by Nathan Hawke
There were places. Little shelters that the Crackmarsh men had built. He looked about. Glanced at Jelira. Didn’t know why.
‘Well?’
‘What happens after? What happens in Varyxhun?’
‘After?’ Arda’s eyes bored into him. ‘Valaric will pay well for those arrowheads I’m bringing him, that’s what happens in Varyxhun.’
He couldn’t read her face. Couldn’t read it at all.
The crippled Lhosir had a shield with the mark of the Crimson Legion on it – Medrin’s men. He was pale and he’d lost a lot of blood but he was alive. Gallow picked him up off the ground and slammed him against a tree. ‘Where’s Medrin?’
‘You’re the Foxbeard?’
‘Some call me that. Heard of me, have you?’
The Lhosir’s eyes flickered and he glanced at Mirrahj and spat. ‘The nioingr who lies with the sheep.’
‘You have my name. What’s yours?’
‘Forris Silverborn. For now.’
Gallow smiled. The Lhosir was young like the rest and hadn’t yet done anything worthy enough to earn a name of his own. Silverborn meant he had riches in his family, that was all. Plunder from the Marroc, most likely. ‘Were you even born when the Screambreaker first crossed the sea, Forris Silverborn?’
‘Nioingr. Nioingr. Nioingr.’
Said three times, which meant they had to fight, and Silverborn could barely hop, which made it nothing more than a rude demand to die. Gallow slapped him. ‘You don’t end that easily, Silverborn. And is that truly what you want? To bleed out in the middle of this swamp where no one will ever find you except maybe a Marroc who’ll laugh and piss on your corpse? No one to speak you out?’
‘I know what I’ve done, Foxbeard. I don’t need a reminder.’
‘Do you now? And what have you done, Forris Silverborn?’ He let that hang between them. ‘Where’s Medrin? Still in Andhun? I bet he isn’t. On his way to Varyxhun yet?’ Silverborn shook his head but there was a look about him as though he’d seen the king not so long ago, as if Gallow was close to the mark. And then there was the shield. Gallow hit him. ‘The Maker-Devourer has no place for lies, Silverborn.’
‘He’s looking for you, Foxbeard. If you want to find him, all you have to do is stand in one place for long enough.’ Silverborn stopped and looked up, suddenly staring into the trees behind Gallow. Gallow craned his head around. Away among the shadows stood two Marroc with bows drawn back and arrows ready.
‘Turn round and face me!’ snapped the closer of the Marroc. ‘Hands where I can see them, and keep still or I’ll poke your liver with my iron.’
Gallow glanced at his shield, leaning against a tree. These were the Marroc who’d shot him once and made him bleed through his mail, the Marroc with the Vathan arrows, and they were closer now, much closer. Beside him Mirrahj gripped her spear. She was limping from the slash on her knee. Gallow gave a little shake of his head. The first Marroc took a few cautious steps closer and slowly lowered his bow. ‘You were the forkbeard at Witches’ Reach. You’re the one who killed the iron devil.’ He waved to the other and sniggered. ‘Gallow Addlewits, that’s what Valaric called you.’ He looked at Mirrahj. ‘Why is there a Vathan in the Crackmarsh?’
‘We’re after Sixfingers.’
The Marroc shook his head. ‘No Vathan in the Crackmarsh.’ He lifted his bow again and Mirrahj moved like a pouncing cat. She threw herself sideways and rolled behind her shield just as the Marroc’s arrow struck it, quivering in the wood. She crouched behind it with her javelot poised, hidden except for her helm, ready to spring. Gallow jumped between them. ‘No!’
The Marroc both had their bows drawn back. ‘No Vathan in the Crackmarsh. Valaric says.’
‘He’s just another forkbeard,’ snarled the other archer. ‘Shoot him and I’ll do the woman.’
‘Shut your hole, Remic! No one shoots anyone.’ The first Marroc narrowed his eyes.
The second laughed, and as he did, Mirrahj sprang. The first let out a startled cry but all there was to see of Mirrahj was her shield. His arrow struck wood and then she landed on him, knocking him flat. Gallow leaped forward as the second loosed his shaft. Mirrahj’s head jerked sideways and she stumbled a moment, then she had the tip of her javelot pressed to the throat of the archer on the ground. Gallow crouched behind his shield as the second Marroc trained yet another arrow on him. ‘Forkbeard! I don’t care what anyone says you did, you’re all the same!’
