The Last Bastion

by Nathan Hawke

  Oribas’s tunnel rose higher into the mountain but it was the going down that interested Gallow. They crept through the trickle of icy water, ever lower until the tunnel ended in a hole and the trickle splashed through it into some reservoir below. There were no steps, no ladder, only a gap the height of a standing man and then ice-cold water and a darkness that seemed to eat the light of their candles. Gallow peered and lowered a lamp and looked about and then handed the lamp to a Marroc, closed his eyes and dropped. The cold was shocking. His mail and his weapons dragged him straight down, but when he found his feet and stood on the bottom, the water only reached his chest. He looked back up. The lamplight from the shaft lit up a cavern shaped like a tadpole, the tail rising up out of the water into the heart of the mountain. Where that passage went not even Oribas knew.

  He waded forward. It was slow and difficult and he kept losing his footing, and the cold was like a vice gripping him ever tighter. Ahead of him the roof of the cavern dropped to the water, pushing down on him, making him duck. Oribas had said there were Aulian pictograms etched into the stone where the water would lead him out but it was too dark to see them. He ran his fingers over the rock instead, feeling until he found their notches and ridges and then took a deep breath and then another, filling his lungs one last time before he dipped his head into the freezing water. Snowmelt, he remembered, that’s what Oribas had said. Water that had made its way down from the tarn above the castle. He could feel himself freezing, his arms and legs already sluggish. He reached up, hands to the stone ceiling above him and walked and fell and floundered and stood up again, pushing himself forward as quickly as he dared. His head broke the surface in a second cavern, utterly pitch black. The floor rose and the water fell away until he was out, shaking himself and his furs, jumping up and down, making his heart pump faster again. Made him wonder how people as small as Achista and Oribas had come through without freezing to death, but maybe Oribas had some potion or powder for that. Straight ahead, the Aulian had said. Straight ahead until you crack your head on the wall and then veer to the right and you’ll see some moonlight. So he walked with one hand reaching ahead of him and when he felt stone he veered to the right, and half a minute later he saw moonlight reflected in the dampness of the walls. He thanked the Maker-Devourer, not that the Maker-Devourer either listened or cared, and turned back to call the rest.

  Reddic dropped into the freezing water, the last Marroc to go. He squealed as the cold shocked the air out of his lungs. The Marroc ahead of him turned and glared. ‘Quiet, boy.’ He followed the man in the darkness through water that reached almost to his neck.

  The soldiers held hands, each whispering to the man behind what was coming, pulling each other onward. Reddic ducked his head beneath the water along with the rest of them and prayed to Modris, but when he felt the stone close over his head he still knew he was going to drown; and when his head found the air again and he breathed a deep chestful of ice-cold air, he felt a relief like the moment the sun had risen after his night with Jelira and the ghuldogs. He hurried after the rest, all of them picking up speed now, keen to keep moving, shaking off the water and the cold and eager for the fight. Out of the cave they scrambled up a vicious path that twisted from the bank of the Isset up to the Aulian Way as it wound along the valley beneath Varyxhun castle. He followed the others and they crouched in the shadows of an overhang.

  Reddic found he could barely meet the Foxbeard’s eye. There he was, hunched over two bodies. Dead forkbeards, and somehow knowing that the Foxbeard had killed two of his own only made him even more terrible and Reddic was suddenly very aware that he’d lain with the Foxbeard’s wife in the caves of the Crackmarsh and then spent the night of Shieftane staring at the moon with his daughter, or someone he thought of as his daughter. He hung back. Sarvic, Valaric’s right hand now, squatted beside Gallow. Rumour had it they’d once fought together against the Vathen at Lostring Hill and that the forkbeard had saved Sarvic’s life. Hard to imagine when you looked at Sarvic now.

  Gallow’s eyes raked them. ‘Medrin and the Fateguard will be in the heart of the camp. Fateguard don’t sleep. Keep away from them.’

  Sarvic glanced at Reddic and Gallow’s eyes followed. ‘The Aulian wizard says the iron devils can’t cross a line of salt. Any of you bring salt with you? Any of you keep it dry through that sump?’ He bared his teeth and drew his sword and pointed it at Reddic. ‘On the left, you’re with the Foxbeard. You wait out of sight for a hand of the moon and come at the camp from the castle road.’ Where the forkbeards’ watch was sharpest and they all knew it, but Sarvic left that out. ‘On the right, you follow me. We go around the other side. There are Marroc in Sixfingers’ army, our own kin. We need their arrows. You see a bow, you take it. A bowstring, you cut it. Kill and fight as much as you like but remember it’s the arrows that the Wolf wants from us. Watch the road and remember your path. Every man makes his own way back. We’ll not wait past dawn.’

