Cold Redemption (21 page)

He climbed quietly back up the steps. ‘Thank you, Beyard. Thank you for that.’

‘You were my friend once.’ The iron man beckoned, eyes on Loudmouth. ‘Come, Truesword.’

Gallow followed Beyard outside. Every step felt as though he was walking through stone, as though he was wading up the steep slope of one of the great dunes from the desert that Oribas called
home. It seemed such a long way to come only to end like this.

‘It is your fate, Truesword. Set for the three of us all those years ago.’

Gallow thought about that for a bit. ‘I turned my back on that fate once.’

‘And look what it brought you.’

‘You two talk too much.’ Tolvis hurled himself at Beyard. A sword flashed in the moonlight, cutting at Beyard’s face. The Fateguard stepped back. Neither of them carried a
shield but Beyard was in his iron, covered head to toe in it, while Tolvis had a thick sheepskin night shirt and nothing else.

‘Must we do this again?’ Beyard lashed out, fast as lightning, but Tolvis danced away, quicker still and too quick for Beyard to catch. The air moaned. The Fateguard still carried
the red sword.

Tolvis howled like a wolf. ‘Come on Gallow! There’s two of us now!’

There was no reading Beyard’s face under his mask but his voice was low and cold. ‘I was kind to you last time, Tolvis Loudmouth. I won’t be kind again.’

‘That’s the sword that cut off Medrin’s hand, is it?’ Loudmouth jumped away as Beyard swung again. ‘As good as any to take my head.’ He flicked a glance at
Gallow. ‘Help me, Gallow. I can’t fight him on my own. Tried that already. If he kills me, who looks after the others?’

Beyard glared. ‘Stand your ground, Truesword. I’ll keep my word if you keep yours.’

‘And I’ve always wanted to kill a Fateguard,’ shouted Tolvis. ‘Everyone says you can’t. Everyone says the Fateguard don’t ever die but that can’t be
right. You’re just men under there.’

‘Stop, Tolvis!’ Gallow lunged to pull Loudmouth away but he was too quick.

‘And what, Truesword? Stay here and hide while you go meekly to Medrin? Damn you! I told you to make an end of him there and then.’ He shook his head. ‘I came here to give your
woman your silver and watch over your sons as a true friend might do, but I’ve broken that friendship.’ His sword clattered off Beyard’s iron arm. ‘I stayed too long.
I’ve lain with your woman and called your sons my own.’ The air screamed as Solace sliced an inch in front of Loudmouth’s face. ‘You were the one who stayed to hold the
Vathen. If one of us must die today then let it be me, Truesword, not you, not this time.’ He caught Beyard another ringing blow, this time on the hip. The Fateguard lunged, untroubled. The
tip of the Edge of Sorrows stabbed into Loudmouth’s side as he danced away.

‘Stop!’ Gallow had his axe in his hand. Beyard swung the red sword’s tip towards him at once.

‘Stand your ground, Gallow Truesword!’

Through the open door into the house the cellar swung open with a crash. Arda. Gallow turned away, hiding his face. He roared at Tolvis again but neither of them would listen. Tolvis slipped
inside Beyard’s guard. His sword skittered sparks from the Fateguard’s iron crown. Beyard cuffed him away.

‘You! Forkbeard pig-poker!’ Arda ran out behind Gallow. He knew what was coming and stepped away and had to turn. She had a half-full chamber pot, ready to crack him over the head
with it, and then she saw his face and froze and the chamber pot fell from her fingers and crashed between them, spilling itself over their feet. ‘You!’ Her mouth fell open. He’d
never seen her eyes so wide. ‘Gallow?’

‘Arda!’ He wanted to reach for her but his arms wouldn’t move and he had an axe in one hand and a shield in the other. She didn’t move either. Just stared and stared as
though she was seeing a ghost; and perhaps to her that’s what he was.

Loudmouth whooped as his sword clattered on Beyard’s armour again. ‘Sooner or later, Fateguard, I’m going to find a hole and slide this into you.’ He jumped into the
shadows of Nadric’s forge. Beyard moved slowly after him.

Now it was Nadric at the top of the cellar steps, squinting. ‘Gallow?’

Tolvis kicked a plume of ash from the forge’s firepit into Beyard’s face. The Fateguard stepped back and Tolvis lunged, stabbing at the iron man’s eyes, but Beyard caught his
blade with the Edge of Sorrows and for a moment they were pressed together. Beyard’s knee slammed up. Tolvis squealed and doubled over, threw himself back, slipped and fell.

