The Last Bastion Read online

  The Marroc who’d put the noose over the Lhosir’s head shoved Oribas hard, knocking him down. ‘He’s a forkbeard!’

  ‘But you can’t . . .’

  The words died in his throat. Behind the scaffold someone pulled a rope. A trapdoor opened, the Lhosir dropped, the rope snapped taut around his neck, and that was that. Oribas thought he even heard the bones snap. The Marroc on the scaffold raised a fist and whooped and the crowd cheered. ‘One less forkbeard! Got any more? Yes? Which one next?’

  The soldiers on the walls watched and joined in with the cheers. Those Lhosir still alive were beaten down, a few simply murdered, others dragged toward the scaffold. Oribas pulled himself angrily to his feet. ‘This isn’t justice and this isn’t right!’ He made for the Marroc hangman again but this time Achista blocked him.

  ‘This is war, Oribas.’

  ‘No, this is murder.’ Though was it any worse than fifty men burned alive under the ground? Hard to say, and maybe it was the guilt that drove him now. ‘You’re better than this!’

  There was pain in her eyes, and Oribas realised with a sickening feeling that it wasn’t guilt or shame, but sadness that he didn’t understand why this killing had to be done. He faltered, and then another Marroc grabbed hold of him and was shoving him out of the way. ‘They were going to kill you, darkskin.’

  ‘For what I did, Marroc, not for what I am! It may seem small to you but on that difference the Aulian Empire was forged!’

  ‘And now it’s gone.’ The rest of the Marroc ignored him.

  ‘At least the forkbeards had a reason.’ Although they hadn’t had any real reason when they’d set out to kill him for the first time, when they’d carted him off to the Devil’s Caves with a gang of ragged Marroc simply for knowing the name of Gallow Foxbeard. And, really, what was he doing here, defending the men who’d been about to kill him?

  One by one the Lhosir were pulled and pushed and dragged and shoved to the scaffold. They were hauled up the steps, manhandled to their feet and nooses were shoved around their necks, and they were hanged. Five at a time because that was how many gallows the Lhosir had built, with the mob baying for the blood of every single one of them. Oribas turned away.

  2

  SARVIC

  Before the fighting kicked off, Sarvic was with the mob, right at the front of it. Valaric was either on his way from Witches’ Reach by now or else he was still there, taunting the forkbeard army that had meant to stop him and his Crackmarsh men from crossing the Aulian Bridge. Without Valaric, that left Sarvic and Fat Jonnic in charge. Jonnic was somewhere in the middle of the mob doing what he did best – shouting at people what to do. Sarvic was at the front, and that was just fine. He’d come a long way since he’d turned and run from the Vathen at Lostring Hill and been saved by a forkbeard. The same forkbeard he could see now, arguing with one of the soldiers at the gate.

  The Marroc around him all wore thick heavy furs. This being the Varyxhun valley in winter, the forkbeards didn’t think anything of it, but the nice thing about furs was what you could hide underneath. Mail, for example. An axe. A sword. Further back, other Marroc carried spears and helms and shields, things even a bear pelt couldn’t hide. When Gallow appeared behind the forkbeards barring the gate, Sarvic quietly passed the word back. Fat Jonnic’s shields crept forward through the mob.

  Gallow shoved the forkbeard in charge of the gate into the spearmen facing the Marroc. One of the forkbeards in the wall of shields staggered and took a step forward. His spear dipped and that was all Sarvic needed. He lunged, grabbed the shaft just behind the point and pulled hard, pushing the tip down toward the road as he did. The forkbeard stumbled another step forward. The soldiers either side snapped back from the glances they’d been throwing behind them but by then it was too late. Sarvic had always been quick as an eel, and he was between their spears before they could run him through. He pressed up to the forkbeard who’d staggered out of the wall, getting in nice and close. He raised a long knife high where all the other Marroc could see, then he rammed it into the man’s neck and pulled at him, yanking him out of the shield line while his blood spurted everywhere. Spears were fine weapons for keeping an angry crowd at bay but now the forkbeards had an armed man inside their points and it left them with an interesting choice: hold on to their spears and keep the mob back or drop them and take out an axe. So now was the time. Either the rest of the Marroc rushed the forkbeard line or Sarvic had about two breaths left in him before someone smashed his skull.

