The Crimson Shield Read online

  They rode through gentle hills down into the sweep of the Fedder valley and forded the river. The shape of the land grew more familiar. Gallow started to see places he knew – a lone tree here, the crook of a stream there, a particular hilltop – until early in the afternoon he looked down on the little Marroc village that had been his home for the last nine years. He left the horses beside Shepherd’s Tree, a tall old broadleaf that stood on its own at the top of the hill where Vennic the shepherd watched his flock. There was no sign of Vennic today, nor of his sheep. There was no one in the village either, no fire lit in the forge, not even any animals, no clucking and snuffling of chickens and pigs wandering free. He walked back to Shepherd’s Tree and climbed into the lower branches and peered out across the hills but there was no sign of anyone for miles. Strange. Something had made the villagers run but there was no trace of it now.

  Corvin was still asleep as Gallow led the horses round to the forge yard. There were no stables in Middislet but Nadric had his workshop, one side open to the sky, big enough to tie up two horses and keep them at least half out of sight. He hauled the Screambreaker down and laid him on the hard earth and set to work on the old man’s armour, one piece at a time, laying each carefully out beside the horses. A man could hardly lie in his sickbed all dressed up in mail and leather, not unless he had one foot already in the Herenian Marches and his eyes already set on the Maker-Devourer’s cauldron. He smiled to himself. Nadric would rub his hands with glee if he ever saw all this metalwork. ‘Better come out from wherever you’re hiding then, eh?’ He loosened the buckles on Corvin’s leather undercoat and slowly eased him out of it. When that was done he lifted the general over his shoulder as gently as he could and carried him into the house, into the tiny night room where he and Arda slept. It was just a corner close to the hearth fire with curtains of rough-spun wool hanging around it to separate it from the rest of the house, but it would do. In the gloom with the curtains closed no one would see the Screambreaker as long as he was quiet. He set the old man down on the bed of straw and furs, shook him and offered him water.

  ‘Do you remember it now?’ Gallow asked him. ‘The battle?’

  The Screambreaker looked off into the distance, right through the walls and far off beyond. ‘The Marroc broke. I remember that. Afterwards there wasn’t much to be done. A few hundred of us would never turn away so many Vathen.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Gallow, old man. I told you that already.’

  ‘You’re no Marroc. So who are you, Gallow?’ He rolled the name around his mouth, frowning, savouring it as though in some lost corner of his memory maybe it meant something.

  ‘I came from across the sea. I’m one of you. I’m Lhosir.’

  ‘No, you’re not.’ Corvin stared and Gallow knew exactly where he was looking. At the bare shaven skin where Gallow’s forked and braided beard should have been.

  ‘Yes, I am, old man. I cut it off.’

  The Screambreaker didn’t say anything. A Lhosir cut his beard because he was ashamed, or else someone cut it for him because he was a coward or a liar or a thief. A Lhosir without his braided forked beard wasn’t a Lhosir at all. He was a ghost to be ignored and shunned. Until it grew back he didn’t exist.

  Gallow shrugged. He fetched a blanket and covered the general. ‘I have to see to the horses. I’ll come back when that’s done.’

  ‘Where’s my mail?’ Corvin didn’t turn to look at him but spoke to the wall.

  ‘Cared for and out of sight.’

  ‘I want it here. My sword too. And my shield.’

  Gallow hesitated. ‘I’ll bring you your blade, Screambreaker.’ He could hardly deny a man his sword. ‘The rest is best hidden away. There are Vathen roaming the land.’

  ‘I’ll not hide from them!’

