With a crack one of the rusting Fateguard snapped at the waist and toppled sideways. His hand remained pressed to the door, welded in place by the rust. The rest of his armour broke into pieces as it hit the cobbles. The armour was hollow now, nothing but dust left of the man who’d once been inside.

  The other Fateguard kicked at the doors. Ruined iron buckled and twisted and then the hinges snapped and the bolts shattered. The gates fell, the iron turning to powder, doors and rusting Fateguard both. Inside the gatehouse the Vathan soldiers hurled their javelots and fired their cross-bows. Bolts struck iron and did nothing. A well swung axe severed an iron hand at the wrist but the Fateguard barely seemed to notice. The axeman had enough time to see there wasn’t any blood, to feel the horror rise inside him before a sword slammed into his belly, doubling him over, and then came again, point first down on the back of his neck and out through his mouth. He spewed his own blood over his feet as he died, and there on the floor right in front of him was the severed hand, still in its iron skin and not a drop of blood at all. Nothing but old dead meat.

  Andhun’s gates were already opening as the last of the Vathen died. Back outside the gatehouse, shadows began to move – Lhosir, running out of the darkness, their king leading the way. They poured through the gates and swept as fast as they could through the upper city, straight for the castle. The Fateguard retraced their steps toward the sea, down to the foot of the cliffs and along the shore.

  This tim
e they turned for the caves.

  9

  THUNDER AND LIGHT

  A crash woke Gallow in the night. His eyes flicked open but the rest of him stayed perfectly still. The sky was dark, just starting to grey where the sun would rise in another hour, as shouts spread through the horse market: ‘Arms! To arms! Forkbeards!’

  A Vathan ran past him, throwing mail over his head. The riders who’d been his guard were scrambling to their feet, snatching up their javelots, casting their eyes around wildly in the dark, searching for the enemy. Gallow rolled into the far corner of the yard and curled up in the moonshadows, trying to make himself small. Trying to be unseen.

  ‘Get up! Get up!’ He recognised the voice. One of the men who wanted to be bashar in place of Mirrahj. Josper, was it? Something like that. ‘Forkbeards inside the walls! Arm yourselves! To your horses!’ Three Vathen ran past heading the other way, then more and more spilled out into the yard, and now Mirrahj was screaming at them to stay together, and right in the middle of the chaos a dozen Lhosir burst in through the market gates and launched themselves at the Vathen, who almost broke even though they had three times the numbers. He saw Mirrahj and Josper both hurl themselves at the Lhosir, stalling their charge as the men around them wavered; and then at last the Vathen rallied and the Lhosir pulled seamlessly back behind their wall of shields and spears and withdrew to leave a dozen Vathen dead in the yard. Josper screamed at the Vathen to charge after them and Mirrahj screamed at them to hold and for a moment the two of them stood nose to nose ready to fight, but by then the Lhosir were gone. Josper swore something and spat. The Vathen dragged their horses into the yard and threw themselves into their saddles, some of them barely dressed but all of them furious. They hurtled away in dribs and drabs, Mirrahj’s last cries echoing back: ‘The castle! The castle!’

  Forgotten, hobbled and with his hands tied behind his back, Gallow was alone. A quiet settled over the yard. In the distance he heard shouting and screams. He waited a moment in case the Lhosir came back or any last Vathen came rushing through, but none did. The sounds of fighting were fading.

  Among the fallen lay one dead Lhosir. Gallow rolled across the yard towards him. Vathan javelots – light things for throwing from the back of a horse – were useless for what he needed, but a Lhosir spear was heavy with a good sharp edge that sliced and slashed as well as stabbed. He fumbled with his fingers, sliding the haft behind him, easing the bladed head against the ropes around his wrists and then rocking back and forth, slicing them thread by thread. The spear kept slipping and he kept having to find it again and line it up right, but one by one he felt the strands of rope snap, more and more pieces of it tickling his fingers. He felt the rope give, a bigger jolt this time, and then the spear slipped again and the rope unravelled and fell apart and his hands were suddenly free. A few seconds more and he’d untied the other ropes. He scrambled over to the fallen Lhosir and took the soldier’s belt and his boots and all his weapons bar one. The last was a knife. He wrapped the dead Lhosir’s fingers around it. ‘I don’t know this man, Maker-Devourer, but I saw him fall. His death was brave and worthy of your cauldron.’

  He picked up the Lhosir’s shield and saw its design, painted like the Crimson Shield of Modris the Protector. The last time Gallow had been in Andhun, the Legion of the Crimson Shield had been Prince Medrin’s personal soldiers. He stared at it and at the dead Lhosir on the worn stones. Did that mean that Sixfingers was here? Until now he’d had every intention of running, caught between Vathan and Lhosir armies, none of whom were friends. But if Sixfingers himself was here . . .

  A terrible purpose swept into him. He hurried through the horse market. His sword hand itched. Medrin. If Medrin was here they could end it between them. One of them would die, and either way Arda and his sons would be safe. A snarl curled his lip – best if it was Medrin who was the dead one. He crouched in the black shadows of a doorway. No one would hunt him if Medrin was dead. The two of them could finish it; and even if the war wasn’t done and the fighting wasn’t over, he could leave all this far behind and go back to who he was, throw away his sword and hammer his spear into something more useful. Arda would have him again if he could promise her that was how it would be. Forget the red sword. Leave it with the Marroc in Varyxhun or lead the Vathan woman to it. He didn’t know, didn’t care. But Medrin had to die first. Right here and now nothing else mattered.

