The Crimson Shield (15 page)

‘I thought we came because we were better.’ Gallow spoke softly.

‘We were!’ Tolvis put a hand on his shoulder, steering him away. ‘We were better than them every time apart from Selleuk’s Bridge. But only because I wasn’t well
that day. Something I ate. If I’d been myself then it would have been a different story.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘Could have ended it all there and then, I reckon.’

Gallow spat. ‘I should have kept on to Varyxhun. I don’t belong in this war.’

‘Don’t belong in this war?’ Tolvis shook his head and guided Gallow inside. ‘Choice tavern this. Feel the air! Lhosir come here; Marroc come here. Both want the others
gone. Good place for a fight later, if that’s what you need, but I’d suggest you choose your side before you start laying about with those fists.’ Tolvis tossed him the purse.
‘For your horses. I sold them all. You didn’t want to keep one, did you?’

Gallow weighed it in his hand and looked inside. He wrinkled his nose. ‘Not really. No use for one in Varyxhun.’

‘That’s a lot of silver, that is. A good price in these times, I promise you.’ Tolvis flicked some pennies at a Marroc, who ran away and came back a moment later with two
foaming cups of beer.

‘Mind you, I could have gotten twice this if I’d taken them with me.’ Gallow tied the purse to a string and tucked it under his shirt. ‘Ah well. Arda’s not to know
how many there were.’

‘Arda your woman?’

Gallow nodded, although with a pause as though he somehow wasn’t entirely sure. ‘She looks after the money.’

Tolvis raised his cup and laughed. ‘Don’t they all. That should be enough to put a greedy smile on her face though.’ He stopped. Gallow was staring over his shoulder through
the open doorway at the riverside. When Tolvis looked, the drowned dead Marroc was hauling himself up off the dirt, not quite as drowned and dead as Tolvis had thought. He glanced back at Gallow
but the big man made no move. Just watched, and so they watched together until the Marroc was gone. He didn’t come inside. Tolvis shrugged and turned back. ‘She’s a Marroc then is
she, your woman? She why you stayed?’

Gallow looked dour. ‘With the Marroc, everything is coin.’ He shook his head. ‘That’s one thing about them I’ll never understand. There’s a carter who comes
through our village. Fenaric.’ As he said the name a flash of something dark crossed his face. ‘Sometimes he needs work done at the forge. I tell him he doesn’t need to pay, that
I can give him a list of things we need and he can bring them the next time he’s passing through. Or else a keg of Fedderhun ale when the chance arises. But he never does. He smiles and nods
and then he goes to see my wife and pays her his money anyway; and then when he comes through with a keg of ale or a new hammer for the forge, or whatever else we need, we pay it back to him. I ask
Arda sometimes: if Fenaric came to us and he had no money and all he could offer were promises, would we send him away? She calls me a fool and says no, of course not, the carter is our friend. So
I ask her are his promises worth more when he has no money? And if they aren’t worth more, why are they not good enough when he has coins in his pocket? She tells me coins are better than
promises, that coins can’t be broken. But coins can be lost or stolen and the Marroc are as much people of their word as we are. I’ve lived among them for nine years but I don’t
think I’ll ever understand their fascination with money.’

All the while he talked, Gallow stared at the table, at the floor, anywhere that was down. He held one hand pressed to his heart as if trying to keep something safe. Then he suddenly stood up.
‘You know, I have half a mind to ask everyone here about that Marroc I pulled out of the river. Who he is. And why—’

Tolvis pushed Gallow gently back onto his stool and put his cup back in his hand. He raised his own. ‘To the crazy Marroc. May they find the strength to defend their homes against the
Vathen. Leave it, Gallow. You saved him, or maybe he would have lived anyway, but he’s gone now, and, Marroc or Lhosir, no one here wants you to ask questions.’ He steered the talk to
the old days then, to the fights against the Marroc and the Screambreaker’s campaigns. Turned out they’d both been at Vanhun and at Varyxhun and Andhun and half a dozen other places,
even on the bridge together at Selleuk’s Bridge. Then later Tolvis had gone back home like most of the other Lhosir when the fighting was done, and now he filled the evening with stories of
all the other soldiers they’d known and what had happened to them. Grown fat on all the plunder they’d carried home and made lots of children, mostly. ‘It’s strange,’
he said, ‘to see this place again. It’s not how I remember it. It was filthy back then and the Marroc were so terrified of us.’

