The Crimson Shield (28 page)

The Vathen swarmed around him. He took a step back – had no choice or they’d be round his shield. Took another, back among those few Lhosir that were left. For a moment the
Screambreaker was open. Unguarded where Gallow’s shield should have been. Gallow watched helplessly as the onslaught battered him back. They were all over Corvin. A Vathan clawed at the
Screambreaker’s shield, pulling it away with his fingers. The red sword rose and fell, driven with such force it burst clear through the Vathan’s head. Another swung an axe and the arc
of the red sword cut both axe and man in two; yet as that Vathan fell, another lunged with his sword and another leaped at the Screambreaker, and then another and another and they bore him
staggering to the ground. Gallow screamed and swung his own axe in great circles around him, but there was no getting through. The Vathen were everywhere now. The centre of the Lhosir line had
gone. There simply weren’t any of them left.

Then finally Medrin came.

M
edrin and his five hundred swept down the hillside, spears held high, Medrin in the middle of them, the Crimson Shield gleaming in the evening
sun. A minute sooner and the Screambreaker would still have stood. A minute later and Gallow would have fallen too. The Vathen around him faltered and wavered. He swung wildly, not caring whether
or what he struck, thinking of nothing except to drive them away from the fallen Screambreaker. He smashed this way and that and then Medrin’s Lhosir swept into the swirling melee and at last
the Vathen broke and ran, colliding with their own men still marching up the hill. Gallow curled up as the Lhosir hit, and when they were past he staggered to where the Screambreaker lay still,
surrounded by a ring of corpses, his face in a pool of blood. His grey beard was black, matted with it. There was no way to know
whose
blood, but he wasn’t moving. Gallow crouched
beside him, cradling the old warrior. The roar of the battle died away, the shouts of victory mingling with the wails of the dying. Corvin looked old now, so frail and fragile and nothing like the
Screambreaker who’d stood before them at the start of the battle, telling them how the Vathen would be smashed. There was so much blood that Gallow couldn’t see the wound that had
finally brought him down. The Screambreaker was still breathing, though fast and shallow. Gallow had seen it a hundred times before: the last ragged breaths of a man as he set his sails and packed
his axe for the Maker-Devourer’s cauldron.

‘He let this happen,’ Gallow whispered. ‘Medrin. He stood and watched with his men all around him, doing nothing, waiting for you to fall. And you very nearly
didn’t.’

A coldness washed through him as the frenzy of battle slowly drained. He hadn’t really thought about what he was saying, but now the words were spoken he saw they had a truth to them.
Medrin
had
waited, and now there was no one left to stand up to him. No one left to keep him from crashing into Andhun, from slaughtering every Marroc inside, man, woman and child.

He let the Screambreaker slide back into the bloody mud. The dead littered the hillside like autumn leaves after a storm. The sun hung low and bloated and orange. It shimmered on burnished
helms, broken swords and blood-drenched mail. Solace slipped out of the old man’s fingers, almost as if he was making one last wish.
You
stop him.

Gallow looked at the red sword. His hand closed around the hilt. Medrin wanted that sword, he wanted it badly. Maybe Gallow could bargain with it. The sword for Andhun? But Medrin was the worst
nioingr
, a liar and not to be trusted. Gallow stood with the Sword of the Weeping God in his hand, looking down the hill. The Vathen were streaming away down the hillside. Bodies lay
scattered everywhere, trampled. In the dying light of the day the valley was stained by a tide of red. Like a beach at low tide after a storm, littered with debris, only here the sea had been a sea
of blood.

A last few Lhosir were standing around him, dazed and confused and wondering what to do. The Screambreaker’s men, the handful who’d survived. Old soldiers all, most of them bloody
and broken from Vathan swords and spears, staggering and close to collapse. They’d fought for hours, watched the battle slowly slip away and then watched Medrin steal it back at the last.
Gallow raised the red sword.

‘Men of the sea! You fought for the Screambreaker. Here he lies!’ He began to walk among them, pointing to the Screambreaker’s body, still surrounded by Vathan dead. ‘It
was no Vathan who killed him. Twelvefingers did this. Your prince. He waited for us to die.’

‘He gave us glory,’ said one whose arm hung uselessly at his side.

