The Crimson Shield (7 page)

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 man 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.’

G
allow 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!’

‘And that makes it somehow better? That you betrayed a man without even knowing his name?’ Gallow snarled and growled and turned his horse. ‘Listen well, Marroc!’ he
cried. ‘The Vathen have come to Middislet. You did that, not I. Now two of their soldiers are dead. That?
I
did that. And Fenaric, you may not have told them who was in my house, but
someone did. The Vathen know that the Screambreaker was here and more will come. Go! Hide in the Crackmarsh! Stay there this time and don’t wait for Vennic to see ghosts up in the hills
– they
will
come. If they burn your homes, let that be all you lose. You’re fools, all of you.’ He jumped off his horse, grabbed Fenaric and dragged him towards Arda.
‘Screambreaker, if anyone leaves the barn before I come back, kill them!’

The forkbeard nodded. He looked distant, as though he was barely listening. His eyes were half closed behind the curve of his helm. Fenaric whimpered as Gallow hauled him along.
Modris, but
he’s strong!

Arda looked at Corvin in disgust. ‘He’s half de—’

Gallow slapped her before she could finish, hard enough to knock her down. Fenaric tried to pull away, certain now that Gallow meant to kill them both as soon as they were outside, but he
couldn’t break free. He knew, because Arda had told him, that Gallow had never struck her in all the years they’d been married.

Gallow didn’t break stride. He tossed his torch among the cringing Marroc and bent down as Arda started to rise. He grabbed her arm with his free hand and dragged them both out of the barn
like a pair of naughty children, walked them past the bonfire, threw Fenaric to the ground and drew his sword.

‘No!’ Arda at last sounded scared. Fenaric couldn’t find his voice.

Gallow pointed his sword at Fenaric’s face. ‘Now listen to me. I’ll leave with the Screambreaker tonight. I’ll take the Vathan horses and everything they had.
There’ll be no sign they were here but that won’t save you. How far away were they, Fenaric? Closer than Fedderhun?’ Fenaric shook his head. ‘Then you have two days, perhaps
three. Arda, for once in your bloody-minded life, listen and do what I say: Fenaric will take you south in his wagon. You’ll take the children with you. You’ll go to Varyxhun. There are
two horses tethered beside the workshop. They’re Lhosir horses. Take them.’ He ground his teeth, staring at Arda. ‘Take everything you can from the forge. Take Nadric and his
tools. You and Nadric can ride the horses. Fenaric will take the children and whatever from the forge that can’t be replaced in his cart. The Widowmaker thanks you for your
hospitality.’ He threw a purse at her feet and shook his head. ‘Why, woman? Why couldn’t you simply do as you were told for once?’

Arda stared up at Gallow with burning eyes. ‘He’s half-dead. How do you think he’ll stop anyone from leaving the barn?’

‘He won’t need to. They won’t dare to try. You told them who he was and that’ll be enough. You’ll wait for me in Varyxhun. Keep my sons safe. I’ll deal with
you when I return.’ His glare fell on Fenaric and his sword touched the skin of the carter’s throat. Fenaric scrabbled away but the sword point simply followed until he gave up and
wept. ‘I’ll not kill now you, carter, because Arda has need of you, but let it be clear in your mind – that’s all that saves you. I’ve seen the way you look at her.
You’ll take her to Varyxhun. You’ll do whatever you must to look after her and her children, all of them. When I return, and I will, I’ll judge you by how well you’ve done
this. And if you run from me, Fenaric, or if you touch her, I’ll hunt you. I’ll find you and I will sever your ribs from your spine and pull out your lungs like wings and sprinkle salt
on you as you die.’

Fenaric gagged. The way the forkbeards had hung King Tane’s huscarls along the roads to Sithhun after Tane was driven to the mountains.

‘Do you understand, Fenaric?’

He nodded, weeping with fear. Arda spat at Gallow’s feet. ‘
Now
you care about your family? Now, when it’s too late?’