‘They’re not now?’

‘Not like they were. But then we never touched Andhun. They must have been waiting for the Screambreaker to turn his eyes on them for more than a year. They knew he’d come for them
one day, sooner or later. And then Tane died out in the middle of nowhere and . . .’ He paused. ‘What did happen at Varyxhun in the end? I heard all sorts at the time.’

‘We found the castle empty, the gates open, the last of the Marroc huscarls already dead. They killed themselves rather than be taken.’ As he spoke, Gallow touched a finger to his
scar, to the small piece missing from his nose.

Tolvis shook his head and chuckled into his cup. ‘That’s so . . .
Marroc.
No wonder they all looked so terrified when we got here at last. They must have thought we’d
burn the place down around them.’

‘It wouldn’t have been the first time.’

‘I remember all those stories about Varyxhun. The river flooding to wipe away anyone who attacked it and those other curses the Aulians left behind. How we laughed.’

‘No curses. Just dead men.’

Tolvis stretched his neck and looked around the tavern. There were other Lhosir here but not so many Marroc tonight. Maybe they’d finally settled whose drinking place this was going to be.
‘I always liked a good burning. Pretty stuff, fire. Twelvefingers would never hold with it though. Too much waste. Empty their houses and then burn them down, that’s how it was at the
start. Then the burnings stopped and we just emptied their houses. Now Twelvefingers acts like he wants to be some sort of king and we just empty their pockets instead. I suppose he
will
be king when old Yurlak goes, Maker-Devourer help us.’ He looked Gallow up and down. His eyes narrowed. ‘There’s a lot of us are going to miss Yurlak. Some would say it’s
the Screambreaker who should follow him.’

Gallow met his eye. ‘Do they say it to Medrin’s face?’

Tolvis threw back his head and roared. ‘Not unless they want to end up like those Marroc sheep strung up over the streets!’

‘So who
do
they say it to, Loudmouth? I fought with the Screambreaker and so did you. He was never one to take cowards to his cause. Men spoke their minds freely in those days.
Have things changed so much?’

Tolvis flushed. His brow furrowed and then he paused and looked confused for a moment. ‘Strong words, Gallow Truesword. Be careful with them.’

‘I ask if things across the sea have changed, Tolvis Loudmouth.’ Gallow shrugged. ‘The Screambreaker judged men by their hearts. Marroc or Lhosir, it never mattered. If you
showed courage, he kept you. If you were weak then he threw you away. He was the finest we had, and that’s why we followed him. Strong as an ox and sure as the sea, but the men around him
weren’t ever afraid to tell him when he was wrong. If men are scared to speak before their prince, the Screambreaker will have naught but scorn for them.’

‘Would
you
tell the Screambreaker he was wrong?’

‘I did so on the road to Andhun, and more than once. I don’t say he listened, mind!’

They both laughed. Tolvis wiped the spit from his mouth. ‘Did he ever go any way but his own?’

By the time they left the tavern, night had long settled over the streets. Clouds scudded across the moon like ghosts. A fresh wind blew in from the sea, warning of storms on the way. Tolvis was
too drunk to even walk straight and Gallow was little better. They staggered up the steepness of the hill, holding on to one another, leaning on Tolvis’s horse, both of them still dressed in
their mail and carrying their shields and with their swords and axes at their belts. Here and there they had to walk up wide steps, or detour around sheer sides of rock that jutted out from among
the houses.

‘Need to keep your ears open down there,’ muttered Tolvis. ‘Docks aren’t far. Marroc there aren’t like the ones up near the castle. Got more balls.’ He turned
and roared into the night. ‘More balls, I said! Eh?’ He looked back at Gallow and laughed. ‘Don’t like our sort down in the docks, not at all.’

Gallow picked his way up the next flight of steps, weaving precariously from side to side. ‘After Yurlak and the Screambreaker left, those of us who stayed started to show up in the river.
Every day one or two more.’ Gallow shook his head. ‘Andhun and the Isset probably killed more of us than Tane did when we took Sithhun from him.’

‘So what was it made you stay, eh? Why didn’t you come home? Your Marroc woman?’ Tolvis peered at him. ‘No? Something else then.’

Gallow grunted. ‘Is every bastard Lhosir I ever meet going to ask the same thing? Thought Yurlak was going to die. Didn’t like Medrin. That’s why. Good enough?’

Tolvis hooted with laughter. ‘No one
likes
Twelvefingers.’

