The Last Bastion (3 page)

Gallow had the other forkbeard pinned to the wall now. Garran Fleetfoot swung his axe. Gallow caught it on his shield and pushed and twisted it away. For a moment the old man was exposed, his shield useless and on the wrong side. The red sword lunged and drove into his ribs, cracking a fistful of them. The forkbeard gasped and staggered but his mail was good enough to keep the red steel out of his skin. Sarvic smiled to himself. He’d remember that. He’d have that mail.

The old man wheezed. He pointed at the mob ripping the other forkbeard to pieces. ‘See what they are,
nioingr
? We’re better than them!’

He dropped his shield, switched his axe to his other hand and lifted it high, wide open, as good as asking Gallow to finish him, and Gallow obliged him. The red sword flashed, blood sprayed across the Aulian walls and Sarvic watched the forkbeard fall. Gallow stood over him. ‘You fought well, old man. Like Beyard. He never stepped aside from the path. It’s the path itself that strayed. It’s Medrin.’

The look on Gallow’s face was like he’d killed his own brother; and then it changed to something dark and harsh – so dark that when he turned and strode away Sarvic forgot about the dead man’s mail and followed. He’d seen that same look before, that morning after Witches’ Reach.

3

ONCE A FORKBEARD

G
allow turned away from the Hall of Thrones and left the Marroc to their looting. Servants would be hauled out of their hiding places. If they were lucky they’d get away with being beaten bloody, but he’d been among a victorious army after enough battles to know what happened next. Nothing that a decent man would care to remember, and it would be like that here too. Worse.

He hesitated a moment then shook his head and moved on. Not his business. Let the Marroc sort out their vengeance without him. He’d come across the mountains to be with his family, that was all, and now he’d come here to this castle for his last real friend, the Aulian, and if Oribas was alive and safe then only one other thing mattered and it wasn’t in Varyxhun. So he chose not to look at what was happening around him and pushed his way past the Marroc still surging into the hall. They were throwing down the braziers now and tearing the hangings off the walls, hangings that had been there long before any Lhosir had come to the valley. Their own treasures, if only they knew it.

Their business. Not yours
. That’s what Arda would say. Three years away and then a few days and nights trapped in a fortress and expecting to die, and then Valaric had come, and the forkbeards had gone away, and all of a sudden everything he sought was right there in front of him, begging to be taken, and he’d turned his back and left her there because . . . because Beyard had sent Oribas to be hanged
and Oribas was his friend. Left her and lost everything, and he’d had to, because sooner or later Medrin would know he was back and the hunt would begin, and if he simply went home then one day he’d wake up to find Medrin standing over him with a thousand Lhosir and Medrin would kill them, all of them, slowly and with a great deal of lingering, because nothing would ever make up for the hand that Gallow had taken from him in Andhun. Medrin made the choice into no choice at all but Arda still wouldn’t wait for him, not again, and he could hardly blame her for that. Better to blame fate.

He forced his way out into the yard. The mob was thinning, more and more Marroc crowding inside, pushing and shoving, climbing past each other, desperate for a share of the plunder. Around the scaffold he could see the bodies, Marroc and Lhosir both. Five Lhosir swung from the gallows. Small gangs of Marroc moved among the corpses, stripping them, shaking them. He saw the flash of a knife. Murdering them if they weren’t quite dead then. The Crackmarsh men were up on the walls, but Valaric was back in Witches’ Reach and the soldiers only stood and watched.

Not. His. Business.

Arda would be on her way home by now, back to the Crackmarsh to be with their children.
His
children. His sons and his daughter. He should have gone with her, wished he could, had always wanted to, but Sixfingers wouldn’t let him. He turned away, sick of it all. ‘Oribas? Oribas!’

The nearest gang of Marroc stopped what they were doing and stared at him. Their malevolence filled the air. There were four of them and their glances around the yard were already drawing in others. They dropped the Lhosir they were looting and closed in. Gallow took a step back. The Crackmarsh men had a hungry hate for forkbeards but they kept it to themselves around Gallow because Valaric had told them the story of the Foxbeard and what he’d
done. The mob from the city beneath the castle, though, all they saw was another forkbeard even if he was shaven. They eyed him, and the longer they did, the more Marroc turned to look. Gallow had seen it before, a wolf pack setting itself to bring down a bear.

He’d seen how to stop it too. He stared right back at the four Marroc, picked out their leader, drew his sword and moved briskly forward. Marroc always turned and ran and this one would be no different. There’d be no need for blood; the threat would be—

A stone hit the side of his helm, hard even through the iron. He staggered sideways and suddenly a snarling Marroc was flying at him. He braced his shield and then there was another coming from the other side and another from behind and more of them all around. He raised the Edge of Sorrows but the first Marroc didn’t flinch. The red sword sighed as it cut the air. Before Gallow could stop himself, he’d split the Marroc’s face in two; and then the others came and the sword wanted more while he stared at what he’d done.