  Gallow brought the Screambreaker his sword and his shield too and then returned to the horses, ignoring the complaints that followed him. The horses had been worked hard and they needed some kindness. He lifted off their saddles and bridles and set to work grooming them; when that was done, since he had no hay or feed for them, he turned them loose in the fields. They were Lhosir horses so they wouldn’t go far. Then he went back to the workshop and set about cleaning the general’s armour and then his own, wiping every piece with an oily rag and hanging them in the shadows at the back of the workshop among Nadric’s old tools, the broken ones that he never got around to fixing but couldn’t bring himself to throw away. He hung up his axe and then took both swords and cleaned those too, hiding them under a pile of sacking. The Vathan javelot he propped up in the darkest corner of all. Then, stripped to the waist now, he started on the saddles, cleaning the leather and polishing it. He’d never had a horse so he didn’t know what he was supposed to do with all the bits and pieces that came with one, but he knew about caring for leather. Spit and polish and a bit of beeswax, although that was usually something Arda tended to.

  When he was done with the saddles he wrapped them in sackcloth and hid them at the back of the workshop. They were clearly Lhosir-made and too decorated to be from anything but a rich man’s horse, and too big to properly hide too. He wondered about burying them, but the Screambreaker’s beard would give him away if any Vathen came by, and if they didn’t then only Nadric would see them where they were, tucked away in the shadows of the forge.

  The sun was still high. The village was empty, but if something had spooked them then Gallow knew where they’d be. They’d be up on the edge of the Crackmarsh, hiding in the waterlogged caves that riddled the hills. A couple of hours on foot, but on a horse he could easily be there and back before dark. He’d look for them tomorrow, he decided, if the Screambreaker was up to the journey, but for now it was useful to have the place to himself. He wondered what had scared them away.

  With the swords and mail and the animals cared for, Gallow walked to the well and drew a bucket of water. He threw a few handfuls of it over himself and carried the rest back to the workshop. Nadric always kept a few rags about the place – he was forever on the lookout for shirts that were so worn and torn that they couldn’t be patched and repaired. Gallow took one and went back to Corvin. One way or another that wound was getting cleaned, even if he had to punch the old man out to do it.

  The thought made him laugh. Punching out the Screambreaker. How many people had tried that all those years ago? A lot, and he couldn’t remember any that had succeeded. ‘I need to—’

  He stopped. The curtains were drawn back. The Screambreaker was sitting up, propped against the wall. He had his sword in his lap and the blankets around his feet and he was staring across the house. He didn’t move or even look at him as Gallow came in. Gallow followed the Screambreaker’s eyes. The village wasn’t as empty as he’d thought. The Screambreaker screwed up his nose. ‘I don’t think this Marroc likes me,’ he said, and Gallow couldn’t have stopped himself from smiling even if he’d wanted to.

  ‘Well I did tell you she wouldn’t.’

  6

  ARDA

  Vennic had been keeping watch up in the Shepherd’s Tree. As much as anything it was something for him to do, but then he’d come running back late in the morning and said there were riders coming. The villagers had sighed and rolled their eyes. They knew what to do: take everything that mattered and hide, let the soldiers come through and be on their way, and then start again once they were gone. The forkbeards had taught them that. Burned-down houses could be built again. People and animals, they were what mattered, and so the men and women of Middislet had run out into the fields and called everyone back and gathered the animals that could be gathered and scattered the rest. The Vathen would come and go, and for most of them life would go on.

  But not for all. The forge and Nadric’s workshop weren’t things you could simply pack up into sacks and throw over your shoulder and carry or herd up to the Crackmarsh. Without them Nadric had no living, and Arda had four children to care for and her man was off to war. Again. It made her furiou
s because it was always her. Why did she have to suffer the most?

  ‘I’m not having it,’ she told Nadric. ‘They come here, they’ll burn us down over my dead body.’

  Which, Nadric pleaded, was almost surely what would happen, but Arda was done with wars and fighting and running away. She took a knife and shut herself in the cellar, and nothing Nadric could say would make her come out. If Vennic was right and a band of soldiers came by then she’d plead with them. The forkbeards admired courage like that, didn’t they? Maybe the Vathen would too. So in the end Nadric gave up and took the children away to hide in the Crackmarsh caves with everyone else and left her.

