The Crimson Shield Read online

  ‘Well they haven’t burned it down!’ He sat calmly on the back of his wagon, used to being the centre of attention.

  ‘There’s Vathen everywhere!’ His sons were more wide-eyed. ‘They look so strange. Short and faces the colour of Harnshun clay and eyes as dark as a forkbeard’s soul.’

  ‘Hundreds of them! Thousands!’

  ‘There’s people running away too. The roads are full of them.’

  Fenaric patted the barrels and nodded sagely. ‘Aye. But these Vathen prefer their own brews over good Fedderhun beer and they haven’t gone burning anything down, not yet. There’s a few folk keeping on—’

  He wasn’t allowed to finish. ‘They’re marching on Andhun!’

  ‘They’re eating all the food and—’

  ‘That’s where the real fight’s going to be.’

  ‘I heard the Sword of the Weeping God is coming! Out from the swamps far to the east. They’re bringing the red curse back!’

  Fenaric looked from side to side, drawing his audience in. ‘They do say that, yes.’ He looked sombre.

  Later on Gallow passed the news to Corvin. The fever had broken but it had left the Screambreaker as weak as a child. ‘Another two or three days and you’ll be strong enough to ride. I’ll go with you to Andhun.’

  ‘No need, bare-face. I’ll leave tonight.’

  He said that every day, when he was conscious enough to say anything at all. Gallow shrugged. For once he might actually mean it. ‘Then I’ll leave your horse saddled for you, because you won’t be managing that without help and tonight you will be on your own. It’s the festival of Shiefa. Fenaric has brought ale back from Fedderhun. You’d stand a better chance if you waited a few days more. I’m sure you know it. But . . .’ He paused. ‘If you don’t want to be seen then tonight is a good night for slipping away.’

  The Screambreaker’s brow furrowed. ‘Ale back from Fedderhun, did you say? Your carter must be an unusually brave man. Are you sure it’s not horse piss?’

  ‘The Vathen never had much taste for Marroc beer. They ferment milk, don’t they?’

  ‘They do. Sour stuff.’ The furrows on his brow wouldn’t leave. He let out a long sigh and shook his head. ‘If I were you I might ask him how he paid the Vathen. I think I will leave tonight.’ The Screambreaker spat. ‘Shiefa? Some Marroc god?’

  ‘The lady of the summer rains.’

  Corvin shook his head. ‘You have a god for everything. I never understood the need for so many. The Maker-Devourer is enough for me.’

  ‘It’s their way.’ Gallow gave the Screambreaker a long look. ‘They’ll be celebrating tonight. If your heartsong says you have to go, I’ll make it easy for you. No food, no water, no shelter, no help, riding into a battle from the wrong side, all of those will be trials enough. The house and the road will both be empty tonight. Everyone should be in the big barn. Wait until dark and no one will see you, or if they do then they’ll be too drunk to be sure you’re not a ghost. For what my words are worth, I ask you to wait. I’d come with you to guide you there. I know this country better than you, and if Andhun falls then Yurlak will need you.’

  The Screambreaker roared, ‘Maker-Devourer! Andhun has walls and the sea! It won’t fall to a horde of bloody Vathan horse lovers no matter how many of them there are!’ He turned away with nothing more to say. Gallow went out to Nadric’s workshop and finished off a few simple jobs that the old man was working on. Better to let Nadric get himself ready. The Marroc grudgingly let Gallow into the big barn to drink ale with them these days, as long as he kept to the shadows and didn’t bother anyone, but they certainly didn’t want him dressing up and dancing and singing like he was one of them. So he stayed in the workshop, pottering from one thing to another until after dark, when everyone else was gone and Arda would be dancing with the village men and Nadric would be swaying back and forth with a happy ale-smile on his face and the children would be asleep in a corner with the other little ones. Perhaps Jelira might still be awake this year, yawning as though she was out to catch flies.

