Gallow (63 page)

In the house Loudmouth and Nadric were packing bags. Loudmouth gripped Gallow’s shoulder. ‘Nadric can take the children to the Crackmarsh as soon as it’s light. Between us we’ll kill the Fateguard. We’ll wait here, and if he’s not lying and more brothers of the sea come tomorrow, we’ll fight them too. The two of us.’

Gallow shook his head. ‘Beyard’s not a liar. Take them now.’

‘It’s freezing cold and dark as soot!’

‘By sunrise you’ll reach the Crackmarsh. They’ll be safe there.’

Tolvis shook his head. ‘Feya’s too little. She’ll freeze. And Nadric’s too old to—’

‘Carry her.’

‘But I’m not—’

Gallow had Loudmouth by his shirt, pulling him up close and almost lifting him off the ground. ‘You want to stay here at my side and fight Beyard? I’ve seen you fight him once already. In the morning Medrin’s men will come. My family will be long gone. You will see to that. What’s between me and Beyard is none of your trouble. Get them ready. When you’re gone, Beyard and I will settle this between us. I’ll follow when it’s done or else I’ll be dead.’

‘It should be me,’ gasped Tolvis.

‘But it’s not you he wants, Loudmouth.’ He let go. ‘You cared for my family when you thought I was dead. Care for them now.’ He turned and walked back outside, not wanting to meet the stares of his children. They hadn’t seen him for years. What good did it do for them to see him now?

Back in the forge Beyard had Arda sat on the floor, tied and with a sack thrown over her head. He squatted beside her, still and silent, and for a long time Gallow stood there too, watching them both, remembering the days before he’d crossed the sea, and afterwards, roaming the Marroc lands with the Screambreaker’s band, fighting, burning, killing, every unkindness that came with war.

‘Did you miss it, Beyard? Not crossing the sea and going to war with the rest?’

Beyard took so long to answer that Gallow wondered if the Fateguard was asleep, but eventually he stirred and turned his head. ‘No. And that seems strange even to me. Those of us chosen by the Eyes of Time, we serve . . .’ He seemed to struggle. ‘We serve a different purpose now.’

‘You serve Medrin.’

‘That is a passing thing.’

They stood and watched without words. From the house Loudmouth’s angry shouts crept out through the falling snow. Arda bawled insults at Beyard and Gallow alike from under the sack and told Gallow how much he was a fool and how much she hated him and how much Tolvis was a better man until Beyard gently laid an iron hand on her and told her she could say what she liked, there was nothing that would drive Gallow away because he wasn’t here for her. He spoke quietly, telling her how Gallow had been brought to him in Varyxhun and what had passed between them, and the locket Gallow carried and how he’d used it to find her. When he was done she still swore and told Gallow he was useless, but her words had an edge to them, a touch of despair, and when she stopped, Gallow saw that she was shaking. Sobbing.

They heard Tolvis and Nadric and the children leave. For a time after that Gallow stared at the roof of Nadric’s forge, listening to the darkness. Beyard remained silent. He didn’t move, didn’t creak or shift, and Gallow couldn’t even hear him breathe, until suddenly he twisted and his arm flashed out. He threw one of Nadric’s hammers so fast and so out of the blue that Gallow didn’t even move. It hit him in the head, and the next thing he knew he was lying on his back in the snow outside the forge and Beyard was standing over him. The iron man was holding the red sword again, and there was a black horse in the forge yard with Arda struggling and yelling blue murder slung across its back.

A cold hand of iron touched his shoulder. ‘It is true, Truesword. We do not sleep.’ Beyard stood up and backed away. ‘Get up.’ As Gallow sat up, Beyard tossed him his helm, scored now by Nadric’s hammer, and climbed onto the back of his horse. ‘For a time there I thought I’d killed you. You were out like the dead.’ He shook his head. ‘Perhaps that would have been better. Damn you, Truesword. I’ll give you a day. I won’t hurt her. I swear that by the Eyes of Time. But I’ll keep her so I know you’ll come. I’ll let Medrin have his sword, but we’re not done, you and I. Find me when you’re ready.’

Gallow struggled to his feet. ‘Just take me. Let her go and take me.’

‘No.’

They stood and faced one another, eye to eye. ‘Why? Let her go!’

‘No.’

‘Curse you, Beyard, why? It’s me you want!’