  For a long time she sat in the quiet and in the dark and all alone. Trouble with that was it gave her time to wonder. What if the Vathen were different? What if they didn’t care? Twice she got up, ready to climb out of the cellar and head after the rest of the village, and twice she stopped herself. Maybe the Vathen, the forkbeards or whoever it was that Vennic had seen had passed on by. Or maybe the riders were actually a herd of deer or simply figments of his imagination. There was no real telling with Vennic. That was what she was thinking – that Vennic was an idiot and there was nothing at all coming their way from the hills – when she heard the first noises above.

  Footsteps. No voices. She froze, crouched in a corner, a lot less sure of herself than when she’d argued with Nadric. Vathen? She sniffed the air for smoke. And if it is, what are you going to do? She looked at the knife clutched tight in her fingers. Stupid woman. What were you thinking?

  The footsteps came and went. For a while there was quiet. She was about to slip out of the cellar to see what was happening when they came back again, heavier this time, above her head through the wooden floor. They stopped by the night room and there was some quiet talking and then one set of footsteps left and everything fell still again. It certainly didn’t sound like a gang of rapacious soldiers burning and looting and smashing everything in sight. More the patient unhurried paces of someone going quietly about their business. Whatever that was in her house.

  Someone had slipped back from the Crackmarsh! Was that it? A thief? So when the footsteps didn’t come straight back she opened the cellar door and crept up and pulled back the curtain from the night room. And there right in front of her was a forkbeard she’d never seen before, lying on her bed for all the world as though he was asleep. She let out a yelp and he lurched blindly awake, sat up, grabbed a sword and then swayed sideways as though he was drunk. She held her knife at him, arm stretched out, backing away, afraid for a moment but only until she saw that the forkbeard’s face was covered with old dried blood, that his beard was matted with it. As soon as she saw his weakness, her fear turned to anger. A forkbeard in her house!

  ‘Get out!’ she hissed. She took a step forward and waved the knife at him. He shuffled back against the wall. He still had his sword in his hand but he looked so weak she doubted he could even lift it.

  ‘Who are you?’ His words were slurred and heavy with that savage forkbeard accent. She held out her knife as though he was a snake. He didn’t look as though he could even stand. She had no idea what to do.

  The yard door opened. Gallow! The relief was like a sudden dive into a river. The forkbeard kept looking at her. ‘I don’t think this Marroc likes me,’ he said.

  ‘Well, I did tell you she wouldn’t. Hello, Arda.’ He was grinning, the clothead! He had no idea what he’d done to her. Relief turned quickly to a flare of anger. She was scared, and Gallow didn’t look surprised at all by the half-dead man lying on his furs. ‘What’s this?’ she yelled at him and jabbed her knife at the forkbeard. ‘What’s this in my house? In my bed?’

  Gallow sat down beside the wounded man with a bucket of water in one hand and a rag in the other. ‘I need to clean that wound,’ he said. ‘You have to lie down, old man.’ He was ignoring her in that deliberate not-now way he did sometimes. She ground her teeth in frustration. It made her so furious!

  The forkbeard didn’t move. He didn’t look at Gallow at all, just glared at her. Arda hissed: ‘Get him out of my house or I swear I’ll stab you both!’

  Gallow looked up. ‘Where is everyone?’

  ‘Where do you think they are, you sack-headed oaf? Hiding up at the Crackmarsh of course! Vennic saw horsemen in the hills, coming this way.’

  ‘Horsemen in the hills?’ Gallow wrinkled his nose.

  ‘Vathen? Forkbeards? Who knows? Does it matter?’ She scowled. ‘Maybe he saw a cloud with a strange shape that frightened him!’ She looked away and snorted. Vennic. Useless fool.

  ‘Well there are no horsemen, I’m sure of that.’ Gallow reached towards the wounded man but the forkbeard pushed him away.

  ‘Get him out of here!’ Gallow was trying to ignore her, and by Modris she wasn’t going to have it. She brandished the knife at him now instead. ‘Get him out of my house!’

  ‘Be quiet, woman.’

  ‘Don’t you quiet woman me, you tree stump!’

