Gallow (41 page)

The others weren’t following him. That shit-stain Longshanks was ignoring him as though he hadn’t heard or seen and was busy telling his men to go back out into the woods in twos and threes and gather wood.

‘Back to Tarkhun now is a long walk,’ said Longshanks as Falgir came back. ‘That what you were going to say?’ He was nodding as though he was quite sure that was what Falgir had been meaning, though they both certainly knew better. ‘Best we stay and see these men on to the Maker-Devourer’s cauldron.’

‘Likely as not we’ll follow them if we do,’ grunted Falgir.

‘Man can’t turn his back on his fate.’ Longshanks could turn his back on Falgir, though, and he did, and that right there and then was the end of Falgir being a leader of any men except himself.

Whoever it was that killed Silverborn and the rest, they didn’t come back that afternoon, nor in the evening either. Longshanks had his pyre and they tossed one corpse after the next onto the flames and spoke them out, told the uncaring skies and the hostile trees everything that mattered of each man who’d died: who they were and how they’d taken their name and who’d given it to them; of the battles they’d fought and the sons they’d sired. It all came out, the good and the bad. That Hardis Hardhand had murdered his own brother by clubbing him from behind when they were both drunk and all over some woman who didn’t want either of them, they spoke that out as loudly as they spoke of his courage at Selleuk’s Bridge beside the mighty Lanjis Halfborn. The truth of a man’s life, that was all that mattered, bare and raw and unadorned. They’d almost lost the light before they even started and by the time they threw the last man onto the flames – Silverborn himself – and spoke him out, the night was half gone. Afterwards they sat in twos and threes, backs to the pyre, letting it warm them and light up the forest, dozing and talking softly to one another while they waited for the dawn. Even so, Falgir must have closed his eyes and slept an hour or two before the sun rose.

He opened them, groggy-headed. The air stank of burned flesh and wood smoke. There was someone prodding him, and when he stared at the face looking down at him, it took him a moment to understand why it had no beard.

Marroc.

He started to scramble to his feet and then stopped at once. Someone had lifted up his mail coat and there was a spear point pressed hard between his legs.

‘Ah go on, Jonnic, you can geld that one of you want.’ He didn’t see who spoke. Before he could move again the spear jabbed sharply into his crotch with a hideous pain that made him scream and curl up into a ball, hands pressed between his legs. He lay there, howling, waiting for the Marroc to finish him but they didn’t. They walked away and left him there.

Eventually he managed to get up. His hands were covered in his own blood and every step was burning agony. The rest of the Lhosir, Longshanks and his men, lay scattered around the pyre. They were covered in blood and their beards had been cut off their faces and the skin from their chins too. They’d died without a sound. In their sleep, most of them, their throats cut. A few had been shot in the face by an arrow from a man standing right over them, the shaft driven through so hard that it had gone right through the skull and into the earth beneath. Dead, every single one, and their swords and axes and spears and shields taken.

He thought the Marroc had gone and so he took his time, but in the end there wasn’t anything to do except head back to Tarkhun and hope he didn’t bleed to death on the way and that he got there before the wolves out hunting found him helpless and smelling of fresh blood. But as he limped away, a single Marroc came out of the trees again. Falgir growled and started to run as best he could, bent half over in pain, but the Marroc just watched and laughed and called out after him: ‘Run, you gelded dog, run. Go back to the Widowmaker and tell him what happened here. Tell him to come on through the Shadowwood whenever he wants. Tell him that Valaric the Wolf waits for him.’

EPIGRAPH

And each man stands with his face in the light of his own drawn sword. Ready to do what a hero can.

Elizabeth Browning

T
he man on the table in front of the Aulian was dying. The soldiers with their forked beards crowded around, full of anxious faces, but they knew it. He was past help.

‘I’ll do what I can.’ The Aulian shook his head. ‘Leave him with me.’ When they did, that too was a sign of how little hope they had. A prince of the Lhosir left alone with an Aulian wizard. The Aulian opened his satchel and bag and set about making his preparations.