‘Why? Fate. Memories. Who we once were. Because if I take you meekly back in chains then I’ll have to give you to Sixfingers. Does it matter? All this way and here I am letting you go, but it was hardly fair throwing that hammer. Don’t hide from me too well, Truesword. Come for me when you’re ready.’

Gallow shook his head. ‘I’ll come for you. I’ll come for both of you.’

Beyard smiled. He stepped back and raised the red sword in salute. ‘I know you will.’ Then he shook his head and glanced at the sky where the first light before dawn was beginning to grey the night. ‘Medrin’s men will come soon. I’ll keep them away from your precious Marroc. When the time comes, fight well, Truesword.’

For a long time Gallow stayed where he was. Tolvis and the others were gone but he knew exactly where they’d be. Nadric would lead them to the edge of the Crackmarsh and the caves in the woods, to the place where the villagers of Middislet had always hidden when war swept towards them. He knew the way.

The sun began to rise. Cocks crowed. The people of Middislet would be waking and Beyard was gone. Gallow bowed his head and turned to the south, towards the Crackmarsh. He walked and ran as fast as he could, determined to find Loudmouth and the Marroc he’d seen in the hills and take them back with him, his own little army, and slay every one of Medrin’s men if that was what it took.

But perhaps the years had made him careless, or perhaps his mind was too much on Arda or on seeing his children again after so long and what he might say to them. And so he didn’t see the Marroc slip out from among the trees in the darkness behind him with a bowstring in his hand, nor hear him until the string looped over his head and pulled tight around his neck and he started to choke. He threw himself down, but two more slipped from the night and pinned him while the bowstring drew tighter and tighter.

‘Well well. Another stinking beardless forkbeard,’ hissed one. ‘Take him with the other one. Valaric’s going to want to see this.’

Valaric?

Gallow’s eyes dimmed. But there were probably lots of Marroc called Valaric.

A
fter he’d set fire to Teenar’s Bridge and scrambled up the cliffs into the western half of Andhun, Valaric had sat and stared over the Isset and watched the eastern half burn. There was no way to know whether the Vathen had done it or whether it was the forkbeards or whether it was no one in particular and just one of those things that happen when two armies rampage through someone else’s city at the same time. He watched the last of the Marroc boats sail out of the harbour and tried to remind himself that he’d made sure at least
some
people had had enough time to get away from the slaughter. He’d seen that coming, the vengeful forkbeards. The Vathen, though, he hadn’t seen
that.
Not that it made a difference. Forkbeards and horse-men fighting each other was just fine. If they could have found somewhere else to do it then it would have been perfect.

He waited until nightfall to see who would win, but it wasn’t until the next morning that he saw the Vathen moving at the other end of the ruined bridge. Knowing that the forkbeards had probably been killed to the last man didn’t make him nearly as happy as it should have. He didn’t know the Vathen but they weren’t likely to be much better. He made up for the disappointment by turning on the forkbeards who’d been in the western half when the bridge burned. There were only a handful, and by the time the fires had died in the harbour, the western half belonged to the Marroc again. The Vathen wouldn’t be crossing the Isset at Andhun, nor anywhere else on its lower reaches without a lot of boats, but anyone could simply ride and march across the Crackmarsh, so that was where he went, and quickly, gathering men around him as he did. They became a grim band, Valaric’s Crackmarsh men, fighting the bestial ghuldog half-men night after night until they learned to leave them be; and then when the Vathen did finally come their way, Valaric murdered them in every way he could imagine. His men were never far from the Vathan camps. Sentries vanished. Scouting parties sank into the marsh under hails of arrows. His Marroc crept among them at night and spoiled their food and poisoned their water. They crippled horses as often as men. They learned to communicate with the ghuldogs in the most basic way and used them, drawing the ghuldogs to the Vathen, showing the half-men that the Vathen and their horses were easier prey, seeing to it that the Vathen had no doubt the stories were true and the Crackmarsh was full of monsters. It was an ugly bloody summer of murder and knives and honour had no part in it, but the Vathen never crossed the Crackmarsh.

Months passed. Summer turned to autumn. The Isset fell to its lowest and the Vathen tried one last time. They lashed together a fleet of rafts into a giant floating bridge, but by then the forkbeards had come back. Even in the Crackmarsh they knew that Yurlak himself had crossed the sea. Marroc fought alongside the forkbeards now, but not Valaric. He sat in his marsh and watched, waiting to pick off the winner.

