The Last Bastion (10 page)

11

THE RIVER

M
irrahj kicked her horse and cantered through the chaos of Andhun to the gates and another heaving mass of horsemen milling in helpless anger. The gates were open but no one seemed to know what to do, whether the city was won or lost, how many forkbeards had come, whether to flee or to rally and fight. As they fought through the press of riders, a voice pierced the confusion. ‘Mirrahj Bashar!’ Mirrahj pushed towards a score of Vathen pressed tightly together. They were her ride, part of it. ‘The forkbeards have destroyed the gates! They can’t be closed.’

‘We leave.’ She had to shout over the cries of the other Vathen.

‘No!’ Josper’s voice. Gallow had come to know it and now the Vathan was pointing a javelot at him. ‘And what’s that forkbeard doing here? You should kill him.’

Mirrahj raised her own javelot and levelled it back at him. ‘We leave because I say we leave, Josper, and the forkbeard comes because I say he comes.’

Josper folded his arms and shook his head. ‘You’re no bashar, Mirrahj. We need to fight these forkbeards. We need to kill them.’ He glared at Gallow. ‘Starting with that one.’

‘Then lead them, Josper. If you can.’ Mirrahj looked past him. ‘You all know me. I say we leave. I have good reason but I will not say what it is.’

Mirrahj’s horse stumbled sideways as another barged into it. The shouting rose to almost deafening and then a river
of horses surged into the square from deeper in the city, pushing and shoving their way to the gates and riding out into the fields beyond. Josper looked at them and sneered. ‘Hakkha Bashar. You say we should turn our tails and flee like he does?’ He turned to the other riders. ‘I say we stand and fight! Look at our numbers! The battle is barely begun and this . . . this
un-woman
would have us turn and run!’

Mirrahj spat. She didn’t say a word, only turned her horse and joined the push for the gates. The walls and the towers either side were empty, held by no one. Gallow looked back. He saw Josper rise in his saddle and raise his javelot to hurl it – whether at Mirrahj or at him he couldn’t tell – but the spear stayed in his hand and Gallow and Mirrahj were through the gates. The press of horses burst into the open space beyond. The other Vathen veered east, but Mirrahj turned south towards the river. She galloped away, full of eagerness to be gone from Andhun and everything it held, but her horse had barely found its stride before ahead of them, lit by the dawn light, Gallow spied a handful of figures walking towards the city.

Mirrahj hissed, ‘Forkbeards,’ and Gallow thought she’d turn and ride away since there were six or seven of them and only one of her, but instead she lowered her javelot and kicked her horse faster, heading straight for them. The Lhosir scattered as she came, jumping out of her path. Half of them were limping. ‘Die!’ she screamed at them as she turned her horse for another pass. ‘What are you waiting for?’

Gallow pressed into her. ‘No, Mirrahj of the Vathen. These are still my people.’

She reined in sharply, twisted and wrapped one arm around his back then heaved and tipped him sideways so he fell off. It was done with such fast grace that Gallow was on the ground before he knew it. ‘Then get off my horse, forkbeard.’

The Lhosir had gathered again, protecting their wounded with a tight line of shields and spears. They watched but didn’t come any closer. Gallow walked slowly towards them. The one in the middle had a face he knew. ‘Thanni Ironfoot.’

Ironfoot laughed out loud. ‘Well, well. And what should I call you, Gallow? I remember your name was Truesword once, but I’ve heard other names since. I heard you married a sheep. Doesn’t look like a sheep to me.’

‘Call me what you like, Ironfoot. Seems the Crimson Legion has taken Andhun castle. Don’t know that they’re going to hold it. There’s a lot of angry Vathen inside those walls. Best you go and help where you can if that’s what you’re minded to do. Are my eyes still good, Ironfoot? Did I see Medrin in Andhun as the sun rose?’

Ironfoot laughed again. ‘And why would I answer a man who rides with a Vathan?’

‘Tell Medrin something for me, Ironfoot. Tell him, in case he doesn’t already know, that Gallow Truesword came looking for him to finish what he started. Tell him I’ll be waiting for him in Varyxhun if he has the stomach for it. Tell him the Comforter waits there too, if he has the strength to lift it in those crooked fingers of his.’