  Before the forge fire died he lit a torch and took it into the fields, calling the two Lhosir ponies. The old general wouldn’t have the patience to stay. Lhosir pride over simple sense. Arda’s words those, said about him, and when she’d said them he hadn’t understood; but now he did and they made him laugh because they were sometimes so true. In the workshop he saddled a pony ready to go. He filled a couple of skins from the well and put cheese and some bread and some eggs into the saddlebags. Arda would see they were gone straight away and they’d have another fight, but the Screambreaker was a guest under his roof and a Lhosir never sent away a guest without at least a first meal for the journey. He took down the Screambreaker’s armour and laid it out piece by piece beside the horse. Last of all he left his own helm. The Screambreaker would leave a proud warrior. If the Vathen weren’t heading south with torches to burn Marroc villages then he had no need of the helm for himself. He was a smith now, a father, living as a Marroc even if he wasn’t. He could let Arda have that much. Peace.

  He left the fire to die and walked slowly to the big barn and the bonfire outside. Music and singing and dancing filled the night. He kept to the shadows around the edges, avoiding the other villagers as best he could. They tolerated him – just barely – throughout most of the year, but festival days were bad and today would be worse. They’d be drunk tonight and ugly. A good few had once lost kin to a sword or a spear from across the sea and the Vathen were making them remember all over again. He waved a cup at Fenaric and took an ale from him. The carter seemed to dislike him less than the rest, perhaps because he travelled and saw Lhosir traders now and then in Andhun and sometimes even in Fedderhun, or perhaps because he and his sons hadn’t been born in the village and he was something of an outsider himself. Or maybe none of those things. Maybe he simply hid it better.

  ‘Might be better if you go home early tonight,’ murmured Fenaric. Gallow thought he was right, but he stayed for a drink because Marroc ale was a pleasure and one of the few things that no Lhosir could reasonably say was done better across the sea. He waved his cup at Fenaric again. Drink always brought out the sea in him. He saw more clearly now: he had spent too long living among the Marroc. The Screambreaker would go tonight because that’s what any Lhosir worth his beard would do. And he’d go alone, because Gallow would stay here. Because this was where he belonged. And it would be a shame, he thought, not to share a last toast with the Screambreaker after all the years they’d fought side by side.

  He held the cup carefully in front of him as he walked out of the big barn. Share a few memories and a few mouthfuls of Marroc ale with the old warrior. Have their own little festival and then help him onto his horse and watch him go. Better for everyone that way. And besides, a man couldn’t bring a stranger into his house and call him a friend without sharing his bread and ale.

  As he reached the yard a horse snickered somewhere behind him. Lit up by the embers from the forge, a shadow flitted across the back yard. Gallow chuckled. The Screambreaker moved quickly for an old man emerging from the grip of a fever. Maybe he wasn’t as weak as he’d seemed.

  The Screambreaker’s horse was where he’d left it. The other Lhosir horse was standing beside it. Gallow froze. Then the horse he’d heard behind him wasn’t one of his. And that shadow had moved too quickly.

  Maker-Devourer! He burst into life, dropping Fenaric’s cup and racing for the workshop, low and quiet and glued to the shadows. To where he kept his sword hidden. Men creeping about his house? Someone who’d somehow found out about the Screambreaker? Who? The whole village was up in the barn! Who was missing?

  He took up an axe instead of his sword and snatched his helm, still lying on the ground beside Corvin’s armour. For a half-second he hesitated, wondering whether to take his shield. A Lhosir always fought with his shield, even though it was a cumbersome and clumsy thing inside a house. He cursed himself as he reached out and grabbed it.

  A m
an came out the back door and began to cross the yard. From the shadows of the workshop Gallow blinked and shook his head. He could see the man clearly in the moonlight and this was no villager. This was a Vathan soldier. A rider!