‘No. We took our own glory. Twelvefingers wants us gone. We who remember the old ways, who honour the Maker-Devourer.’ He picked a face he knew. ‘I knew you once, Thanni
Ironfoot. Jyrdas was your friend. Medrin poked out his other eye.’ Another. ‘Galdun. You too. At Selleuk’s Bridge we turned and ran, but never again. And Twelvefingers has you
guarding gates?’

But they wouldn’t listen. They were too hurt, too dimmed by their wounds and dazzled by victory. He’d end it himself then. The Red Sword raised once more against the Crimson Shield.
The Weeping God come at last to face his old brother and foe, Modris the Protector. He left the Screambreaker where he’d fallen to finish his dying among the men who remembered him best and
started off down the hill, picking his way through the dead. There were so many, Lhosir and Vathen all jumbled together, lying on top of one another; and then further on there were only Vathen. He
reached the black-armoured giant and stopped to take the belt and the scabbard of the Weeping God. On the ground the giant didn’t seem so large after all.

So many dead. Did any of them even know why the Vathen had come? Did the Vathen know themselves? He saw a few of them still alive, the injured, the crippled, the ones too frightened or damaged
to move. They watched him fearfully but he let them be. There was only one man left on this battlefield he wanted to add to the tally of the dead.

He began to pass Lhosir moving among the bodies, looting them while it was still light. Men who’d lost their spears and their axes, their helms, searching among the dead for weapons,
stripping boots and hauberks, plucking out arrows, collecting javelins before night fell and the battlefield belonged to the wolves. The sun had touched the hills now. It would be too dark to chase
the Vathen down before long, and so the Screambreaker’s design had a flaw after all. The Vathen wouldn’t be scattered. They’d come again in the morning, if they had the will for
it.

‘Medrin?’ The Lhosir he passed pointed down into the valley where the last shouts of fighting still echoed; and as the sun sank behind the hills he found the prince marching back up
the slope of the battlefield with Horsan and a dozen more of his men around him. They stopped when they saw Gallow. Medrin spread his arms wide.

‘Truesword! Look at us! Victorious once again.’ He squinted at Gallow. ‘How many Vathen came to this field today? My men say thirty thousand marched through Fedderhun. The
Screambreaker said it was more like twenty-five and my own eyes say more like twenty. But still, four or five times our numbers, and look at them, Gallow. Look! When word of this crosses the sea,
more will come. We’ll march across their nation as the Screambreaker marched across the Marroc!’

All the while his eyes were locked on the sword. Gallow held it up in the orange light of the dying sun. ‘Is this what you’re looking for?’

‘We saw the Screambreaker take down the Vathan giant and take his sword, every one of us. His legend is complete. But . . . how is that
you
carry it now, Gallow?’

‘The Screambreaker fell while you stood at the top of the hill and did nothing.’

‘He’s gone?’ Medrin didn’t even bother trying to sound troubled or surprised.

‘He is.’

‘Give me the sword, Gallow.’ Medrin held out his hand. ‘Give me the sword. I will carry it in his name, for his memory, and you will march beside me. The sword and the shield
together. No one will stand before the Lhosir.’

‘
You?
’ Gallow spat at his feet. ‘Carry it in
his
memory?’ He pointed the sword at Medrin. ‘And when your father dies, shall we build his pyre from
a pile of turds too? Do you imagine I’ve forgotten the temple of the Fates, Medrin? You and Beyard and I? The Screambreaker told me you’d changed, you were now a man whose beard was
fine and strong, but I’ve watched you and I do not believe that to be so. Where were you when Jyrdas and Tolvis and I opened the gates of the monastery for you? How was it that one of your
men struck Jyrdas in the back? And when he
still
wouldn’t die, you finished the work yourself!’

‘Jyrdas spoke words that could not be left unanswered!’ Medrin’s face darkened.

‘You let the Screambreaker die. You waited for him to fall.’

‘No, Gallow. I waited for the moment when the Vathen would break. And they did.’

‘This victory is his. It could not have been without him.’

Medrin nodded. ‘True enough.’ He held out his hand again. ‘Now give me the sword, Gallow.’ For a moment his face changed. He looked sad, almost pained. ‘I need it
to put something right.’ He nodded at Gallow. ‘All those years ago.’

‘I will not give it to a
nioingr
!’

A stillness swept over the Lhosir. They stopped whispering to each other and stared.

‘
Nioingr!
’ declared Gallow again. ‘You’re not fit to crawl across the mud he walked, Twelvefingers. You’re a coward and a liar. I call you again.
Nioingr!
’

Called three times. There was no turning back from that, and now Medrin had to answer with steel, and then Gallow would kill him no matter what shield he carried.