‘If he’s there, Gallow-who-rides-with-my-enemies.’

‘He’s there, Ironfoot, and you know it. But I’ll not make you lie for him.’

Thanni Ironfoot dipped his spear in salute. ‘The Screambreaker loved you, Gallow. I wonder what he’d make of what you’ve become. Maybe it’s as well he’s gone.’

‘I wonder what he’d make of us all, Ironfoot. What he’d make of a king who deals with the ironskins, who makes war on women and children. What he’d make of those who follow such a king. I wonder that all the time. I’d not head for the gates, if I were you. Not yet. More Vathen there than even you can bite.’

He turned his back on the Lhosir. Mirrahj was still where she’d dumped him off her horse and so he walked back to her. She didn’t stop him from climbing behind her again, though it was hard with his shoulder so swollen and stiff from the blow he’d taken beneath the castle. Ironfoot and his Lhosir watched but they didn’t move.

‘What did you just do, forkbeard?’

‘Told Medrin where to find the things he most desires. Called him to where I can kill him. And then I can go home.’

Mirrahj didn’t reply. After a long pause she turned her horse and rode away leaving the Lhosir behind. She stopped again on the top of a ridge overlooking the river. Long shadows of morning sun streaked the ground now but there was no missing the bodies or the streaks of bright red blood in the whiteness of the snow. Mirrahj dismounted and poked at the dead with her foot. Caught by surprise, half of them murdered in their sleep, throats slashed, the others cut down before they could lift their shields or don a helm. Gallow counted a score of Vathen and there were clearly more. A couple of forkbeards too.

‘They did this.’ Mirrahj was looking down from the ridge towards Ironfoot and his Lhosir, limping on towards the city. In the morning light there was nowhere to hide. ‘This was Moonjal Bashar’s ride. The ardshan’s son.’ She sat heavily among the corpses and closed her eyes and then stood up again and walked among the dead, turning them over one by one and looking at their faces. Gallow left her to it; by the time she was done the sun had risen a hand higher and he’d lost sight of Ironfoot’s men, still heading for the gates. Chances were they’d be dead soon.

‘He’s not here.’ Mirrahj Bashar leaned on her javelot and held her head in her hand.

‘Why didn’t you stay and fight?’ Gallow asked. ‘Your riders were ready for it. Best I could see, Andhun could still go either way.’

‘Because I’m sick of it, forkbeard, that’s why.’ She rounded on him. ‘Did you count the size of my ride when we entered Andhun? There were eighty of us. I knew them all. More than just their names. I know the names of the children they left behind when they followed the Weeping Giant across the plains. I know the names of their wives who’ll never see them again and of the brothers they once rode with who are nothing but bones now. We don’t belong here, forkbeard. This isn’t our land and none of us wants to be here, but we have no choice any more. We brought the Sword of the Weeping God here and then we lost it and now we can’t go back. We just can’t. Were you lying in Andhun or was that the truth at last?’

‘The truth.’ A pall of smoke was rising over the city now.

‘Then take me to it and I’ll take it back where it belongs and every Vathan for five hundred miles will follow me. We just want to go home, forkbeard.’

The words touched him deep enough to make his eyes swim. ‘Three years I carried that burden.’

‘Three years.’ Mirrahj nodded. ‘And more for those who followed the Weeping Giant and his dreams in the early days before he had all the clans drawn to his banner. The start wasn’t so bad. Riding and riding and riding across lands almost bereft of anything but grass and wind. We smashed a small Marroc army at Fedderhun and we felt the calling in our blood. And then Andhun. Bloody Andhun, and yet we took everything this side of the river in the end, but what it cost us . . . What you forkbeards did to us.’ She shook her head and wiped her eyes. ‘I was just a rider then. I had a man, a bashar himself, though I dare say I wouldn’t have kept him long. But he was strong and wild, and you took him from me, you and yours, like you took the sword. After that nothing was right.’

Gallow watched her. He might have offered her the comfort of an arm but she was his enemy and he was hers, even
if the pain they shared was deeper than any race or creed. He forced himself to look away. ‘Many died at Andhun. Why did you come back looking for me?’