A second Marroc crashed into his side and tore at his shield. He battered the man away and tried to run but another tackled him from behind and staggered him; yet another grabbed his sword arm high around the shoulder and held on, trying to drag him down, and then another had his shield again, and however hard he forced his way onward, for every Marroc he shook off, another two came at him. He felt a knife stab at him, jabbing hard at his mail coat. Something hit his head, another stone or a stick, and then a hand had his leg and his foot, pulled hard, and he couldn’t break free. He staggered, hopped, and finally fell with a half a dozen Marroc on his back.

‘Hang him! Don’t kill him down there; hang him for everyone to see! Hang the forkbeard!’ He growled and snarled and twisted and writhed, trying to shake the
Marroc off, but there were too many. One got his helm and someone hit him on the head with a stone. Light crashed through the back of his head and the sound of everything changed as though he was underwater again. Drowning as he’d been off the cliffs of Andhun after fleeing the Vathen. Should have sunk beneath the waves there, but somehow the Screambreaker had come in a little boat, sailing away from his own death towards the Herenian Marches, given one more day of life to do whatever needed to be done; but in the moments before, as the water had swallowed Gallow, the sounds of the world had fallen away like this. He felt another sharp pain in his back and then the weight came away and he was being carried, dragged, and his eyes were still open but there was only light, horrible flaming lances of light.

The Marroc dropped him. He lay still, fingers clawing at a ground that was softer and warmer than the crushed-snow cobbles of the castle yard. Wood. The noises were slowly changing again. The Marroc mob, shouting and screaming. He opened his eyes. Everything was blurred. Bright blue sky above, a swirling sea of movement below.

Hang him! Hang him!

He blinked as the world swam back into focus. He was on the scaffold looking out over the heads of a few dozen angry Marroc. When he tried to get up, someone stamped him back down. He felt as weak as a baby. A great weight pressed on him, men sitting on his shoulders and his legs. They had his arms, were tying his wrists behind his back. Then hands reached under his shoulders and hauled him up. His sword was gone, his shield and helm too. He tried to shrug the hands away but the Marroc were too strong and too many. They pushed and shoved him and hauled a rope over his head, scraping it across his face, settling it around his neck. Panic washed away the dizziness, but too late. He snarled and raged and almost fell.

‘Hang the forkbeard!’

The noose tightened and a vicious voice hissed in his ear, ‘Ready to meet your uncaring god, forkbeard?’ The voice grew into a shout. ‘Shall we hang us another one?’ The crowd howled with gleeful joy.

Something hit the scaffold by Gallow’s feet. When he turned his head to look, an arrow was quivering in the wood. He couldn’t turn enough to see his executioner, but he felt his shiver of hesitation. Then another arrow hit the scaffold, and this time the mob saw it too. A cluster of soldiers was coming down the steps to the Hall of Thrones and forcing its way through. He saw Achista with her bow and an arrow nocked, Achista and Oribas. They shouldered their way onto the scaffold. ‘Jonnic! What are you doing?’

The executioner barged past Gallow. ‘Killing a forkbeard.’

‘Let him go!’

‘Do I answer to you now? No, I answer to Mournful, and he’s not here.’

‘Are you dim? I said let him go!’

‘Or you’ll shoot me?’ The hangman pushed forward. The soldiers around Achista pressed forward until they were all almost nose to nose. ‘Kill a Marroc to save a forkbeard, would you? You know what we do to women who give themselves to forkbeards.’

Oribas punched him, and for a moment Gallow was so surprised that he forgot he was standing with a noose around his neck. The Marroc lurched back and drew a hand across his face and then laughed as Oribas clutched his fist. Achista shoved past them all and stood beside Gallow, looking out over the crowd. ‘This is Gallow Foxbeard. The man who slew the iron devil of Varyxhun. The forkbeard who cut off Sixfingers’ hand.’

‘Still a forkbeard!’ yelled a voice from the crowd.

‘Hang him!’

‘Look what he did!’

‘He’s a killer!’

The mob parted around the Marroc man Gallow had killed, eager to show his crime. He barely remembered doing it. An instinct, lashing out before he fell, that was all. Achista stared at the body, the fire stolen from her mouth. Then she looked at him. ‘You did this?’

Gallow nodded. ‘He came at me.’

‘And you killed him.’

‘I had little choice.’

‘Angry Jonnic! Get your smelly hands off that noose!’ Another Marroc soldier was pushing through the crowd. Another face Gallow knew from a long time ago. He squinted, trying to remember where it had been.

