The Last Bastion

by Nathan Hawke

  ‘We’ll not be ruled by a forkbeard!’ shouted Valaric, and the Marroc cheered.

  Medrin threw back his head and roared with laughter. ‘You’ll be ruled by a king! What difference does it make whether he’s born on this side of the sea or that? He might as well be an Aulian for all the difference it makes. A king is a king is a king, and kings do what kings do and whether their beards are forked or straight or they have none at all, it makes not a whit of difference. I am your king, no more and no less, and you are traitors, every one of you, and so you will die.’

  Gallow let out a deep sigh. ‘Thank you, brother of the sea.’ He drew his sword. ‘Thank you for letting this be clear. Because you’re right: it’s not about your beard, it’s simply that as kings go, you’re a bad one.’

  He lunged, and the Crimson Shield swung down and caught his blow.

  For a long long time Oribas stared at the chain. It was right in front of him, a massive thing of iron links each the size of his fist. He could reach out and touch it. It hung straight down from the clot of stones above his head and ran into the darkness of the void below. When he looked down, he could just about see a piece of stone the size of a man dangling from its end.

  He wondered what to do. Such a massive chain and such a weight hanging from it and such a weight pushing down from above, what difference could one man possibly make? But then he peered more closely and saw that not all links in the chain were alike. At the level of his eye was a single link of a different colour, and Oribas understood. This was not iron but a milky glassy stone, stained by years of rust from the links above but definitely different, and he knew this stone, a kind of glass sometimes found in rough round nuggets in the fields of old Aulia itself, stronger than iron yet brittle. One good sharp blow would shatter it. And when he rubbed away at the stains to be sure, he found it marked with pictograms that left no room for doubt. Air and earth, water and the dragon. The chain would snap and the weight would fall. Earth would become air and water would become the dragon. It wasn’t about pulling the chain but about snapping it.

  He looked up. He couldn’t see how it worked but maybe that didn’t matter. A counterweight mechanism perhaps. The intent was clear enough.

  His first problem was having no hammer to shatter the brittle link, but that wasn’t much of a problem at all because there were loose stones right at his feet. His second problem was a bit harder. How not to die when a ton of stone and a lakeful of water crashed down on his head. And he was still pondering that one and realising that it probably didn’t have an answer when he heard Achista’s desperate cry echo through the caves. ‘Oribas! The sixth gate is shattered! The forkbeards come! If you’ve found your dragon then let it out! Let it out!’

  Gallow charged into Medrin like an angry boar, crashing into him, shield on shield. Medrin was smaller, weaker, sure to buckle and fall, and yet it was Gallow who reeled away as though he’d run headlong into a wall of stone. He charged again and Medrin simply stood unmoved as though he barely noticed. Breathing heavily, Gallow faced him more warily. ‘What sorcery is this, Sixfingers? Has the witch you keep put a spell on you and made you into iron?’

  Medrin’s eyes never left him. ‘I carry the shield of a god, Foxbeard. What did you expect?’

  Gallow shook his head. ‘It’s just a shield.’

  ‘So it is.’ Medrin came at him then, slow and sure, his sword swinging in a steady barrage of blows. Gallow took them on his shield and struck back, yet Medrin caught Gallow’s sword on the Crimson Shield each time with ease. ‘Shall we see who tires first?’ He snorted. ‘A dull fight this is for our men to see. How about this? If I beat you, all your Marroc will throw down their arms and I’ll let one in every four go free, chosen by chance. One in four, Gallow. Better odds than I offer with my army. And if you beat me, then what shall we say? One in three? If they throw down their arms, that is.’ He cackled with glee. ‘I’ll make it sweeter. If you beat me, one in three may live, most chosen by chance but you may choose a dozen of them. Got any friends here, Foxbeard? Or family?’ Then he looked at his six-fingered hand and at his stump behind his shield. ‘No. We shall say six, not twelve.’

  Gallow spat at Medrin’s feet. ‘I will cut you down, prince of cowards, and the men behind you too while the rest of your army turn to their heels!’