‘Because without you I’d never find the sword.’

‘But I’m a forkbeard.’

‘But you know where the red sword rests.’

‘And now I’ve told you, shall I be on my way?’

Mirrahj laughed. ‘I took you, forkbeard, and you didn’t care. There was no fear in you, no anger. All I ever saw was relief. And it took me a while, but by the time we reached Andhun I understood – I understood why it sang to my heart. Whatever it was you were fighting, it was over, and you were glad, because in the end there was no victory to be had, not really, and you’ve known that for a long long time. And I saw that in you and I saw that in myself, and the moment I did I was no longer fit to be the bashar of my ride. That’s why I let Josper have his way. Are you done now, forkbeard, or shall I show you my other scars? I have plenty.’

He couldn’t answer that. She was right. He’d never have seen it for himself, only ever felt the relief that nothing he did would matter any more, and yet this Vathan woman, a stranger to him, had put it into words. That was why he’d gone after Medrin instead of fleeing. To die. To make it all end. The knowledge made him shiver.

‘Take me to it and I’ll take my people home.’

Gallow shook his head. ‘It’s just a sword.’

‘The Sword of the Weeping God, forkbeard! Older than the world.’

‘I carried it for three years, Mirrahj Bashar. It’s a sword with a strange colour to its steel and a very hard sharp edge, and that’s all.’ He sighed.
Home
. They all wanted the same, really. The Marroc of Varyxhun busy hanging forkbeards. The Vathen. Even the Lhosir, most of them. He’d seen it in Thanni Ironfoot’s face clear as day, just as he’d seen it in the
eyes of all the Screambreaker’s men a dozen years ago before they’d finally sailed back across the sea. Home. Peace. To built their houses and farm their land and raise their sons and daughters. For a moment Gallow wasn’t sure who was left who wanted anything else. Medrin? The red sword itself perhaps? Hard to see why they were all still fighting.

Mirrahj threw down her javelot with a snort and vaulted into her saddle. She rode away along the ridge, out of sight, and was away for so long that Gallow wondered if she was coming back. When she did she was leading another Vathan horse. ‘Can you ride, forkbeard?’

Gallow nodded.

‘I mean actually ride, not just sit there tight as a drum and hope you don’t fall off like most of you forkbeards do.’

‘I learned across the sea.’

‘Then she is yours.’ She handed him the reins. ‘Treat her well. Which way to the sword?’

They made their way through the snow along the bank of the Isset. Gallow’s thoughts wandered as they rode. He’d been lost when the Marroc threw him out of Varyxhun, but not any more. Medrin would come after him, and Medrin would come after the sword, sure as the sun rose each morning, and there’d be no peace until he was dead, and killing him wasn’t going to be easy, even if it was what had to be done.

‘I’ll take you to the sword,’ he told her when they stopped by the river to drink and rest. ‘But I can’t give it to you. You’ll have to fight to make it yours and then you’ll have to fight a deal harder to keep it. And then later you’ll wish you hadn’t.’

He turned away from the river when they mounted again, heading to the south and east toward the distant Crackmarsh. He’d come this way once before.

12

THE CRACKMARSH CAVES

T
he Crackmarsh had been full of Marroc when the winter began. Most had left with Valaric. He’d taken every about man he could spare; but when he wasn’t called Valaric the Mournful, he was Valaric the Wolf – so the old Marroc knew him – and he’d always known that one day the forkbeards might drive him back and so he’d prepared for that. A few men stayed behind then, left to watch the hideouts, keep the tame ghuldog packs in line and to watch what the forkbeards were up to nearby. The old men, the injured, the crippled, the ones who couldn’t fight and a few that Reddic thought Valaric had left behind just to spite them.

The two old men left to keep watch over the Crackmarsh caves near Middislet might as well have been a pair of blind goats for all the good they did. Arda led the mules along the hill path and through the woods at the frozen edge of the water meadows and right inside the caves before either of them even knew she was there, and when Reddic woke them up from their snores, they were obviously both drunk as lords. He left them to it. They had half a night of darkness before them and the air was as cold as death’s fingers.

