Gallow (50 page)

‘The Aulian.’ The anger fell out of her face. ‘What do you forkbeards want with him? What’s he done?’

Gallow shrugged. ‘It’s not Oribas they’re looking for, it’s the sword I was carrying.’

She stared at him, and for a moment the mistrust vanished into wonder. ‘Gallow Foxbeard and the Sword of the Weeping God. So it’s all true, is it?’

‘Was Oribas there? And the sword? Has Beyard got them both now?’

The old look of suspicion settled back over her face. ‘There was a shadewalker. Your Aulian claimed he could put an end to it. Addic went off with him to see if he could.’

‘Where did they go? How do I find him?’

The woman took a deep breath and then seemed to come to some decision. ‘Horkaslet. They went across the ridge to Horkaslet.’ Then her hand flew to her mouth. ‘We have to stop them from going back to the farm! The forkbeards will be waiting for them!’ She still held the knife and now she waved it in Gallow’s face. ‘You! You have to take us there. Quick! Before it’s too late!’

T
he Marroc were cheerful as they rode the last miles towards home. Oribas tried to let the mood take him with it, but there were too many glooms weighing on his mind. Gallow, his strange and unexpected friend for the last year. Whatever he’d told the Marroc, whether or not the gods had sent Gallow as an answer to his prayers, he was still just a man returning to his family. Harsh of fate to let him come so close to what he so wanted and then take him. And then there was his own fate too, hanging loose in the great weave now the Rakshasa was gone, flapping in the wind. The monster had given him a purpose and a direction and now that was over.

He stopped and got off his horse while the Marroc wandered on. They were riding beside a stream, rustling its way down from the mountains, swathed in ice but not so frozen that the water didn’t break through here and there. He cleared a patch of snow, plucked a blade of grass and tied a knot in it and set in the water. ‘If you’ve killed him then you’ve done wrong. You should have let him have his last years among those he loved. If not, if you truly sent him to me to kill my monster, leave him be. Give him his peace.’ They were words spoken to gods, though the only gods Oribas knew were the old gods of Aulia and they were far away. As an afterthought he set another knotted blade adrift. ‘If you’ve killed him then I would like to go home now.’

Jonnic waited up the path. Addic walked slowly back. ‘Have you found something, Aulian?’

Oribas shook his head. ‘A little prayer, that’s all. To wish us all to our homes in warmth and safety.’ He pushed past Addic and mounted again. The desert where he’d been born was littered with temples to the Aulian gods, all empty and desolate now, abandoned just as the gods themselves had been after the empire fell. To the desert child in Oribas, water was the sacred goddess and always had been. Quiet and unassuming, asking little save that she be nurtured with love and care, fickle though, and deadly when she withdrew her blessings.

‘Amen to that.’ Addic followed him and together the three rode in silence over the rise to Brawlic’s farm. Smoke rose from the chimney. There was no one about. Maybe that was to be expected late on a winter afternoon. Oribas’s world had little to say about farms, nor about mountains or winter or all this cold and snow and how men set about living in the middle of it.

The Marroc left their horses in the barn and called out, and suddenly there were armed men everywhere, soldiers like the men in the road that Gallow had fought, big and tall, cloaked in thick heavy furs with mail underneath, with axes and shields and swords at their sides and helms that hid half their face but not the braids of their forked beards.

‘Forkbeards!’ Addic had his iron sword in his hand as the Lhosir reached him but they didn’t stop to trade blows. The first charged into him, taking Addic’s sword on his shield, and battered him back, and before he could find his balance, the next one crashed in and knocked him to the ground. Jonnic was already running with three more Lhosir chasing after. Oribas simply stood where he was, helpless and with no idea what to do.

‘Alive!’ A monster came out of the farm behind the soldiers, a terrible golem made of black iron, or so it seemed at first until Oribas understood that this was simply a man, huge and fierce perhaps, but a man clad in metal. He wore a crown on his head and a mask over his face. ‘Alive, you dogs!’ he cried again, and then he saw Oribas and came straight towards him. There were more Lhosir behind him, swords drawn, watching. Addic cried out, a scream of fury and fear, as the forkbeards pinned him to the ground. The metal man strode closer.

