The Last Bastion (11 page)
Authors: Nathan Hawke
Reddic even tracked the shadewalkers a little way, before a fine drizzle made him think better of it. On the way back to the Crackmarsh the rain fell steadily heavier, blurring the snow and then washing it away, but the last tracks he’d seen had the shadewalkers going south, close past the caves, and maybe it would be better to get back to Middislet tonight after all. He hurried and ran the last few miles, leaving the others to follow, but when he got back to the caves, Arda came running out. She grabbed him by the cloak and shook him, and this time there was no hiding her fear.
‘Jelira’s gone.’
And all he could think of was that it was cold and it was raining and it would be dark soon and then it wouldn’t just be the shadewalkers that came out. Here in the marsh it would be the ghuldogs too.
‘I
came this way before,’ Gallow told her after he’d settled the argument about how to get to the Crackmarsh by simply riding off, and after she’d finished shouting at him and threatening to kill him when she’d had no choice but to follow. ‘After Lostring Hill I went back home, close to the edge of the Crackmarsh. This is how I came to Andhun from there.’
They stopped beside a frozen pond. Mirrahj reversed her spear and smashed the ice around the edge so their horses could drink. Gallow drew a map in the snow with a stick. ‘The Crackmarsh is here, the Ironwood here. We go around the top of the Ironwood and then cross the marsh to the Aulian Way. The road leads to the Varyxhun valley.’
Mirrahj pinched her lips. ‘Crossing the Crackmarsh? So there
is
a way.’
‘Probably about a dozen.’ Gallow yawned.
‘And you know them! Tell me!’
Gallow shook his head. ‘You’ll see soon enough. Until then it gives you another reason not to kill me in my sleep.’
‘And why should I do that?’ Mirrahj spat a laugh at the snow. ‘We’ve both turned our backs on our people now.’ When he took her hand she flinched and snapped it away, got up and went back to the horses. He understood her bitterness. ‘Well, I have no secret to hold over you, forkbeard, yet I’ll sleep easily enough. I don’t think you’re the throat-cutting sort.’
‘No.’
They passed two nights together, huddled up in the best shelter they could find with the horses standing over them among a thick stand of trees on the first night, with a fire Mirrahj managed to light from the last handful of tinder she carried. The air was still bitter with a killing cold and snow still lay on the ground, but at least the winds hadn’t come back to flay the skin from their hands and faces and strip the last of their warmth away. On the second night they found a crumbling shepherd’s shelter. When morning came, Gallow’s horse was dead. After that, a wind picked up. Heavy grey clouds scudded in from the north and the west and it began to rain, dreary, relentless and grey; but Gallow
had
been this way once before, and although years had passed since the Vathen had driven the Marroc from this part of the land, none had come back. When he finally found the farmhouse where he and the Screambreaker had fought a handful of Vathen together, it was still there, still with a roof and its torched barn, empty and abandoned for all those years. Mirrahj nodded and looked impressed. ‘And I’d thought you were bringing us this way just to see whether a Vathan was tougher than a forkbeard or the other way around.’
There were benches. Blankets. Everything the way he remembered it. There were dead Vathen too, three of them out the back by the remnants of the burned-out barn, one out the front, the one the Screambreaker himself had killed, and one still in the house, all skeletons long since picked clean by whatever animals had found them. Gallow dragged the one in the farmhouse outside in bits and pieces, a reminder of the war that neither of them wanted to remember. Mirrahj coaxed her horse into the shelter of the house and tended to it while Gallow searched through the larder. Everything was long gone, eaten or dissolved into mould, but outside in the ruined barn he found a crate with
a sack of grain in it that was dry and only tasted slightly bad. He took it back to the hearth and filled an old pot with rainwater that had collected among the ruins. There was even firewood in the house, cut and ready underneath thick cobwebs, sheltered from the rain. Farm tools too, and when he searched he found a handful of precious flints. By the time they’d scraped enough shavings of wood to make tinder and lit a fire, the sky was dark as pitch. Neither of them said a word. They listened to the hammering of the rain and the wild tearing of the wind and stared at the fire, warming themselves, always watching to make sure the flames kept alive. As the house shed its icy chill they stripped off their soaking furs. The grain, after Gallow had boiled it soft, tasted of mould, but after three days without warmth or food it was like seeing the sun again after weeks of storms. They ate in silence, and for the first time since they’d left Andhun, Gallow eased himself out of his mail and let the warmth of the flames bathe his skin. ‘We’ll be in the hills tomorrow. There’s not much shelter. Then we cross the Crackmarsh, dawn to dusk. The ghuldogs won’t trouble us as long as we’re out by sunset. The water meadows will be growing now. Might have a skin of ice at sunrise if the rain stops but don’t let it fool you – you’ll go right through as soon as you put any weight on it.’