‘We’ll be needing a fire.’ Arda was bad from the cold. She’d been the last to dress and she hadn’t put on enough. Her hands were blue and her head kept sagging. The children weren’t much better, their sobs of exhaustion long since fallen silent. Only fear kept her going. Truth be told
Reddic wasn’t much better either, what with the nights he’d had after Stannic’s farm, but he was the man among them now and so he made his shaking fingers rummage through the bags lying open beside the snoring watchmen. He found tinder and then their stash of dry cut wood and painstakingly blew on the embers of their old fire until he had a flame again and lovingly carried it to a new spot. Nadric was already asleep by the time he got it burning and Arda was fussing with the children, settling them around him, wrapping them all in the furs off her own back to keep them warm. ‘Any more blankets here?’ she asked after Reddic had been staring at the fire for a few minutes, rubbing the feeling back into his fingers, and he could have kicked himself for not thinking of that before. He ran off to look but came back empty-handed.

‘Sorry.’

She’d found some straw from somewhere and piled it as close as she dared to the fire. Now she was sitting cross-legged on it, hands stretched out to the flames, shivering. Reddic took off his cloak and laid it over her and then took off his mail and sat beside the fire on the other side, watching her shudder and curl up tight and rub her hands and blow on her fingers. He’d spent the winter in the Crackmarsh, a good few nights in places with no fire at all. He’d seen men shiver like this and fall asleep and not wake up again, the life stolen out of them by the winter. Fire or no fire, without his furs he was already cold. Nadric had all four of the children wrapped around him, bundled up so tight that Reddic couldn’t have said how many were in there. Arda had given them too much – or rather she hadn’t left enough for herself.

He got up and came round the fire and lay down beside her, wrapping his fur tightly around both of them, pressing up against her, giving her his warmth. She was cold, just a thick woollen shift and a thin linen dress underneath the
fur cloak she wore, and beneath it her skin was like ice. He wriggled closer and wrapped an arm around her. She never moved or said a word. Within minutes they were both asleep.

His dreams were strange that night in the cave. He was paralysed and there were shadewalkers everywhere. He was in the cave and they were shambling around him, talking. Then he was back in Middislet. He watched them tear open doors and drag women and children out into the snow and the air was full of screams. He never saw what they did, but he knew anyway because he kept seeing Torvic with his face bitten off, walking about the place. Then they were coming for him too, and he could run, only these shadewalkers could run too. They chased him for what felt like for ever until he reached the edge of a cliff and had to stop because there was nowhere left to go, and they were all around him and they closed in and dragged him down and tore off his helm. He was about to die but suddenly he was somewhere else, somewhere warm. Now he wasn’t seeing a horde of hungry shadewalkers but Valissi, the girl he used to see in Tarkhun washing clothes by the river, only now she was leaning over him and she was naked and she had one hand pressed between his legs.

He woke with a start. There’d been enough nights when Reddic had been huddled up like this with others of Valaric’s men trying to keep warm, and there was no accounting for dreams. There were no women in the Crackmarsh. He’d seen men disappear together now and then, and they all knew what happened, said nothing and looked the other way.

His hand was pressed into Arda’s breast with her own hand clasping it. He could feel the nipple, hard as stone, and when he shifted his legs, trying to find a more comfortable way to lie, she followed him, her buttocks pressing into his crotch. He had no idea whether she was awake or asleep.

He twitched. Couldn’t help himself. He tried closing his
eyes, tried to think of other things, even made himself think of the shadewalkers and Torvic with his face ripped off, but it wouldn’t go away. He kept seeing Arda’s face and Jelira’s too, seeing for the first time how alike they were. Without even realising he was doing it, his hand slid off her breast and slipped downward. Arda’s hand stayed with him. As his fingers slipped between her legs she let out a little whimper and twisted slightly towards him. Her legs opened and his hand went on under the fur, feeling along her thigh until he found her skin and then reaching underneath the wool and linen and round to the inside of her leg and sliding back again; and then he shifted himself and pulled up his own shirt and pushed down his trousers and pressed his hands between her legs, pushing them apart from behind. She shifted now and then. Little movements but all to make it easier for him. He slid inside her and thrust hard. His hand ran up her skin, reaching for her breasts. He grunted with each push but Arda didn’t make a sound, only perhaps breathed a little harder, and then came and was still. She shifted once or twice more as he twitched inside her, then a moment later he was asleep.