  He picked up his Lhosir spear and walked out of the horse market, turned the first corner and was almost ridden down by a dozen Vathen.

  ‘Forkbeard!’ One of them threw a javelot. Gallow lifted his shield to knock it aside and then dived into an alley too narrow for the horses to follow. Jeers came after him. ‘Coward! Nioingr! Sheep lover!’

  ‘Leave him!’

  The voice that rose over the others was Mirrahj. Gallow ran back to the end of the alley. ‘Mirrahj Bashar!’ The horsemen were disappearing back into the market, half-lost in the shadows cast by the houses pressed tight around them; but as he stood and watched she came back. She kept her distance on the back of her horse, spear levelled at his face, while Gallow kept his back to the alley and his feet ready to run.

  ‘My pet forkbeard! Fortune smiles on you.’

  ‘I mean to look for King Sixfingers so that one of us might kill the other. These are his men here. Where might I find him?’

  ‘The forkbeards are at the castle. I’m sorry to tell you that they’re already inside, so you might find it hard.’ She lifted her spear. ‘I’m glad the ardshan won’t be ripping you apart, forkbeard. I’ll look for you on the battlefield so I might do it myself.’

  ‘I mean to kill him, Mirrahj Bashar.’ Gallow saluted and backed away. ‘You were a fine enemy. Better than many a friend.’

  He turned, letting the night swallow him, and ran uphill, always uphill towards the castle. The alleys of Andhun, all too narrow for a man on a horse, made it easy. Now and then he darted across open streets, and sometimes there were riders and sometimes they saw him and shouted and threw their javelots but they were always too slow and they never gave chase. Some of the streets were empty, others he had to wait while dozens of Vathen cantered past, but they never looked down or to the side, always up and towards the castle. In one small square he had to creep around fifty riders. He could hear the Lhosir by then, their battle shouts splitting the night, barked cries of men with weapons ready, and he heard the beating of swords and spears on shields and the bellows of men readying themselves to fight and then the clash of arms, the animal howls, the screams of horses and of the dying. Yet as he drew close to the castle square, the sounds of fighting dropped away. For a few minutes the city fell quiet, and in that stillness Gallow reached its heart.

  In the grey gloom of almost dawn, dead Vathen littered the cobbles. A hundred Lhosir barricaded the castle gates, shields pressed tight together, spears arrayed over the tops. They had their own dead too, dragged back through the ranks by now, but Gallow could see them through the thin line of spears, the Lhosir who were too wounded to fight dragging the dying back into the castle yard, talking among themselves to see who knew each man to speak them out. Scores of Vathan horsemen rode back and forth in front of the shield wall, just out of reach, taunting with words and javelots. The Lhosir held their ground, howling insults of their own and throwing the Vathan javelots right back at them. Fists clenched, spears shook, horses snorted and men bellowed, each side firing itself up for the next crash of iron.

  At the edge of the square Gallow watched them all, and then he stepped out from the shadows and strode between them. Spears and eyes swivelled to greet him as he ignored the Vathen, stopped a pace short of the Lhosir wall and lifted his spear over his head and let out a roar: ‘Medrin! Medrin Sixfingers! King Nioingr! Gallow Truesword waits for you!’

  The Lhosir looked at one another and cocked their heads and shook them. One of them started to laugh and soon they all were. ‘You just stay there calling for him.’

  Someone threw a stick. A
stone pinged off his shield. Then the ground under his feet was trembling – he could feel it tickling his soles – and the Lhosir weren’t looking at him any more, they were looking across the square to the wide road down to the harbour.

  ‘Medrin!’

  The rumble of hooves grew louder still, and with a great roar another hundred Vathan riders thundered into the square and hurled themselves towards the Lhosir line, veered away from the spears at the last second and hurled their javelots. Stranded between them, left to choose whether to run or to be trampled, Gallow ran, and as he did he cast a glance back. The reluctant sun was creeping over the horizon now and the tops of the castle towers lit up, suddenly bright. In the square the Lhosir bellowed and roared their taunts, the Vathen howled and hooted back, javelots flew into shields, spears reached out to stab at man and horse alike. Animals and soldiers screamed and the air reeked of blood. Back in the shadows Gallow looked wildly for another way through, a weakness in the Lhosir wall. Then he saw the rising dawn light the balcony over the castle gates. Men stood there, and Gallow stared at them until the sun touched the square and struck his eyes, dazzling him, pulling him out of its shadows.

  ‘Forkbeard!’ A Vathan horseman pointed a spear at him. In a flash, a group of riders had turned towards him. He was still dazed by the light and the figure on the balcony. He turned to run and a javelot hit him between the shoulders hard enough to hurl him forward and sprawl him across the cobbles. The horsemen came up behind him. He could barely move. For a first helpless moment he couldn’t tell whether his mail had held and turned the point or whether the javelot had driven right through him and he was about to choke on his own blood. He’d been kicked by horses a few times and that had hurt far less less.