by Nathan Hawke
Sixfingers lifted his spear, stretched his arms and yawned. ‘Three years in your swamp, Valaric of the Crackmarsh, and not a single new rebuke? Truly, the turgid waters have seeped into your head. Or perhaps the ghuldogs have taken a bite out of you? As for your challenge?’ He shook his head. ‘I’ll fight you, Valaric of the Marroc, Valaric of Witterslet, you and I alone, but I’ll fight you at the top of this road not the bottom, between sundered gates ringed by the burned corpses of those who follow your foolishness. It won’t satisfy me just to kill you now; I mean to make an end of you that all Marroc will see.’ His voice rose as though he addressed the mountain itself. ‘For a year and a day this will be a castle of ghosts. Not one who hides behind these walls will I spare. Not one. Men will hang and women too. Children will burn. Gibbets will rise and blood ravens will fly. The curse of the red sword lies on you all, Marroc of Varyxhun.’
Sarvic strummed his bow and then put an arrow to it. ‘I’ve had enough of this.’ But Valaric knocked the arrow aside.
Sixfingers looked up to the gatehouse again and cocked his head. ‘Marroc who serve their king with good hearts tell me that tomorrow is your festival of Shiefa. They tell me you celebrate with ale and mead and dancing and singing and beckon the blushing bride of summer to shed her last clothes of winter. I’m told it’s a time for bonfires and bedding maidens and that even the dead rise to watch. Make your festival a grand one, Valaric of Witterslet, wherever that is. I’ll give you three days of kindness before I return with iron and fire.’
He turned and walked back down the road to Varyxhun. The army of waiting forkbeards lifted their shields and spears and roared and beat them one against the other in a slow steady rhythm. Sarvic drew out another arrow, and this time Valaric rounded on him and pushed him so hard he lost his balance. Sarvic threw out an arm to catch himself and almost barged Reddic off the battlement. ‘Sixfingers, Valaric! Sixfingers the demon prince of Andhun! Have you forgotten?’
Valaric grabbed two great fistfuls of Sarvic’s mail and pulled him close. ‘Have I forgotten?’ For a moment his face twisted into such a fury that even Angry Jonnic paled and took a step back. Valaric set Sarvic down. ‘No, Sarvic, I haven’t. But that doesn’t make it right to shoot a man in the back when he comes to parley. Not even if that man’s the devil.’
‘Took a finger of courage, coming up here like that all on his own.’ Fat Jonnic sniffed and scratched his chin.
‘And don’t you go and start admiring him, don’t you dare. You didn’t see Andhun.’
Reddic and Angry Jonnic stayed on the gate with a handful of the Marroc from Varyxhun while Valaric and the rest of the Crackmarsh men climbed back to the castle. They slept the night on the battlements, eight of them out in the open wrapped up in their winter furs – the warm spring days didn’t change how cold the nights could be. They spent the next morning there too, and by the time Valaric sent his Crackmarsh men to relieve them, Angry Jonnic was ready to go and fight the forkbeards on his own. They climbed the ladders from gatehouse to gatehouse, all the way to the castle walls where Sarvic and a few others stood watch, looking down at Varyxhun and the forkbeard camp and the glittering rush of the Isset winding off to the north. Sarvic nodded as Reddic came past. ‘You wait and see. Sixfingers says he’ll come the dawn after next. But he won’t; he’ll come tonight when he thinks we’re all in our cups, raising them to Shiefa. Faithless forkbeard.’
Reddic thought he might go and look for Jelira, but even before he’d come down off the walls and crossed the castle yard, Valaric was waving at Angry Jonnic and so Reddic went too, and Valaric had the Aulian with him and a barrel full of arrows. He clapped Reddic on the shoulder. ‘Those iron heads you brought? Fletchers from Varyxhun have finished making them into arrows. There’s three thousand, give or take. That’s . . .’ He frowned.
The Aulian smiled. ‘Make them into bundles, ten arrows in each. One bundle to every man with a bow. What’s left to stay in the armoury.’
‘Ten arrows in a bundle?’ Jonnic picked up ten arrows and then looked at the barrel. ‘That’s all? That’s—’
‘Not enough arrows,’ finished Valaric curtly. ‘So they’d better count.’
‘Going to take us all day is what I was going to say!’
