The Crimson Shield Page 2

  Gallow crouched beside a man with blood all over his face. He nodded. ‘Yes, Valaric, he is.’ He stood up. He still had his axe, and the way he was looking made Valaric wonder if that day when they’d face each other wasn’t so far off after all. ‘He’s still alive.’ Gallow’s eyes were right for a forkbeard now. Merciless. Valaric took a step back. He let his hand sit on the hilt of his own sword. The Nightmare of the North. The man who’d led the forkbeards back and forth across his land and stained it black with ash and red with blood. Whoever killed the Widowmaker would be a hero among the Marroc, his name sung through the ages. And here he was, helpless, and there was only one forkbeard left standing in Valaric’s way.

  Gallow met his eye. ‘Now what?’

  Valaric couldn’t draw his sword. Simply couldn’t. Not that Gallow scared him, although it would be a hard fight, that was for sure. Or he could have called the other Marroc and told them what he’d found, because no forkbeard ever born was strong enough to face nine against one. But he didn’t do that either. The honest truth was that the Nightmare of the North hadn’t done half the things people said he had. What he had done was stand with two thousand Marroc against the Vathen in a battle he must have known he couldn’t win. He’d done that today. Valaric turned away. ‘They say things about you, Gallow.’

  ‘I’m sure they do.’

  ‘Tavern talk, now and then. They say you’re good to your word. That you work hard. Decent, they say, for a forkbeard. Always with the same words at the end: for a forkbeard. Which is good. Doesn’t serve a man to forget who his enemies are. Why did you fight beside me and not with your own people, eh? Would have been safer, after all. Likely as not they were the last to break.’ The words were bitter. Bloody forkbeards.

  ‘You’re my people now, Valaric.’

  Valaric spat in disgust. ‘No, we’re not. A forkbeard is a forkbeard. Shaving your face changes nothing.’ He stared at Gallow and found he couldn’t meet the Lhosir’s eyes any more. They were the eyes of a man who would stand without flinching against all nine of his Marroc if he had to because it would never occur to him to do anything else. Valaric shook his head. ‘I tell you, I got so sick of running away from you lot. Must be a first for you.’

  ‘Selleuk’s Bridge, Marroc.’

  ‘Selleuk’s Bridge?’ Valaric bellowed out a laugh. ‘I missed that. Beat you good, eh?’

  ‘That you did.’ Gallow’s hand still rested on the head of his axe.

  Valaric turned and started to walk away. ‘I’ve done my fighting for today. Best you be on your way. You take more than your share of these horses and we’ll come after you like the howling hordes of hell. Go. And be quick about it.’

  3

  DEAD WEIGHT

  Gallow saw to the horses first. Two of them, one for him and one for the Screambreaker. That was fair. A man took what he needed and no more when times were hard. He chose Lhosir mounts over the Vathan ones. Stamina over speed. He couldn’t see he’d be needing to win any races today but it was a long ride home and there wouldn’t be any stopping while the sun was up.

  He grimaced as he lifted the general across his shoulders. The Marroc called him the Widowmaker and the Nightmare of the North. To the Lhosir he was Corvin Screambreaker. He was a heavy man, full of muscle, but old enough to have a belly as well, and nearly ten years of peace had done him no favours there. In his armour he was almost too much; but for all Gallow knew, the Screambreaker was already knocking at the Maker-Devourer’s cauldron, and a Lhosir died in his armour if he could, dressed for battle with his spear in one hand and his shield in the other. That was a good death, one the Maker-Devourer would add to his brew. Once Gallow had the Screambreaker on the back of his horse he strapped a shield to the old warrior’s arm and wrapped his limp fingers around a knife and tied it fast with a leather thong ripped from a dead Vathan’s saddle. A sword would have been better, but swords were heavy. Chances were it would fall out and be lost and then the Screambreaker would have nothing. A knife was at least something. The Maker-Devourer would understand that.