Mirrahj shrugged. ‘We have warmth and shelter. We should wait a day here. Rest until the weather breaks.’
Gallow drew out a knife and sharpened it on a whetstone. When the edge was good enough, he tugged at the stubby beard he’d grown in the days since Hrodicslet and lifted the knife to it.
‘You should leave that,’ said Mirrahj.
He stopped and looked at her. ‘To what end?’
‘What are you, Gallow? Are you Marroc or are you Lhosir? Which is it?’
‘Can’t I be both?’
‘No. You may live among both and worship the gods of both but you cannot
be
both. What were you born?’
‘You know very well I was born a brother of the sea.’
‘And in your heart which are you?’
‘Both and neither.’ Gallow lowered the knife and poked angrily at the fire.
‘You left your family to fight Sixfingers. Is that what a Lhosir would do?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is it what a Marroc would do?’
Gallow hesitated, which was answer enough in itself. ‘Some of them,’ he said.
Mirrahj looked at him hard. ‘You’re a Lhosir, Gallow Foxbeard, not a Marroc. However much you want to be, deep inside you have a forkbeard soul. That’s how you were made and it’s a thing you can’t change. Be what you are, forkbeard.’ She bared her teeth at him and then nodded across the fire. ‘In my saddlebags you’ll find a piece of waxed paper wrapped around some cheese. It’s more than a year old and it comes from my homeland. It has a flavour strong enough to kill children and it’s the most delicious taste in the world. Get it and I’ll share it with you.’
Gallow found what she wanted and unwrapped it. The stink climbed up his nose and stabbed him right behind the eyes. ‘Maker-Devourer!’ He almost dropped it, then tossed it to Mirrahj. She cut off a piece and tossed it back.
‘Vathan horse cheese, aged to perfection.’
He sniffed and promptly sneezed. ‘That stinks, and of strong stale piss.’
Mirrahj waved the knife at him. ‘You found us this house, forkbeard, so I’ll forgive you a lot, but not that. You eat or you fight now.’ Her mouth was angry but her eyes were smiling. Gallow took a deep breath and bit a piece. For a moment he let it sit inside his mouth, trying hard not to
taste anything at all. Then he felt it wriggle, made a face and spat it across the room. ‘It moved!’
Mirrahj collapsed with laughter. ‘Your face! O forkbeard, your face!’ He glared as she cut a piece for herself and chewed it. ‘I’m not trying to trick you, forkbeard. This is what we eat, but I’ve yet to find anyone other than a Vathan who has a taste for it.’
She turned the cheese and pinched at something and then delicately withdrew a slender reddish wriggling thing. A worm. Gallow screwed up his face. ‘You can keep your cheese, Vathan.’
‘Forkbeard, this is how we welcome one another when clans meet. I invite you into my shelter. We share milk and I promise to protect you as long as you remain in my house; and by accepting my food you promise to protect me too, and my family. We might be enemies the moment you cross the threshold, there might be blood as bitter as wormwood between us, but when you come into my home and drink my milk, you vow to be my brother until you leave. You forkbeards welcome your guests by breaking bread and sharing ale with them but we don’t have bread and ale.’ She cut another piece of cheese and picked out the worms. ‘Here. It’s not exactly milk either, but it was once.’