‘Move and your friend’s blood feeds this swamp,’ hissed Mirrahj.
Gallow kept his eyes on the Marroc with the bow. ‘Remic, is it? Weren’t you with Valaric at Witches’ Reach? We mean to cross the Crackmarsh, nothing more.’
‘No.’
There was a moment before he let the arrow go. Gallow saw it in his eyes, the slightest narrowing in the set of his face as a resolve and a belief settled there. Even as his fingers slipped off the bowstring, Gallow ducked and raised his shield. The arrow thudded into its rim exactly where his eyes had been a second ago. The Marroc on the ground let out a piercing cry of anguish, cut off as soon as it started into a lingering dying gurgle. The archer reached for another arrow. Gallow turned his head, caught in indecision, looking at Mirrahj, but the Marroc on the ground was already bleeding out from where her javelot had ripped his throat.
She had her arm drawn back to throw it.
‘No!’ He was far to slow, and if she had heard him, she didn’t listen. Her javelot hit the archer in the chest, punching straight through him and hurling him back. By the time Gallow reached him he was already dead. He whirled and glared at Mirrahj. ‘Why?’
She put a foot on the dead man’s chest and pulled on the javelot with both hands, tearing it out of him, then flicked a glance to the arrows in Gallow’s shield and her own. ‘Why? You have to ask me that, forkbeard?’
‘They were Marroc!’
‘And Marroc have your permission to fire arrows at you as the mood takes them? Very generous of you, but they certainly don’t have mine. Let’s find the horses these forkbeards were riding and go.’
Gallow shook his head. ‘We’ve spilled Marroc blood in the Crackmarsh now. There’ll be others. They’ll hunt us.’
Mirrahj snorted. ‘No, they won’t! Some forkbeards came upon some Marroc and most of them died. Five forkbeards, two Marroc. They’ll be heroes if they’re ever found at all, and who’s left to say exactly how it played out?’
She turned away and vanished back among the trees. Gallow left Remic and knelt for a moment beside the other Marroc. ‘I don’t know you, but you followed Valaric to Witches’ Reach and I know how many Marroc died there and how they fought.’ He turned to look around at the trees. ‘A brave man, Maker-Devourer. He belongs in your cauldron.’
He went to the Lhosir with the shattered leg to see if he wanted to die with a sword in his hand but when he got there, he found that Mirrahj had beaten him to it, and when he looked for her, she was already out among the water meadows, cooing and clucking at the horses the Lhosir had left behind.
It wasn’t long before they rode off, each on their own Lhosir mare. They left the bodies as they lay. No point burying a man in the Crackmarsh, even if you wanted to. The Ghuldogs just dug them up again.
VARYXHUN
17
THE WITCH OF THE NORTH
Achista and Oribas lay hidden in snow halfway up the mountainside. Half a mile away around the mountain at the edge of the treeline waited a dozen Marroc soldiers. They were the last remnants of the Hundred Heroes, the Marroc who’d crept into Witches’ Reach and taken it from the forkbeards and started the fire that now burned across the valley. They’d been more like seventy, even at the start, and now most of them were dead, and Oribas knew all that because he’d been with them from the start, because he’d opened the Aulian seal beneath the Reach that had let them into the forkbeard tower above. But a hundred sounded better and no one felt like arguing.
He’d stood in this very same place that day. Witches’ R
each perched on a small stumpy peak overlooking the Aulian Bridge across a saddle in the mountain. The Reach was full of forkbeards again now, which was why Achista was here with her heroes, watching them, sending runners and riders every day back to Valaric in Varyxhun across the secret mountain paths with word of their movements. The forkbeards had taken much of the lower valley back. They owned the bridge and the road as far as the Devil’s Caves, or at least Valaric allowed them to think they did. Oribas wasn’t sure anyone owned the road or the land between Varyxhun and the Reach any more. Neither army made much move to venture out from its walls. The Lhosir rode out in packs of fifty or sixty now and then, but never further than a single day’s ride. They raped, pillaged, murdered, looted, took whatever farmhouse they fancied as shelter for the night and then rode back the next day before the Marroc could muster. After a few weeks of this every house and barn within a day of the Reach was a burned-out shell and the forkbeards didn’t have any shelter any more. At the same time Marroc archers roamed the mountains from tiny caves and hideaways, shooting at any forkbeard they saw. No, it was winter that owned the road, and if Oribas had been in Varyxhun then he might have told Valaric to do something about that before the spring thaw came. Or Valaric might have quietly led his army into the Devil’s Caves and out of the mountains and across the Crackmarsh and maybe bloodied the garrison at Issetbridge instead. Might, but Valaric was set on making his stand, on the Vathen crossing the Isset again to take war to the forkbeards once more, and so Oribas was here with Achista because she needed a scribe and because Oribas was very glad indeed to be beside her. Love was a strange beast.
