Gallow (69 page)

Oribas turned away and then forced himself to turn back. There was nothing here he wanted to see but he needed to. He had to. Had to be sure he would remember what he’d done. He felt a presence at his shoulder. ‘Come away.’ He knew it would be her.

‘I can’t.’

‘Yes, you can.’ She leaned into him, wrapped her arms around his neck and nuzzled his ear.

‘I will not forget that I have done this.’

‘All they ever had to do was go. You’ve spared so many of us who never had that choice.’

Oribas followed her away, certain that he hadn’t saved anyone at all, that these Marroc would stay here until the Lhosir starved them out, or burned them, or laid them low with axe and sword. But it was easier to listen to Achista’s whispers than to the lost ghosts of the men who’d taught him how to do these things.

A few of the Marroc stayed in the tomb, watching. The rest crept up onto the walls of Witches’ Reach and threw down ladders and slipped away into the night. They encircled the Lhosir camp and tore through it, pulling down the men that Skilljan Spearhoof had left to stand watch over his wounded and slaughtering the Lhosir to the last man. They took the heads of the men they’d killed and carried them down to the Varyxhun Road and the Aulian Bridge and once again left them there, another Marroc message of triumph.

Through it all, Achista held Oribas tight. Sometimes he hardly felt her. He sat in the tower, rocking back and forth. Every breath carried the smell of burning fish and burning fur and hair aflame. Between her soothing words he heard the Lhosir scream, howling with rage and fury and pain and, at the very last, a deep and horrible fear.

He didn’t close his eyes to sleep that night. He was far too afraid of what he might see.

B
eyard paused and stared at the Marroc woman Arda and wondered what he was doing. Only the Fateguard themselves could understand what it meant to be made into an ironskin, a man who served the Eyes of Time. Much was lost, many things that other men took for granted and would never willingly have forgone, and almost all those the Eyes of Time chose were given no say in becoming a Fateguard. Yet it was not all loss. With the iron and the sleepless eyes and the ever-present chill and the little need for food and rest there came an instinct for what was proper and what was wrong, what was fated and what was chance, what was a man’s destiny and what was not. This was the instinct that had made Beyard let Gallow go in Middislet, the same instinct again in Hrodicslet. Something lay between them. Their fates had been entwined for a full score years and would not unravel so easily.

So he told himself, and he told himself too that it couldn’t simply be that Gallow had once been his friend or that he was a better man than Sixfingers and always had been. The Fateguard had no friends, and fate cared nothing for right and wrong.

He followed the trail from Hrodicslet up into the mountains, tracing the path Gallow had made coming down. Snow began to fall, and for two nights and one day they were forced to wait in a Marroc farm while a blizzard wiped away every trace of every track that had existed before. When it was gone and the last snowflakes had settled, Beyard looked up at the sky, at the parting clouds, and smiled and followed anyway. Gallow had walked this road. He’d carried Solace for three long years and he left traces of his fate like a wounded man dripped blood.

He wasn’t sure what it meant, this thing that lay between him and Gallow now. He passed through Jodderslet and didn’t have all the Marroc there killed, even though he knew he probably should. His thoughts were distracted, and the more he sought for meaning, the more it seemed to elude him. He crossed into the Varyxhun valley through the Devil’s Caves with every intention of returning to the castle. Gallow would come. He would come for his Marroc wife as surely as the sun would rise each dawn but the walls of Varyxhun would make him pause.

In sight of the city he stopped. Between him and the castle stood a host of Lhosir warriors. There must have been almost a thousand of them, and that, by Beyard’s reckoning, accounted for nearly every Lhosir man in Varyxhun and almost half in the entire valley.

He stopped and watched. He was still watching when two riders broke away and galloped straight to him. ‘Ironskin,’ they called, breathless. ‘Cithjan summons you!’ And when Beyard stood before the man he was supposed to serve, Cithjan looked like he didn’t even begin to understand why everything had turned out the way it had. Beyard pitied him for him for that.