  The Vathan stopped in the middle of the yard. Gallow readied his axe. Two more came out, dragging the Screambreaker between them. The fever made his struggles feeble and turned his curses into groans, but he was fighting them as best he could. Gallow watched them go, waited until they turned away and had their backs to him, and then he charged, his heavy footfalls lost beneath the raucous songs from the barn. He crashed into the soldier on Corvin’s left, shield rammed into the man’s back, sprawling both him and the Screambreaker forward. Gallow swung his axe at the other Vathan’s neck just beneath the line of his helm. The blade hit hard and bit into the mail draped from the back of the bassinet, twisting in Gallow’s hand, almost wrenching itself out of his grasp before he jerked it free. The soldier let out a startled grunt. Gallow stumbled over the Vathan he’d sent sprawling to the ground, fell, landed on top of him, straddled his back, pinned him, took his axe in both hands and brought it down as hard as he could into the back of the man’s head. The Vathan helm split open and the soldier’s brains spilled over Gallow’s hands. The other one lurched towards him, sword drawn, staggering from side to side, blood running down his shoulders. Gallow jumped up, casting his eyes around for the last of the three and not finding him. The lurching soldier walked straight into Corvin, prone on the grass, and stumbled. His movements were jerky and full of twitches. Gallow scooped up his shield, let out a roar and swung, whirling the axe, but the soldier didn’t move, didn’t even seem to see it coming. The axe shattered the Vathan’s jaw and left the bottom half of his face a ruin of pulpy flesh and fractured bone. Blood poured down his hauberk. He sank to his knees and pitched forward, face first.

  ‘Get up, you sickly dog!’ swore Gallow at Corvin. ‘Get up and take his sword!’

  An arrow struck his shield. A stroke of luck that he’d lifted it to look down at the Screambreaker. Gallow let out a bellow and ran at the last Vathan, but the rider was already on his horse and galloped into the dark and was gone. At least the Screambreaker was getting to his feet.

  ‘Let him get away, did you?’ Gallow ignored him. He sat on his haunches for a while, trying to think. The old man’s breathing was hard and he dragged his feet, but at least he had some strength. ‘They’ll be back,’ he said.

  Gallow stared at him. ‘They knew you. Didn’t they?’

  The Screambreaker gave him a sour look. ‘Of course. They knew before they came, bare-skin.’

  ‘Then this village is dead.’ Gallow glanced back at the horse and the armour he’d laid out on the ground. ‘The mare’s all ready for you. I have to go back to the barn.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I have to warn the Marroc. The Vathen knew who you were. One of them got away. So they’ll come back, and when they find you’re gone they’ll burn my village and kill everyone here. Would you, the Widowmaker, have let this pass?’

  The Screambreaker thought. ‘No,’ he said. ‘But they brought this on themselves, no-beard.’

  ‘I would spare my wife and my children.’

  The old man shrugged. ‘One of them has spoken out of turn. One of them told the carter.’

  ‘The carter?’

  ‘I told you to ask him how he paid the Vathen for his ale. And for his life.’ The Screambreaker shook his head. ‘I’ve dealt with these horse-lovers before. I know how they are. Your kinsmen have made their own fate now, bare-skin.’

  ‘They’ve made yours and mine too.’

  The Screambreaker shrugged, indifferent. ‘I was going to leave in the night anyway. My fate isn’t changed at all.’

  ‘Yes, it is. You were going to leave alone. You would have left a small trail that would be hard to find. Now, when the Vathen come, the tracks will be those of two Lhosir, more if I can make it seem that way, and the trail I will leave will be so glaring that even the blind couldn’t miss it.’

  The Screambreaker looked at him for a long time. ‘You think you’ll spare these Marroc who betrayed you by drawing the Vathen away? They’ll simply split their numbers.’

  ‘But if I don’t try then there’s no hope.’

  Corvin kept staring. He started to laugh and then nodded. ‘Then I have a proposition for you, clean-skin. I’ll leave your trail. Go back to your Marroc. They might actually need you now. Which is more than I do.’

  10

  FENARIC

  Gallow was gone from the festival for a long time. Fenaric drank his own pale ale and grew pleasantly drunk, relieved that the big forkbeard had found something else to do. He should really stay away from these festivals – they weren’t his place and no one wanted him. What he should really do was go home, back across the sea.

  He fidgeted, unable to relax. Gallow made him nervous tonight more than most nights. He couldn’t settle. He looked over the empty space of the big barn to where Arda was dancing with Nadric since she had no husband to join her and he had no wife. It was a shame, and he wished it could have been him with her tonight, but it couldn’t. It was a shame she hadn’t been patient eight years ago. Others would have taken her, even with another man’s child to feed. She hadn’t had to lie with a forkbeard, but now that she had, no Marroc would touch her when Gallow finally left her. Four children, and three of them half-breeds? Even Vennic had more sense. Yes, a shame.