  None of the Marroc spoke. Gallow rose and began to lead his men away. Reddic decided the sword must have been pointing to his right and followed Sarvic instead.

  There were men here he knew, Gallow had no doubt of that. Most of Medrin’s army would be younger Lhosir, men like the ones he’d seen when he’d sailed with Jyrdas One-Eye to take the Crimson Shield. But there’d be some older men too, men like him who’d fought in the Screambreaker’s war and found a taste for it in their blood and never given it up. For almost twelve years he thought he’d been free of that hunger but Mirrahj had taught him he was wrong. He knew better now. He’d never be free of it. He could put it aside – for Arda he could do that much – but be free of it? No.

  He took his time. When he reached the edge of the Lhosir camp he kept the Marroc down and out of sight. He watched the waning half-moon creep up through the sky, wondering how long Sarvic would need before he found where Sixfingers’ archers kept their arrows. Wondering how far he, Gallow, might get among them before someone realised who he was. If he could get to Medrin himself, and if he did whether that would be enough to make them go away. But that wasn’t how it worked among the brothers of the sea, and besides Sixfingers still had his ironskins. They’d spot him long before he could run a spear through Medrin’s heart.

  The moon crept over the top of his hand. Time enough. With a sigh and a snarl, half-regret and half-hunger, he stepped out of the shadows to where the nearest Lhosir sentry must be. ‘Hoy! Filthy nioingr!’ He couldn’t see the man but he was there, and sure enough a furious Lhosir came striding out from a cluster of stones long fallen from the mountaintop.

  ‘What flap-eared piece of—’ Gallow rammed into him shield first, battering him back. The force knocked the sentry off balance, and he stumbled and fell. Gallow drove his spear through the Lhosir’s neck before he could say another word.

  ‘Gallow Foxbeard,’ he hissed, ‘that’s who.’ He stepped over the body and quickly on.

  Sarvic dropped to the banks of the Isset and crept through the shadows, hidden from the moon. Reddic followed. They slipped into the fringes of Varyxhun where the river touched up against it. The Isset was flowing fast and high, still rising every day as the late spring warmth reached the deep valley snows. There were no walls here and it was easy enough to creep into the deserted streets. The emptiness put Reddic on edge. He was used to the quiet of the Crackmarsh but he’d been to towns often enough on the back of his father’s cart to know they were bustling places, full of life. Varyxhun was dead, abandoned. As they crept deeper in, they began to pass the gibbets where Sixfingers had hung the Marroc who hadn’t run. From the castle they hadn’t seemed so many, but now Reddic saw them all. A hundred of them and more.

  ‘Sixfingers wants his kin-traitors to remember what they’re fighting for,’ hissed Sarvic, and Reddic winced at the savagery in his voice. Kin-traitors. That’s what the Crackmarsh men called the Marroc who fought for the forkbeards, but the forkbeards had their own word for it. Nioingrs.

  Sarvic stopped. He wa
ved the other Marroc into the shadows and crouched down and put a finger to his lips. Reddic strained his ears. He heard voices. Marroc voices.

  Three Lhosir sat beside their fire at the edge of Varyxhun, picking dirt out of their fingernails and trading battle stories. They’d been fighting the Vathen in Andhun, and not long ago at all by the sounds of it. They heard him coming and were already up and on edge as Gallow strode towards them out of the dark. As he stepped into their circle of firelight and they saw his face, they scrambled to their feet. None of them wore mail.

