Gallow (39 page)

T
he gods had sent Oribas away from his home, out to the edge of this ocean of sand where it met the sea at the far fringes of what the Aulians had once called their own. They were mocking him for the audacity of asking for their help but he’d come anyway because he had nowhere else to go. He’d not expected to find anything except perhaps a snake with a novel poison or else a slow death from thirst and hunger.

He stared along the beach. An hour ago he could have looked either way for miles along the flat sands and the barely restless waters and seen nothing, not a single thing. It had been like that for days.

But now it wasn’t. He quickened his pace. Something was on the sand. Something large. A chest, perhaps, washed up by the sea and wrapped in seaweed.
Filled with the treasure of the gods?
He laughed at himself. More likely it was the half-eaten corpse of some giant sea creature or a piece of a wrecked galley.

But it wasn’t either of these things. When he came closer it was a man. Two arms, two legs. Surely dead so not much use, but wrapped in armour of metal rings. Maybe he had a use for that? The man was clinging to the remains of a mast or tree trunk, his arms still wrapped tight around it. He was lying on a shield and his hand was clenched tight around something that hung from his neck.

Oribas rolled the man over and his eyes grew wide. As well as his shield the man was clutching a sword. A strange dark reddish steel, unusual but a fine weapon. Oribas reached down to take it.

Under the bright desert sun the man’s eyes flicked open.

THE FATEGUARD

NATHAN HAWKE

The door shuddered again. ‘
Open!
’

Beyard turned. ‘Shall we take our punishment like men then?’ But Medrin was already at the window. He vanished down the rope and that was that. Gone.
Craven bastard
.

‘
Open this door!’
The roar from outside was furious this time. The other Lhosir, the blacksmith’s lad Gallow, pushed an empty chest across the threshold and sat on it. Beyard sat beside him, wedging the door shut. ‘
Open up! Beardless cowards!
’

Beyard spat. He cast a grin at Gallow. ‘Shall we cast the runes together while we give our noble lord a minute to make good his escape. I dare say we can hold them here for hours if needs be, but another minute or so should do it.’ He glanced over his shoulder as the door shook again. ‘
My dead grandmother could push harder
,’ he yelled. ‘
Go away and find some friends with some strength in their arms. I can give you my word we’ll wait if that helps!
’

A roar of rage answered. The door groaned as whoever was on the other side threw themselves at it. ‘
Whoever you are in there, I know there’s more than one of you. I’ll strangle you with each others guts!
’

‘
Only after I take out yours so I can teach you how to tie proper knots!’
When everything fell quiet, Beyard pressed his ear to the door. There were footsteps and then more voices and he leaned away just in time before the the door shook hard. Two men now, and this time they forced it open a crack. An arm reached around. Beyard bit it and it withdrew with a howl. The shouts from outside gathered force, but then they fell silent. A low gravelly voice spoke instead. ‘Give me your axe
.
’

Fateguard, and for all his bravado, Beyard felt a chill. He gritted his teeth against the fear. ‘I reckon we’ve given him long enough now, don’t you?’

Gallow nodded. ‘You go first. I’ll hold them.’

Beyard looked at him. Not that either of them could see much in the dark, but they’d been friends for long enough that they didn’t really need to see each others’ faces any more. ‘Truth is, my friend, whoever goes last gets caught. You know this.’

‘They won’t catch me.’ But they probably would. And if it came to a fight, well then they could both handle themselves well enough but that was hardly much use when you were challenged by an ironskin. He glared viciously at the window. Most likely whoever stayed would lose his hand for being a thief and spend the rest of his life wishing he’d been hanged.

‘Yes they will.’ The door shuddered and the axe struck its first blow. ‘My father will pay blood money if that’s what it comes to. Yours can’t. Go.’

Gallow hesitated. ‘Piss poor gang of thieves we turned out to be.’

Beyard chuckled. ‘Piss poor.’

Gallow nodded. He clasped Beyard’s shoulder and squeezed and then pushed off from the door and bolted for the window, throwing himself through the space between them as fast as he could. He almost fell out head first and then he had the rope, catching himself, and that was the last Beyard saw of him.

‘I will not forget,’ he whispered to the moon and then he lunged for window himself as the door burst open. Men sprawled in, lit by torches from behind, tumbling over the chest and all falling to the floor and he was half out of the window and so very close to being free when a hand clamped onto his ankle. His first kick didn’t break him loose. Another hand grabbed him, and after that he stopped struggling. Maybe the other two would get away, maybe not.