  ‘No, Gallow Foxbeard.’ Medrin smiled back at him. ‘That’s not how it will be and you very well know it.’ And he jumped forward and barged into Gallow with the Crimson Shield and it was like the kick of a horse, a battering that would have shaken even old Jyrdas One-Eye in his prime. Gallow reeled and before he could do more than stay on his feet, Medrin hit him again, another hammer blow, and another, and with each blow Gallow staggered back and the Marroc behind him withdrew to make space, and Medrin and the Lhosir advanced beyond the gates and the Dragon’s Maw and into the castle yard, until on the fifth blow Gallow stumbled and there was no time to recover, and when the shield of Modris struck him again, he fell exhausted and beaten. King Medrin Sixfingers pointed his sword at Gallow’s face. He wasn’t even breathing hard.

  ‘Do you not see? Do you not understand? Just a shield? It’s the shield of a god, Foxbeard. A god!’

  ‘Oribas! Oribas!’ For a moment he froze, too terrified and torn, but then he heard the sound of feet on stone and knew she was climbing the steps.

  ‘Achista! Wait!’ If he let her come she’d die beside him.

  ‘Oribas! The forkbeards are in the yard!’

  ‘I have the dragon. I’ve found it! Go! Turn back and I will release it!’

  He closed his eyes and picked up a stone, and when he opened them again there were tears on his cheek. Not for himself but for her, for the years, for the hours, for the minutes they wouldn’t have. It was a cruel trap these long-dead Aulians had made.

  ‘Oribas!’

  ‘Do not be angry, my love,’ and roundly and loudly he cursed every god he knew as he drew back his rock to smash the brittle link and snap the chain in two.

  Gallow felt as if he’d been trampled by a herd of wild horses. He tried to get to his feet but it was so hard and then Medrin kicked him back down. The Lhosir king walked towards the Marroc soldiers, lifting his shield high so they all could see it. He shouted at them, ‘The shield of your god! Modris!’ Wherever he approached they quailed and backed further away.

  As he lay on the stone, Gallow felt the mountain quiver beneath him. A whisper of a rumble breathed from the Dragon’s Maw, too quiet to be heard over the noise of Medrin roaring at the soldiers around him. ‘Lay down your swords and your shields and sink to your knees and bow your heads, Marroc. One in four will live, that was my promise. Or fight and you can all die. Here I stand! Who will face—’

  ‘More than happy to kill you, Sixfingers.’ Valaric limped out from amid the Marroc, swinging a sword in his hand. Gallow pulled himself to his hands and knees. ‘Shame my spear missed you in Andhun but I’ll be happy to—’

  Medrin moved like quicksilver. He barged Valaric, shield on shield, and Gallow saw Valaric’s face as he reeled back, the shock and surprise as if Medrin was not one man but ten. The Wolf crashed into the Marroc behind him and slowly picked himself up. Medrin turned his back. Valaric took a deep breath and picked up his sword and this time, Gallow knew, Medrin would kill him. Valaric probably knew it too, but that wasn’t going to stop him.

  ‘I’ll fight you, King Sixfingers.’

  Mirrahj. She pushed her way through the Marroc. She carried no shield, but in one hand was an axe and in the other the long rust-red blade of the Edge of Sorrows. Medrin opened his arms to welcome her. ‘Good for you, Vathan. About time someone with a proper sword came to this fight.’

  The glass-stone link in the chain exploded. Shards like knives stung his face. Something hit him in the eye – a bright burning pain. The upper part of the chain flicked like a whip, lashing with all its pent-up energy into the stone above Oribas’s head. The bottom of it plunged into the dark. He heard the crash as the stone a
t its end hit the floor of the cave somewhere below. Then something else came hurtling down the shaft. Another stone on the end of another chain. It jerked to a halt right in front of him and he understood. The counterweight. Somewhere above, the force of its arrest would jerk something free. He closed his eyes, waiting to die under the deluge of stone and water, but none came.

  ‘Oribas!’

  He opened one eye, the one that would still open. His face had blood on it.

  ‘Oribas!’