Oribas turned to flee but barely managed a handful of strides before an arm with fearsome strength caught his shoulder and spun him round and a palm smashed into his face and knocked him flat. He blinked, bewildered by the brightness of the sky, and then darkness fell as the shadow of the iron man loomed over him. The mask was a twisted visage, as though of a demonic man burned deep by fire. Between vertical slits in the metal, deathly pale skin hid among the shadows. Oribas squealed, ‘Shadewalker!’ It was the first thought that came into his head. His hand was at his side, resting on the shoulder bag where he kept his salt – he scrabbled back in terror and scraped out as much as his fingers could claw together and threw it at the iron mask. A moment later a boot stamped on his arm, hard enough to bruise bone, and pinned him there. A spear point came to rest against his throat. The Lhosir soldiers around him laughed.

‘Not a move, Aulian,’ the spearman growled.

The iron man tore off his gauntlets and the mask and crown and clawed at his face. His skin was sallow and greasy, his hair lank and ragged, but he was no shadewalker.

The spear point dug into his skin. ‘What have you done, Aulian?’

‘Salt,’ gasped Oribas. ‘Only salt. I thought he was a shadewalker!’

The Lhosir roared with laughter and the spear withdrew a little. ‘Salt in the eyes of a Fateguard? Maker-Devourer, but that’s a thing. You have a fierce heart in there, Aulian.’ The Lhosir’s eyes gleamed and the spear waved over his face again. ‘Stay right where you are if you want to keep it beating.’

The iron-skinned man rubbed snow in his face. He took his time and then slowly replaced his mask and crown and his gauntlets. He turned to Oribas, who squirmed with fear again, not sure which looked worse, the iron man or the spear that would skewer him if he moved. The iron man growled. ‘Let him up, Niflas. If he runs, catch him.’

Niflas lifted his spear and backed away, laughing. ‘This one? He couldn’t run from a flock of angry birds.’

‘If he gets away from you I’ll make a cloak out of your lungs.’ The iron man came closer.

Oribas stared up as the Fateguard towered over him. ‘What are you?’

The iron man ignored his question. ‘Aulians don’t come over the mountains any more. You’re the first that isn’t a shadewalker for twenty years. But you didn’t come alone, did you?’

The Aulian didn’t even blink but Beyard saw the answer in the sparkle of his eyes. He nodded, as much to himself as to anyone. ‘No, I know who you are. You came across the mountains with Gallow the smith’s son, Gallow Truesword, Gallow the Foxbeard.’

Foxbeard.
The Aulian’s eyes flinched and gave him away. So Gallow had called himself Foxbeard, the name King Medrin had given him.

Beyard looked over his shoulder. They had the second Marroc now. He’d take them inside and deal with them properly: show them their women and their sons and daughters, still alive and unharmed, and tell them exactly what they would have to do to keep them that way. There would be no mercy for the men and they’d know it. Pointless to pretend otherwise, but he’d send them back for Cithjan’s judgment for the sake of things.

He turned to the Aulian again and held out Gallow’s locket. ‘The Foxbeard. He’s still alive.’ Strange, the flash of glee he felt at that, same as when Gallow had thrown Arithas into the ravine. ‘Why did he come back. Because of this?’ He waved the locket. Wide eyes said yes. Sixfingers would never believe it but Beyard did for he’d seen the same answer in Gallow’s own eyes. All this way for a woman. For his sons, and so that was how Beyard would find him again. He looked at the Aulian, peering hard as if he could look inside the man. ‘And you? Will he come for you?’ The Aulian thought not. Beyard’s eyes bored harder in, searching the twisted skeins of fate that ran though him and finding strangely little. ‘What have you done, Aulian? What is your crime?’

The Aulian shook his head. ‘None . . . nothing.’

‘Then why are you are afraid?’

‘You . . . I am afraid of you.’

Underneath his mask Beyard’s face didn’t change.
Of course you are, Aulian.
‘But there’s more. What are you hiding?’ The Aulian shook his head. ‘But I smell a death on you, Aulian. You have killed.’ A strange death, though. Not fresh but old as stone.

The Aulian closed his eyes. His head drooped as though he was announcing his own death. ‘A shadewalker. I helped to lay a shadewalker to rest.’