  The Marroc surged forward. They didn’t hesitate, and right there and then Sarvic knew they were going to win. Behind the forkbeards, Gallow had thrown back his hood and drawn out the red sword Solace and was shouting and roaring about who he was and what blade he carried and daring anyone to face him and all sorts of other nonsense. For a moment the forkbeards looked uncertain. It was enough. The crowd fell on them like a spring flood from a broken dam.

  Sarvic barged on through, past the silence of the Dragon’s Maw and into the yard. A few more forkbeards stood about, some of them still looking up at the scaffold, others frowning at the gate, the quickest-witted of them already starting to move. He let out a murderous roar. The more forkbeards he killed before they realised they were armed and should be doing something more useful than gawping, the easier it would be. He headed for the scaffold, intent on cutting down every forkbeard in his way. Up there was a man supposed to be an Aulian wizard, half the reason they were there, but at a quick glance Sarvic couldn’t tell the prisoners apart. If he was honest, he wasn’t all that bothered.

  A forkbeard came at him swinging a hatchet. Sarvic raised the shield he didn’t have, swore and threw himself sideways instead, rolling across the cobbled yard and crashing into the legs of another who bellowed a curse and lifted something big and heavy-looking. Sarvic knifed him in the foot and scrambled away from the scream that followed. He wasn’t going to reach the scaffold after all, but back by the gates the wall of shields had stayed broken, and more Marroc soldiers were getting into the yard and throwing off their furs to show the mail they wore beneath. The men who’d been hiding deeper in the crowd rushed forward with shields and spears and more swords and axes. A good few carried bows. Sarvic snatched a shield off a Marroc he half-recognised from the Crackmarsh and shouted something he hoped sounded inspiring. Not that anyone needed much encouragement by the looks of things.

  Beside him the needle-faced Marroc woman from Witches’ Reach shot an arrow into a forkbeard stupid enough to make himself an easy target by standing up on the scaffold. Achista the Huntress, that’s what the Marroc of Witches’ Reach called her, and in reply she called them her Hundred Heroes, the dozen of them she had left. They deserved it after what they’d done. As far as Sarvic saw it, every one of them should be a lord or prince just as soon as the last forkbeard sailed back across the sea.

  A hand on his hood yanked him back. He staggered and almost fell as an axe sliced the air past his eyes. ‘Is it bedtime, Sarvic?’ Angry Jonnic shoved him aside and drove the forkbeard back, battering him with his shield.

  ‘Up yours!’ Sarvic lunged low and fast with his knife, neatly hamstringing the man with the axe. He left Angry to finish him off and pushed on towards the castle keep. The forkbeards were scattered now. One climbed onto the scaffold. A last prisoner was still up there, shaking off his hood. The prisoner’s skin was dark and Sarvic had heard enough about the Aulian wizard to pause for a moment to see what would happen. But the forkbeard didn’t turn to ice or explode or burst into flames, he just took an arrow for his pains. Apart from his dark skin the wizard looked oddly ordinary to Sarvic – scared out of his wits and close to shitting himself, much as anyone else ought to be.

  The forkbeards from the gate were retreating to the steps of the Aulian Hall of Thrones. Marroc swarmed around them, swamping them. The stream of men passing into the yard turned to a flood. Sarvic snatched up an abandoned spear and stormed to where a few more forkbeards were making a stand on the step
s. Cithjan the Bloody had once held his council here but he was dead now. The iron devil had burned him and spoken him out and then Gallow had killed the devil. Which was all a snarling shame: they could have done with hanging Bloody Cithjan high over the gates for every Marroc in Varyxhun to see, him and his ironskin too.

  The forkbeards on the steps faltered and broke before Sarvic could get to them. He saw Gallow’s massive frame thunder inside with a dozen Marroc in his wake and followed as fast as he could. He’d been starting to get the hang of killing forkbeards that night outside the Reach when they’d turned and fled, and he might have cut down one or two as they ran, but forkbeards never ran and it had taken him by surprise when they did. He’d watched for a moment before the savage inside had called for blood and by then they were away. Now his luck was out again. He forced his way into the Hall of Thrones. Marroc were on the floor, the kin-traitors who’d worked and lived in the castle and served the forkbeards, cringing and cowering and begging for mercy now as they were beaten half to death. Sarvic spat on them as he passed. The hangings would start as fast as they could. Every Marroc who’d made this place their home would swing and they’d deserve it too. Valaric might have something to say about that, but the Wolf wasn’t here, and by the time he was it would be done and too late to argue.

