Authors: Nathan Hawke
I
t was more than a week before Torvic returned, and when he did he came with three other grim-faced Crackmarsh men. Arda waved them into the house and they tied up their mules and came inside, pleased to be out of the gales blowing from the Storm Coast. While the other Marroc exchanged greetings with Nadric – because he was the man of the house – Torvic went back outside and Arda went with him. He had two enormous hams. ‘No flour,’ he said. ‘But I’ve got this.’ He passed her a bag of cured fish strips, tough and oily and salty and delicious. ‘Valaric thanks you for your kindness. We’ll take the arrowheads. After that . . .’ Torvic scratched his beard.
Arda hoisted one of the hams over her shoulder and turned to go, keen to be out of the wind, but Torvic put a hand to her arm and caught her. He leaned in close. ‘There’s a band of Vathen about. They sacked Hrodicslet. About a week ago. They burned what would burn and took a few slaves and chased off everyone else. Seems like they’re looking for a way across the Crackmarsh. Could be they’ll come here before long.’ They were face to face now, close, Torvic looking at her intently. She felt her pulse quicken. Stupid really, but she hadn’t had anyone stand so close to her since Witches’ Reach and it made her think of Gallow in all the good ways she was trying to forget. She took a step back, giving herself a little space.
Torvic raised his voice over the wind. ‘We followed them
most of the way here. They were pushing a hundred. They turned north but that doesn’t mean they won’t be back.’
Back in the house the stale air was a relief. Jelira was staring at a soldier who couldn’t have been much older than she was, and he was staring back, and they were both smiling and looking away and then looking back and smiling again, and Arda wasn’t having any of
that
, not with a man from the Crackmarsh who’d vanish at the drop of a hat and probably be dead before the year was out. She slid the ham off her shoulder and thrust it at Jelira. ‘You can take this out to the workshop and hang it round the back where the birds and the rats won’t get at it.’
The young soldier began to get to his feet. Arda glared at him until he squatted down again.
‘The Vathen must have passed only a few miles from here.’ Torvic shook his head. ‘Heading for Fedderhun, and in a hurry.’ He was looking at Nadric now, a steady gaze full of some meaning that filled Arda with unease. ‘Haven’t seen the Vathen come so far south in a while. They’re looking for something. Only a matter of time before they come back.’
Arda fixed Torvic with a hard stare. He was leading to something, if only he’d spit it out. Only he was gazing at Nadric, as though she didn’t count, and she wasn’t having
that
either. ‘Well, if they do then we’ll be sure to be nice to them.’
Torvic reached into the bag he’d given Arda and helped himself to a fish strip. He cocked his head. ‘Valaric could make good use of anyone who knows their way around a forge. In Varyxhun.’
‘How interesting.’ Moving the forge then, that’s what he wanted, and when she looked at the three men he’d brought with him, she wondered if that was why they’d come. ‘Any travelling smiths come through, I’ll be sure to mention it.’ She glared at Torvic, trying to make sure he understood she wasn’t moving anywhere for anyone, not now, and he’d
said his piece and now could he please have the sense to let it go?
‘We’ll be here a few days,’ he said. ‘Going to head north and have a look around between here and Fedderhun. Keep an eye in case there’s more Vathen on the move. You mind if we leave the mules here with you?’
‘You do that.’ Arda’s voice had a finality to it. ‘You’re welcome to stay under my roof as long as you’re here. Mules too.’
Torvic smiled. He had an easy smile, not forced. ‘That’s kind of you, Arda Smithswife. When we’re back, we’ll talk a bit more about what we’ve seen.’ And the forge, she supposed. He’d talk about the forge and moving it and her and all of them up into the mountains again where Gallow had sent them three years back. She’d be buggered if she was going to let that happen a second time.
She nodded. ‘You do that, Torvic. I’ll be made of ears.’
Torvic took his Crackmarsh men and left the next morning, nice and early. The Vathen had had a beardless forkbeard among the slaves they’d taken but he hadn’t seen any need to mention that. Might have been Gallow, might not. Either way he reckoned Arda didn’t want to know and so he kept his peace and made sure the others did too. They all knew who Gallow was. They’d all followed the Wolf to Witches’ Reach and seen what happened there.