Valaric shrugged and pointed to two more barrels tucked in the shadows against a wall. ‘Needs to be done though, so best you get on with it.’
Jonnic took a deep breath but Reddic got in first and put a hand on Jonnic’s arm. ‘Go and find the children who came with the smith from Middislet. They can do it. I’ll stay with them and make sure it’s done right.’
Valaric smirked as Jonnic stamped off. ‘Arda won’t let you anywhere near her. You know that, don’t you?’
He was about to say he hadn’t any idea what Valaric was talking about but by then the Wolf and the Aulian had turned away. The Wolf was laughing. And he was wrong too, because when Jonnic came back he came with Nadric and Jelira and the three children and there was no sign of Arda at all, and for a while Tathic and Feya helped with counting the arrows into tens and tying twine around them, until they got bored and wandered off to where Nadric and Pursic were playing. Jelira and Reddic finished the rest on their own. They talked, hardly noticing the time, Reddic about the family he’d had once and his new family in the Crackmarsh, Jelira about the days she remembered back before the Vathen, before the forkbeards came again, the days when Gallow had been her father. They talked about happy things, times and places and people that made them smile and forgot for a while about the harshness that overshadowed them. By the time they were done with the arrows, the sun was setting and Angry Jonnic was coming across the yard. He clutched a jug of something, held it close like it was a lover, and for once he looked more merry than angry.
‘Looks like Sarvic and Valaric are wrong and the forkbeards aren’t coming tonight after all.’
Reddic reckoned that was the mead talking, given the night had barely begun, but kept the thought to himself. Jonnic beckoned Reddic forward, but when Jelira came too he shook his head and put an arm around Reddic’s shoulder and walked him away, whispering loudly and stinking of drink. ‘Got something for you.’ He struggled for a bit while he tried to hold on to Reddic and the mead jug and get something off his belt all at once. Eventually he pressed a key into Reddic’s hand. ‘Valaric says to let him go. I don’t like it, mind, but Mournful don’t ever listen to me any more.’
‘Let who go?’
‘The Foxbeard.’ He snorted and shrugged. ‘Valaric says for you to do it. So go on then. Do it.’ He staggered off.
Jelira looked at him, face filled with worry. Reddic smiled and showed her the key. ‘Valaric says to let the Foxbeard g—’ He shook his head at his own stupidity. ‘I mean Gallow. Your d—’
And then he couldn’t have said how she covered the ground between them except that one moment they were a good ten feet apart and the next she was wrapped around him, head pressed against his chest, arms squeezing him as though she was wringing water out of a blanket. She led him by the hand to the sixth gate, skipping past the Dragon’s Maw and down the winding stairs to the dungeons beneath, past the cell where the strange-looking Vathan woman hissed at them and on to another. There was a guard on watch, sitting beside Gallow’s cell, pressed up against the iron bars. Gallow was on the inside, pressed up against them too, and it seemed odd to Reddic that Valaric would waste a man to guard the forkbeard and stranger still that any guard would sit so close; and then he realised this wasn’t a guard at all, this was Arda, and this was where she’d been when Angry Jonnic had gone looking and for the rest of the day too.
She stood up as she heard Reddic and Jelira and scowled. ‘Whatever you two want on Shieftane, I doubt very much I’m going to like it.’
Jelira threw herself at Arda and hugged her the way she’d hugged Reddic. Reddic just slipped the key into the cell door, opened it and stood back. And then took another step away as the Foxbeard unfolded himself from where he’d been cro
uched beside the bars and eased to his feet. In the cramped space he looked huge, a head taller than Reddic and twice as wide, with arms to wrestle bears and fists strong enough to stun a boar. But then Jelira let go of Arda and ran into the cell and threw herself at him, and that and the bemused pain and joy on the Foxbeard’s face took away his menace.
‘Valaric the Wolf says you’re free to fight beside us,’ said Reddic, which wasn’t quite what Jonnic had said but it would do. But they’d already forgotten him. He watched the three of them wrapped up together tight in each other’s arms, and a pang of longing built up inside him and he had to turn away. He went up to the yard and stared at the moon for a bit and then found Angry Jonnic and stole his jug of mead. In the Hall of Thrones half the Crackmarsh men and most of the Marroc from Varyxhun were singing and dancing. Up on the walls Sarvic and a few others kept watch, those who wouldn’t trust a forkbeard’s word, not ever. Reddic let them all be. For now he wanted to be alone.