‘Then perhaps I didn’t like him more than the rest of you.’ He stopped. ‘He wants to go off chasing after the Crimson Shield, does he? You remember we had it once? It was
in the Temple of Fates in Nardjas for a few days. Someone tried to steal it, or that was the story that went round.’

Tolvis nodded. ‘I was with the Screambreaker, killing Marroc, but we heard eventually, yes. Don’t remember the thief’s name. Bard or something. I know the Moontongue did the
job not long after. Always supposed they were together, somehow.’

‘Beyard, not Bard. And Medrin was the king’s son. He should have said why Beyard was really there. But he didn’t, and Beyard died. He was my friend.’

Gallow fell quiet and they walked in silence up the last winding road to the castle. Tolvis led the way to the keep. The doors were open, warm stale air wafting out between them. A pair of
Lhosir soldiers waved them inside, yawning.

‘Who’s the Marroc, Loudmouth?’ one of them called. Tolvis ignored him.

‘For the love of the Maker-Devourer, grow your beard, Gallow. Cut it off again when the Vathen are gone if you must go back to living with the sheep.’ He took them into what had been
the Marroc duke’s feasting hall before Medrin had come and the Lhosir had filled it up with furs and straw and snores. He sat against a wall in the gloom, pulling off his mail, his head
already spinning, his eyes starting to close. ‘Sleep where you can,’ he mumbled. ‘Like being back home. One big longhouse.’ He lay down on the first piece of floor he could
find, a smile on his face. ‘Why did we come across the sea, Truesword? Truly? Marroc beer, that’s why. It’s certainly why I came back.’

G
allow lay down. Loudmouth was right: the smell of the air and the sounds of men breathing brought old memories out of hiding. This was how it was
when he’d been a child out in a homestead somewhere on the coast. One longhouse and a dozen barns and sheds, and at night they’d all slept together. He’d never counted, but there
must have been nearly thirty of them. One big extended family, and in winter they’d have the animals inside as well for their warmth. The Marroc did that too, but the Marroc didn’t have
winters like the ones Gallow remembered. He closed his eyes. The memories were strong, the smell of straw, of sheep and horses. He could see his father again, as he’d been when Gallow was
young, before they’d gone to Nardjas. Yurlak had wanted smiths to hammer the swords and armour for his raids against the Marroc. It had seemed to Gallow that the Lhosir had always been at
war, but for a moment he wasn’t so sure.

His thoughts lost their focus. They wandered, drifting past the edges of the Herenian Marches and he found himself standing in a great stone hall, far larger than the one in Andhun where he
slept. The hall was filled with soldiers, shouting, waving swords and burning brands, but their cries seemed small and helpless, and when he looked to see what it was that made their blood burn so
fiercely, he saw another warrior had entered the hall, striding through great gates streaming with sunlight. The newcomer was a giant, head and shoulders above the rest. He strode through them,
cleaving left and right with the great rust-red sword he carried. His mail dripped with the blood of those he slew. He carried no shield and yet no blade touched him, and where the red sword swung,
shields and mail split and tore apart. He walked and slew with deadly purpose, yet slowly and sorrowfully too, and when the last of the warriors fell to his sword he lifted his helm and surveyed
the bodies. Gallow knew him, for the giant’s eyes wept tears of blood. He was the Weeping God, and the sword he carried was the blade the Marroc called Solace, the Vathen called the
Comforter, and the Aulians had always named the Edge of Sorrows.

Gallow saw that the giant wasn’t alone. Beside him was a boy clothed in a golden shift. Diaran the Lifegiver. The boy-god came to stand beside Gallow instead, unafraid as the giant stepped
slowly forward.

I am sorry
, the Weeping God seemed to say.
I am sorry but there is no other way. All life ends in slaughter. I see it always. Let it end.
He lifted his sword to strike the
boy-god down. Gallow drew his own, but in his hand all he found was a sapling branch.

The boy-god beside him looked up and Gallow saw he was Tathic, his own son.

Don’t be afraid.
But how could he not be? He launched himself at the giant but the Weeping God swatted him aside. In his dreams Gallow watched, broken-boned and helpless, as the
old-blood blade of Solace swept down, but the blow didn’t land. At the last moment another god stood beside the boy, Modris the Protector with his Crimson Shield, and his shield caught the
Edge of Sorrows and turned it away. The old story, as it had always been.