‘Piss off, Sarvic. I don’t answer to you either.’

‘But you do answer to Valaric and Mournful’ll string you up by your toes. I’ll vouch for this one. Years ago he fought among the Marroc against the Vathen at Lostring Hill. I stood beside him in the shield wall. He’s a forkbeard, yes, but we lost that day, and in the rout that came after the second Vathan charge he saved my life. Angry, I see you up there all hungry to kill another forkbeard and I have that hunger too. But a life for a life, I say. We both saw what happened here.’

‘What I saw was a Marroc killed by a forkbeard. Seen too much of that these last years.’

Achista turned her back. ‘This forkbeard is
nioingr
to his own kind. Do you understand what that means?’

‘Means they won’t care what we do to him.’

‘Means you’re doing their work for them.’

Jonnic snorted and shouted at the crowd. ‘Anyone else? Anyone else want to spare this forkbeard, or can we get on with it? Just one of you and I’ll let him live. Can’t say fairer than that.’

An eager murmur rolled through the crowd, but then another Marroc pushed through them and climbed onto the
scaffold. ‘When the devil Sixfingers was prince of Andhun, three forkbeards threw me into the Isset and left me for dead. Then another one pulled me out, this one, and if he hadn’t, I’d have drowned. I’ll spit at him in the street now just as I did then. But I’m with Sarvic: a life for a life. Let this one go to never come back.’

Achista pushed past Jonnic. ‘Now take him down.’ There was steel in her voice. She snatched the rope and pulled it roughly off Gallow’s head and no one moved to stop her. When she was done, Angry Jonnic punched Gallow in the kidneys hard enough to stagger him even through his mail and forced Gallow down to his knees. Achista squatted beside him. ‘You’re not welcome, Gallow Foxbeard. Varyxhun belongs to the Marroc now. Leave this valley and never come back. If you do, you’ll be what Jonnic says: just another forkbeard to be welcomed with spears and arrows. Do you understand?’ Her voice softened. ‘Go home, Gallow. Go to Arda. She’ll open her arms quick enough, for all her blunt words.’

Oribas pushed forward. ‘Achista!’

She turned to him. ‘You’d better choose whether you follow him or stay, Oribas. I know he’s your friend and I know he came here because of you, but I can’t change what has to be. If you have to go, I won’t begrudge it.’

Gallow hauled himself wearily to his feet and shook his head. ‘No, old friend. I’ve nothing to offer you and I don’t want your company. I came home for my family, and if Beyard hadn’t sent you here to be hanged then that’s where I’d be; and I’d be there without you.’

He clapped Oribas on the shoulder and picked his way down the steps from the scaffold and through the hissing crowd. He walked to the Marroc he’d killed, picked up his helm and put it on slowly and deliberately. He found his shield and a spear and, last of all, the red sword. Then he turned to face the crowd, a Lhosir warrior dressed for battle.
The mob glared back, full of hate but with fear now too, and when he walked towards them again, they parted easily. He stopped by the scaffold. ‘I wish you a long and happy life, Achista of the Marroc, and your brother too.’ He glanced toward the Marroc who claimed they’d fought together at Lostring Hill. He remembered it, a distant thing: fleeing at full tilt down a grassy slope, a Marroc ahead of him, Vathan horse cutting at them as they ran, throwing the Marroc to the ground, catching a Vathan javelot on his shield. Angry Jonnic had called him Sarvic. Yes, that was him, but he’d changed, a frightened goat become another wolf. ‘My greetings to Valaric when he comes. Tell him he’ll be more than welcome to have his plough fixed or to buy some nails once Sixfingers is dead.’ He almost laughed. Sarvic stood there looking confused, but Valaric would understand.

He looked at the other one, the Marroc he’d hauled out of the Isset three years back. He remembered doing it, but he hadn’t ever seen the man’s face until now, not properly. Then at his one last friend, the Aulian. He raised his spear in salute. ‘Oribas. You were always a better man. Remember that. Remember what you told me.’ He turned away from the Marroc and from Oribas and this new beginning they had before them, and rubbed his neck where the noose had touched his skin. His heart felt strangely empty.
Go home?
But he couldn’t. Not until they’d be safe and forgotten, and that would never happen, not while Medrin was alive.

Inside the gates he stopped by the Dragon’s Maw. The Marroc soldiers there looked uncertain, and when Gallow drew out the red sword they stepped back in alarm and drew their own. But Gallow reversed his grip and drove the sword into the hard-packed dirt between the cracked stones of the yard.

‘Yours,’ he whispered to the sky. ‘For whoever is foolish enough to take it.’

*

Achista stood beside Oribas. They held hands as they watched Gallow go. ‘What was it you told him?’ she asked.