The morning woke him, late winter sunlight bright through the stunted trees at the mouth of the cave. He was still wrapped in his own fur but Arda was already up. She sat across the re-kindled fire, boiling a pot of water and chewing on a strip of black bread, and there was a bewilderment of people around him who hadn’t been here the night before. He stared at them, wondering who they were and how they were here and why he didn’t remember them. Most were still huddled under their furs but a few were shuffling about or squatting by the fire. When he grunted, Arda shot him a sharp look.

‘If those two in that other cave are supposed to be your lookouts, I’d have a word with them if I were you. Still snoring fit to bring down mountains, they are. I dare say there’s
forkbeards standing right across the Crackmarsh with their ears tipped to the wind wondering what they’re hearing. We had a look around, found where they kept their breakfast and helped ourselves. Hungry?’

‘We?’ Reddic was still staring at the other Marroc. It was as if they’d appeared by magic in the middle of the night while he’d slept.

‘Did you think everyone else in Middislet was just going to stay there?’ She snorted. ‘These caves were ours to hide in long before your Valaric came along.’

Reddic nodded. He wrapped his fur around him and came closer to the fire. ‘What if the shadewalkers come here too?’ He leaned in, peering into Arda’s pot, but before he could see what was cooking she smacked him across the knuckles with the stick she’d been using to poke the fire.

‘Then we go somewhere else. Mother not teach you manners, boy?’

He stared at her. That was exactly the thing his mother had done before the forkbeards had killed her. ‘She died last summer. And yes, old mother, she taught me some.’

Arda poked another stick into the pot and stirred it. ‘Well I’m sorry to hear she’s gone. Been a lot of people dying these last few years and not many of them for much of a good reason, if you ask me. Still no excuse for having no manners. Even little Pursic knows better and this is barely his fifth winter.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Reddic sat and looked at her and opened his mouth and closed it again. Fidgeted and opened his mouth a second time. ‘About—’

‘Manners, boy,’ she said again. ‘Manners.’ Her voice softened very slightly. ‘You did nothing wrong, if that’s what you were wondering. And you did good with those shadewalkers.’

Reddic shook his head. ‘No, I didn’t. I practically shat myself, I was that scared.’

‘No different from the rest of us then. Reckon my Gallow would have said the same too. Kept your head, that’s what matters. Better than some would do.’

‘You didn’t look like you were scared at all.’

Nadric and the children were stirring now – the light or the smell of Arda’s pot perhaps – and more of the villagers from Middislet were coming to sit around the fire, muttering to each other, whispering their stories. Arda picked up her pot and came and settled beside Reddic. ‘I was scared right enough, lad. I’ve had one husband lost to the forkbeards and another lost to the sea only to show up again three years later. I’ve carried five children and lost one when it could barely lift its head. Jelira and Tathic I’ve seen sicken and nearly die and then fight their way to the living again. I had one forkbeard in my bed for eight years and another for nearly two. I had the Widowmaker himself in my house and stitched closed a hole in his head – though not until after I’d had a good long think about dashing his brains out, mind. Shadewalkers? I’ve met men who’ve hunted them. I was in Witches’ Reach when the forkbeards were about to storm it. The Wolf hadn’t crossed the bridge out of his swamp and we were all going to die, and badly too. I had the iron devil of Varyxhun in my yard once and his fingers around my throat. So I’ve seen a lot that’s made me scared and would give me the shits again if it cared to, but I know how to deal with it. Put another few years on you and you will too.’ She glanced behind Reddic to where Jelira and Feya and Tathic and Pursic were sitting in a row, all quietly watching her. ‘Them.’ She nodded, and for the first time Reddic had seen, a smile settled over her face, a real warm smile full of love. ‘They’re what keep me going. There’s nothing in this world or any other that scares me like the thought of losing my little ones.’

‘I’m not little any more,’ grumbled the older boy. ‘Pursic’s little. I’m not.’

