Gallow (60 page)

A year turned into two and Arda came to him one day and told him that if he was staying he might want to cut off his beard, and it hadn’t surprised him greatly either when, after he did it, she’d taken him to the night room alone. There wasn’t any ceremony about it, but she was lying with him and laying Gallow to rest both at once, and he’d been happy enough with that. Some of the Marroc said things behind her back and others said them to her face, but she only shrugged and pointed out that people had always said things behind her back even before she’d married Gallow, and that she had no truck with anyone whose life was so joyless they had nothing better to do than make misery for others, nor did she care in the least as long as there was food for her family. Gallow’s silver made her rich in the village, she still vanished off among the Crackmarsh men for whole weeks at a time, and it wasn’t as if there were baskets full of spare men going at the market who’d look after her and her half-forkbeard children. She made Tolvis laugh, and he made her laugh too, and when Sixfingers came back across the sea with a new hand made of witch’s iron and set about raising armies to fight the Vathen, Tolvis kept to himself, not wanting anything to do with it.

‘Loudmouth!’

He looked up from where he was supposed to be cutting nails for Nadric. There weren’t too many Marroc who bothered to talk to him in Middislet. They were used to him, tolerated him with grudging reluctance, but no one said they had to like it. But now and then Fenaric the carter came by, and Fenaric didn’t seem to care who Tolvis was, even though Arda made it plain that she couldn’t stand the carter and wouldn’t spare him a word.

‘I’ve got news, forkbeard. You might want to hear it.’ He looked from side to side as though there might be someone lurking in the shadows of the forge.

‘What’s that then?’ Tolvis was careful to be civil with the carter. Varyxhun was turning bad. Tolvis quietly thought that if there wasn’t an uprising in the spring then he’d eat Nadric’s forge, and if there
was,
well he wanted to be far away from it. And then there was Sixfingers. He hadn’t forgotten Gallow, that was for sure. Probably thought of him every time he looked at the stump where his hand used to be. Probably hadn’t forgotten that Gallow had had a family. So yes, he gave Fenaric the time of day, careful to keep an ear to the ground.

Fenaric sat himself on a log beside the forge fire. ‘Could do with new tyres for the wagon,’ he said.

So he was short of money. Tolvis nodded. ‘I’ll talk to Nadric and see what’s to be done.’ That’s how it went. Little favours for snippets of the world outside the village.

‘Was up at Issetbridge.’ He sniffed and looked about as though he was bored. ‘Heard a story that a dozen forkbeards got killed up in the high valleys. Not the only story like that, either.’

‘Glad that’s not near here then.’ Cithjan had a fondness for hangings from what he’d heard. Thought if you hanged enough Marroc everything would be sorted out. Maybe if he hanged every last one of them, it would.

‘Reckon it’s going to get bloody, forkbeard.’

‘Reckon so, carter.’ Tolvis went back to cutting nails. If that was all Fenaric had then he could pay for his tyres.

The carter stayed where he was though, so there was clearly more. Funny thing about the trouble in Varyxhun – it made the Marroc in Middislet more unsure about Tolvis. Reminded them how much they were supposed to hate all forkbeards; but at the same time Tolvis knew it set them thinking about how it might not be such a bad thing to have one living among them if the trouble spilled over the Aulian Bridge. ‘There was one other thing I heard. Something about a sword. That sword the Vathen were supposed to have with them at Andhun, the one you forkbeards took off them.’

Tolvis stopped cutting. ‘Oh yes?’

‘Well I don’t know for sure what’s true and what’s not, but what I heard was it went missing when the Vathen kicked you lot out of Andhun.’ He cocked his head. ‘You know different?’

‘No, that’s about the right of it.’ Tolvis tried not to look interested.

‘There’s a rumour going around Issetbridge that the iron devil of Varyxhun has found it again.’

Tolvis almost choked. ‘Anyone say how?’

Fenaric stuck out his bottom lip and grunted, and Tolvis knew him well enough to know this wasn’t just the carter trying to get some tyres hammered for nothing. After a bit Fenaric stood up. ‘That’s about it.’

‘That was news worth having, carter. I’ll see about those tyres.’

‘No hurry. I’ll be good for another month. If they’re ready for the next time I roll through, that would be fine.’ He walked away.

Tolvis Loudmouth sat and stared at the forge for a very long time and hardly cut any nails at all after Fenaric left. The carter had earned his tyres but Tolvis wasn’t sure what to make of it, because if the red sword hadn’t drowned off the cliffs of Andhun then maybe Gallow hadn’t drowned there either, and a pang of something came with that thought. Not fear, exactly. Sadness, and that was when he realised how content he’d become here, doing nothing very much and being in no way important.