‘Dada?’ More faces were peering up from the cellar, squeezing past Nadric and running to the open door, staring out into the yard. Pursic, the smallest of them staring at Tolvis, not
at Gallow. ‘Dada!’ Nadric tried to push the children back inside but they wriggled through his hands.

Beyard took a quick stride and stood over Tolvis. ‘Brave, Loudmouth, but stupid.’ He lifted the Edge of Sorrows ready to drive it down.

Gallow threw his axe as hard as he could, straight into Beyard’s side. It bit into the Fateguard’s iron and staggered him sideways. Beyard roared. His head snapped to Gallow and his
face lowered. ‘You’ve sealed all our fates now, old friend. None will be spared.’ He kicked Tolvis and came at Gallow, the scattered embers of the forge fire crunching under his
iron boots. Gallow drew his sword and lifted his shield and braced himself ready for the Edge of Sorrows to come.

T
he Marroc gathered in the cellars of Witches’ Reach, waiting until they were all up the shaft. Oribas looked at what the Lhosir had stored
in the cellar-tomb. Kegs of ale and mead. Sacks and sacks of flour and dried peas and beans, strings of onions. A few baskets of nuts. Certainly enough to keep a hundred Marroc fed for a few weeks.
He looked at the stone door, rolled right back now. They could close it behind them but there was no way to seal it from the inside; nor was there a way to open it again once the four seals had
been locked. Oribas found a second door like the first, the way out into the rest of the tower, wide open and half smashed apart. Whatever the Aulians had buried here was long gone. Still, he
checked through the sacks and the crates and baskets until he found some salt and filled the bag over his shoulder.

Achista beckoned the Marroc on. Beyond the second seal a staircase spiralled up into the bottom of the tower. They went up. Oribas recognised the room at once. It was hexagonal, with the stairs
in the centre and six stone benches set one into each wall. They would have been altars once, one for each of the Ascendants, but now the Lhosir used them for tables and the whole room was piled
with more crates and sacks.

Voices echoed down the staircase. Lhosir. Achista crept forward, finger to her lips and her bow in her other hand. She nocked an arrow and began up the steps. Other Marroc crowded around her,
the ones with mail and helms; when Oribas tried to follow she pushed him gently away and shook her head and so he watched anxiously as the Marroc silently inched their way up until the first
alarmed Lhosir shout came ringing down. The Marroc all started yelling and running and the men around him let out whoops and charged up the steps. Oribas found himself joining them, carried away in
the rush. They burst out into a kitchen where three Lhosir already lay dead, riddled with arrows. The Marroc rushed on, most pouring out of a door into the yard between the tower and the wall that
surrounded it, some pushing on up a flight of steep wooden steps. Sounds of fighting came from both. Oribas took the door. It was easier. He had no idea which way Achista had gone but he wanted to
be near her. It didn’t make any sense since there wasn’t anything he could do except get in the way, but he wanted it anyway.

The curtain wall of Witches’ Reach encircled the summit of the mountain with the tower built into it on the very peak. Half a dozen wooden huts and outhouses had been propped up against
the stonework: stables and a small forge and storehouses, perhaps, or hanging sheds, or maybe the Lhosir slept out here. Oribas had no idea. The gates to the road down the mountainside and the
Aulian Bridge hung open. A dozen Lhosir – some in mail, some not – were fighting twice that many Marroc. Most of the Lhosir had formed themselves into a circle of shields and the Marroc
were keeping them occupied while they brought down the ones who’d been cut off from their fellows. A wide flight of steps rose to another door, the main door into the tower. Aulian steps.
Indeed, everything about the tower was jarringly familiar. It looked like the towers Oribas knew from the desert, with their finely jointed walls in which every stone was different and no join ran
straight for long, fitted together like a jigsaw with hardly room to slip a knife blade in between them. The outer wall was more recent and a much cruder thing, stones piled haphazardly together
and thick with crumbling mortar.

The door at the top of the stairs burst open. Four Lhosir in mail hurtled out, smashing through the Marroc in the yard, cutting two men down as they went. Another dozen Marroc came after them,
shouting and screaming and waving axes. The Lhosir punched through the Marroc surrounding the circle of shields and joined it and Oribas watched in admiration: the circle opened to receive them and
closed again around them and then grew a little as the new Lhosir joined the wall. It was seamless.

‘Take them!’ screamed Achista. She stood at the top of the steps and loosed an arrow at the Lhosir. It stuck into a shield and quivered there.