  The forkbeard’s head swayed from side to side. He groaned. ‘Give me back my horse and I’ll be gone. I spurn your hospitality, clean-skin.’ To Arda he looked ready to drop dead at any moment. And he was welcome to do just that, as long as he did it outside.

  Gallow shook his head. ‘Don’t be stupid, old man. You’ll be lucky if you get to the edge of the village.’

  Arda folded her arms. ‘You heard him. He doesn’t even want to stay. So, we’re all done here now and he can go.’

  She watched as the man she’d married took a deep breath. He sat back and looked at her at last. Properly, eye to eye like he should have done in the first place. ‘Wife, he’s a soldier! I found him like this after the battle, beside his horse. I could hardly leave him to die.’

  ‘He’s a forkbeard! And we’ve got children to feed.’ She spat on the straw at the wounded man’s feet.

  ‘You mean I should have taken his horse and come back on my own?’ His eyes narrowed and grew suddenly cold. ‘I’m a forkbeard too, or had you forgotten?’

  He had what she thought of as his fighting face on now, the one where he stopped listening. She didn’t care. She’d been looking for a fight from the moment Vennic had come running into the village. ‘Forgotten? Tch!’ She might have thrown something at him, but at that moment the forkbeard’s head slumped onto his chest and his eyes slowly closed. Arda peered at him. ‘So is he dead now?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Pity. Why are you back here so soon?’ She winced at the anger in her own voice. Not anger that he was back, far from it, but at the way he’d come, at the fright he’d given her. At . . . at . . . She looked at the furs where the two of them lay together at night, at the battered old forkbeard lying there instead. ‘Is it over then?’

  Gallow’s face fell. He shook his head. ‘We broke and ran. The Vathen will come.’

  A thrill ran through her along with the inevitable dread of war. Forkbeards, beaten! ‘So much for your great Widowmaker then.’ She spat out his name. ‘Murdering bastard. I hope the Vathen slaughtered him.’

  Gallow glanced at the wounded man. He was asleep now. ‘Where are the children?’

  ‘Where do you think? Nadric took them into the hills.’ Her grip on the knife eased. A part of her would always hate Gallow simply for being from across the sea, but she’d dealt with that part and told it to shut up often enough to know how. It was better to have him than not, that was the long and the short of it. Better that he was back than dead. ‘You’re such a thistlefinger! The Vathen are coming? What if they come here? What if they find that?’ She pointed at the forkbeard again. ‘Do you want to see your children killed in front of you?’

  His eyes flashed. The children were the chink in his armour, but they were the chink in hers too. Made him hard to hate even on her bad days. ‘The Vathen won’t come this way,’ he said.

  She stuck her chin out at him. ‘Did you stop to ask while you were busy running away from them, then?’

  ‘They’ve gone to
Fedderhun.’

  ‘Really? Vennic was in the Shepherd’s Tree. He said there were riders coming. That’s why we left. You forkbeards taught us that.’

  Gallow cocked his head at her. ‘But you didn’t leave.’ She caught a smile flicker across his face and frowned even more deeply. Later, when they were making up again, he’d tell her how he liked her spirit. How it reminded him of home. Every time he said that she punched him. Hard, but he kept on saying it anyway. She pointed her knife at the sleeping forkbeard. ‘I don’t want him here.’

  ‘He’ll go when he can ride again.’

  She threw back her head in disbelief. ‘You’re going to let him keep his horse?’

  ‘It’s his horse.’

  Arda threw the knife she was holding hard into the floor in disgust. It struck the wood and stuck, quivering. Right there was the thing between them that would never go away. Family first. ‘You cloth-mouthed scarecrow! There’s four children to be fed here. Hungry ones, and it won’t be the Vathen that feed them. Soldiers only take, whoever they follow.’ She’d lived it once. Never again. ‘You’d get silver for a horse in Andhun, even an old nag. In Tarkhun too.’ She shook her head. ‘You’re still one of them. You just pretend you’re not because they wouldn’t have you any more.’ Now she was being nasty. His fault. He drove her to it.