Beyard sat back on his haunches. So it wasn’t the red sword. Killing a shadewalker – that wasn’t what he’d expected at all but the Aulian wasn’t lying. The Fateguard cocked his head. ‘You’re a brave man to face one, Aulian, and a clever one to win. You should be proud, but all I see is fear. Why so afraid?’

He asked about the red sword but all he got was confusion. The Aulian knew exactly what it was but he had no idea of the where and so Beyard let him be, telling the Lhosir to treat him well. He’d go back to Cithjan with the others, but as far as Beyard could see he’d done no wrong. He might even take the Aulian back to Varyxhun himself and let him go; and then he wondered at that. Why? For the Foxbeard? Yes, but then still, why? Why did Gallow’s return trouble him so?

No matter, not now. He would get to work on the Marroc. They knew where the sword was hidden and it wouldn’t take long to convince them to share their knowledge. As for Gallow, there was only one place he was going. Fate whispered patience in Beyard’s ear and so he took his time. He settled himself in front of what would have been a pleasantly warm fire for any but a Fateguard and stared at the two Marroc. He still had their women and their children, all well and unharmed, all with their fingers and hands still attached in all the right places and none of them scarred by burns, not yet. He showed the Marroc his mercy and explained with slow and careful patience how their womenfolk and their sons and daughters might stay the way they were, and though the Marroc refused to say a word, in the end they gave themselves away, eyes darting here and there, answering his questions without a sound, looking to the place where the sword was hidden. Beyard had his men rip up the floor, had them pull back the skins and furs and dig in the remains of an old firepit beneath. They didn’t have to go far to find a wooden crate half-filled with bundles of arrows and a few old swords underneath. He looked at the Marroc askance when the Lhosir showed him what they’d found and gave a little nod. The Marroc men had sealed their fate and they knew it. Varyxhun would see two more gibbets.

The red sword wasn’t in there with the rest, but all he had to do was look from the stash of arrows to the quivering women and children and they were telling him before he even said a word, confession flowing out like he’d broken a dam. Hidden under the hay in the barn, and five minutes later he had it in his hand. He swung it in arcs and listened to the air moan as the red steel cut it. The wailing of ruined souls, perhaps, or maybe simply the way the steel had been forged.

H
er name was Achista. He got it out of her after the second night when they were sneaking into the barn of some Marroc farmer she didn’t like. ‘Forvic has a loud mouth when there are none of you forkbeards around but he’s happy enough to take your coin when he thinks there’s no one to notice. It’ll be a pleasure to make some trouble for him.’ Gallow simply nodded and told himself that he wanted no part in this, that it was none of his concern what Marroc did to forkbeards or forkbeards did to Marroc. All he wanted was to go home.

He touched a hand to his chest, to the locket he’d carried there for the last three years, only to remember that Beyard had it now.

‘Praying to your uncaring god, forkbeard?’ Achista settled into farmer Forvic’s hay. Gallow kept carefully away from her. ‘Or are you looking for your heart? Wasting your time there. You lot don’t have any.’

She didn’t want to hear his story, not at first, but for some reason he needed to tell her. He said little about the early years, fighting in the Screambreaker’s army, killing Marroc left and right. He’d been the same as the rest of them then. They’d none of them seen any wrong in it – just the way of the world, the soldier’s way, the strong taking from the weak – and he could say he was sorry as much as he liked; it changed nothing about what he’d done and she’d never believe him anyway. So he told her the truth and left it that, and then how after the war was done he’d turned his head towards Aulia; how he’d met Arda on the way and all the little things that sparked between them. How she’d shouted as he’d left her to fight the Vathen, how he’d sailed with Medrin to bring the Crimson Shield of Modris back to Andhun, the bargain he’d struck with Corvin Screambreaker and everything that had followed. Years adrift, and now all he wanted was to go home to Nadric’s forge and make nails and wire and horseshoes.

He thought perhaps she’d fallen asleep long before he finished and perhaps she had, but in the morning when she looked at him he found her face was softer than it had been the night before and she put a hand on his arm instead of poking a knife at his ribs. He saw the fear in her eyes, the almost-knowledge that they were too late, and that was when she told him her name.