Gallow (36 page)

‘Turn on your king? You’re outcasts already!
Nioingr
, all of you.’

‘Yield, traitor!’

‘You’ll be hunted to the end of the world. Kill me and my father will do it. Let me live and I’ll hunt you myself!’

‘You betrayed the Screambreaker!’

‘He fell in battle! He got what he wanted!’

Gallow pushed past them. As he did, he drew Solace from its sheath. ‘Yield, Medrin. End this. Go back across the sea and stay there. Say what you like about what happened here, just don’t come back.’

‘Never, Foxbeard!’

‘Then go back in pieces.’ Gallow shrugged. ‘It’s all the same to me.’

He closed on the prince and Medrin backed away behind his men. Gallow smiled. ‘See. In the end you always were a coward.’

‘
Nioingr!
’ With sudden fury, Medrin leaped forward again, slamming the Crimson Shield into Gallow and lunging with his blade. The shock staggered Gallow, knocking him back as though the shield had a strength of its own beyond Medrin’s arm. The prince’s blade eased past his guard and skimmed off his mail. ‘Die!’ Twelvefingers lunged again, high this time at Gallow’s collar, their shields still pressed together. Gallow barely dodged aside while Medrin kept pushing forward. ‘You always had poison in your blood for me, you sheep-loving clean-skin no-beard! Now I’ll let that poison out!’

With their shields locked together Medrin’s short thrusting blade had the advantage over the long edge of the red sword. Gallow raised Solace over his head and brought it down but Medrin parried the blow with his own steel, keeping so close that Gallow could smell his breath. ‘Yes,’ said Gallow, ‘I have.’ With a mighty heave he threw Medrin back and for a moment they stood apart, circling each other. ‘You led us to the Temple of Fates, Medrin, and you left us to the Fateguard.’

‘And were you any better?’ snarled Medrin. ‘You let Beyard die!’

‘
You
let us both die, you snivelling shit! “Hold them! I cannot be found here!” Do you remember those words as you ran? And we did hold them, Beyard and I, and at the last he threw himself into them and screamed at me to run too and there was nothing else I could do! But I held your words in my heart and I’ve carried them with me for fourteen years, and you haven’t changed at all.’

‘
Nioingr!
’ Medrin charged again. Gallow brought the red sword down. Medrin caught it on the Crimson Shield, and a shock ran through Gallow as though he’d been stung by a spark from his father’s forge. His arm fell limp and the red sword hung from his fingers. For a moment his grip on his shield loosened.

Medrin’s blade lunged past, catching him on the shoulder, digging into the mail with enough force to split open its links. Gallow felt its point bite into him, scraping against bone. He jerked away, stumbling back. The pain was staggering. Medrin bared his teeth and came at him again, slamming the Crimson Shield into him and lunging at Gallow’s face this time. Gallow could barely hold his sword. His shield arm felt as weak as a child’s. He jumped back as Medrin’s edge sliced past his nose.

‘You wanted to fight me, clean-skin? You always did. So fight me!’ Gallow tried to grip Solace but his fingers were still numb. It was all he could do not to drop the sword. Medrin slammed into him again and again, a lunge each time, pushing him back and back while Gallow’s shield arm grew weaker with every blow.

They parted for a moment. Medrin wore a vicious smile. ‘Now you know better than to strike this shield, but I’ll take that Vathan sword too. Yield, clean-skin. Yield and give me the Edge of Sorrows and I’ll put it to fine use. Beyard was your friend? He was mine too and I’ve not forgotten his fate. Give me that sword and I’ll have revenge for both of us.’ He took another step back. ‘We’ll do it together. I’ll even spare the rest of these men. They’ll be outcasts but I’ll let them run a few days before I hang them as ravens over their own houses. Yield, clean-skin!’

Gallow shook his head. He let go of his shield and let it slip off his arm and crash to the floor. ‘No.’ When he tried to lift the red sword, his arm twitched and refused.

Medrin shrugged. ‘Look at you. Raise your blade at least before I finish you!’

‘Take me if you can, demon-prince.’

‘So be it. And then the rest of you will follow, and then I will take that sword you carry and settle what we started all those years ago.’ He launched himself again, as he had before, each time always the same, the shield to batter his enemy down and the stabbing lunge over the top. Gallow pulled the red sword out of his one hand and into the other, threw himself sideways and swung as Medrin passed. The prince screamed. Something clattered on the floor. When Gallow staggered back to look at what he’d done, Medrin was hugging his arm to his side. Blood ran down his mail. His sword lay on the floor and the hand that had held it still gripped its hilt.