He sent two of his men north-west, scouting the fringes of the marsh in case the Vathen were doing the same. He kept the young one, Reddic, close, with his eyes for Arda’s daughter, and trudged up the north road towards Fedderhun until they picked up the trail of the Vathen from Hrodicslet. The Vathen were travelling too fast to catch on foot but Torvic followed them anyway until he was sure he knew where they were heading: north and west to the coast road and Andhun. Then he turned north and for another
day they followed the winding waters of the Fedder. The winds off the Storm Coast fell away and the air grew still. A bitter cold drifted out from the Ice Mountain Sea and settled over the land.
By the time they slunk into Fedderhun, the ground was freezing at night and it was snowing again. They spoke to the Marroc there and kept their ears open but all they got was a name: Mirrahj Bashar, who’d taken her ride south to look for a passage around the far side of the Crackmarsh and had never come back. By the sound of things, no one had expected her to. Full of ghuldogs and Marroc bandits, the Crackmarsh. Torvic often wondered whether there might be some way to get the forkbeards and the Vathen into the Crackmarsh at the same time, have them kill each other in the swamps and water meadows and then let the ghuldogs finish them off while the Marroc just watched it all happen. Fat chance, but it was a nice dream.
The Vathen around Fedderhun helped themselves to whatever took their fancy and largely left the Marroc fishermen of the town alone. They didn’t seem to be doing anything much except kicking their heels and as far as Torvic could tell most of them didn’t want to be there at all. They wanted to be in their home pastures for the winter, curled up in their tents, not here in this godsforsaken outpost. They were here because someone had told them to be and so they were making the best of it until whoever that someone was allowed them home. Or so it seemed to Torvic.
They learned as much as they could, which seemed like it wasn’t much at all, and left after a couple of days, and they were hardly out of the town when the snow started again. It fell steadily all through the day, thick and heavy, covering the land with white and then, as the light faded, the clouds cleared away to the south and Torvic was looking up at a deep blue sky. They’d need more than a fire and some warm furs out in the open tonight, but it wasn’t much of a worry.
Nice thing about moving through this part of the world: the farms were scattered and easily missed but they were there if you looked for them, and the Marroc who lived here were happy to share their fires and their shelter and even a little food to hear a few travellers’ tales. And there weren’t any forkbeards, but there
were
old friends here and there.
Torvic stopped at a house with a pair of small barns nestled beside it in a hollow, almost snow-bound already, and banged on the door. When a scar-faced Marroc opened it, Torvic grinned, and the scarred Marroc hugged him and dragged him inside.
‘Stannic. Long time.’
‘Torvic!’ Stannic let him go and looked Reddic up and down. ‘This lad yours?’
Torvic shook his head, chuckled to himself – no daughters here for Reddic to make eyes at, thank Diaran! – and sent Reddic back outside to settle the mules and strip their saddles; and by the time he came back Stannic’s wife had fetched some cheese and milk and a few turnips, and Stannic had opened a jug of mead and his three young boys were peering from behind the curtain to the night room with eyes hungry for stories and the evening was looking very comfortable indeed.
‘He ever tell you about Lostring Hill?’ asked Stannic as soon as Reddic sat down, and then he told the story anyway, even though Reddic had heard it a dozen times by now, about how he and Torvic and Sarvic and the two Jonnics and a few others had fought the Vathen with Valaric the Wolf, and how they’d run away with a forkbeard who’d turned out to be Gallow Foxbeard. Reddic listened as though he’d never heard it before, which made Torvic smile even more. By the time he was done, the food was gone, the fire was dying and the eyes gazing out from the night room had long since closed.
‘The Vathen came as far south as the Crackmarsh after,’
said Stannic as they settled down for the night. ‘Valaric ever tell you that story, Torvic?’
Torvic nodded, because yes, he knew all about it, and so did anyone who’d lived through Andhun and the months afterwards, but then he saw Reddic shake his head. Reddic was too young to have been at Lostring Hill or at Andhun after. The first forkbeards had probably come from across the sea before Reddic was even born. To him they were simply the way of the world. Hadn’t stopped him running away to the Crackmarsh though.
Stannic belched. ‘Lad, you’ve heard of the Widowmaker, curse his soul, the Nightmare of the North? That was who the forkbeards sent to hold the Vathen outside Fedderhun. Well he lost, didn’t he, and it was Valaric who found him after the battle, out of his senses, and he let the Widowmaker go. Let Gallow take him away.’ He jerked his head down the track towards Middislet and the Crackmarsh. ‘That’s why half of Middislet looks like it was only put up yesterday. Vathen tore a good piece of it down.’ He poked the fire with a stick and watched the sparks rise with the smoke.