‘My Fateguard vanishes and now the whole valley is on the brink of revolt! Where in the Maker-Devourer’s cauldron have you been?’

‘Hunting Gallow Foxbeard.’ Beyard gave that a moment to sink in. He drew Solace from its scabbard and held it up for Cithjan to see.

‘Is that . . .?’

‘Yes.’ Beyard put the sword away. ‘I will leave the valley and take it to King Medrin when I can take the Foxbeard to him as well.’

‘The Foxbeard is
here
?’

Beyard bowed his head a fraction. ‘I have something he wants and so he will come to me. As I no longer need to hunt him, I am at your disposal until he does. Is there a war? Have the Vathen entered the Crackmarsh again? Has Valaric the Mournful called us to the field at last?’

Words tumbled out of Cithjan’s mouth as he spoke of the Marroc of Witches’ Reach – how they’d taken the tower and slaughtered two Lhosir attacks almost to the man. How they’d held the Reach for twenty days and sent messengers across the bridge to the outlaw Valaric to call for his aid. How Varyxhun simmered with discontent.

‘Let Valaric come. I have a prisoner to be taken on to Varyxhun . . .’ He hesitated. Was that best? Foolish not to send her, but Gallow would go to her, not to him. ‘No. I will keep her close.’ He felt the uncertainty drain away. This was the right thing. ‘I will lead your army, Cithjan.’ Beneath his iron mask Beyard almost smiled.

The Marroc had wiped out the Lhosir in the shaft under Witches’ Reach without losing a single man. When it was finished, Achista sent the last of the walking wounded with the severed heads of the Lhosir to the Aulian Bridge and on across the river, past Issetbridge, which guarded the mountain road to the Varyxhun valley, searching again for the men of the Crackmarsh. Addic went up the valley, murmuring and whispering in every tavern and inn where there were no forkbeards watching. The other Marroc Achista released were never meant to come back, but Addic wouldn’t allow himself to be sent away and so Oribas went with him, and everyone knew that Achista had sent them both so they wouldn’t be in the tower when the end came – all except Oribas and Addic, who had every intention of defying her.

They passed a few small bands of Lhosir heading for the tower but not enough to take it. They watched a party walking down from the Devil’s Caves with a Marroc woman and the iron devil at their head and kept well away. They passed along the valley in secret, spreading their word until they found the Lhosir army from Varyxhun and then they watched it. In the valley Marroc came and went without being seen. In the winter chill, wrapped up in furs, even an Aulian passed unnoticed.

Addic watched the forkbeards trudging the Varyxhun Road. ‘They’re scared,’ he said.

Oribas thought the Lhosir looked more angry than scared, but he kept this to himself. For the next three days the army moved slowly, swamping every village it reached. Most of the Lhosir slept in tents, which it seemed none of them liked. They crept along, stripping the valley of food and firewood as they went, almost deliberately slow. Addic and Oribas kept behind them, riding stolen Lhosir horses and covering five times as much ground, sweeping from side to side, heading into the high valleys the army left untouched. The Marroc were scared, everywhere scared, but angry too, and Oribas felt that more and more as they drew close to Witches’ Reach again. People had seen the forkbeard heads strewn across the road, had heard the tales of bodies left out on the bridge night after night. Everywhere they went Addic spread the call:
Rise and throw the forkbeards down!
He burned with a barely held hunger. ‘They’re ready, Oribas. Just one more spark to light their fire, just one.’

Oribas wasn’t so sure that a mere spark would be enough, but he kept that to himself too.

‘Do you have any tricks to defeat this army?’ Addic asked when the Lhosir were only a day away from Witches’ Reach.