When the moon reached its zenith, Jelira came and found him and asked him if he’d seen Nadric and the little ones. He pointed her to the hall and she went away again, but after she’d found them she came back and nestled beside him, and later Reddic took her hand and led her up to the castle walls and they sat on the battlements together and got drunk on Angry Jonnic’s mead. Noises wafted up from the valley below but Jelira and Reddic were both lost, drunk on mead and each other, staring out over the Isset, which was lit up like silver by the moon.
The sun rose on the morning after Shieftane and then rose on the next and Reddic stood atop the first gate once more. Low grey cloud hung over the valley. The forkbeards were massing. The abandoned houses and taverns and stables and barns of Varyxhun had become their camp, and on the morning after the festival, as the Marroc nursed their sore heads, the forkbeards had erected an avenue of wooden poles along the castle road. Reddic didn’t understood what they were at first, and then when he did, he wished he hadn’t. Gibbets. While he’d been sitting and dreaming in the moonlight with Jelira, the forkbeards had rounded up the Marroc of Varyxhun who were too stubborn or too stupid to leave. Now they lined the road, dangling.
A column of forkbeards was winding its way out of Varyxhun. He watched a while longer until he was sure and then he ran to the wall. ‘They’re coming! The forkbeards are coming!’ And when he peered closer he saw what it was that had kept them in the city these last few days. It wasn’t some simple gesture of kindness that had made Sixfingers leave them alone until the festival of Shiefa was past. They’d been building, and now four siege towers eased their way onto the road.
There wasn’t much to do now but watch and wait and pray to Modris.
24
THE FIRST GATE
Standing beside Valaric on the second of the six tiers of walls that rose up to the castle of Varyxhun, Gallow watched them come. The Lhosir marched up the road in the cool morning air singing an old song of the sea that Gallow knew well, a mournful lament for drowned men. A hundred feet short of the first gate they stopped. A few dozen pushed a ram towards the gate but they stopped short too. Gallow waited for the surge forward and for the fury of the battle to begin but it didn’t happen. The Lhosir stood below him, out of reach of the gatehouse but right below the feet of the men lining the second tier, shields locked together over their heads, looking up in anticipation. For a long minute an eerie quiet fell over the road. Then Valaric raised his hand and held it high for three long heartbeats and let it fall, and as he did, a storm of stones and arrows flew into the shields from right above them.
The Marroc yelled and howled and hooted. The Lhosir held firm and took their punishment. Arrows stuck out of their shields. Men screamed and howled curses as stones hit them. Here and there Gallow saw a Lhosir fall, crippled or dead, but there were few. The air had a touch of sweat to it now, forkbeard sweat, men already sweltering under their mail and helms though the road to the castle lay in the shade of the mountain. No burning skin yet though. Valaric was saving his fire for when he needed it. The Lhosir simply stood there. They didn’t even try to raise any ladders.
Gallow caught Valaric’s arm and shook his head. Arrows into a wall of shields was a waste, even if they did hit a Lhosir now and then. ‘They’re drawing you in, Valaric. They’re making you spend your arrows while their shields are strongest. Wait for them to make their move.’ He looked at the stones around him. The Marroc had already thrown most of what they’d brought and the battle had barely started. Three hundred archers with some dozen arrows each and the same again waiting in the castle thanks to Arda and Nadric. Enough to kill almost every Lhosir who’d ever crossed the sea, but only if they were used with care.
Valaric’s eyes blazed, itching for the fight. ‘Every arrow, you beef-witted clods! Every arrow has to count! Every arrow and every stone! Hold! Hold!’
The first of the siege towers was getting close. The Marroc bowmen fell silent, and now it was the turn of the Lhosir to hoot and taunt and howl, peering from behind their shields and sticking out their tongues. There was a rhythm to their shouting, as if they were at the oars of their ships. The towers weren’t for the gates, Gallow saw that now. Medrin meant to scale the walls directly from one tier of the castle road to the next, bypassing both the first gatehouse and the second. And Valaric, who had seen this too, meant to stop him. Marroc scurried to and fro, readying every stone and missile they could find. Valaric raised his hand again as the first tower came higher, as its top came close to the level of his feet. Every Marroc eye turned to follow him. The Lhosir watched too, hunched behind their shields. They understood what would come when that hand fell.