He didn’t tell Arda. The return of the red sword wouldn’t mean anything to her, but he took to sleeping with his own blade kept in the corner of the night room, which she noticed and gave him all sorts of grief for until he made up some story after Fenaric had gone about outlaws roaming the Fedderhun Road. And then the day after that Vennic came screaming through the village with some wild tale about a man made of iron riding the fringes of the Crackmarsh. Vennic hadn’t seen it himself but he’d heard from another shepherd out in the hills and now he had it in his head that a shadewalker was coming. The rest of the village laughed in his face. Shadewalkers never rode horses and they didn’t wear iron or venture out in the middle of the day, and anyway this was Vennic, who saw ghosts in the moon and devils in the shadows and thought Modris talked to him through his sheep.

Tolvis kept his mouth shut. He’d seen enough to know it was a Fateguard that Vennic’s friend had seen, the iron devil of Varyxhun. After that he took to sleeping with his shield in the night room too, and with one eye open, and that was probably why he sat up in the small hours of the morning a few nights later, wide awake and quite sure there was someone outside. He slipped his sword out of its scabbard and slid his shield onto his arm and crept to the door to the yard and opened it a crack, and right there in front of him was the shadow of a man swathed in metal and with a shield of his own on his arm. Tolvis let out a cry and jumped back, ready for a fight, but the iron devil in the yard didn’t move.

‘Tolvis Loudmouth?’ Iron grated on iron. ‘Well I certainly wasn’t expecting to find
you.
Still, Sixfingers keeps a special place in his heart for both of you.’

M
iddislet was still miles away when the sun set but Gallow kept walking. Perhaps there was shelter to be found in the hills that edged the Crackmarsh but he wasn’t looking for it, not now. He knew how close he was and he knew this land, and besides there were Marroc in the woods and caves here. He’d seen them. Bandits or thieves, he didn’t know which, but it didn’t matter. He was a forkbeard alone and so he kept on going. He could almost have walked these last miles blindfold and still found his way home.

Snow started to fall, muffling the darkness and silencing the wind. The night was black as ink when he reached the forge and the house was still. Everyone inside would be sleeping. He listened at the door and heard nothing, no snores, no snuffles, no wheezes. But this was home, still the way he remembered it, and his heart was beating fast. Three years. Anything could have happened. He didn’t know whether to knock or simply open the door and creep inside.

He was still standing there when he heard movement, the scrape of wood across the floor and then the chink of metal and a footstep and the door opened, and in the night Gallow stared. There was a man. He was holding a candle. Not Nadric, not Arda, but . . .

‘Tolvis Loudmouth?’ Gallow stared. The side of Loudmouth’s face was a mass of scars from that last fight in Andhun. He looked fatter and his forked beard was gone. But most of all Gallow simply couldn’t understand what he was doing here. Here in Middislet at Nadric’s forge. It made no sense. Words started and then faltered.

‘Gallow?’ Tolvis couldn’t find anything to say either.

Gallow couldn’t think, couldn’t think of anything at all except that Tolvis had been a friend, one he’d never thought to see again. He offered his arm and Tolvis took it and they clasped each other. ‘Loudmouth?’ He shook his head in disbelief again. ‘Your beard . . .’

Tolvis was laughing, almost weeping with joy and surprise and dismay. ‘The silver I got you for those horses in Andhun. The Screambreaker.’ He shook his head. ‘There didn’t seem to be a particularly good moment for giving it back, what with the whole chopping Medrin’s hand off and being chased through the castle by a Vathan horde. And then you didn’t come . . . You held the Vathen long enough that we got away. I couldn’t keep all that silver if it wasn’t mine and so I went to Varyxhun after Andhun fell and I found her, and then I stayed in case you came back and weren’t dead after all, and then I never quite . . . left . . .’

‘Loudmouth.’ Gallow shook his head. Now he looked closer there were bruises and a bloody gash on Loudmouth’s face. Fresh, no more than a day old. ‘What’s wrong?’

Tolvis looked over his shoulder. He glanced at the night room. ‘Maker-Devourer, Gallow, I’m so sorry.’

Gallow’s heart beat even faster. ‘What, Loudmouth? What is it?’

He had tears in his eyes. His hands grasped Gallow’s arms. ‘I looked after your family, Gallow. I’ve done what I could but Sixfingers never stopped looking.’

‘My sons?’