  Sarvic skidded to a stop. The forkbeards were mostly gone, but not all of them. Two stood in front of Bloody Cithjan’s throne. Old men whose strength had long faded from their arms, but they were armed and armoured and already three Marroc lay dead in front of them, pricked by forkbeard steel. Sarvic grinned and started towards them. Strange lot, forkbeards. Wicked bastards, evil and vicious and mean in a fight, but they had their superstitions. Like back at Witches’ Reach when the Crackmarsh men fell on their camp in the middle of the night and Gallow killed the iron devil. Some of the forkbeards had turned and melted away like any sensible man should, but the ones up inside the fortress hadn’t. They’d retreated in silence behind their wall of shields. Even when Sarvic had run up close and taunted them and thrown spears and stones, they hadn’t answered. Right in the middle of the battle and they’d left. Just lost all interest in it, as though the fall of the ironskin mattered more than fighting a rabble of angry Marroc, and Sarvic hadn’t thought there was a forkbeard alive who’d give up a good fight for anything less than a severed limb. After the first few jeers, Sarvic and the other Marroc had mostly stood and watched them go, uneasy at their own victory.

  Now two of them were ready to die to defend a dead man’s chair. Sarvic was happy to oblige them, but another stood in his way. Huge in all his furs, even from behind there was only one person it could be: Gallow the Foxbeard, who’d faced down the iron devil of Varyxhun. Sarvic remembered clear as the sun: the Foxbeard standing beside the pyre and on it the ironskin, and then Mournful telling him how it was, how Gallow and the iron devil had fought as the Crackmarsh men swept down the mountainside. How the iron devil’s red blade Solace had shattered Gallow’s sword and how the Foxbeard had killed him anyway, ramming the splintered remains of his blade through the devil’s mask.

  The rest of the Marroc scattered, looking for plunder or other forkbeards to kill or whatever drove them now. Sarvic looked the two old men up and down. Warriors once. Didn’t take much of an eye to see that in the way they held themselves, in the way they gripped their spears.

  ‘Nioingr,’ hissed one of them. He was staring at the clean-shaven chin where Gallow’s forked beard should have been.

  Sarvic sidled up behind Gallow, too close for him to ignore but not so close he got in the way. ‘Need a hand, forkbeard? You can leave them to me if you like. I’d take that as a favour.’

  If Gallow heard, he didn’t show it. His eyes didn’t leave the men shielding the throne. When he spoke he sounded tired.

  ‘Nioingr? The last man to call me that was Beyard Ironskin. He ate those words.’ He drew out the sword Solace and let them see the red steel of it. Sarvic stepped back, hissing at the cursed blade. ‘Beyard carried this. We fought by the pyre of Tolvis Loudmouth and I sent him to the Maker-Devourer by his own sword. I placed his body on the pyre and I spoke him out and I have no doubt that the Screambreaker himself will welcome him. A better man than any of us.’ He looked at the red sword. ‘The Marroc named this blade the Comforter and call it cursed. The Vathen named it Solace, the Peacebringer. The Aulians called it the Edge of Sorrows.’ He pointed the sword at the two forkbeards. ‘You’re Garran, named Fleetfoot once. I remember what they said of you, that you could run faster than the wind. You were with the Screambreaker at Selleuk’s Bridge. I was there too and I saw you. You didn’t run like the wind that day. You didn’t run at all. The Marroc broke us yet your brothers had to tear you away. Lay down your spear, Garran Fleetfoot. Even the Lhosir can’t always win. The Marroc have the day here. Cithjan is dead. Sixfingers’ Fateguard is gone.’ He shrugged. ‘Our brothers of the sea who fought for the walls of Witches’ Reach are scattered and broken. What sense is there in dying for all these things that went before you? Set down your spear, Fleetfoot. Walk the Aulian Way to Tarkhun and beyond. Sail your ship home and live your twilight years in peace among the family you left behind. You’ve long done enough to enter the Maker-Devourer’s cauldron.’

  Sarvic tried not to snort. Walk the Aulian Way? Let Gallow explain to the mob outside why they should let a couple of forkbeards go when they could just as easily hang them.

  But it wouldn’t come to that. The old forkbeard shook his head. ‘Nioingr,’ he hissed. ‘Nioingr. Nioingr.’ Three times, after which Sarvic knew there could be no going back. He breathed a quiet sigh of relief. No one would have to explain anything to anyone then. Just two more dead forkbeards. So much the better.