  ‘I’d be very pleased to hear more.’ Blood still dripped from the tip of his spear as his arm whipped back and he threw it. It struck the middle Lhosir in the chest just beneath the breastbone. He flew back and fell, twitching, trying to raise his arm as blood poured from his mouth. Gallow hefted his axe. The other two were quick, he’d give them that, with their shields propped up by their sides and their spears leaned against their shoulders. But not quick enough. He was up close before they could bring their spears to bear and between them before they could overlap their shields; and while he barged one back, he dipped almost to his knees and swung his axe across the earth – low enough to snip the stems of spring flowers and also to snap an ankle or two. A Lhosir screamed. The last one dropped his spear and went for his sword but he was too hesitant. Gallow stood and his axe rose high and came down, over and inside the guard of the other man’s shield and into the Lhosir’s collarbone. It bit deep. The Lhosir clutched at Gallow. His eyes rolled like a madman. He sputtered and coughed, blood welling up in gouts in time to the last few beats of his heart and then his arms went limp. Gallow pulled his axe out of him and turned on the other. The crippled Lhosir was gasping for breath. Hopping back. He was desperately young, young like Gallow had been once when he’d first crossed the sea.

  ‘Medrin took an arrow through his chest from a crazy Marroc when he was your age. Didn’t stop him from being king.’ Gallow scratched at his mangled nose, his own reminder of a first year of war. ‘You know who I am?’

  The Lhosir didn’t answer. He had his back to the mountain now, and so to the dozen Marroc creeping up behind him out of the darkness.

  ‘I’m the Foxbeard. I’m here for Sixfingers. Built a new ram yet?’

  He caught a flash of a glance away and then perhaps the Lhosir heard a noise: he turned sharply in time to see three Marroc come out of the night to pull him down. They dragged him to the fire and pushed his face into it until he stopped screaming. Good enough a way as any to get some attention, Gallow supposed.

  Sarvic waved them forward. They kept low, creeping through the fringes of the Marroc camp. A few Marroc soldiers stood around a fire in the middle, looking off to the commotion on the other side of the town. In a ring around the fire were a dozen hunting shelters, branches lashed together and draped in hides. They’d each have ten or maybe twelve Marroc inside. The arrows would be at the end near the fire in leather quivers. In the Crackmarsh they did the same.

  Sarvic nodded. He pointed to three of the Crackmarsh men and then to the guards and drew a finger across his throat. They moved silently forward and then struck all at once, one hand over the mouth, pulling back the chin, the other with a knife to open the throat, the way every Crackmarsh man learned for when they met a forkbeard one day. Some guards, Reddic knew, wore mail across their throats, and this was exactly why, but Sarvic had known without looking that these Marroc wouldn’t have such a thing. They were Marroc and so they only got what the forkbeards threw away.

  They lowered the dead guards to the ground around the fire and Sarvic beckoned the others forward. He pointed at them and then to the shelters, made a creeping silently gesture and then another throat-cutting motion. And it took a moment before Reddic realised that he really did mean them to creep inside and kill every single Marroc here.

  Gallow sent half his Marroc looking for the Lhosir ram. The rest scattered across the town, kicking over fires and kicking in doors, setting roofs alight, murdering forkbeards where they could get away with it. With a bit of luck they might find some place where the Lhosir kept something that mattered – food, boots, arrows, anything they could take or smash or ruin. There were Lhosir in the houses all around him, asleep, half-asleep, in the middle of waking, but few on the streets. A man stumbled out of a house – Gallow darted sideways and split his head open. The more chaos the better. Let them think they were under attack by a thousand. Keep moving, that was the key – plenty of gloom and shadow in a town at night. And noise, and while the Marroc made mayhem, Gallow ran straight and in silence with one thing on his mind: Medrin. And he almost reached the heart of Varyxhun too, the big barn-like hall beside the market square. Almost, and then Lhosir were running towards him to cut him off, and they were armed and carried shields and none of them was afraid to face him, and when they were close enough for Gallow to see their faces, he understood why. He slowed and stopped and braced himself for a fight. ‘Hello again, Ironfoot.’

  ‘Foxbeard.’ Ironfoot nodded. ‘Your warning about the gates of Andhun was timely. Without it my men and I would all be dead. So I thank you for that.’ Ironfoot was limping. Survived then, but not without a scratch.

  ‘I heard men talking. Medrin took Andhun and held it then, did he?’

  Ironfoot nodded. ‘He holds the castle and what passes for their king as a hostage. Frankly, the Vathen could help themselves to the rest any time it took their fancy, but who knows? Maybe they’re like the Marroc and like to keep their kings alive.’

  Gallow laughed at that. ‘And you, Ironfoot? Do you want to keep yours?’

