Gallow (22 page)

He held Twelvefingers’ eyes with his one good one for a moment longer. ‘You and Gallow. Whatever it is, put it away until we get back.’ Anyone could see the two of them had some old feud far from forgotten between them – the mystery was why they didn’t just get on with it, fight each other and then one of them would be dead and that would be the end. Because Yurlak was king and that somehow made Twelvefingers special? But Yurlak himself would fall out of his shoes laughing at that.

Jyrdas shook his head. He let Twelvefingers go and went to help carry the ram to the monastery doors. The other Lhosir were already hacking at them with their axes. There was no stopping it. For better or worse, Twelvefingers would have his shield tonight.

‘Hoy! Dog-buggerer!’ He grabbed Tolvis. The two of them being the oldest, veterans of the Screambreaker’s first war, as far as Jyrdas was concerned they were in charge of the fighting and never mind what Twelvefingers had to say about that.
Prince?
The Marroc were the ones impressed by titles, not Lhosir.

‘What do you want, One-Eye? Did you wink at someone and think you’d gone blind and get confused?’

‘Ha bloody ha. The beacon in the back yard. You think of that?’

‘I did.’ Loudmouth made a big show of shrugging his shoulders. ‘Some fool lit it. Couldn’t be bothered to put it out. Seemed like it might not be such a bad thing actually. Makes some good light and gives us plenty of burning brands for setting fire to things.’

‘And if the soldiers out of Pendrin see it?’

Tolvis shrugged again. ‘If they see it then they already saw the fire Medrin lit by the bridge. Otherwise they won’t see the smoke until dawn. Either way it makes no difference.’

‘They know we’re inside, they’ll come quick.’

‘Well then I guess we’re none of us clever enough to have thought of that until it was too late.’ Loudmouth laughed. ‘Although
now
a clever man would surely think that we’d have to get out of here sharp-like when we’re done. No time for making any ravens. Shame, eh?’

Jyrdas considered that. He gritted his teeth. ‘Likes his ravens, doesn’t he?’ Blood ravens were for
nioingr.
Doing it to any old Marroc who happened to look at you in a funny way made the whole thing a mockery. Man called you a pig, you ripped his lungs out. Man murdered your family in their sleep? Same thing. Might as well go ahead and do the murdering then. Someone crossed you, you had a fight about it, quick and simple. Nothing wrong with a fair fight. Even the Marroc understood that much. Maybe you killed them or maybe they killed you, or maybe one of you marked the other and then you were all friends again. Ravens though, that was for something else. The Maker-Devourer would frown on them if he cared about anything at all.

Sod it. He looked about for Gallow and saw the no-beard running past the monastery towards the back yard. Maybe he wasn’t quite as clever as Loudmouth and had decided to go and put out the beacon. Jyrdas shrugged. There was killing to be done here and he was eager for it. He headed for the ram.

The monastery door splintered at the first blow and fell at the second. The Lhosir let out their battle cries and charged into a hail of rocks and javelins. A stone hit Jyrdas on the helm and a spear went straight through the man beside him. Stupid not to think of picking up a shield, but too late for that now. They swarmed through, swinging their axes and swords. Jyrdas charged the first islander he saw, shoulder dropped straight into the man’s shield, knocking him down. He ducked the swing of a sword and stabbed at a face. The inside of the monastery was dark, so damn dark that everything was reduced to shapes and shadows, glimmers in the feeble starlight that came in through the windows and wild dancing shadows from the burning beacon, and in the middle of all that the men and the women from the village below the cliff, screaming and shrieking and running and falling over, desperate just to get away. The kind of fight where everything came to luck, where the fearless won out over the afraid, which was fine by him.

A blow from behind caught him on the shoulder, cracking a bone. He roared in pain and spun around, lashing with his axes. His left arm hung almost useless. He caught sight of a shape and screamed, jumping at it, bringing the other axe down. The shape threw up a shield.

‘For Yurlak!’ He swung again, battering the man back.

‘For Medrin!’ The islander lunged with his sword. In the dark Jyrdas didn’t see it coming and it caught him hard in the ribs, snapping at least one. His mail held, though, and he had the bloodlust on him now. A dim thought wondered why the islander trying to kill him was shouting his own prince’s name.