‘No! No!’ he screamed at Gallow. ‘
No!
What have you done to me?’

Gallow turned to face him. He held the Sword of the Weeping God out straight before him. ‘The sword against the shield, Medrin? Or do you yield?’

‘Kill him,’ shouted Loudmouth from behind the rest of his men. ‘Finish him properly. Let him end well at least.’

Medrin lowered the Crimson Shield. His face was filled with murder and hate. ‘Yes, Foxbeard. Give me that at least. Let me die as a Lhosir should die. It’s what your precious Screambreaker would have done.’ He had his own blood all over him. He was already pale.

Gallow nodded. He lowered Solace. ‘He would. But I’m wondering, Prince Sixfingers, what
you
would have done.’

T
he Vathen reached Andhun and attacked. The Lhosir saw them coming and tried to close the gates but they were too late and Gulsukh and his horsemen were too quick. A hundred were inside before the Lhosir could form a wall of shields. It hung in the balance for a minute but that was all, and then Gulsukh and his riders broke the Lhosir. He called his bashars to him as they came through the gates and gave them their orders. Two hundred to stay here, to hold the gates and tear them down so they couldn’t be closed again. Another hundred to ride back out after the Vathan clans retreating across the countryside, to tell them they didn’t need the Weeping Giant and his god-touched sword, that Gulsukh had broken the Lhosir without either and that Andhun lay helpless and waiting for them. Others he sent down towards the Isset to take the bridge and hold it against any who would try to destroy it, and to the docks and to the harbour to find the Lhosir soldiers and the Marroc and kill them, but above all to stop them from leaving in their ships.

Some he took himself, up the hill from the gate towards the castle, where surely whoever commanded this city would be waiting for him.

Valaric’s spear point rammed into a Lhosir collarbone and stuck tight. The forkbeard snatched at it and roared, pulling it with such force that Valaric had to let go or be pulled off the barricade. He switched to his axe until that stuck in a shield and was wrenched out of his hand. He drew his sword and fought on, kept hitting them but achieving nothing much, while all around him the Marroc were dying.
Damn them – why did they all wear armour? Where did they get such mail, so many swords?
But he knew the answer to that. They’d taken it from all the Marroc they’d killed for the last fifteen years. Iron and steel were cheap to the forkbeards, they had so much.

A Marroc fell at the far end of the barricade, blood gushing from an arm severed at the elbow. A forkbeard pulled himself up before anyone could take the dead man’s place. Valaric swore and shouted and then realised there wasn’t anyone left. The forkbeard swung his axe and caved in the skull of another Marroc and then jumped down, howling and chopping left and right. Valaric swung down behind him and stabbed him in the back of the head. He tried to climb back up before another forkbeard could get over the barricade but his legs failed him. There was no strength there any more. His arms could barely hold his sword and shield. He gritted his teeth and hauled himself back up anyway. Most of the Marroc he’d led here were dead. Sarvic was still up, Jonnic too. And the rest . . . the rest were ordinary men who just didn’t want to see their homes go up in flames.

‘Enough!’ he shouted. He looked at Sarvic and Jonnic.
We’re the ones with mail. We hold them long enough for the others to get away.
He simply didn’t have the energy to say that but he didn’t need to. A look was enough.

Jonnic nodded. Sarvic looked at him too but his was a different look. His was
Look, Valaric, look!

Behind the forkbeards at the end of the street, men on horseback were coming. Soldiers. A mass of them. Valaric had no idea who they were but they didn’t look like forkbeards and they weren’t dismounting as Marroc soldiers would. The forkbeards had noticed too and had started to turn.

Vathen!

The Vathen drew back their arms. Javelots rained on Lhosir and Marroc alike.

‘What would you have done?’ Gallow said again.

‘Put an end to it,’ slurred Tolvis. He sounded as though he was talking with his mouth stuffed full of food.

‘No.’ As Medrin slumped against a wall and the Crimson Shield fell from his other arm, Gallow stood over him. He closed his eyes for a moment at another wave of pain from his shoulder. The feeling in his sword arm was coming back and it was like being stabbed by a thousand needles. He sat Medrin up, lifted his arm, wrapped a belt around his severed wrist and squeezed it tighter and tighter until the bleeding stopped. ‘Pitch?’ he asked. ‘Is there any?’