  I’d have taken you with a child from another man. It wasn’t as though Merethin had been a thief or a layabout or had simply run away. He’d gone bravely to fight the forkbeards and he’d died on their spears with other decent men. There was no shame in that. You should have waited for me. But Fenaric had been languishing in a forest full of outlaws a hundred miles away and they’d never heard of King Tane’s death or the fall of Varyxhun and Andhun or that the fighting was done with until six months after Yurlak and the Screambreaker had gone back across the sea. It was almost a year before he’d come through Middislet again, and for all that time he’d had no idea that Merethin was dead. He’d seen Arda and he’d smiled and waved and she’d smiled back, and it was only later he realised she was married to the forkbeard now, and he was, again, too late. He glowered at Nadric. He had pushed her into it. Nadric, who was getting old and needed someone who knew his way around a forge.

  Well now maybe he was going to be short-handed again.

  The music faltered and stopped as two soldiers rode into the barn. For a moment Fenaric was confused. The soldiers weren’t Vathen from Fedderhun. Both wore mail hauberks and carried burning brands taken from the fire outside. The first one didn’t have a helm but he had the terrible forked beard and a brutal scar from his eye to his ear. The second one was Gallow.

  ‘Fenaric!’ Gallow pushed through the barn. The dancing petered out; drunken villagers staggered away from Gallow’s horse. Fenaric looked for somewhere to run but he was stuck in a corner beside his own cart and his barrels of beer. Gallow levelled his sword. ‘You! You sent the Vathen to my house!’

  ‘No!’ Fenaric tried to shake his head but he couldn’t. Couldn’t even move.

  ‘Who else, Fenaric? You went to Fedderhun; you came back. The Vathen came back with you. Did you show them which house it was? Brave of them to wait until dark.’

  ‘No! No, I didn’t!’ Fenaric backed into the corner. He cringed as Gallow advanced.

  ‘Yes, you did. Someone told you he was there. Someone sent you. How did you know?’

  Fenaric glanced at Nadric. He shook his head and fell to his knees and clasped his hands, begging. ‘Modris have mercy!’ He should have known better. Never cross a forkbeard. His bladder suddenly felt very full.

  ‘I did it,’ said Arda. She stood proud in the middle of the barn, pushing past the others to stand across from Gallow, hands on her hips. ‘I told him to do it.’

  The look on Gallow’s face was murderous. ‘Why, wife? Why would you do that?’
/>   ‘I told you I didn’t want that man in my house. I said that many times and you never listened.’ She pointed at Corvin and turned to the Marroc around her. ‘Do you know who this is? This is the Widowmaker, the Nightmare of the North. In my house.’ She rounded on Gallow. ‘You said he’d be gone in the morning. And he wasn’t. So yes, when Fenaric went to Fedderhun I told him to bring the Vathen, that I had a forkbeard from Lostring Hill in my house if they wanted him. I never said who, and I told no one else. Bluntly, I thought he’d be dead by the time they came and that would have been fine for all of us.’

  Gallow turned on Fenaric. ‘Did they pay you?’ Fenaric shook his head but he couldn’t help looking at the barrels of ale. ‘If they did then that’s blood money, and you give whatever they gave you to Arda and let it hang around her like a curse.’ He backed his horse away and looked at them all. ‘Do you know what you’ve done?’

  ‘You brought him here!’ snapped Arda. Sometimes she was the only one of the Marroc who wasn’t afraid of him.

  ‘I came from fighting the Vathen with a soldier who was hurt, defending our land!’ roared Gallow. ‘Does it matter who he was?’

  Arda matched him, thunder for thunder. ‘Yes! When it’s the Widowmaker, yes, it does!’

  Fenaric stared at Corvin. ‘I didn’t know who it was.’ Oh Modris. The Nightmare of the North! He’ll kill every one of us. Gallow’s eyes were on him, hard and narrow. ‘I swear! I didn’t know!’