‘You’re all still little to me,’ Arda snorted. ‘Who wants to eat?’

She lifted the pot and passed it round, tipping some sort of runny white sludge onto old wooden plates she must have liberated from the same place she’d found the food. The children eyed it hungrily and Nadric already had his fingers in it when Arda raised a hand. ‘Wait!’ She took out the pouch she’d thrown at Reddic back in the house, the magic Aulian salt. He watched in amazement as she sprinkled a few flakes onto each plate. ‘Just a little, mind.’ She crouched in front of her children. ‘Remember how I told you I met a wizard from Aulia last time we all had to run away, when the iron devil came?’

‘Before da killed him and made you safe again,’ said Jelira loudly.

‘Which da?’ the smaller of the two boys turned to look at the bigger one.

‘Both of them, actually,’ said Arda without even a blink. ‘They did it together. And that was when I met a wizard from Aulia. He gave me this magic powder to keep us all safe. Just a pinch of it and those shadewalkers won’t hurt us.’

‘Is the wizard here?’ Pursic’s eyes were as wide as saucers.

Arda shook her head. ‘He had to go somewhere else.’

‘He was sent away to be hanged for helping our real da,’ said Jelira. ‘And then our real da went away to save him.’

‘That’s right.’ Arda looked uneasy now. She put a hand to her mouth and heaved a long deep breath.

Tathic sniffed at the porridge and tasted it. His face lit up. ‘Does that mean we can go home now?’

‘I don’t want to go home,’ said Jelira. ‘I want to find Gallow.’ She turned to Reddic. ‘He’s still in the mountains near Varyxhun. He went to help Valaric the Wolf fight the forkbeards and send them away.’

‘If he didn’t get himself killed already,’ whispered Arda.

Reddic leaned forward. He smiled at Jelira, taking her attention for a moment. ‘Not many call him Valaric the Wolf these days. Mostly the Crackmarsh men call him Mournful. Wolf was his name in the war against the forkbeards.’

‘So why do you call him Mournful?’

‘Because he lost his family in the war, and even though that was more than a dozen years ago now, he still mourns for them.’

Jelira’s eyes grew wide. She took a step closer. ‘Did the forkbeards kill them?’

‘No.’ He almost told them how it had been cold and starvation and how a shadewalker had walked through their village one late autumn day and cursed them all, but then he looked at them, cold and hungry and with their village filled with shadewalkers, and thought better of it. Instead he dipped his fingers into Arda’s porridge. He looked down at the children and made a happy face. ‘Mmm! Good! I might have all of this!’

It might have been an accident that Arda kicked him right after he said that, but he could have sworn he saw just the tiniest flicker of a
thank you
on the corner of her mouth. They talked for a bit after that about what they should do, all of them together. Go back to Middislet maybe, since shadewalkers were wandering things who never stayed in one place for more than a night. In the end they agreed that Reddic and a couple of the men from the village would go and have a look and see whether it was safe. They didn’t wait for Valaric’s two guards to wake up, and Reddic spent half the walk imagining Arda giving them a good shaking and shouting-at until they were awake enough to realise their caves had been overrun by fifty-odd men and women and children and they hadn’t even noticed.

It was an easy enough walk to Middislet and back and the air was a lot warmer that morning. Dull grey clouds filled the skies and a wind was blowing in from the north and the
west, freshening with each hour they walked. They reached Middislet with the sun at its zenith and found the village half empty but not dead. The shadewalkers were gone. When Reddic looked, there were a few villagers already back in their homes, those who’d hidden in their cellars or walked or fled a different way and come back in the morning, as Stannic had done. He talked to them until he had a dozen different stories saying which way the shadewalkers had gone or how many they’d been – five, fifty, a hundred, and every possible way except north. Reddic settled for there being maybe a dozen and they’d headed roughly south. It amazed him that no one had been killed. It was the forkbeard Gallow, he heard one of them say, who’d told them about shadewalkers and what to do when they came. He’d played games with the children, the ones whose parents would let a forkbeard monster anywhere near them, and he’d pretend to be the shadewalker and they had to see how close they could get without him touching them.