The last three of Medrin’s men looked uneasily from one to the other. The others shook their heads.

‘Fire? Torches?’

The prince was breathing too quickly. He was pale as death now, his eyes barely open. Tolvis stood watching. ‘First you try to kill him, now you’re trying to save him. Why, Truesword? So you can hang him beside the gates for the Marroc to see, the way he used to do to them? I’ll not have that. I might turn my back if anyone speaks him out but I’ll not have a prince of the sea strung up like that. Yurlak’s son? No. Put an axe in his hand and kill him properly.’ Behind him Medrin’s men were surrendering their swords.

Gallow stood. ‘It’s not for me to decide, nor for you either. I mean to give him to the Marroc. Let them choose what to do with him.’

Tolvis shook his head. He tried to smile but the ruined side of his face was too swollen. ‘Truesword, you know perfectly well what the Marroc will do. Hanging him won’t be enough. They’ll rip him to pieces and feed his parts to their dogs, and when word of that comes back across the sea to Yurlak, he’ll shout for every man who can so much as hold a stick. He’ll rouse them out of their homes and into a ship within a week. They’ll sweep across this land in a tide of blood and slaughter that’ll make the Screambreaker’s campaigns look like a wedding feast. It won’t be conquest and plunder this time. He’ll be coming to wipe away the stain of the Marroc who’d killed his son. Is that what you want?’

Gallow shrugged. ‘We stand on Marroc stone. They should be the ones to choose.’

Loudmouth turned away. A Lhosir came with a torch. ‘Put his sword in his lap, Gallow. Finish it here. He died in battle after his first great victory against the Vathen. Give that to Yurlak. The Maker-Devourer will know the truth. Let that be enough.’

Gallow ignored his words but took the torch and held the blade of the red sword in the flame. Fire from burning wood should never have been enough to make a piece of iron even start to change its colour, but the sword seemed to glow with an an inner light in the flames.

‘You might kill him doing that,’ said Tolvis.

‘I might. Hold him down and put some leather in his mouth.’

The Lhosir held Medrin down. Gallow gripped the prince’s arm between his knees and pressed the hot steel into the wound. Blood sizzled and flesh cooked. Medrin’s eyes flew wide open, his back arched. He screamed and bucked but the Lhosir held him fast, and after a moment he fell still again. His eyes rolled back into his head. Gallow took the sword away and loosened the belt around Medrin’s arm. The bleeding had stopped.

‘Is he alive?’

Gallow pressed his ear against Medrin’s chest. ‘His heart is faint but it still beats.’

‘You’ll not give him to the Marroc, Gallow,’ said Tolvis.

‘Do I have to fight you too?’

‘No.’ Tolvis pulled his axe from his belt – Gallow’s axe – and handed it back, haft first. ‘Not if you just let it go. Best you have this back, I think.’

Gallow took the axe. He looked at the Lhosir around him, a dozen and then some. They were with Tolvis, all of them, and he couldn’t fight that many even if he hadn’t been stabbed in the shoulder. And he didn’t want to.

‘Do what you want.’ He turned his back on them and walked away.

‘Run! Run for the ships!’ Valaric waved the rest of the Marroc away from the barricade. ‘You too, Sarvic.’ He stood and jabbed his sword at the forkbeards climbing the barricade. ‘No reason to stay now. Let them fight among themselves. Leave them to it.’

Still alive. Well that’s a surprise.
He ran down the street, left into an alley and across to the Riverway. People streamed past him, running, screaming, heading helter-skelter for the docks. He looked up the river towards the bridge. There had been another barricade there but it was smashed now, bodies littered around it. His eyes hunted for forkbeards to kill, but he didn’t see any.

Why are you all screaming?

A Vathan jumped his horse over the disintegrating barricade and hurled a javelot into the back of a fleeing Marroc. A dozen more followed him.

Oh. That’s why. Modris!
He gripped his shield and stepped out into the street.

Gulsukh Ardshan slowed as he reached the square outside the castle.
No one to greet us?
Just a lot of bodies and open gates with no one guarding them. He urged his horsemen on, riding with them, seizing this second set of gates before anyone could close them. There were more bodies in the yard beyond. And in the middle of it two handfuls of forkbeards, standing and staring at him as though he was the Weeping Giant himself risen back from the dead.