Gallow forced himself to swallow as quickly as he could and washed it down with a long gulp of water, trying not to be sick. His stomach rumbled. Mirrahj got up and walked into the shadows in the far corner of the house. She stripped off her mail and her woollen shift and wrapped herself in a blanket. She hung the rest of her clothes neatly around the fire. ‘You should do the same. It’ll be nice not to be sodden for a while.’
Gallow was already stripped to his woollen shirt. ‘Aye, before I sleep I will.’
‘It’s customary, as a stranger who’s shared my milk, that we should tell each other of our deeds.’
‘You already know mine. I’ve told you everything that matters.’
Mirrahj shuffled closer and sat next to him beside the fire. ‘But not the Vathan way.’ She touched his face and ran a finger along the length of his nose, over the dent near the bridge and along the old white scar that ran beneath his eye. ‘Some wounds tell their own stories, others speak in hints and whispers. Where did this one come from?’
‘A Marroc.’ Having her so close was unsettling. He felt on edge, tense, and was suddenly very aware that she was naked under her blanket.
‘A Marroc? Just
a Marroc
?’
‘It was my first proper fight under the Screambreaker. Not far from Kelfhun. The Marroc then weren’t as they are now. They still knew how to be fierce. It was a hard battle.’
‘A whisker closer and you wouldn’t have seen the end of it.’
For a moment Gallow laughed, remembering the day. ‘I knew he’d hit me. I felt it. I didn’t feel the pain but I felt the blow and suddenly I couldn’t see. I thought he’d taken my eye out.’
‘He very nearly did.’
‘I hit him and hit him and hit him until I knocked his shield down, but I didn’t kill him. The man behind me did that. Quick fast lunge through the throat the instant that shield dropped. The man who held that spear was Thanni Ironfoot’s cousin. He died a year later. Ironfoot spoke him out. I was there to make sure he remembered that thrust.’
She traced another line along his cheek, fresher and redder though still years old. ‘This one?’
‘A Vathan. Lostring Hill. I don’t remember his face or anything about him. I didn’t kill him either.’
Her finger moved across the side of his throat. ‘This one?’
He froze. He forgot that one, now and then, and then he’d find himself running a finger over it. ‘From a Marroc, but a
different kind of battle.’ That was the night he’d found Arda. She’d been on the road from Fedderhun to Middislet with little Jelira on her back and a basket on her head. And it was late and there was no one else about and he was lost and trying to find his way to Varyxhun and the Aulian Way and so he’d walked towards her, a forkbeard, and she’d stopped and put down the basket and little Jelira and come to him swinging her hips because she had a child to protect and everyone knew what forkbeards did to Marroc women. And he’d stopped to stare at her, wondering what she wanted and why, and when she’d come close he started to ask her the way to Varyxhun and she’d flung her arms around him and then slid behind him, and the next thing he knew she had a knife at his throat and was making a fine effort to cut it. It had been a close thing but he’d thrown her off, bleeding from the gash in his skin, and he might have killed her or done what she’d thought he wanted in the first place, but he’d seen five years of that with the Screambreaker. So he’d taken the knife and then helped her to her feet and carried her basket for her while she carried her little girl, and he’d asked her about Varyxhun and found that he’d gone completely the wrong way out of Andhun and would have to cross the Crackmarsh. And she’d brought him into her home and they’d broken bread together, and he might easily have gone away the next morning but it turned out that there was a forge in need of a smith, and he was a smith in need of a purpose, and so he’d stayed a few days to help with a few things, and somehow one thing had led to another and he’d never left.
He touched the scar again. She’d marked him on the day they’d met so that everyone else would know he was hers. He’d said that, years later, and she’d laughed and called him a clod, but the twinkle in her eyes had given her away.
And now she was gone and here was the Vathan woman
Mirrahj sitting beside him and suddenly Gallow found he wanted her very much. He turned.
‘Deep, that one?’ She didn’t stop him as he unwrapped her blanket and pushed it away.
‘Deep.’
R
eddic rolled his eyes and stamped his feet. He was sodden to his boots from walking in the rain and he wanted the dry and the warmth of the caves and their fires. ‘When?’