‘Who are you?’ The dying man’s eyes were open. The skin of his face was grey and slick with sweat; but there was a fierce intelligence behind those eyes and a fear too. A forkbeard prince who was afraid to die, but then who wouldn’t be when dying looked like this? The Aulian didn’t answer, but when he came close the Lhosir grabbed his sleeve. ‘I asked you: who are you?’

‘I’m here to heal you. If it can be done.’

‘Can it?’

‘I will try, but I am . . . I am not sure that it can. If you have words to say, you should say them.’

The Lhosir let him go. He was trembling but he seemed to understand. The Aulian lifted his head and tipped three potions into his mouth, careful and gentle. ‘One for the pain. One for the healing. One to keep you alive no matter what for two more days.’ Then he unrolled a cloth bundle and took out a knife and started to cut as gently as he could at the bandages over the Lhosir’s wound. The room already stank of putrefaction. The rot was surely too far gone for the Lhosir to live.

‘I left him. I left my friend. I abandoned him.’

The Aulian nodded. He mumbled something as he cut, not really listening. The Lhosir was fevered already and the potions would quickly send him out of his mind. Soon nothing he said would mean very much. ‘Even if you survive, your warring days are over. Even small exertions will leave you short of breath.’

‘I was afraid. I am Lhosir but I was afraid.’

‘Everyone is afraid.’ The Aulian lifted away a part of the bandage. The Lhosir flinched and whimpered where it stuck to the skin and the Aulian had to pull it free. The stench was appalling. ‘I’m going to cut the wound and drain it now. This will hurt like fire even through the potions I’ve given you.’ The Aulian dropped the festering dressing into a bowl of salt. As delicately as he could, he forced the Lhosir prince’s mouth open and pushed a piece of leather between his teeth. ‘Bite on this.’

The Lhosir spat it out. ‘The ironskins took him.’

The Aulian stopped, waiting now for the potions to take the Lhosir’s thoughts. ‘Ironskins?’

‘The Fateguard.’

The Aulian looked at the knife in his hand, razor sharp. ‘Then tell me about these iron-skinned men, Lhosir.’

So the Lhosir did, and the Aulian stood and listened and didn’t move, and a chill went through him. ‘There was another one like that,’ he said when the prince was done. ‘Long ago. We buried it far away from here under a place called Witches’ Reach. It was a terrible monster. Its power was very great, and very dangerous.’

The Lhosir started to talk about the friend he’d left behind, the one he said the ironskins had taken. The Aulian listened until the Lhosir’s words broke down into a senseless mumble. The potions were taking hold. He turned his knife to the wound. The Lhosir screamed then. He screamed like a man having his soul torn out of him piece by piece. Like a man slowly cut in two by a rust-edged saw. The Aulian worked quickly. The wound was deep and the rot had spread deeper still and the stink made him gag. He cut it out as best he could, drained the seeping pus away, cut until blood flowed red and the screaming grew louder still. When he was done he tipped a handful of wriggling creatures onto the dying Lhosir’s bloody flesh and placed their bowl over the wound.

The door flew open. Another Lhosir, with the dying prince’s bodyguards scurrying in his wake. They ran in and then stumbled and turned away, hit by the reeking air. The Aulian didn’t look up. He wrapped cloth over the wound as fast as he could, hiding what he’d done. The first of the soldiers was on him quickly, gagging. The dying prince was quiet now. Fainted at last.

‘Wizard, what have you done?’

The Aulian cleaned his knife and began to pack away his bags. ‘If he lives through the next two days he may recover. Send someone to me then.’ He looked at the forkbeard soldier. ‘Only if he lives.’

But the Lhosir wasn’t looking at him; he was staring at the hole in the dying prince’s side – at the blind thing wriggling from under the cloth. The Aulian frowned. He’d been careless in his haste. He turned back to the soldier. ‘It will—’

‘Sorcerer!’ The forkbeard drove his sword through the Aulian. ‘Monster! What have you done?’

The Aulian tried to think of an answer, but all his thoughts were of another monster. The monster with the iron skin. And, as he fell to the floor and his eyes fixed on the dying Lhosir’s hand hanging down from the table, how the Lhosir seemed to have too many fingers.