  The Marroc were still back in the clearing. He ought to lay out the other Lhosir dead and speak them out, tell the Maker-Devourer of their names and their deeds, but he couldn’t. He didn’t know them. He put swords and knives into empty hands, knowing full well that the Marroc would simply loot them again as soon as he was gone. With the Screambreaker’s horse tethered to his own, he whispered a prayer to the sky and the earth, mounted and rode away.By the time he was free of the woods, the sun was sinking towards the distant mountains of the south. Varyxhun was up there somewhere, up in the hills, surrounded by its mighty trees and guarding what had once been a pass through the mountains to Cimmer and the Holy Aulian Empire, but that was an old path. Nothing but the odd shadewalker had come from the empire for more than fifty years now, while the castle overlooking Varyxhun itself was said to be haunted, full of the vengeful spirits of the last Marroc to hold out against the Screambreaker. It was said to be the home of a sleeping water-dragon too, but the Vathen wouldn’t bother with it, dragon or not. They’d stay north and move along the coast to Andhun. If Valaric and the other Marroc wanted a fight, that’s where it would be. I’ll be with my family, Valaric had said, but Valaric’s family were six wooden grave markers in a field near a village by the coast, far away to the west, and had been for years. Everyone knew that.

  He watched the sun finish creeping its way behind the distant horizon. As the stars came out, he stopped and eased Corvin to the ground and gently took away his shield. He let the horses cool and took them to water; when he was done with that he searched their saddlebags for food for both of them and blankets for Corvin. The Screambreaker’s breathing was fast and shallow, but at least he was still alive. Gallow forced one of his eyes open. It was rolled back so far that all Gallow could see was white. He made a fire, forced some water into the old man and ate from what he’d found on the stolen horses.

  ‘If you die on me I’ll make a pyre if I can. I’ll miss a few things when I speak you out, I reckon. Forgive me. The sky knows there’s enough that I do know.’ He took the Screambreaker’s hand and held it in his own. Talk to a troubled spirit. Helps it to remember who it is. Some witch had told him that, not long after he’d crossed the sea. ‘They say you were a farmer once, no better than anyone else. The old ones who knew you before. Thanni Thunderhammer. Jyrdas One-Eye. Kaddaf the Roarer. Lanjis Halfborn. We listened to all their stories. You were one of them, and you were their god too. Even then people knew you because of what you’d done, not because of a name you carried when you were born. “That a man should somehow be better than his brothers simply because his father was rich? A Marroc nonsense. Lhosir will never stomach it.” You said that. Do you remember? I think we’d been talking about Medrin.’ He let the Screambreaker’s hand go and poked at the fire. ‘Things were changing even before I crossed the sea. Some of these Marroc ideas were taking root and a dozen and more winters have passed since then. Was it all different when you went back? Is that why you sailed again? Or was it simply too hard to resist? One last glorious stand. A battle you couldn’t possibly win. A hero’s death for a hero’s life.’

  He shifted the Screambreaker closer to the fire and settled down on the other side, gazing up at the stars. ‘We weren’t all that far from here when we last parted. Andhun opened its gates to us, do you remember? You gave your word not to plunder it. We honoured that. By then we just wanted to go home, to get back across the sea and eat proper food again. Drink water that tasted of mountain ice and marry some big-boned woman who’d bear us lots of sons and sleep in a longhouse with all our kin and not in those stinking Marroc huts. That sort of thing. We talked about it all the time in those last weeks. Was it all there waiting for you just as we remembered it? It must have gone well enough for you and the others, what with bringing old Yurlak home and every ship laden with loot and plunder. But I can’t say it’s been too bad here.’

  The Screambreaker moaned and shifted, still
wandering the Herenian Marches where the lost spirits of those neither alive nor dead were cursed to dwell, spirits like the Aulian shadewalkers. Gallow patted his hand. ‘I wasn’t going to stay. I was as eager as the rest of you. But then Yurlak fell ill and everyone was sure he was going to die before you reached home and Medrin would be king in his place. I’m not so fond of Medrin. So I got to thinking that maybe I’d stay and I watched you all go, ship by ship. You took Yurlak back across the sea so he could die in his own house and among his own people, only then he went and didn’t die after all. If I’d still been in Andhun, I’d have come home when I heard but, as you see, I never did. I left. Back to the mountains and the giant trees of Varyxhun. I was going to cross the Aulian Way. Go south, to lands we can hardly name, but on my way I found a forge and an old smith who needed a strong arm to work it, and one of his three dead sons had left a wife behind him and a girl he likely never saw. It was us who left her a widow, us who took the old man’s sons, so I won’t say they were happy with having a forkbeard around the place. But it felt good to be making things again. I wonder if you can understand that.’ He took a deep breath and touched his hand to his chest, to the place where the locket lay next to his skin. ‘I took a lock of her hair while she was sleeping. A little luck to carry into battle. I know what you’d say about that, old man. Laugh and scoff and tell me I was daft in the head, tell me that a man’s fate is written for him before he’s born. But here we are, so perhaps it worked, in its way. No one would have her, see, because she was another man’s wife and she came with another man’s child to feed when both men and food were scarce, and she was . . . Screambreaker, you’ll understand if you meet her. The Marroc prefer their women a little more docile.’ He rose and looked up at the stars. ‘A fine woman, Screambreaker. We have two sons of our own now, and another daughter. You’ll like her if you last long enough to see her. Fierce and speaks her mind as often as she likes and doesn’t give a rat’s arse what anyone else thinks. She won’t like you, sorry to say. Not one bit. Arda. That’s her name.’

