Gallow (68 page)

‘Don’t you wish to hear what I have to offer, Skilljan Spearhoof?’ asked the Aulian.

‘Not unless you have a way to get me into Witches’ Reach.’

There was a long silence before the Aulian replied. ‘And what, Lhosir, if I do?’

Oribas sat bound beside a fire in the Lhosir camp. Fear didn’t stop him from sizing up their numbers and it didn’t stop him listening either. They were angry, simmering with rage and impatient to avenge their fallen. In the morning they walked to the walls and waved a flag of parley to ask for their dead but the Marroc had already crept out in the night and hauled the bodies closest to the walls back inside. Skilljan’s face turned thunderous. They all knew what that meant.

They tried a second time, easing into reach of the walls behind a line of shields and with one of their Marroc prisoners held in front of them. The Marroc asked for their man to be set free and then the Lhosir could have their bodies. When Skilljan refused, the archers in the fort killed the Marroc and drove the Lhosir away. Oribas’s face went white when Skilljan told him that. ‘They’re madmen,’ he whispered.

The Lhosir built their pyres and dragged away all the bodies they could reach. When they’d done that, they started on the last Marroc, and Oribas realised then why Achista had killed the first prisoner when she’d had the chance. For most of his life Oribas had been proud of his knowledge of the human frame. He’d worked with skeletons of men and cadavers. He’d been taught what organs were what and where they were to be found and what their importance was and what would happen if they were to fail. Now he tried to close his eyes and forget. The Lhosir stripped the last Marroc and laid him on his belly in the mud, close enough to one of the fires that the snow had all melted away. They held his arms and his legs while one of them took a knife and opened the skin on his back, one long deep cut on each side of the spine. They opened the cuts up wide and deep until bone showed beneath, and the screams were a thing Oribas knew he’d never forget. Then one of the Lhosir brought a strange-looking tool like a pair of long-handled tongs with cutting blades instead of metal fingers. One by one they pushed it into the screaming Marroc’s wounds and pulled the handles apart, and each time they did, bone cracked and splintered. They were separating the Marroc’s ribs from his spine. Oribas shut his eyes then and clamped his hands over his ears but he couldn’t stop the sounds, couldn’t stop that awful screaming. Worst of all though, he couldn’t stop himself counting, to see if the Lhosir snapped every rib or only some, and he couldn’t stop himself from wondering how many they’d cut before the Marroc could no longer breathe and so died.

The screams slowly faded. When it had been quiet for a while he opened his eyes and wished he hadn’t. The Marroc was lying where he’d been before, only now he was lying on a wooden wheel with two fat stakes driven right through him and sticking out of the gaping wounds on his back near the shoulder. The dead man’s lungs had been drawn out through the wounds and the Lhosir were draping them from strands of wire to make them look like wings. The blood raven. He’d heard Gallow talk of them.

When they were done they ran ropes around the two stakes and hung the dead Marroc from a pole. Three Lhosir carried him up towards Witches’ Reach. Oribas didn’t see what they did with him. Dangled him from a gibbet like the Marroc he’d seen in Varyxhun, perhaps.

They burned their own dead after that, standing beside each pyre to speak the deeds that each man had done in life and offering their souls to the cauldron of the Maker-Devourer. Skilljan Spearhoof had ignored Oribas until now, but as the dead burned and the Lhosir settled to an afternoon of feasting and remembering and watching the walls of Witches’ Reach, he came at last. An old Lhosir came with him.

‘Well then, Oribas of Aulia. Speak.’

‘Witches’ Reach was built by my people. There is an old Aulian tomb beneath it.’

Spearhoof looked to the old Lhosir. ‘Sharpear here has been inside the tower. Tell us what you know.’

So Oribas described the parts of the tomb the Lhosir had turned into a storeroom and the round stone door they’d never been able to open. He told them of the caves on the other side, how the Marroc had made him open the door for them and entered the tower and taken it. How these men that Skilljan had caught and killed had sealed it shut again.

‘So you’re the one who let them in?’ Skilljan bared his teeth. ‘I should make a raven out of you too, Aulian.’

‘I will open a door to anyone who has a knife at my throat and offers to remove it. The Marroc were good to their word. They meant to leave it to you to kill me.’

‘Careless of them to let you go, then.’

Oribas shook his head. ‘They didn’t let me go, Lhosir. They were careless with the ladders they were using to go over the walls and rope up all your dead so they could cut off their heads and scatter them on the Varyxhun Road. Tonight I dare say they’ll slip over the walls again and deliver their presents to you.’