‘I might suggest ways to defeat a few dozen here, a handful there, but this many?’ Oribas shook his head. ‘Melt away. Burn the tower for all to see and leave them with nothing. Take your secret paths and ways through the high valleys and strike at them somewhere else. They’ve made this army now and so they must use it. Strike them again and again, always out of reach. You have the speed, they have the strength. Take their city, take their castle, any town you wish. Draw them hither and yon and never face them. Make them look like fools.’

After the sun had set and they were left to stare down the mountain at the Lhosir fires, Addic chuckled and shook his head. ‘You’re right, Aulian, but you also haven’t been here very long. Do you know what they’d do? Everywhere we went, they’d burn it flat. They’d burn Varyxhun. If they had to, they’d burn every Marroc out of this valley and simply leave.’ He bared his teeth. ‘What use am I inside the walls now? You go back to her, Aulian. You’ll be her strength. You’ll show her ways to kill forkbeards that I’d never see.’ He stood up.

‘This many of them?’ Oribas shook his head. ‘It’ll be over in the first day. They’ll swarm over the walls in a hundred places at once.’

‘Then I’m glad I won’t be there to see it.’ He stood up. ‘If every Marroc kills a forkbeard before he dies then the valley will be free of them quickly enough. Cithjan is here. I mean to take him. Another spark struck at the waiting fire. Tell my sister I love her. Get her out of there if you can. Drag her if you have to. Farewell, Oribas. It was good to know a proper wizard.’

He walked away down the mountain towards the Lhosir and Oribas watched him go. He felt lost. Bereft. They’d have no chances to flee after this. He’d go back to the tomb, back to Witches’ Reach; he’d stand by Achista and they’d either die together or the miracle she hoped for would come and the Marroc would rise before the Reach fell, but Oribas didn’t believe in miracles.

Or he could walk away. Not like Addic, but the other way. Turn his back on Witches’ Reach and the Lhosir who surrounded it. It deserved a thought, at least, and yet if it did, he couldn’t come up with one. The idea of not going back was inconceivable. Perhaps that was the most frightening thing of all. He’d rather die under a storm of Lhosir swords even though those swords terrified him.

He reached into his satchel without really knowing why and pulled out a tiny leather pouch closed tight with twine and sealed with wax. He only understood when he stared at it. A soporific. He started to laugh. The most preposterous idea of them all, that he might slip a poison into Achista’s drink and put her to sleep and then carry her away past Marroc and Lhosir alike. Absurd, and even if he managed it then she’d hate him. Besides, he couldn’t possibly get her down the Aulian shaft. He shook his head, put the pouch back into his satchel and looked around for anything else that might magic away a thousand Lhosir soldiers. Nothing. Yes, he might poison a few of them, make a few dozen too ill to fight. He might conjure fire a few more times before his powders were gone, but to what end? He couldn’t save her, not this time.

He held his head in his hands. Addic had gone to his death in the Lhosir camp because he couldn’t bear to see his sister at the end. That was one thing Oribas could do. He could make a poison so that when the end did come the Lhosir wouldn’t have her. After a while he rose and left, traversing the mountainside. A part of him said he should go after Addic, as if that would somehow do some good, and he was too busy wondering about that to notice when he crossed tracks in the snow where two other men had come down the mountain a little earlier in the twilight.

Addic slunk down the mountain and stopped a hundred paces short of where the Lhosir sentries should be. He couldn’t see them though, which troubled him. He could see the forkbeards’ fires and the edge of their camp and knew their sentries should be out in the darkness beyond. So he
ought
to be able to see them.

He was in the middle of frowning about that when he saw a subtle movement on the slope ahead.

He wasn’t alone.

‘S
he talked about you all the time.’ Tolvis Loudmouth knelt at the fringe of the Lhosir camp beside one of the sentries he’d killed and beckoned Gallow forward. Loudmouth was dressed in mail under his furs now, with a helm and a shield and a spear all stolen from the sentry. ‘Always, Gallow did this, Gallow did that.’ He put the other sentry’s helm on Gallow’s head and wrapped his furs around Gallow’s face.