  He lay down beside the fire and pulled his cloak over himself. ‘Maker-Devourer watch over you, old man. Don’t get yourself lost in the Marches. And don’t tell Arda about the hair. I’d never hear the end of it.’

  Gallow closed his eyes. The Screambreaker was mumbling to himself. He hadn’t heard a word.

  4

  THE ARDSHAN

  Gulsukh Ardshan’s horse shifted beneath him, impatient to move. From where he sat, the battlefield looked as though the Weeping God had reached down from the sky and picked the Marroc legion up to the clouds, shaken them fiercely and let them go, scattering them to fall as they may. The light was fading but he still watched from where the Marroc line had stood and looked down the gentle slope of the hillside. His riders swarmed over the dead, the dark litter of mangled shapes that had once been proud Marroc men. Looting mostly, but it served a purpose. His horsemen needed their javelots, those that could be thrown again. There were spears and axes and shields and helms and perhaps even a few swords and pieces of mail for the soldiers of the Weeping Giant, the ones who fought on foot. And, too, he was looking for someone.

  In the failing light a dozen riders emerged from the trees at the bottom of the hill. Their horses looked tired, Gulsukh thought. They trotted closer up the slope and he saw that one of them had a body slung over his saddle. Watching them weave their way in and out of the piles of naked corpses and the fires that were just being lit, he felt a hungry thrill of hope, but it died as they approached. The lead horseman stopped in front of him, clenched his fist across his chest and bowed his head.

  ‘And what did you find, Krenda Bashar?’ Gulsukh peered at the body. A Lhosir, yes, but from a distance there was no telling who, other than it wasn’t the man he was looking for.

  The bashar kept his head bowed. He spoke loudly and quickly and a little too abruptly. ‘Ardshan! Beymar Bashar is dead. We followed his trail. He caught up with the Lhosir and tried to take them but he was beaten. The men with him were killed. Most of the Lhosir too.’

  ‘But not the Widowmaker.’ The ardshan turned away. Failure was in the bashar’s voice.

  ‘The Widowmaker wasn’t there, Ardshan. But . . .’ Krenda Bashar looked up with a furrowed brow. ‘Ardshan, I would like to pursue this further. The tracks are unclear but the Lhosir bodies were left where they fell. Whatever happened, too few survived to take their dead with them. I . . . I think the Widowmaker may have been killed too, and the last of his men took the body with them. They must have been in a hurry.’

  Gulsukh shrugged. ‘It means nothing without his body.’

  ‘And so I beg your leave to pursue. Ardshan, the Lhosir don’t leave their dead, not like this. At the very least they would lay out the bodies and leave weapons in their hands. There were no weapons at all. Further . . .’ Krenda’s frown deepened. ‘There is this.’ He turned and led over the horse with the dead body across its back, bringing it close so that Gulsukh could see the dead Lhosir’s face. ‘Lanjis . . .’

  ‘Lanjis Halfborn.’ The ardshan stared at a face he hadn’t seen for ten years.

  ‘We found him. Lying dead as he fell. The Widowmaker would not have left him so if he was alive to do otherwise.’

  Gulsukh nodded. ‘They were like brothers.’

  ‘We found a handful of horses but most were gone. The trail leads inland. We followed it a short way. They weren’t heading for Fedderhun.’

  The ardshan closed his eyes. Even one last Lhosir would have laid out their fallen, and they surely wouldn’t have have left one like Lanjis Halfborn behind, even dead. They must have had a very good reason to leave in haste and he could only think of one. To take the Widowmaker out of danger.