The Lhosir held their ground and the yard fell still for a moment, some Marroc finishing off the men they’d caught alone, the others standing back from the Lhosir shield wall. The Marroc
outnumbered the Lhosir three or four to one but they were the ones afraid, and now that fear was turning against them. They started to back away. Oribas saw one or two Lhosir glance at the open
gates and then back at the Marroc in front of them. ‘Let them go!’ he shouted. ‘Let them run.’ That’s what Achista wanted, wasn’t it? For word to spread of their
defeat?

And then, gods preserve him, there she was, shouldering her bow and snatching an axe from the Marroc beside her and walking towards the Lhosir shields. She looked so small in her outsize mail
shirt against the men in their furs with their forked beards. They’d kill her in a blink and he couldn’t do anything, not a thing! He didn’t have a weapon, and even if he had, he
wouldn’t have had the first idea what to do with it.

One of the Lhosir pointed at her and laughed; and then all the Lhosir were shouting, taunting the Marroc around them that they were afraid and had to send a woman to do their fighting, and
Achista had pushed her way to the front of the Marroc and stood there for a moment, holding her axe, staring them down. Any moment now she’d charge them, he knew it, and then . . .

He couldn’t think what else to do. He snatched up a fistful of snow and scrunched it into a ball, let out a high-pitched cry – it probably didn’t sound frightening at all but
it was meant for his own courage – ran through the Marroc to stand beside Achista and hurled his snowball at the Lhosir. It was a good throw. It clipped a shield and broke apart into the face
of the Lhosir holding it. A few of the Marroc laughed. He grabbed another handful and hurled that too, and then another and another, and now some of the Marroc joined in, pelting the Lhosir with
snow as they stood behind their shields; and then in the midst of that someone fired an arrow and the Lhosir didn’t see it coming. It hit one in the face and he staggered back, and then other
arrows came; and perhaps one of them came from a Marroc who’d been with Oribas in the woods, for it flew low beneath the shields and struck a Lhosir in the leg. The wounded Lhosir howled and
broke from the wall, charging as best he could, flailing his axe; and again the Marroc might have lost their courage if it hadn’t been for Achista, who ran straight back at him. He batted her
away with his shield and ignored her, but now two of the Marroc in mail ran at him. The three crashed together. The Lhosir took one of the Marroc down with a huge swing of his axe and then fell a
moment later to the other. Achista picked herself up, and at that rest of the Lhosir charged. Oribas had no idea whether they were charging for the gates and escape or still thought they could win
the day, but the Marroc split and let them through, and the Lhosir must have taken that as a sign that these Marroc had no stomach to fight, for the shield wall broke apart and they fell upon the
Marroc as though they were a broken enemy, but the Marroc weren’t broken at all. They surrounded each Lhosir as they’d learned in Jodderslet. They took them down one by one, pulling
them into the snow and finishing them off with their knives; and every time a Lhosir cut one Marroc down, two more surged into him, leaping on his back, grabbing his shield, stabbing and hacking
and slashing.

The Lhosir fought to the bitter end. The last two stood back to back behind their shields and whirling axes and killed three men before the Marroc withdrew and peppered them with arrows until
they fell. Carnage filled the snow-covered yard. To Oribas it was a vision of horror but Achista was jubilant. She ran among the dazed Marroc from one to the next, grabbing them, shaking them,
showing them what they’d done. The invincible forkbeards! Beaten! Again! She went to every single one of them, to the ones who crouched beside friends or brothers whose blood now stained the
snow, touching them all. Then to the wounded, doing nothing useful except telling them how Modris would protect them and reward them for their courage. Oribas shook his head. Wounds from Lhosir
spears and swords were savage things but here were Marroc men laughing and talking through their pain, covered in their own blood, men who wouldn’t last the night.

He picked himself up and busied himself among them – treating wounds was one of the first things he’d learned. There wasn’t much he could do for some and for others he lacked
the medicines that might have saved them. But the cold of this place was his ally now. He pressed snow into wounds to staunch the blood and sent those Marroc who seemed to have nothing better to do
into the tower to look for needles and thread and to get a fire going. The axe cuts were the easiest, ragged and bloody and horrible to look at but rarely deep. He set them aside to be stitched and
cauterised. The men wounded by stabs from spears and swords were probably going to die but he did what he could for them. The Marroc watched with a mix of awe and horror when he packed wounds with
snow then stitched them half closed but still open enough to drain. A few muttered under their breath about witchcraft, but they let him be. He was the Aulian wizard, after all, who’d laid a
shadewalker to rest and opened the seal between the caves and the tower; and he was, they whispered to each other, sworn to serve the Huntress Achista who’d led them to victory at Jodderslet
and now twice more. Oribas didn’t remember swearing anything to anyone but he wasn’t going to argue. Besides, if Achista had asked him there and then for an oath he might just have
given it.