‘There. Again.’ He pointed.
The forkbeards of the Reach were little more than dark specks on the snow, but now and then Oribas caught a flash of light from among them. He might have put it down to lanterns in the dark, but he saw the flashes in the daylight too, and at night they were too bright. They came and went like tiny stars exposed and then quickly covered. In the last week Medrin Sixfingers had come to the Reach. They knew that from all the flags and the fuss the forkbeards had made – the forkbeards had stopped riding out to burn Marroc farms too – but something else had come, days before, and Oribas had no idea who or what, only that he’d felt a deep and abiding unease ever since.
‘We need to get closer.’
Oribas shook his head. Achista’s idea of getting closer was to slip away when he was asleep and creep down the slope as close to the walls as she could get without the forkbeards seeing her. She was good at that while he was almost useless, but every time she did it he always woke up almost as soon as she was gone and then spent the rest of the night pacing the woods and chewing his nails until she came back.
Later, as the sun sank, they went back to the camp in the woods and Achista told Oribas what to write for Valaric. When that was done she dragged him to their tent before it was even dark and they made love to the quiet amusement and occasional hoots of the Marroc outside. Another sign Oribas understood. Amusing him, occupying his thoughts and leaving him dozy and happy as twilight fell and she quietly dressed and slipped away. He watched her through lidded eyes, pretending he was asleep. Watched her look back at him with a lingering glance full of love and with a sadness he understood perfectly. He didn’t try to stop her, but when he was sure she was away from the camp, he rose and quietly followed.
The Marroc nightwatchman was ready as soon as Oribas crept out of his tent. ‘She’s gone,’ he said.
‘I know.’
‘See if you can keep quiet tonight, Aulian. People need their rest.’
‘I’ll be off in the trees. I won’t keep anyone from their pillow.’
The Marroc shook his head and snorted. ‘Pillow? Keep close, Aulian. There might be wolves or forkbeards out there.’
‘I won’t be far. But I will be quiet.’ He spoke lightly. It was only half a lie after all.
He walked away and then wandered aimlessly in the trees as Achista had shown him to make his trail a hard one to follow, then climbed back past the place where they’d spent the afternoon wrapped around each other while they watched the Reach. He carried on around and down the further slopes until he was in among the massive trees where he’d once seen twenty Lhosir massacred and where, a month later and not all that long ago, a hundred Marroc dead had been carefully hidden where the Lhosir would never find them. There had been flowers on that first day. Deep blue midwinter flowers, the first colours of the year, or the last depending on how you measured such things. He’d slipped out and brought back three and given them to Achista on the day he’d asked her to be his wife. Silly sentimentality perhaps, with death as close as it had been, but he’d never regretted it, not once. It was one thing he’d done since he’d crossed the mountains that made him proud however he looked at it. One thing among many that did not.
He walked quickly through the immense Varyxhun pines, guided by the starlight. Out to the north over the plains and the hills that led to the sea the sky was filled with grey cloud, but here in the mountains it was as clear as Aulian glass. The stars twinkled and sparkled and the half-moon glowed bright. They reminded him of home. Of the desert. Those night skies had been cold and clear too. Sometimes he wondered if he’d ever go home but mostly he thought not. He couldn’t think of a single reason why he should.