But the man
was
trying kill him. He ducked and lashed out with a foot at where the islander’s legs ought to be. Caught something. The islander staggered and his shield dropped and that was enough. Jyrdas brought his axe down and felt the blade bite deep. The islander shrieked and Jyrdas swung again, a backhand swipe to the head that shattered the islander’s cheek and tore most of his face off. Jyrdas stamped on him and looked for the next. His shoulder hurt and his ribs too and he couldn’t breathe without stabbing pains, but he’d had worse and more than once.

The fight was ebbing now. Shapes in the dark, that was all he could see, curse his one good eye. The screams were mostly outside. The villagers either dead or they’d got away.

‘The shield!’ shouted Twelvefingers over the ruckus. ‘Where’s the shield? Bring it to me!’

Jyrdas pulled himself straight. ‘Come on!’ he roared. ‘Which one of you
nioingr
wants to fight me?’

A silhouette appeared against the broken doors, darkening to the vague idea of a shape as it came inside. ‘Jyrdas?’

‘Who wants me?’

‘Gallow. Maker-Devourer, this is madness!’ Gallow ran out and came back with a burning branch taken from the beacon. ‘Someone lit it,’ he said, not sounding much bothered. ‘Didn’t get there in time to stop them.’

‘I think you might want to ask Loudmouth about that.’ Jyrdas clenched his good fist. ‘Seemed far too smug about it if you ask me.’

‘Some of the women from the village got away. Some of the men too. There’s quite a few of them dead out there though.’

‘Ach, let the bastards from Pendrin come. Damn but I want to kill something.’

The light from Gallow’s torch showed the fight was all but over. The last few islanders were surrounded and being cut down one by one. They didn’t try to surrender even though they must have known there was no hope. Good for them. The Maker-Devourer liked that sort of spirit.

‘Looks like you already did.’ Gallow was looking at Jyrdas’s axe, at the blood still dripping off it. And at the man lying on the floor with his jaw hanging off his face by a flap of skin. The dead man was a Lhosir. Mangled beyond recognition but he had the forked beard. Couldn’t be anyone else.

‘Stupid shit hit me in the back with an axe.’ He couldn’t move that arm at all now. ‘Bugger couldn’t tell the difference between friend and foe in the dark. Serves him right. What kind of
nioingr
takes a man from behind anyway?’

There was an odd look on Gallow’s face. ‘Where’s Tolvis?’

‘Do I care? Where are the bloody monks?’ Jyrdas clenched his teeth and snarled. Damn but that shoulder hurt.

The other Lhosir were scaling the stairs and ladders to the upper floor of the monastery, or else running outside to smash in the doors of the little outbuildings that pressed against the walls. Jyrdas pushed past Gallow, looking for Twelvefingers. ‘Where’s the shield, boy? I want to see it!’ Every breath hurt. Not coughing up a bloody froth though, so no need to go and pick a fight with someone just so he could go to the Maker-Devourer with a weapon in his hand. He found Twelvefingers and a few of his closer Lhosir clustered at the hearth. Someone had pulled back the furs that had been scattered there. There was a door in the floor. ‘Is it down there?’

Twelvefingers looked at him and laughed. Little prick. ‘It may be, old One-Eye. Do you want to go and look for it?’

‘Do I? Out of the way, boy.’ Jyrdas pushed at him with the one arm that still worked but this time Twelvefingers stood his ground. His eyes glittered in the firelight, a flash of hostility.

‘Mind your mouth, One-Eye! Looks to me like you’re down to one of almost everything. Not sure you could handle a few monks right now.’

‘You little . . .’ He clenched his fist, but before he could punch Twelvefingers across the hall, Loudmouth was beside him and had a hold of his arm.

‘If the shield’s down there then Prince Medrin, may his glory shine like a thousand suns, should have the honours. This is his hunt, not yours.’

Jyrdas backed away. ‘Half mine,’ he muttered. Loudmouth being right didn’t make it any better. ‘Little prick,’ he muttered again. ‘If Yurlak was here or even the Screambreaker, they’d put him over their knee and spank him. May his glory shine like a thousand suns? Head gone as soft as the rest of you, has it, Loudmouth?’

Tolvis laughed. ‘You need to sit down, old man. Take some air.’

‘No, I bloody don’t. I need to stand up so I don’t shove the broken end of some rib or other through a lung and bleed to death on the inside.’

‘Then lie down.’

‘
Lie down?
Have you lost your balls? Anyway, some shit stain smashed my shoulder. Can’t lie down.’ His head was spinning a little.

‘Battle’s over, Jyrdas. Here. Have a spear to lean on.’