They did. He slowly realised it when the Fateguard and the priests kept asking him over and over who else had come to steal their precious Crimson Shield. They didn’t even know how many had been in Beyard’s gang, but nothing he could say would make them believe that he and the others had only come for a look, merely to see the forbidden shield that even Corvin the Crow couldn’t be allowed to carry. No, they’d come to steal it, the priests were certain and wouldn’t be swayed because they’d seen the signs in the sky and omens in the entrails of dead pigs. There was a thief coming, and here he was, and so there would be consequences, and if Beyard’s father ever offered to pay blood money to save his son then Beyard never heard of it.

The frost-wind of the frozen north howled over black stone crags draped and spattered with snow. It moaned and screamed like the ghosts of the ever-hungry dead and wailed like the widows they left behind. Birthed by ice-wraiths and abandoned it was a cruel wind, heartless and without mercy, a wind that flayed any thought of kindness. The sun hung low on the horizon, weak and pale and muted. Here at the far end of the world even a midsummer morning offered only ice and storms. Mountains as old as time grew in this place. Pitiless cliffs forged at the very beginning, hard as iron and bitter as juniper. No place for men, no place for life, no place for light, and yet etched somehow into this shattered landscape wound a road, steep and hostile and paved with ice. It wound among them, picking its way from the ice-choked sea as though stalking some unseen prey, hidden as best it could from that hate-filled wind; but here and there it had no choice but to break its cover to rise towards its destination. To their delight the snow and the wind found it, winkled it out of its hiding and lashed it without remorse. The air filled with their frenzy to bury it, this intruder made by men.

Along its whole length, one thing alone travelled this road. A heavy wagon of old weathered wood and fat sausage-fingers of rust pulled by creatures that might once have carried the idea of a unicorn at their heart, but had been birthed by a vision burned and blackened and twisted. They were not alive and their hoof-beats rang on the icy road like cold black iron, four horned nightmares driving ever onward, ever upward, eager now as the end approached. They threw their burden against the howling wind, rocking from side to side, groaning wood and creaking metal hurled against the tireless icy teeth of the storm. They devoured the remorseless road and defied the savage wind until they came to a place where the mountains had been sheered by some great hand and nothing remained but a cavernous void and falling snow; and there they stopped beside an iron gate that might have swallowed a ship, and waited. They stamped their feet but no steamy breath came with their snorts for they were dead things, and even the snow and the stone shivered at their cold. In this landscape, life stopped at the edge of the sea, at the ship that even now nudged its way away from the ice floes to the shore – stopped but for the single soul inside the wagon, a chained main, huddled and freezing, his life flickering and sputtering and close to its end.

A shadow shifted from the great iron gate to the wagon and crept inside. It spoke a word, and its whisper was like a snake across parched desert sand. It held out a crown of black iron. You didn’t escape from monsters who could reach through time and space. Not once they knew who you were.

‘Beyard,’ it said, and put the iron crown forever over his head.

‘I will not forget.’ He clung to it and held it in his heart and spoke it out, over and over. ‘I will not forget.’

There were consequences for the others as well, not that Beyard heard of them until long years had passed. A lost coif – w
e were playing at fighting the Marroc, father, and it fell down the well –
cost the smith’s son an extra year of working in the forge before his father let him cross the sea to join the Screambreaker’s war band conquering the Marroc. Medrin crossed sooner and almost died in his first battle, and when he came back half a year later, he was as weak as a newborn and it was years before he was strong again. The Crimson Shield itself left on the same ship that carried Beyard. It rested a while on the Fortress of the Fates on the island of Brek, but other thieves came before it had even had time to gather dust, the real thieves of all the priests’ omens.

And slowly both it and Beyard were forgotten.

THE END OF FARRI MOONTONGUE PART 1

NATHAN HAWKE

The night was moonless and the stars were hidden behind a heavy bank of cloud and it was almost impossible to tell where the black sea ended and the black cliffs began. A soft steady rain hissed into the restless sea. Choppy waves pawed at the Lhosir ship’s prow as she slowly turned into the wind and slid quietly to a stop. Even in the rain, orders were given in whispers and the ship carried no lights. On each side of the bow, sailors lowered anchors gently into the water. When they were done with that, they lowered a rowing boat and threw a net over the side and four men climbed down. Two were sailors in rough linen clothes. The other two wore mail and all four were wrapped in heavy thick furs against the biting cold. This was the Ice Mountain Sea, and another few days north towards the Frost Wraiths, the water would already be turning to ice. Once the four men were in the boat, a tightly wrapped bundle followed them down. Swords and axes, helms and shields for the warriors, two poles as long as the boat itself and a dozen much shorter ones. The sailors lowered their muffled oars into the waves and started to row while the two men in mail watched their ship fade into the night and then turned ahead, looking out for the crash of waves on the shore, the phosphorescence of the surf breaking at the foot of the cliffs. Farri Moontongue had chosen the night for this with care and patience, the darkest and most dismal hour, but he’d been past here in daylight too, and often enough that he could find his way around these shores with his eyes closed.