  Krenda coughed. ‘I think we weren’t the first to find the Lhosir. Some of the Marroc fled through the same woods. They would have followed the same trails. It would explain the looting.’

  The ardshan opened his eyes. ‘Marroc aid the Widowmaker? I doubt that.’

  ‘They’d most likely kill him. Or ransom him, Ardshan, and even his body would be worth a great deal. Perhaps they know that. Or perhaps they simply took him to strip him later, in a quieter safer place.’

  ‘Yes.’ Gulsukh smiled and nodded. ‘Yes, and even dead they might do that. Then go and follow and see if you can find them, and make sure that every Marroc knows there’s a price on the Widowmaker’s head, dead or alive. Take some silver to show them. That should make them happy to see you.’

  Krenda Bashar nodded. They might have talked more, but Gulsukh’s son, Moonjal Bashar, was riding up the hill at a gallop now. The ardshan rolled his eyes. Krenda bowed. ‘The Weeping Giant calls again?’

  The ardshan nodded. ‘Doubtless to debate when we shall press on to Fedderhun. Go. Perhaps while you’re looking you could save us all some bother, Bashar. You could probably seize Fedderhun yourself while the Weeping Giant muses.’

  5

  FORKBEARD

  The sun rose. Gallow shook the dew off his blanket and fetched water up from the nearby stream. He pissed on the last smoking remnants of his fire and checked to see if the Screambreaker had died in the night; but the old man was still breathing so he sat and ate breakfast and waited. The sky was a cold blue but the late spring sun was already warm on his skin and chasing away the chill of the night. The sun would have to be enough. Out here on the open downs the smoke of a fire would be seen for miles and the Vathen he remembered had been a restless people. Always with their horses and they liked to roam.

  ‘My helm, man! My helm!’ The cry jerked Gallow away from burying the traces of their camp. The Screambreaker was sitting up and staring blankly at the sky, one hand on his head. He looked at Gallow. ‘Who are you? What have you done with my helm?’

  Gallow took his own off the ground and offered it but the Screambreaker threw it away. ‘That’s not my helm. Where’s my helm? Where is it?’

  ‘Fell off your head when someone whacked you one, I’d say. Wasn’t a
nywhere near when I found you. Probably some Marroc has it now. Glad you’re awake.’ Gallow rummaged among the saddlebags and pulled out a piece of dirty cloth, something used for polishing saddle leathers by the looks of it. It would have to do. He dipped it in water and crouched in front of Corvin. ‘You’ve got blood all over you. I’m going to wash it off. Should have done that last night.’ Except last night it had been dark and he’d half thought the Screambreaker wouldn’t live to see the morning.

  He leaned forward but Corvin lunged and pushed him away. ‘Get off me!’

  ‘Suit yourself.’ Gallow squeezed the water out of the cloth and hung it over his saddle. ‘There’s a horse there. It’s yours now.’

  The Screambreaker didn’t move. He lay where he was, panting with his head twisted to one side. ‘You’re not a Vathan. You’re not Marroc either. I don’t know you. Who are you?’

  ‘I was with you at Vanhun.’ Gallow stood up. ‘Most of the times afterwards as well, for that matter, until you went back across the sea. Gallow. No particular reason you’d remember me.’

  ‘Gallow?’ The old man wrinkled up his face. ‘Where are the Vathen? This isn’t Fedderhun! Where’s the sea? The Marroc won’t last the first charge! Where are they? They need their spirit!’

  Gallow pointed to the rise behind them. ‘See that hill? Good view from up there. I’m going to go and have a look and see if anyone’s following us. Doubt it, but you never know. You led us against the Vathen yesterday, Screambreaker. The battle’s been and gone. The Marroc held the first charge but it was never going to last. The second one broke them. You don’t remember, do you? Thump round the head can do that.’ He walked away, leaving the general to gather his thoughts, to sort his memories and get up off the ground and maybe come up and look too, but Corvin did none of those things. When Gallow came back the Screambreaker was asleep again, snoring loudly. Gallow lifted him up and flopped him into his saddle. ‘There’s smoke a way to the north. Probably not Vathen on our tracks but best be on our way.’ Corvin didn’t wake. The wound on his head was oozing again. At least the old man still knew who he was.