He passed through the trees until he was around the back of the Reach and began to climb again, cautiously now because the cave that led into the mountain and to the shaft beneath the Reach likely wasn’t a secret any more. He crept as close as he dared without crossing open snow and then lay in the cover of a boulder for a good hour, watching and waiting, feeling the bitter cold of the night slowly dig under his furs and into his skin and deeper. No one moved. No guard on the cave then, and so he ran across the open snow to the crack in the side of the mountain and slipped in. There were no lamps here and the starlight quickly vanished as he walked deeper. He carried a lantern but didn’t light it, not yet, knowing how far it would gleam and shine off the wet walls of the cave. In the dark he felt his way along as quietly as he could. It took longer and seemed further than he remembered but finally he felt the air change. Space opened ahead of him. He dropped to his hands and knees and crawled the last few yards until he reached the shaft and touched the surface of the water there. A thin crust of ice broke beneath his fingers. No one had tipped more barrels of fish oil down here then. He smiled bitterly at the thought. His finest hour, as far the Marroc were concerned, and the most terrible thing he’d ever done.
The walkway around the shaft was too narrow for crawling. He took the bag off his shoulder and left it in the tunnel, and then his boots as well, and inched around on his feet, pressing his back against the wall and feeling his way with his toes. Far above him another tunnel led to an Aulian seal that the Marroc had smashed open. For all he knew there might be a Lhosir on watch up there now, picking his fingernails, half-crazy with boredom. It made more sense than standing a man out in the open by the mouth of the cave. If nothing else, the inside was warmer.
Rungs set into the wall led up. Oribas climbed them slowly and with care. Here and there he found the loose ones and the ones that were missing. The Marroc hadn’t needed to make the climb any more treacherous than it already was – age had done that well enough – but they’d given it a good go nonetheless. At the top he half expected to peek over the edge and find himself staring at the boots of a forkbeard but there was no one there, and no light coming from the half-smashed door into the tomb. He almost relaxed. Almost, but not quite. Something still set his teeth on edge. Maybe it was the thought of entering an Aulian crypt in the pitch dark, even if he knew perfectly well that whatever it had once entombed was long gone, turned to dust or vanished away centuries ago.
Yet still . . .
He hadn’t understood, from the moment he’d left the Marroc camp and even before, quite why he was doing this. If there was a way into the Reach to be scouted then he was the last person to be doing it, and yet he�
��d come and he’d come alone and only a part of it was because of Achista. There was a sense of something. A sense of something here and he’d had it for weeks, long before the Lhosir king had come. The sliver of bone that he carried with him in a silver rune-etched tube quivered the way it had once quivered whenever the Rakshasa was nearby. The coin he carried that bore no face now bore the face of death. Something had changed, something that wasn’t about Lhosir and spears and swords and arrows but had to do with darker things, and so here he was. Alone.
He eased himself over the rim and onto his hands and feet. Everything was silent and still, yet he was suddenly certain that the tomb was no longer empty. He pulled himself up and took two steps forward, then walked to the wall and took out a handful of his precious salt and spread it in a line across the passage. Most of the things he wished he had with him right now were back at the bottom of the shaft but salt was the one thing he never left behind. A part of him felt stupid for being so nervous. He’d been through the tomb a dozen times, after all. He’d found what had been imprisoned there and it was long gone, a couple of pieces of old iron armour all that was left.
Iron. Iron like the ironskins of the Lhosir Fateguard. The same design and style. He finished his line of salt and stepped over it and immediately there was a presence. It had felt him make his wall and now a noise came from the other side of the broken seal, the grinding of metal on metal. He crept to the door, feeling his way, half of him wishing he’d brought a lamp, the other half glad he hadn’t. He held a fistful of salt in each hand. It was right there. He was sure of it. Right on the other side of the broken seal, silently waiting for him to step through. His heart was pounding so loudly that the Lhosir in the tower above must be wondering what was going on in their cellar.
On the threshold he paused and threw a handful of salt ahead of him. A soundless dazzling light bloomed inside the tomb. The air shook as though the mountain had fallen and a silent shock trembled the air, throwing him away from the seal and back the way he’d come. As he scrabbled to his feet, a figure came through the shattered door covered in a skin of iron armour save for a black cloth wrapped around its torso. It wore a mask and a crown and from under the mask glowed pale blue eyes like glacier ice. It stepped through and lifted its hands to its head. Iron armour. Like the Fateguard but missing a breastplate, and Oribas suddenly knew it was missing a back plate too because those were the pieces that had been left in the tomb. The pieces it had once been forced to leave behind.