  He was alive. The dragon had failed and now he didn’t know what to do. ‘It didn’t work.’ He swore. Then he swore louder. ‘It didn’t work. Stupid . . .’ How old was it? Stuck? Rust? He didn’t know. Didn’t know what to do.

  ‘Oribas, the gate is breached! The forkbeards come! Do it!’

  He nodded, not that Achista could see him. ‘Then we have to leave. The way we came. There is no dragon after all. It did not work. I am sorry, my love, but it is dead from age.’

  ‘No!’

  He squeezed his fists as though he could somehow squeeze an idea out from between his fingers. Only a fool gave up at the first attempt. Maybe there was another . . . He froze. Cocked his head to listen.

  ‘Oribas! What are you—’

  ‘Be quiet!’

  The hiss of the water pushing out from between the stones had changed. Very slightly, but it wasn’t the same sound it had been when Oribas had come. He looked at the chain and the stone dangling in front of him. Water ran down it now, trickling off in a steady stream. It hadn’t done that before. And it had come down after the first stone had hit the cave floor. The mechanism was higher up the shaft than he’d thought.

  As if to answer him, a rumble shivered down the shaft – stones falling somewhere above. Awe ran cold across his skin.

  ‘Run, Achista. Just run!’

  The hole the Aulians had filled and left behind them wasn’t big, easily large enough for a man to climb through but little more. Yet the pressure of water from the lake above was as though every Lhosir assaulting the walls of Varyxhun was hammering in that one place. And in that elaborate working of stones upon stones, as Oribas released the chain, something high above had shifted, and it was enough.

  The rumbling grew louder. The shaft shook suddenly, right above his head. The stones that blocked it trembled. He could hardly see, and all he had was his tiny lamp in all this darkness and one eye still burned and wouldn’t open and he had no idea how long he had. A few seconds perhaps. Or perhaps for ever. But either way he ran, scampering down the stairs, dancing from step to step with the crazy grace of desperation and dreadful fear and unexpected hope. A sharp crack sounded behind him. He felt it through the walls of the cave and heard a sudden spray of water, and then another crack and a terrible crashing roar as the weight of the lake at last crushed its way into the cavern. The Aulian stones plummeted past him and smashed into a thousand fragments and behind them came such a torrent of water that for a moment the whole mountain shook and almost threw him off its walls. A shock of air rushed and tugged at his limbs. He felt the mountain quake and heard its drawn-out rumble, and then he was at the top of the passage down to the cisterns and Achista was there and her arms were around him, dragging him in, hauling him to somewhere safe, and he clasped her hand and hugged her tight and kissed her while the great roar of water thrummed in his ears and the air filled with soaking spray.

  ‘The dragon,’ he whispered in her ear. ‘It seems it was only sleeping after all.’

  Up on the battlements Sarvic felt the mountain quiver too. He looked at his last arrow, the one Valaric had given him. The one with Medrin’s name scratched into its iron head. With exaggerated care he rested it against his bowstring and drew it back and took aim. The back of Sixfingers’ neck, that would do. But then a shout came from the gates, and then another and then more, and he heard Lhosir cries full of fearful warning and he couldn’t help but turn to look. Water rushed from the Dragon’s Maw and, even as he watched, the river became a torrent, so hard and fast with such force that all the forkbeards in the gate were swept back onto the road, and the ones on the road shouted out as the water tore over them, rising around their ankles and sucking at their feet.

  Medrin waited. The Vathan woman danced around him, twirling her sword and her axe. She raised the Edge of Sorrows as if to swing it at his head and he lifted the Crimson Shield and smiled. From the corner of his eye he saw Gallow stumble to his feet and open his mouth to shout a warning. Three years ago in Andhun Gallow had struck the shield of Modris with the Sword of the Weeping God and learned a hard lesson. But this Marroc had learned it too, in the tomb under Witches’ Reach. The red sword slid through the air past the Crimson Shield, turning away at the last moment as the Vathan woman struck at him with her axe instead, then drove the point of the sword low, too fast for the shield to follow but still not quick enough. Medrin saw and jumped away.