Skilljan’s eyes narrowed. ‘Why did you come here, Aulian, when you could have run away?’

‘And go where?’ Oribas shrugged. ‘I have nothing to do with this fight and no wish to be a part of it, but between you and the Marroc I have no choice but to choose a side. So I choose the side that will win. I will show you the way into Witches’ Reach and open the door for you if you will swear in blood two things. You will let me live. I did nothing wrong but befriend a
nioingr
without knowing who he was, and for that I was sent to the Devil’s Caves. You will become my kinsman and speak for me. You will swear in blood and I will lead you into Witches’ Reach. Afterwards, while you bask in your victory, I will help you as best I can and you will shelter me until the snows melt in the spring and the Aulian Way is clear. Then I will go home.’

Skilljan Spearhoof laughed. ‘I’ll do all those things, will I? I have a different offer. You show me the way into Witches’ Reach and I won’t kill you as I killed that Marroc.’ He crouched in front of Oribas and glared.

Oribas met his eye. ‘I spent a year with a Lhosir, Skilljan Spearhoof. He was brave and strong and good to his word, and he taught me your ways well. I’ll take you to the door. We will make a blood oath in front of your men. I’ll open it and you’ll lead your soldiers into the Reach and you won’t look like a fool beaten by a few Marroc farmers.’ Skilljan ground his teeth. Oribas smiled at him. ‘When you see what I have to offer, you’ll agree it was a small price, and so I’ll have one more thing too. You’ll give me one of the Marroc to do with as I see fit. Whichever one I choose.’

A
s the sun set, Oribas led Skilljan and three of his men around the mountain to the crack in the crags that led to the tomb beneath Witches’ Reach. They crouched inside and Oribas fiddled with the flint and steel in his satchel until he had a tiny lamp burning. The Lhosir wrinkled their noses. ‘What’s that smell?’

Oribas began up the passage as far as the shaft. ‘The cess of Witches’ Reach makes its way down here.’

One of the Lhosir slipped and fell. ‘Cursed greasy ice! I can’t see a thing.’ He made a retching sound. ‘Stinks of fish.’

‘Bring torches down the mountainside and the Marroc will know your purpose.’ They pressed on all the way to the shaft, guided by the Aulian’s tiny flame until Oribas stood in the mouth of the passage and pointed up. ‘There are rungs set into the far wall. It was a long climb and slippery. One of the Marroc fell.’

‘Show us.’

Oribas pursed his lips. ‘At the top of the shaft is a door made by Aulian priests. I can open it. Go and look if you like. It’s a long way and I’m not sure I have the strength to climb it twice in one night.’

‘Twice, Aulian? The three of us will be enough to open the gates.’

Oribas laughed. ‘You won’t open any gates, Skilljan Spearhoof. I told you: the Marroc have sealed themselves in with ice and only the goddess of spring will open those gates now. That is unless you mean to light a fire beside them and hold off fifty Marroc archers for as long as it takes for that ice to melt.’ Skilljan growled at him. The problem took him longer to mull over than Oribas liked. ‘The Marroc came in this way, all of them. A cautious man like me would wait until he had more swords to follow him.’

‘You’re not as cautious as you’d like me to think.’ Skilljan shook his head and stared up at the shaft.

Oribas withdrew a little way down the passage. ‘The door is closed,’ he whispered, ‘but the Marroc aren’t stupid. They may still have an ear to it. They’ll know by now that I am gone.’

‘But not that you came to me.’ The Lhosir whispered among themselves and then Skilljan and one of his men crept away, leaving Oribas behind with the others. While he was away, Oribas and the two Lhosir sat in the pale light of his Aulian lamp. The Lhosir barred his way out, but it didn’t seem to trouble them when he left the lamp beside them and moved back to the shaft, and so they didn’t see as he circled the stone walkway, sprinkling powder from his satchel into the oily water. Oribas was half minded to climb the shaft without them, but would they follow? So he waited, and from their numbers when Skilljan returned, Oribas guessed he must have brought very nearly his entire band, what was left of them.

‘You first, Aulian,’ hissed Skilljan. ‘I’ll follow.’

Oribas gave Skilljan his lamp. ‘No sound. No light. I’ll take you to the door. You can stand there and see it in front of all your men, and then you can murder me and grind your teeth in frustration or you can whisper your blood oath and I will open it.’

‘We’ll see, Aulian.’