The battle, when it came, made the slaughter outside Andhun look like a skirmish. Valaric didn’t see it but he heard soon enough: the Vathen had beaten Yurlak. Then they beat him again and this time they killed him for good measure, but by then the winter was setting in and the Crackmarsh men had turned the ghuldogs into their own horde. There were thousands of the feral creatures, half dog and half man. Valaric led them out of the marsh one late autumn night and they swept in secret along the banks of the river, the ghuldogs sinking into the Isset in the daylight, the Marroc vanishing among the trees. They caught a new Vathan horde crossing the river, so many it would take them days. On the first night Valaric sent the ghuldogs into the camp of the Vathen who’d crossed while he and his Crackmarsh men cut loose the rafts that made the bridge and set them adrift and then melted away back to their swamp. Stories trickled to them of how the Vathan camp had been turned into a bloody horror. Ghuldogs took a man down, they ripped him apart and usually partly ate him, and even the men who got away with only a bite generally died or even worse. They were only stories, especially that last part, but living in the Crackmarsh Valaric came to know the truth.

The ghuldogs didn’t come back – they stayed along the Isset, preying on whatever came their way – but the Crackmarsh was huge and there were always more.

The Vathen fared badly that winter. When they came again in the spring, Medrin Sixfingers was waiting for them, and Valaric wished he hadn’t crushed the Vathen after all, for Medrin loved his blood ravens and hated every Marroc ever born. He came with more forkbeards and this time he came to stay. He hanged every Marroc who said a word out of place and drafted the men he didn’t murder into his army. He wasn’t like the other forkbeards. Valaric heard that much. He only cared about the winning of a fight, not the way of the winning, and he won that year against the Vathen on the back of his Marroc archers.

Some said it was the year after that the horror began – after Sixfingers broke the Vathen and drove them back across the Isset at last and set his mind to ruling his new kingdom – but Valaric knew better. The Crackmarsh began not far from where the Isset tumbled out of the Varyxhun valley gorge, close to the Aulian Bridge and Issetbridge. He knew that Medrin had sent the very worst of his forkbeards into the valley looking for the Sword of the Weeping God and for Gallow the Foxbeard. He knew about what they’d done there, the blood ravens. Varyxhun became as Andhun had been, as the rest of the old kingdom of the Marroc would become once Medrin finished taking out his hate on the Vathen. Sixfingers never forgot that a Marroc had nearly killed him once. It was a while before Valaric learned that it was Truesword who’d taken his hand and a while longer still before he heard the stories of how Medrin had had a new one made of iron crafted by the cold spirit of the Ice Wraiths, gifted to him along with the iron-gloved servants the forkbeards called their Fateguard but the Marroc knew by other, crueller names. The forkbeards called him Medrin Ironhand to his face, other things behind his back. Valaric called him worse and quietly carved Medrin’s name into an arrowhead and kept it on a thong around his neck.

He was fingering it when Sarvic came and stood nearby in that lurking way he had where he never quite got around to saying anything, just stood closer and closer to wherever Valaric was sitting until eventually Valaric just wanted to stick a knife in his leg to make him spit it out. He never did, though. Sarvic had been at Andhun, and Andhun had turned him cold and hard. And he could shoot an arrow into a man’s eye at fifty paces.

‘Well?’

‘Messenger from Fat Jonnic. A couple of forkbeards just wandered in from Middislet.’

‘Well now they can just wander to the bottom of the swamp then, can’t they? Feed them to the ghuldogs. They’ll be hungry this time of year.’ He frowned and looked at Sarvic hard. ‘Why’s Fat Jonnic bothering to tell me this?’

Sarvic shuffled his feet. ‘One came with a handful of Marroc. They say the iron devil that crossed the Crackmarsh went to Middislet.’

Valaric stopped fiddling with his arrowhead. ‘Middislet?’ A smile spread slowly over his face. ‘Nice and close. We might have to do something about that after all. Did they say how many men he’s got?’

‘None.’

Valaric frowned. He’d let the devil cross his swamp without trouble because none of them quite knew how to kill one, but what was he doing in in Middislet? ‘Fat Jonnic did right. We’ll go and see these forkbeards and ask them a question or two before we chop off their beards. And maybe pay a visit to Middislet. There’s Vathen about this side of the river again. Forkbeards could get into all kinds of trouble in a place like this.’ He raised an eyebrow, then saw that Sarvic wasn’t rushing off to grab a fistful of swords and axes like he ought to but was doing his shuffling thing again. Valaric sighed. ‘Yes?’