  A rumble came from behind him, from the gates. He heard his Lhosir cry out. The Vathan swung again, backhanded, axe and sword at once, striking for the head and for the knees, and he saw what it was she was trying to do – to strike two blows at once so that the shield couldn’t possibly deflect both.

  He smiled a last smile. Too ambitious by far. Her axe struck the Crimson Shield and stuck fast, torn out of her hand. Medrin caught the red sword on his own blade, which shattered, leaving him holding a jagged stump of iron. He threw it away as they stepped apart, breathing hard. The Vathan woman looked past him, up to the castle walls, but Medrin only shook his head. ‘Do you think I’m so easy to fool?’ And then it seemed to Medrin that the Vathan closed her eyes and something came over her. She took the red sword in both hands, lifted it high and brought it down straight at his head, and it was the easiest thing in the world to lift the Crimson Shield.

  Sarvic watched in awe. A flood like the Isset in all its rage was sweeping down the road now, washing the forkbeards away. They dropped their weapons and clung to the cliffs, climbed the walls, scrambled for any high ground they could find, for any handhold they could reach, but for every forkbeard who found safety Sarvic saw another plucked from his feet and tossed by the waters over the cliffs.

  He shook himself. Laughed and then turned away because glorious as it was, he had other business. He looked back to the yard and Sixfingers and lifted his bow again. Sixfingers and the Vathan woman had stepped apart. She’d broken his sword but she’d lost her axe. He raised his bow and saw her look up, right at him, and it seemed that a glimmer of understanding passed between them. Then she looked away and lifted the red sword to split the Lhosir king in two. Sarvic took aim and his fingers released the bowstring.

  Gallow watched as Solace struck the Crimson Shield. Mirrahj screamed in agony and dropped the blade. Medrin screamed too. He lurched bizarrely and half spun, eyes wild, the shield slicing down behind him at nothing at all while Mirrahj staggered away, clutching her arm to her side, doubled up in pain. Gallow was the first to move. He sprinted the few yards between them and snatched up the red sword. He turned on Medrin, ready to make an end of it, but the king was already dead. He tipped over and fell face first in front of Gallow, lying still, and it took an age for Gallow to see the arrow sticking out from the back of Medrin’s neck.

  35

  KING OF THE VALLEY

  Valaric stood on the sixth gate and looked at what was left of the valley below. The five tiers of the road from the castle to the Aulian Way. The five gates below him, all gaping holes scoured clear by the flood. And down in the valley the forkbeards’ camp washed away and half of Varyxhun with it. All vanished in a lake of mud and rubble.

  The Lhosir weren’t all dead, not by any means, but the ones who hadn’t been washed away had still gone. Maybe they were at Witches’ Reach by now, licking their wounds, choosing their new king. More still were crossing the Aulian Bridge from Tarkhun. Maybe in a few days they’d be back again. Or maybe they’d had enough and they’d keep on walking, all the way to the sea and beyond, back to their homes.
>
  He’d sent Medrin’s body down on a mule. Chased it off after the last forkbeards along the Aulian Way for the forkbeards to do whatever forkbeards did. He hadn’t liked doing it – what he’d wanted was to take Sixfingers’ head and hang him by his feet from the gates but Gallow wouldn’t let him, and his leg was giving him grief again, and in the end it had just been easier to let the crazy forkbeard have his way.

  When he looked away from the valley and back into the castle, he saw that Gallow was coming to bother him again. He was with the Vathan woman and one of his Crackmarsh men, the one who thought he’d killed Medrin for a day or so. They seemed to take it in turns to make sure he had no peace. If it wasn’t Gallow then it was the Aulian, or the worst of them all, Arda.

  ‘Well? What now?’

  ‘I came to say goodbye.’

  ‘I need a smith.’

  Gallow clapped him on the shoulder which made him stagger, and that made his leg hurt. ‘Goodbye, Valaric. Come see me if you need your horse shod or a new blade for your scythe.’

  Valaric winced and growled, ‘So that’s it? You just go now. After all this, you just go?’