Tolvis looked away. Gallow grabbed his shirt and shook him.

‘Arda? What, Loudmouth?
What?
’

And then the furs around the night room shifted and a shadow moved out of them and a rasp cut the night. ‘This was always where you’d come, Foxbeard. I’ve been waiting for you.’

The scrape of metal on metal and then a shape unfolded itself from the darkness behind Tolvis, a man cased in iron, and Gallow knew, though he couldn’t see the face that lay beneath the mask in the moonlight, that this was Beyard. Who else? Gallow hissed, ‘You’re dead!’

‘Did you weep for me, old friend? Did you build a pyre for me and speak me out?’ Between them Tolvis hung his head. Beyard held out the amulet with the lock of Arda’s hair and threw it at Gallow’s feet. ‘You were quick, Truesword, but I was quicker. Across the Crackmarsh and the bandits and the ghuldogs knew enough to leave well alone. I watched her. Your children too. I know why you came home.’ He pushed Tolvis aside and offered out his hand. ‘Come, old friend. No need for Sixfingers to know. You understand what he’d do if he did.’

Snap their ribs from their spines and pull their lungs through their skin and fly them like wings, suspended from gibbets and wheels. Blood ravens. Gallow’s hand gripped his sword. He shook his head. ‘Where are they, Beyard? What have you done?’

‘They’re in the cellar. Unhurt. Aren’t they, Loudmouth?’

Tolvis bowed his head. He nodded, eyes closed.

‘I have no interest in them, Truesword. Medrin need never know. You can’t escape your fate but no one else has to share it.’ His face turned a fraction to Tolvis. ‘Even this one. We’ll leave, you and I, quietly in the night. Loudmouth here will lie with your woman and raise your sons as his own. We both know he’ll raise them as he should.’ Beyard made a wet rasping sound that might have been laughter and tipped his head to Tolvis. ‘After all, I didn’t make you stay, Loudmouth. You could have left me alone with them if you’d wished. But you couldn’t do that, could you?’

Tolvis seemed to fold in on himself. He shrank back into the darkness of the house. ‘I looked after them, Gallow. We thought you were dead. I kept them safe.’

Gallow hesitated. He looked from Tolvis to Beyard and back again. ‘I’ll kill you, old friend, if I have to.’

Beyard nodded. ‘As I will you, old friend. I will kill who I must.’ His sword was already in his hand. The red sword, Solace, and now he levelled it at Tolvis. ‘This one tried already. He fought well, but I am Fateguard now and my skin is iron.’

‘Swear on your blood, Beyard. No harm to my wife and my family. Swear you won’t come back for them. Swear you won’t come back for Loudmouth.’

‘I told you in Varyxhun, Gallow: I can’t swear on what I don’t have.’ Beyard dropped to one knee, though the sword remained pointed at Loudmouth’s throat. ‘They think you dead, Truesword. The family you left, they belong to another now. I’ve watched. Your sons call Loudmouth father. Your wife calls him husband. Your fate lies elsewhere and always did. Leave them be, Truesword. Let us go into the night, the two of us alone. I’ve not forgotten that Sixfingers fled and left us once long ago. I’ve no love for him, only duty.’

Tolvis hissed, ‘Then don’t serve him!’

‘I must.’

Gallow slowly slid his sword back into its scabbard. He looked at Loudmouth and sniffed the air and looked at Beyard again, standing once more with the red sword still in his hand. Three years of searching and now the last gift he could give them was to leave? Let them go? ‘I’d see them one more time. I’ll not wake them. Then I’ll come with you.’

‘It’s best they don’t know, Truesword.’

‘I know.’

Tolvis turned and gripped Gallow’s arm. ‘They’re strong and filled with life. That much I did well.’

Gallow walked inside, treading lightly. The smells were such an old familiar comfort that they almost made him weep. He crept down the steps into the stale warmth of the cellar and crouched down beside each of the sleeping figures there. His sons: Pursic, who’d grown into a boy in the years he’d been gone, and Tathic. His daughters: Feya, who was losing the baby looks he remembered, and Jelira, the daughter who wasn’t his but whom he’d taken to be his own, almost a woman now. And Arda. He crouched beside her for the longest time of all, drawn by the temptation to wake her. She looked exactly as he remembered. No one who glanced at her in the street would have said she was beautiful but to Gallow she was perfect. He swallowed hard and forced himself to rise. Beyard was right: what good did it do for her to see him now? She’d shout and scream at him for not coming home and she’d wake everyone else, and then she’d probably go up and start throwing pans at the ironskin.