  ‘If you had Sixfingers or old Yurlak or even the Screambreaker himself up in that castle of yours, Foxbeard, do you think I’d hesitate for even a second before I came at your walls? Would any true Lhosir?’ He laughed too and shook his head. ‘We’re not like them, Foxbeard. Why are our shields not locked together, you and I, side by side?’

  ‘Because you follow Medrin and Medrin is no Lhosir.’

  ‘I disagree. He’s a brother of the sea and our king.’

  ‘Yet you wouldn’t hesitate for a second if I held him?’

  ‘Not one heartbeat.’ He smiled again. ‘You don’t like him, find him and call him out. The old way.’

  ‘I’m here, Ironfoot. But I don’t see him, I see you.’

  Ironfoot shrugged again and let out a sigh. ‘You picked the wrong night, Foxbeard.’

  For a moment they looked at each other, smiling and remembering how they’d fought together once, remembering the men they’d known, the mighty and the small, the noble and the craven. And then slowly a change came over Ironfoot’s face and he lifted his shield another inch. His grip tightened on his spear and quietly they set to killing one another.

  Reddic slipped into a shelter, easing in, careful as could be. There were quivers of arrows piled just inside. He crawled past to the first Marroc. They were pressed together, sharing their warmth, wrapped in too few furs for a mountain spring night. He slipped out the knife he was supposed to use to cut their throats. Valaric and Sarvic and a few of the others had shown him how to do it back in the Crackmarsh, how to come up behind a man and open his neck the way Sarvic had done to the guards outside. Do it so he’d bleed out in a few heartbeats and die without a sound. But here, to a man wrapped in furs, lying asleep. To a Marroc?

  He slipped back outside, pulling the quivers after him. Behind him the closest of the Marroc muttered and turned in his sleep. And he’d barely got out when a shout went up and inside one of the shelters a struggle broke out. He saw the hides bulge at the side and two men roll out. Then a scream went up from another and Sarvic popped his head out of the next and looked sharply around. There was blood on his knife and blood all over the rest of him. He stank of it. He dived back in and pulled out a dozen quivers then thrust them into Reddic’s arms. He glanced at Reddic’s knife as he pulled away, frowned a little and then shrugged. ‘Hard to kill a man in his sleep, even if he’s a kin-traitor. I’ll not say more.
Now go!’

  Other Crackmarsh men rolled out of the shelters clutching quivers, and Sarvic sent each one scurrying away. As they ran, Marroc tumbled out after them, clenching their fists and shouting. Sarvic waited long enough to stab a few and then ran too. There seemed to be a lot of them to Reddic, so perhaps it wasn’t just him who’d found it hard to kill a man in his sleep.

  Ironfoot lunged with his spear at Gallow’s face. The man on his right tried to hook away Gallow’s shield with his axe but Gallow tipped back a couple of inches at the last moment and the Lhosir missed. For a moment his arm was open. Gallow’s spear flicked up and down and sliced an exposed wrist, cutting deep; the Lhosir howled and fell back. One fewer to fight; still, that had been enough for Ironfoot to ram his spear point at Gallow again, creeping it inside the rim of his shield, straight through Gallow’s sodden furs and into his mail hard enough to knock the wind out of him. Gallow lifted his shield over Ironfoot’s spear and turned his body, catching the spear in his cloak. Ironfoot dropped it and stepped smartly away, pulling an axe from his belt, but Gallow kept turning, snatching up the tangled spear in his shield hand and lashing it at a third Lhosir, making his head ring under his helm, and he would have lunged with his own spear and finished him too if Ironfoot hadn’t barged him away. As they staggered apart, Gallow shook the spear free. The three men eyed each other.

  ‘I’ll give you a good death,’ said Ironfoot.

  ‘I’d speak you out myself, Ironfoot, but I doubt your friends will allow me that luxury.’

  ‘You turned your back on us, Foxbeard.’

  Gallow snorted. ‘We’ve all turned our backs. We’re not what we thought we were, Ironfoot. I’ve travelled half the world to learn it, but really we’re nothing more than a pack of savages. And whatever nobility we had – if we ever did – it’s dying. Men like you and me, there won’t be any more of us. Whether Medrin wins or whether I kill him, it makes no difference. Our time has gone. We’ll grow old and look at the world and wonder what happened to it, and as we turn feeble, we might wonder whether it would have been better if we’d died in our prime and thought ourselves heroes and seen a little less of what was to come. But by then it’ll be too late.’