‘Now!’ Valaric’s hand dropped, and the Marroc along the walls cried out to Modris, to old King Tane, to Diaran, even to the Weeping God. Stones and rocks and boulders rained on the Lhosir once more, and now lighted pots of fish oil burst among their shields. The Lhosir wavered and Gallow felt a pang of sorrow for them, for deep down these were his people. Nothing wrong with most of them, just men on the wrong side of a wall as stones smashed down shields and broke bones and snapped sinews. Arrows flew. Men wrapped in flames tumbled over the edge to the Aulian Way and the Isset below. Others slipped and fell, rolled on their backs; burning shields were hurled away. Medrin’s Lhosir had no answer, no arrows of their own, no javelins, no stone throwers. Yet the towers came on.
‘More! More!’
The Lhosir were packing themselves tight, pushing their shields closer. A jagged piece of stone as big as a man’s torso went over the edge and smashed into a dozen of them clustered together. Half were crushed where they stood, the others sent sprawling. Gallow saw one man stagger to his feet with two arrows in his chest and vanish back under the wall of shields. How deep they were through his mail was anyone’s guess. Smoke rose up the walls now, acrid, thick with the stench of burning men, of fish and hair and skin. Over the shouting he heard Valaric whoop as the Lhosir died.
Gallow closed his eyes. Medrin. Medrin had made this slaughter. Medrin and no one else and so Medrin would pay to make it right.
The first tower began to slide slowly back. For a moment Gallow’s heart was in his mouth, begging and praying and willing for it to slip and roll and topple and fall and crush the others. The Lhosir were yelling to hold it steady. Yet now, when it mattered most, the stones and the arrows gradually wilted. The boulders became pebbles. The road fell quiet again as though both sides were holding their breath, waiting to see, all except Valaric who was screaming at his men for more. But when Gallow looked, he saw why Valaric’s Marroc didn’t respond. There was no more. They’d thrown everything they had.
The Lhosir shouts found a rhythm again. The tower stopped then ground back up the road once more until it slid to a halt in front of Gallow, right in front of him because he’d been watching it and was waiting for it. A ladder on wheels, that’s all it was, draped with heavy furs to protect the men climbing inside. At the very top the forkbeards had built a ramp like a drawbridge to cover the gap between the to
wer and the wall. Gallow readied his spear and waited for it to fall.
Now the tower was actually here, Valaric wished he’d saved some of the oil or the boulders. There was a runner on the way to the third gate calling for both but they wouldn’t come in time. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. The forkbeards were supposed to die battering their way through the gates. Now his men were in the wrong place. He needed his soldiers here, all of them, and he sent a second runner for reinforcements, but it was all too late to make a difference. Cursed Sixfingers had out-thought him, that was the truth of it, not that any man around him would ever say so.
A dozen archers stood ready for the ramp to come down. Valaric stood in the middle of a semicircle of twenty men with spears and shields, the best of his Crackmarsh men with Gallow in the middle beside him. In his hand he held Solace, the Comforter, the red sword of the Vathen. In Andhun he’d told Gallow that the sword was cursed and he’d believed it too, but now he had no choice. ‘When that ramp comes down, sod the arrows.’ The forkbeards would be ready for that. They’d have their shields up, but maybe that meant for a moment they wouldn’t see what was coming. ‘When it comes down, we charge them. We hit them like bulls and we take their tower and throw it down on their heads!’
The forkbeards below fell quiet. Valaric and his men gripped their spears, waiting for the ramp to fall.
‘Are you ready for us, Valaric of Witterslet, Valaric of the Marroc, Valaric of the Swamp? Are you ready to die now?’ Sixfingers was somewhere below and not far from the foot of the tower but Valaric couldn’t see where.
Beside him, Gallow let out such a howl of hate that Valaric winced. ‘Medrin!’
There was a long pause and then Sixfingers seemed to be closer. ‘Is that you, Foxbeard?’
‘My sword hungers for you!’
‘They say you killed Beyard outside Witches’ Reach. I hear he had the better of you and let you win.’