‘Hours ago!’ Arda’s face was red and puffy and her fingers kept curling like claws. ‘I tried to make those other two look for her but they’re worse than mules. So I went myself but she’s gone into the Crackmarsh and I don’t have the first idea which way. And I couldn’t leave the others. Nadric and Harvic and a few of the men went out looking but none of them know where to even start.’ She put a hand on his chest. ‘You do. You live here. Find her, Reddic. Please.’
The men who’d come with him to Middislet were moving among the villagers, telling them what they’d found. Men and women were already gathering up their furs, their children, whatever they’d brought with them when they fled. They wanted to be home before dark, behind doors and shutters they could bar before the shadewalkers came out from their hiding places. When Reddic talked to the two old Crackmarsh men Valaric had left to watch the caves, they only shrugged. ‘No point looking now,’ muttered one of them. ‘She’s long gone. Ghuldogs might get her tonight or they might not, but you won’t.’ And they were probably right, but Arda wasn’t going to understand the cold logic to waiting. What she’d understand was that, between the rain and the wind and the ghuldogs and the night, there wasn’t
much chance they’d find her if they left their search to the morning. So he pressed the old men and they told him Jelira had asked the way to Varyxhun and the two daft buggers had as good as told her how to cross the Crackmarsh to Hrodicslet and that there was a trail up into the mountains from there. And after that she’d gone. Gone looking for Gallow.
Reddic went back to the mouth of the caves, looked at the sky and reckoned he had three hours before dark. And the rain didn’t look like it had plans to stop any time soon. He sighed and dressed himself as warm as he could, taking a few more furs from the two old men – not that they much liked letting them go, but Arda was about ready to kill them – and left. Him and Arda, while Nadric stayed to look after Tathic and Pursic and Feya and Jelira if she came back. Arda promised to flay the two old men alive if they didn’t help too. She hung on to Reddic’s arm. ‘Promise me! Promise me we’ll find her!’ And she wouldn’t stop, and so he promised and then wished he hadn’t. Valaric was always loud about that sort of thing. A man gave his word to something, he’d best see it through.
They set off together in the rain, wrapped up in as many furs as they could wear, partly to keep warm and partly to keep ghuldog teeth at bay. The old men had been certain about the trail to Hrodicslet, at least, so Reddic followed the path as they’d described it. They ran, keeping up a steady pace, but after an hour Arda had to stop.
‘I can’t keep going like this. I’m sorry.’
‘Then you shouldn’t have come.’ Which sounded harsh but he was right. He probably ought to have run off again there and then and left her with not much choice but to follow or get left behind alone in the swamp in the dark or else go back to where she ought to have stayed in the first place. He couldn’t though, and if she’d said he had to go more more slowly then he’d have done that too.
But she bowed her head and turned back alone, hiding her face so he wouldn’t see the tears. Better this way, Reddic reckoned. Better she wasn’t there if the ghuldogs came, because then there wasn’t much to do except run or fight, and Reddic had been chased by ghuldogs before and had learned how to run a lot faster after that. Better too that she wasn’t there if he reached Jelira after the ghuldogs did. He shuddered at that, and with the light slowly failing he ran on alone into the Crackmarsh. To a man who didn’t know the place, the water meadows and the swamps were a maze, tricky at best and often deadly. You came here and you didn’t know their ways, you vanished, and Reddic could have filled a day with the stories he’d heard of men who’d disappeared. But he was a Crackmarsh man now. He’d lived among them for months and he’d learned their fickleness. He slowed to a walk when the sun set and true darkness came, but he didn’t stop. A few stars were enough light. Give it another few hours for the air to freeze and there’d be a scum of ice over the water meadows, if the rain ever stopped. The ghuldogs didn’t like that. It cracked and snapped under their feet. You heard them coming, if you knew what to listen for.