  Gallow lifted his shield as the second forkbeard lunged and then jumped back as Fleetfoot stabbed at his feet. The red sword swung sharp and hard and sheared the shaft of Fleetfoot’s spear. Sarvic started forward but Gallow was faster, lunging at both of the forkbeards, barging into the other Lhosir, shield against shield with enough force and weight to send the old man sprawling. Sarvic darted in quickly to put the point of his spear to the fallen forkbeard’s throat. ‘Very happy to kill you, old man. Very happy.’

  The forkbeard didn’t move. Gallow battered Fleetfoot back, driving him with blow after blow until he was pressed against a wall. ‘Eat your words, old man! Eat them!’

  Garran Fleetfoot glared. He dropped his broken spear, lifted an axe from his belt and lowered his shield. ‘I know you, Gallow Foxbeard, and I’ll unsay nothing. You took the sword you hold from the dead hands of the Screambreaker on the battlefield outside Andhun and you cut off the hand of our king with it, and instead of facing your fate you fled in fear. No, Foxbeard, I will eat nothing. Nioingr.’

  Marroc were gathering around Sarvic now. Not the Crackmarsh men, who’d already pressed on deeper into the castle’s labyrinth, but the Varyxhun mob that followed. They had an evil about them, a hunger for vengeance. Before Sarvic could see it coming, one seized the spear in his hand and jerked it down, too quick for him to stop. The spear sliced into the old forkbeard’s throat. He gasped. When Sarvic snatched back his spear the Marroc let go but it made no difference. The forkbeard’s blood sprayed into his face as he gurgled a curse and grabbed at Sarvic’s leg, and then he was still.

  The Marroc who’d done it laughed. ‘Filthy goatbeard.’

  Sarvic turned on him and then changed his mind and backed away. He’d barely taken a step when the rest of the mob fell on the dead forkbeard. Knives and clubs rose and fell as they beat and hacked him to pieces. Sarvic watched to see if he felt anything but he didn’t. No pride, no shame, no joy, no regret. Nothing. The forkbeards were all going to die anyway, and when he looked at the angry men around him, come with cudgels and murder and hate to revenge themselves for everything that had been done to them, how was he any different?

  Gallow had the other forkbeard pinned to the wall now. Garran Fleetfoot swung his axe. Gallow caught it on his
shield and pushed and twisted it away. For a moment the old man was exposed, his shield useless and on the wrong side. The red sword lunged and drove into his ribs, cracking a fistful of them. The forkbeard gasped and staggered but his mail was good enough to keep the red steel out of his skin. Sarvic smiled to himself. He’d remember that. He’d have that mail.

  The old man wheezed. He pointed at the mob ripping the other forkbeard to pieces. ‘See what they are, nioingr? We’re better than them!’

  He dropped his shield, switched his axe to his other hand and lifted it high, wide open, as good as asking Gallow to finish him, and Gallow obliged him. The red sword flashed, blood sprayed across the Aulian walls and Sarvic watched the forkbeard fall. Gallow stood over him. ‘You fought well, old man. Like Beyard. He never stepped aside from the path. It’s the path itself that strayed. It’s Medrin.’

  The look on Gallow’s face was like he’d killed his own brother; and then it changed to something dark and harsh – so dark that when he turned and strode away Sarvic forgot about the dead man’s mail and followed. He’d seen that same look before, that morning after Witches’ Reach.

  3

  ONCE A FORKBEARD

  Gallow turned away from the Hall of Thrones and left the Marroc to their looting. Servants would be hauled out of their hiding places. If they were lucky they’d get away with being beaten bloody, but he’d been among a victorious army after enough battles to know what happened next. Nothing that a decent man would care to remember, and it would be like that here too. Worse.

  He hesitated a moment then shook his head and moved on. Not his business. Let the Marroc sort out their vengeance without him. He’d come across the mountains to be with his family, that was all, and now he’d come here to this castle for his last real friend, the Aulian, and if Oribas was alive and safe then only one other thing mattered and it wasn’t in Varyxhun. So he chose not to look at what was happening around him and pushed his way past the Marroc still surging into the hall. They were throwing down the braziers now and tearing the hangings off the walls, hangings that had been there long before any Lhosir had come to the valley. Their own treasures, if only they knew it.