Reddic leaned sideways and let out a long fart. ‘Did they find him?’
‘The Widowmaker? He died fighting them outside Andhun the day before the city fell.’
‘I knew
that
.’
‘Well, how’d you think he got to be at Andhun a month later if the horse shaggers had found him Middislet?’ Stannic laughed and shook his head.
‘Could have escaped.’
‘No. He got away.’ Stannic stared into the flames, remembering, and Torvic stared too, remembering much the same, fleeing through the woods with Valaric and the Foxbeard and then the two Vathan horses and the rest and the aftermath of the battle, and then the days after, riding for Andhun. He looked suddenly up at Stannic.
‘You ever face him? The Nightmare of the North?’
‘Go against him?’ Stannic shook his head and laughed. ‘Never wanted to go and fight when I was younger. Scared, I suppose. I was about the age of your lad here when the Widowmaker came and I didn’t have the balls to run away and be a Crackmarsh man even if there’d been such a thing. Forkbeards didn’t come by these parts for years, and when they did they weren’t as bad as everyone said they’d be, not back then. That was after Tane died and Varyxhun fell. Just wanted to go home, I think. Most of them did, too.’
Reddic looked awed. Torvic grinned. Lostring Hill wasn’t something he talked about that much because everyone who hadn’t been there made out that the Marroc who’d survived the battle were heroes, whereas Torvic knew perfectly well that most of them had been shitting themselves as much as everyone else and just kept their heads a little better and got lucky. He snorted. ‘You remember the Foxbeard said he saw horses? And then he and Valaric went on their own to look, and Valaric came back and it was just him? How we all thought he’d done for the forkbeard?’ He chuckled again and looked at Reddic. ‘The Wolf only told us the truth later, and even then only because there were some Vathen who just wouldn’t stop following us until Valaric skinned a few of them to find out why. That’s when it came out. Ask Sarvic if you like – he was there too. Don’t ask Valaric though. Valaric doesn’t talk about it. He and the Foxbeard got a history . . .’
He froze. A noise. Outside. The look on Reddic’s face said he’d heard it too. Then it came again. A heavy broken shuffle, as though someone was dragging a load through the snow in long slow pulls with a good rest between each one. Reddic jumped up, startled, eyes darting from one door to the other and one hand already on his axe. ‘Forkbeards?’
Torvic shook his head. ‘Not out here.’
Stannic waved at them both to sit down. ‘Wolf maybe.
If it is then it’s got something. Leave it be. Dead of night in that cold?’
He snorted but now Torvic got up too. ‘Didn’t sound like an animal to me.’ He crept to the door and opened it. Cold air froze his face but at least the winds weren’t the gales they’d been a week ago. The moon was full and high, its light bright on the snow except where long deep shadows spilled from the wood pile and the low barns. A soldier in mail and a helm stood not more than a dozen yards in front of him. Hard to make out much in the moonlight but he had a naked sword hanging loose and long from his hand and he was too big to be a Vathan. Torvic snatched his shield from beside the door and whipped out his axe. ‘Reddic! Stannic!’ The soldier was a forkbeard. Had to be, although only Modris knew what a forkbeard was doing all the way out here. He couldn’t see the forkbeard’s eyes but he felt them staring at him, and when the forkbeard moved, he lurched a stride closer, dragging one leg as though crippled. Crippled was good. Torvic tried to tell himself that one crippled forkbeard was more a gift than something to fear but he couldn’t quite make himself believe it. One forkbeard out here all on his own? One?
Then again, the Vathen had taken a forkbeard from Hrodicslet. It made him pause a moment. He took a step closer and peered. ‘Foxbeard?’
The forkbeard took another step and this time it wasn’t so slow. His sword came up fast and lunged and Torvic barely got his shield in the way. The sword was odd. It wasn’t a forkbeard sword. Too long, Torvic thought as he brought his axe down hard on the man’s helm, not hard enough to split the iron but hard enough that the forkbeard would see stars long enough for a killing blow. But the forkbeard grabbed at his shield as though he hadn’t felt anything, and Torvic stepped back, and that was when the moon caught the forkbeard’s face and he saw it wasn’t a man at all. The
sight froze him stiff, and in that moment the shadewalker drove its long Aulian sword through Torvic’s guts and then caught him as he crumpled. While one hand still held the sword, the other grabbed Torvic by the throat and pulled him close. The shadewalker stiffened; and as it squeezed Torvic’s life out of him, its crippled leg twisted and straightened and its eyes gazed hard at the door.