‘Daft bugger! Shoulder and ribs, I said! Nothing wrong with my legs!’ He gripped his axe. Might be that Loudmouth had a point, though. ‘Who are
you
calling old, anyway?’

Tolvis smiled. ‘You got me there, One-Eye.’ Medrin’s men were vanishing down the hole in the floor, big Horsan at the front. Jyrdas felt a surge of envy. That was where
he
should be. Would have been too, in the old days. Wouldn’t have been stupid enough to get thumped. Wouldn’t have been stupid enough to fight a man in the pitch dark. Axed in the back by one of his own? Maker-Devourer! Still, no accounting for idiots. ‘Children. Half of them should be back across the sea still sucking at their mothers’ tits by the look of them.’

‘They have their beards, One-eye. How old were you on your first raid?’

Twelvefingers and his men had all gone down to the cellars now. With a bit of luck someone would knife a few of them in the dark. Learn them a thing or two about a bit of common sense. Jyrdas sank to his knees and clutched at the spear. His head was buzzing and all the pain made it hard to breathe. ‘Don’t let those little shits see me like this, Loudmouth.’ He could smell smoke, little wafts of it creeping in from outside where others were setting fire to the outbuildings. Like the old times. He smiled.

‘Lean on me if you want.’

‘Lean on
you
, Loudmouth? I’d snap you like a dead twig.’ He bared his teeth and growled. ‘Ah but it hurts, damn it.’

‘Pain, Jyrdas? A Lhosir doesn’t feel pain. You told me that. I had a Marroc arrow in my leg at the time, but I’m sure you were right.’

‘Time I lost my eye? Hurt like being taken up the arse by the Maker-Devourer himself. Worse than this. I’ll live.’ He spat back at the dead Lhosir on the floor. ‘Stupid
nioingr
crap stain piece of shit!’

One of Medrin’s men poked his face up out of the floor. ‘It’s here! The shield! It’s here!’

Jyrdas tried to get up. If there was one thing he was going to do now he was here, he was going to see the damn thing with his own eyes. The Crimson Shield, holy relic of the Marroc and their gods. The shield the Fateguard had said was too dangerous for the Screambreaker to take. Why? Because he’d have made himself king? Probably, but he could have done that anyway if he’d wanted to.

Instead of getting up, he seemed to be sliding closer to the ground, hands slipping down the shaft of Tolvis’s spear.

‘Loudmouth! Your spear’s not working properly!’

‘It’s a lump of wood, you daft half-blind . . .’

He caught sight of a strange look on Tolvis’s face and then his one good eye wouldn’t stay open and all he could hear were the monks singing from down in the cellar while a pleasant warmth spread through him.

‘S
ince we both know you’re as keen as I am, you might as well lead the way.’ Medrin slapped Gallow on the shoulder and pushed him towards the ladder leading under the monastery hall. Gallow climbed down, the rest of the Lhosir pressing after him. The ladder led them into a narrow tunnel, a dank and winding thing so low that he had to stoop. He passed niches in the walls, crudely cut from the raw stone, dozens of them, in each a desiccated body wrapped in bandages. The smoke from the Lhosir torches quickly filled the air, choking him, making his eyes water so he could hardly see.

The tunnel led lower, deeper, past pits filled with skulls and bones. The passage grew narrower and uneven, steeper, until it was little more than a fissure in the rock crudely etched with steps that wound down from the crypts sunk deep in the rauk. Gallow heard the Lhosir behind him muttering, wondering where he was leading them. They were men of the sea and the mountains and wide-open spaces. Cramped dark places deep under the earth brought out the superstitious in them. Monsters dwelt in the darkness deep beneath the earth – they all knew that.

The fissure widened, spilling them out into a slanting cave that ran deep to the bottom of the rauk. He could smell the seawater at the bottom, rank and salty. The Lhosir torches barely touched the darkness of it, but it was easy to see where the cave ended and the water began because that was where the monks of Luonatta were waiting for them, fifty feet below. They stood in a circle on a tiny island surrounded by rings and rings of candles and black glittering water. A narrow wooden stair, steep and creaking, wound down the side of the rift, little more than a string of wooden pegs hammered into holes in the rock. Now and then, as Gallow shifted his weight from one to the next, he felt them flex and bend, heard them creak. There was nothing to hold on to except the damp wall of stone, pressed so close beside him that it seemed to want to push him over, down into the depths below.