He stopped and swore. Somewhere he’d taken a wrong turn and now the path was getting muddier and turning him east instead of south. Hummocks rose out of the marsh ahead, little mounds covered in tufts of thick grass that rustled in the breeze. He stared, reaching out with his ears for the distant howls of ghuldogs a-prowl, but all he got was the wind. He knew where he’d gone wrong. Ten minutes back where the path was dry it came to an old tree stump, dead a hundred years. There was a fork. He’d gone right. He should have gone left. He turned around and then stopped again. He knew he should have gone left because he’d walked the track from the Middislet caves to Hrodicslet before. But Jelira hadn’t. If she didn’t know the way, maybe she’d made
the same mistake too. In the dark he’d walked straight past it. Too busy thinking about how he wanted to be back in the caves. Jelira would have come past in daylight, though. She’d have seen it, wouldn’t she?
What if she didn’t?
He didn’t know. He ought to go back now and he knew it. Come out with others in the morning and all go separate ways, but he couldn’t. He could see Arda’s face, how she’d look if he came back alone. How his own mother had looked the day his sister hadn’t come back. And he could see Jelira too, eyes filled with hope and promise – what if she
had
come this way without realising she’d gone wrong? She’d follow the path as best she could, wouldn’t she?
He walked on. After another half an hour the path was gone, no trace of it left. The hummocks that rose out of the water were bigger now. The first stands of stunted trees weren’t far ahead, where the hummocks grew into hillocks and the water meadows grew deeper and swallowed a man who wasn’t careful with his feet. Where would he go, lost and alone and with the light failing? Back, surely, but if Jelira had gone back why hadn’t he found her? What then? What had he done when it had been him? He’d gone for the trees, that’s what. For the shelter they seemed to offer, even though they didn’t.
He heard a howl far away, and then another. The ghuldogs, talking to each other. Too far to worry about but that didn’t stop his heart racing. Stupid. Trees meant shadows and the ghuldogs liked shadows, and yet the trees called out nevertheless, offering him the haven of their branches, and he almost started running, and never mind that he knew perfectly well that any ghuldogs nearby would be waiting there. And that they could climb.
A distant scream ripped the night over the steady hiss of rain. Not a ghuldog scream this time but a girl scream.
Now
he ran. In the dark with the rain it was hard to know which
way or how far but it had come from somewhere ahead. Almost at once another ghuldog howl went up, closer this time, the howl of scent found and of calling the pack. Reddic’s heart pounded. He glimpsed movement to his left, something bounding through the water. Not towards him but alongside, slowly converging. He almost turned to chase it off but he didn’t have the nerve. Made him wonder though – how was he going to face down a whole pack of them if that’s what it was? – but he kept running anyway. The ghuldog pulled ahead of him. Reddic let it lead. Thing clearly knew where it was going.
‘Jelira!’ He felt suddenly stupid now. And guilty. Guilty for leaving her. ‘They can climb the trees!’ People who didn’t know better thought ghuldogs were just big dogs but they weren’t. They had dog-like heads but their limbs were the arms and legs of a man and they had no tails. Man was chased by wolves, man climbed a tree. Everyone knew that, and so men chased by ghuldogs climbed trees too, and then watched in horror as the ghuldogs climbed after them. Not that they were much good at it, but usually it was enough that they could. Truth was, there was wasn’t much you could do about ghuldogs except turn and fight them. They weren’t keen on fire but there wasn’t much chance of that out here, not tonight.
The rain answered his thoughts, falling more heavily. Over the hiss of it he heard Jelira scream again. A scream for help. They hadn’t got her, not yet, not quite.
The ghuldog he’d been following reached the edge of the trees and vanished into the shadows. There couldn’t have been more than a dozen trunks but there could have been a dozen ghuldogs too for all Reddic knew. He saw one of the trees shake as the first started to climb.
‘Help! O Modris! Help me!’
The ghuldogs would have seen him by now. And yes, as he looked hard into the shadows he saw at least four still
on the ground, as well as the one easing its way up the tree. Those on the ground turned to look at him, one by one. It was Jelira’s scent that had drawn them and so it was her they were after, but it wouldn’t take much for them to change their minds. Reddic drew his shield up in front of him and lowered his spear. Against a Vathan or a forkbeard, a man crouched, hiding himself as best he could behind his shield. Against a ghuldog a man stood tall and broad and made himself as big as he could. ‘You look big enough, they all just run away.’ Although the man who’d told him that was Drogic, who was about as big as a horse. Even bears thought twice when they saw Drogic coming.