But Medrin only laughed. Not just laughed, but threw back his head and howled while his men looked uncertainly at one another. ‘And who are you, Gallow? Or what? Here are my words, then,
to answer your slur, for
I
have not forgotten that day in the Temple of Fates either. Yes, I ran, that’s true and shameful. But what fate befell
you
, Gallow? Nothing, though
it was
your
foolishness that betrayed us. Never caught? Never punished? I’ve long held that against you, Gallow, for it was you I thought of as I watched a man I called a friend cast
away by my own father and taken across the cold seas to the icy castle of the Eyes of Time. How was it that
you
, Gallow, didn’t suffer the same fate? Yet you brought the
Screambreaker to Andhun and he spoke for you. “Pay no heed to his clean chin,” he told me. “This is Gallow Truesword who fought with me against the Marroc. A fine man worthy of
his beard and he has not changed, not in his heart. Grown strong now by the forge of war.” And so I offered you a place at my side again to see the shield we sought once before. An effort to
look past the friend I lost, yet my reward for such trust? You turn my men against me. Tolvis, Jyrdas, how many minds did you poison with your lies? And when that wasn’t enough, when the
shield was mine for the taking, finally we all saw the truth of Gallow Truesword, the bitterness and the envy. I take your name and give you another: Gallow Foxbeard. From this time hence that is
how you shall be known and remembered by those who care to remember you at all. And how is it, Gallow Foxbeard, that I left you bound among the Marroc and yet here you are? How is it that you
escaped Andhun when the streets ran with traitors baying for Lhosir blood? Did you not walk openly to the gates? Did they not throw them wide for you? Why weren’t you killed, clean-skin?
Because you’re one of them and you’ve turned against your own kind, that’s why.’

Gallow hurled himself forward, howling. ‘
Nioingr!
Kin-traitor!’ He swung the sword as he ran and the air seemed to moan like ghosts around him, but Medrin didn’t step
forward and the Lhosir around him moved to block Gallow’s path. ‘You let the Screambreaker die! Him and all those like him. The ones who would have stood up to you for the old ways. You
let them all die.’ He hacked at the first man to stand in his way; Solace struck the other man’s blade and shattered it, sending shards of steel flying. The Lhosir lurched back as the
red sword clove the air an inch from his face, but another one stepped in and lunged at Gallow.

‘Let him die? And what could you see from where you stood, pressed hard up against the Vathen? What did you see of my men on the hill? Nothing! And yes, I dare say you fought with courage
and strength, all the easier when you’re watching your enemies butcher one another. Do you want to know what I did while you fought so hard? I sat on my horse and did nothing but watch! No,
no honour or glory for Medrin Twelvefingers.’ He was snarling now, his fist clenched on the hilt of the ornate Marroc sword he carried. Gallow lunged at another of the Lhosir standing in his
way and drove them back, but only for a moment before they pressed around him again. ‘And when my warriors wavered, I rode my men to rally the left and then to the right, because the centre
held firm, always, even though that was where the Vathen pressed the hardest. And why? Because the Screambreaker was there and he had no need of this Crimson Shield or that sword you carry.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘I saw who was beside him at the end, Foxbeard. Whose sword was it that dealt him that fatal blow? Was it Vathan or was it yours?’

Gallow howled with rage and swung at the Lhosir around him. They kept their distance, still uncertain and wary of the red sword but not afraid of him either. Waiting for Medrin’s
order.

‘You would have me spare Andhun for their treachery,’ said Medrin mildly. ‘I know the bargain you struck with the Screambreaker.’ Six of Medrin’s men were around
him, and now Horsan stepped in front of him while the others moved to encircle him. Gallow backed away. He slashed at the haft of one man’s spear, cutting it in two; the man threw it at him,
catching him in the chest and winding him, then drew an axe. Gallow staggered back. They were all advancing on him now. ‘But Andhun was not his to give you, Foxbeard; Andhun is mine. The
Marroc who came out to fight the Vathen, they’ll be honoured as they deserve. The rest? The rest burn!’ He slammed the Crimson Shield into the ground and the earth shook. Gallow almost
fell, while the soldiers around him paused, awed and stunned by the power of the shield. ‘Kill this sheep, Horsan. I’ll not dirty myself with him.’