It was a long slow climb, every bit as hard as Oribas remembered. Worse for thinking of what waited at the top. He’d never done a thing like this. A horrible, terrible thing by any reckoning. There would be no forgiveness, not from those he crossed. And it was strange, because the Oribas who’d left the desert would never have done what he was about to do now, would never have considered it, would have thrown up his hands in horror at such a betrayal, and yet he felt no doubt. He would die for Achista, he’d known that for a while, but then he would have died for other things too – for Gallow, for the shadow-stalker and the sword-dancer he’d left behind who’d stood with him against the Rakshasa, for many others too. But for this Marroc woman he would do things far worse. For her and only for her.

Below him, Skilljan Spearhoof snarled and snapped at him to climb faster. Oribas kept his pace measured, though he was as eager as the Lhosir to reach the top and be done with this evil. The damp walls of the shaft glittered dimly in the lamplight, the only light any of them had until they reached the top and Skilljan climbed over the ledge and gripped Oribas and shook him. ‘If you’ve brought us all this way for nothing . . .’

Oribas pulled himself free. ‘Light a torch, Lhosir. We will need one.’ Quickly, before too many of the Lhosir could follow Skilljan over the edge, he snatched his lamp and ran to the door. When Skilljan had his brand burning, he followed. ‘Your oath,’ hissed Oribas. ‘And quickly, lest they hear us.’ He started to turn the wheels.

‘You have it.’ Which only made it worse.

Skilljan lit a second torch and held them both so Oribas could see. The wheels moved more easily this time and it was done in seconds. Oribas bowed his head and took back the torch. ‘Then the way is yours.’ He stared at the look of glee on the Lhosir’s face as Skilljan put his shoulder to the stone door and felt it begin to slide, then quietly walked away. There were six Lhosir up, then seven, and each one ran to the door with sword at the ready to race into the tower and fall upon the sleeping Marroc. None of them paid any attention to Oribas, their eyes focused on the slowly moving door, not even when he knelt down by the ledge to help one of them up and accidentally knocked over a bucket of foul-smelling oil that happened to be sitting by where he’d left it the day before. Nor as he stumbled back, holding his hands up in apology, and a piece of paper fell from his fingers and into the oil he’d spilled. Nor as he took his torch and lowered its flame to the ground. They only really noticed him again when the cavern lit up in a flash of light.

The oil he’d spilled over the edge caught alight and the fire began to spread across the floor. A Lhosir looked down to find his boots burning and tried to stamp them out. But it wasn’t the Lhosir who’d already climbed the shaft that Oribas was looking at. He was crouching, making himself as small as he could, looking into the shaft.

The fire ran down the wall. It was slow, not as quick as Oribas had hoped, but the Lhosir clinging to the rungs had nowhere to go as the flames trickled towards them and the stones around their hands and in front of their faces burned. A gobbet of flaming oil dripped down the shaft, a bright falling star vanishing into the darkness. But only so far. For waiting for it was the rest of the trap Oribas had laid. The drop of oil hit the surface of what had once been water but was now oil laced with saltpetre. Oribas looked away as the whole shaft bloomed into bright burning light and the Lhosir began to scream.

In the old tomb Achista heard the stone move and the Lhosir’s whispers grow louder. Through the cracks at the edge of the stone she saw the first flash of light, the signal Oribas had promised her. Thirty Marroc men gripped their spears and swords while a couple helped the Lhosir pull the stone door aside.

Skilljan Spearhoof froze at the first flash of light. He knew at once he’d been betrayed but he didn’t yet know how. The hairs on his back prickled like a creeping spider. He let go of the door and turned to see the fire. The flames didn’t seem like very much.

He turned back. The door kept moving even though no Lhosir was pushing it any more. He caught a glimpse of a face coming at him from the other side. What he didn’t see was the spear point that came at him too, and so he died as steel pierced his eye and deep into his skull, the first forkbeard to fall but not the last.

The Marroc burst out from the tomb. Oribas stayed very still, face turned away from the flames, crouched in his corner, losing himself in the flickering shadows. The Lhosir could have found him if they’d chosen to look but most of them had no idea what has happening. It was over in a dozen heartbeats. The Marroc slammed into them and cut them down or pushed them back. Two ended up thrown over the edge. The Lhosir below were still climbing as fast as they could, roaring and swearing and howling as flames licked at their hands and reached for their faces and burned their forked beards. The Marroc waiting for them at the top were merciless. The Lhosir who fell vanished into the inferno at the bottom of the shaft. The last few started to climb back down but all they had waiting for them were flames and a thickening fish-stench of choking smoke.