If you were lucky the first ghuldog came straight at your throat and all you had to do was lift your spear a little and watch it skewer itself. Trouble with ghuldogs was they learned. As Reddic came closer, two of them split away from the tree and circled him, one coming from each side. They stopped, letting him know that he wasn’t welcome, that he should leave, that the prey in the tree was theirs and not for sharing. Changed things, that did. A ghuldog in close turned a spear into a useless lump of wood and then it was time for a stabbing knife. Or his hatchet would do. He lifted the spear high, took careful aim at the ghuldog climbing the tree, threw it as hard as he could and ran straight forward. The spear caught the ghuldog in the chest and it crashed out of the branches. Reddic roared at the top of his lungs. The two still by the tree shied away, startled. He turned sharply back. The other two had chased after him as soon as he’d run and the closer one was already leaping. He ducked behind his shield, gripped it with both hands and slammed it into the ghuldog as it came at his face. It bounced off and landed and rolled snarling back to its feet. The other one skittered round behind him and for a moment he couldn’t see it. He slipped the hatchet off his belt and jumped at the first. Keep moving, that was the thing. Keep moving, because when
you fought a ghuldog pack there was always
always
one of them creeping up behind you.
Modris smiled on him for a moment. The first ghuldog scampered warily back out of reach but the creature from the tree, dead with his spear stuck through it, was right in front of him. He slipped his hatchet into the hand holding the shield and snapped the spear out of the ground. The ghuldog in front of him growled and bared its teeth. Reddic held the spear high up the shaft, disguising its reach, then stabbed out with it, almost throwing the spear and then catching it again by its end. The ghuldog jumped away but the blade still raked its flank and left a long bloody cut. It whimpered and fled.
Always one from behind. He spun around. The creature was already in the air, so close he had no chance to put his shield between them. He raised his arm to protect his face, dropping the spear as he did. The ghuldog’s fangs closed around his elbow and bit down hard. Reddic screamed. He had no mail there, only furs, and yes they were good and thick, but the ghuldog’s bite was like nothing he’d ever known. Like the blow of a forkbeard’s axe, maybe, only it didn’t stop. He howled and snarled and shook his arm but it didn’t let go. He changed his grip, let go of his shield and brought his hatchet down on the ghuldog’s skull and cracked it in two. The bite loosened but Reddic was past caring and he brought the axe down over and over until the ghuldog fell off his arm. His elbow felt as though the bones had been crushed to powder. In the dark he couldn’t see if there was blood. Blood was bad. Blood meant the ghuldog had broken his skin. He wasn’t sure what happened then, only that the Crackmarsh men whispered that if the wound from a ghuldog’s bite went bad – and they always did – then a quick clean death was for the best.
There were still two ghuldogs close by. One howled, no more than a dozen yards away, summoning more of the
pack. He couldn’t find either his spear or his shield and his sword arm was too hurt to be much use. He looked up.
‘Jelira, where are you?’ He heard a voice. His foot trod on something hard and he almost stumbled. His spear! ‘Can you see me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Take this then.’ When he looked up he could see her as she moved. She was good and high, well out of reach of the ghuldogs if they jumped. He waved the spear at her. ‘You know how to use this?’ He looked about for the other ghuldogs and then jumped at the tree, hauling himself up fast with his one good hand and scrabbling feet, driven by a surge of fear. ‘You stab it at their faces. Brace well and use both hands and pull quickly back so they don’t grab hold of it. Strike hard and fast and don’t be afraid to hurt them.’
He was gasping for breath. Maybe a braver man would have got her down from the tree and walked them home in the night and seen the ghuldogs off, but Reddic wasn’t that man and, besides, his sword arm flared in agony whenever he moved it. Now he was up in this tree, he was staying.
He sat in the crook of a branch with his axe in his lap, and when more ghuldogs came he slashed and kicked at their clambering muzzles and Jelira stabbed with his spear until they’d bloodied three and the rest gave up. It was hardly what anyone would call heroic, but when the sun rose they were both still alive, and that was what mattered.
