by Nathan Hawke
‘I’m going home, Valaric.’
‘Well I do need a smith, but I shan’t be sad to see the back of your wife so I suppose it evens out.’
‘I’m taking Reddic too. Forge could do with another hand.’
‘Yeah.’ Valaric smirked. Reddic and Arda’s firstborn. Half the Marroc in the castle knew by now. ‘Anything else you want? Maybe to cut off my arms and legs too, before you go?’
Gallow held out the red sword in its scabbard.
‘Taking that, are you?’
Gallow shook his head. ‘In Andhun you told me it was cursed. You were right.’ He cocked his head at Valaric and then handed the sword to the Vathan woman. ‘This goes back where it belongs. Do we agree?’
For a moment Valaric remembered how it had felt to hold the Comforter. How strong and powerful he’d seemed. He bowed his head. ‘Go on then, Vathan. Take it.’ He tapped the Crimson Shield, which now hung from his arm. ‘Don’t bring it back, mind. You know what happens if you do. So just go home.’
Later he watched them go, picking their way down the castle road on their mules, Gallow and Arda and their children, Nadric and Reddic and the Vathen. Off to the Devil’s Caves and the Crackmarsh and then their separate ways, and he wondered quietly if they’d all get home and find there what they wanted. He supposed he’d never know. And he was still wondering when Sarvic came and stood beside him and did that lurking thing again, shuffling closer and closer, except this time he managed to spit it out before Valaric hit him. ‘I think you’d better come,’ he said. ‘Your soldiers have made something for you.’
‘What’s that, then? A list of demands?’
‘No.’
‘Gates? Is it new gates? Because we could really do with some new gates.’
‘Just come and see. And don’t mind me if I can’t stop laughing if you ask me to start calling you Your Majesty.’ He sniggered.
There was one other person to see before he left, and Gallow went to see him alone. He clasped arms with Oribas long and hard and it seemed that his hands didn’t want to let go. Then Oribas closed his eyes and took a deep breath, and it felt to Gallow as though the Aulian was letting go of everything between them. Or at least perhaps loosening it a little. ‘I have climbed to the lake, Gallow. Under the water my people built something. Something that was meant to stay hidden. I wonder now if it was no accident that they drained it. I have not told any other. Should I leave it be, Gallow, or should I see what lies beneath?’
Gallow smiled and shook his head. ‘You know very well to leave it be, old friend.’
‘I will seal the hole as my ancestors did before me. The snows are melting. It will be hidden again before long.’ He bowed and then picked up a heavy satchel filled with salt and handed it to Gallow. A corner of iron poked out. ‘I have one thing for you to take, Gallow.’ He laughed and shook his head. ‘I would shower you with gifts if I had any to give, but instead I have only this burden.’
‘My hunting days are done, Oribas. I gave the sword to Mirrahj.’
But Oribas pressed the satchel into his hands anyway. ‘Just this one thing, Gallow. Take it with you. Take it to your fire. Melt the iron down and forge it again with salt. Then throw it away, far from where you live. Or send it back, or drown it in the Isset, or lose it in the Crackmarsh, or hurl it into the sea. Whatever you like – just be rid of it.’
Gallow took a deep breath and then took the satchel. ‘Make it work, Oribas. Make it work.’ And he didn’t know whether he meant Valaric’s kingdom, which he was about to find he had, or holding off the Lhosir if they came again, or simply being married to a wilful Marroc woman – and the Maker-Devourer himself knew how hard that could be.
‘I will do my best, old friend. I will do my best.’
EPILOGUE
The Vathen rode slowly through the ruins of the village. There was little left. Burned-out huts, not much else. They stopped at the edge, at what had once been a forge. One of them dismounted and poked through the rubble. Whatever had been done here, it had been a while ago.
‘The forkbeards call themselves men of fate.’ She said it without much feeling one way or the other, as if noting that the clouds had turned a little darker and perhaps more rain was on the way.
‘This is a Marroc village,’ said one of the others, with a voice that was keen to push on.
‘Yes,’ said the first. ‘But a forkbeard lived here once. They called him Gallow. Gallow the Foxbeard.’
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
If you’ve read this far, I’m kind of hoping you’ve read The Crimson Shield and Cold Redemption, because otherwise you probably had a real who on earth is he moment somewhere in the battle for the fifth gate. If you have, then I’m sorry for repeating myself. I’ll be brief. Thanks go to Simon Spanton, who commissioned this and to Marcus Gipps, who edited it, and to all the people who put together the wonderful covers these books have had. They go to the copy-editors and proofreaders and booksellers and the marketeers and everyone who makes books possible. They go to you, for reading this.
And thanks, still, to all the crazy people who think the best way to spend a week in February is to strut though York in mail carrying an axe.
As always, if you liked this story, please tell others who might like it too. And if you did like it, there are other stories out there that you might like too, ones that had a touch in shaping these stories or ones that I read afterwards and wished I’d read before, including:
Legend by David Gemmell (Varyxhun castle has six gates after the six walls of Dros Delnoch);
Wolfsangel by M. D. Lachlan (I can still smell the blood and the iron); and
The Ten Thousand by Paul Kearney (The fight scenes – ouch!).
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © Nathan Hawke 2013
All rights reserved
The right of Nathan Hawke to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in Great Britain in 2013 by
Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper St Martin’s Lane,
London WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company
This eBook published in Great Britain in 2013 by Gollancz
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 575 11513 2
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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