The Crimson Shield (6 page)

Gallow rose and left. Outside the door Arda took his arm and pulled him away across the yard and into the workshop where Nadric was sitting by his anvil.

‘We’ve decided.’ She looked him in the eye. ‘We’ll ransom him.’

Nadric nodded slowly. Gallow shook his head. ‘No.’

‘Yes!’ Arda hissed. ‘He’s nothing but grief and another hungry mouth, and we can barely feed the ones we have. What happens if anyone finds him here? The Vathen will kill
us all and burn our homes. They’ll burn the whole village! If any of the others find out he’s here,
they
will go to the Vathen.
They
will be rewarded and
we
will be killed. There’s no other way that makes sense. We sell him to the Vathen. It’s decided.’

‘No.’ Gallow looked at them both. ‘If you do this then I’ll burn our home myself with both of you inside it. He means to leave in the morning. No one will know he’s
here and he’ll be gone before any Vathan could get here. Think on how
that
will seem. No. He’ll leave us a fine horse and the spoils it carries to keep us fed and we’ll
have done what was right. Let that be enough.’

‘Your Prince Medrin is in Andhun,’ said Nadric. He tried, when Gallow and Arda set against one another, to be the voice of reason, always a thankless task. ‘Could we not ransom
him there instead?’

Arda spat. ‘Why, when we could give him to the Vathen and he could get what he deserves?’

Gallow turned away. In their eyes he’d brought an enemy into their house. He understood that. They were Marroc, and Corvin was the Screambreaker from across the sea who’d led armies
against their people and conquered their king in the name of his own. What they thought hardly mattered though. The Screambreaker had said he would be gone, and so he would, and that would be that
and he’d either reach Andhun alive or he wouldn’t.

They slept in the main part of the house that night, leaving the Screambreaker the night room with the curtains closed around him. In the early hours before the dawn he woke them all with a
scream, wild with fever. He was not gone in the morning, nor the one after, nor the one after that. Each night Gallow thought he would die. Each day Arda prayed for it, and yet she tended to him as
she would have tended to her own children, even as he denied her and his heart kept beating. As far as Gallow could see, no one said a word of it outside his walls. The Marroc of Middislet looked
at him just as they always did. With disdain, a sneer and a little fear.

T
he Vathen gathered around the dying Marroc. There wasn’t much left of him. Just a bloodied sack of flesh and bones hung from the branches of
a tree by his wrists and ankles. They’d tortured him, beating and flaying him with bundles of wiry sticks. They’d been doing it for hours. The sticks were vicious, splitting the skin
like whips as often as not.

‘He’s done.’ Gosomon threw his bundle away. ‘He’s got nothing more to say.’

The rest of them nodded. The air among them changed. Hostility ebbed and a question grew in its place. Eyes shifted from the dying Marroc to Krenda Bashar.
And?

‘The Screambreaker isn’t with them.’ Krenda Bashar nodded to himself. Nodded to the gods who’d dealt him this pot of shit. He grabbed the dying Marroc by the hair and
pulled up his head. ‘There was a Lhosir with you when you fled the battle. You found a clearing and the remnants of a skirmish.’ The Marroc had had a gold-handled Lhosir knife tucked
into his belt when they’d taken him. Krenda waved it under his face. ‘You found Beymar Bashar’s ride, all of them dead, and plenty of dead forkbeards too. You had a fine old time
looting the bodies. Afterwards the Lhosir who was with you suddenly wasn’t there any more. You have no idea whether he took a horse. You have no idea if he took anyone with him. You have no
idea whether he found another forkbeard alive or took away one of the dead. You don’t even know who he was except his name. Gallow. You have no idea where he went or why. Am I missing
anything? Oh, and this all happened two whole days ago, so by now he could be pissing
anywhere
!’ He didn’t wait for the Marroc to answer. With a sudden jab, he stabbed the
Lhosir knife into the Marroc’s neck and let him bleed out. ‘Mollar and Feyrk!’ he cursed. ‘Gosomon, take your ride and go after the rest of these Marroc. Maybe one of the
others knows more. Find where this Lhosir went and who he is.’
Andhun, surely. Where else?
‘If he’s gone to ground, it’ll be in the Crackmarsh. That’s about a
day’s ride straight south. Huge mess of a place. Mostly under water this time of year. You can’t miss it, but if he’s hiding in there and you somehow manage to find him then
I’ll have you made the next ardshan.’

Gosomon snorted as Krenda Bashar climbed back into his saddle. ‘Going back to Fedderhun are you, Bashar? Back to your woman? A couple of soft nights while
we
sleep in the
mud?’

Krenda Bashar’s face turned sour. ‘I’ll join you again in a few days, Gosomon. Gulsukh won’t like it, but if the Screambreaker is on his way to Andhun then maybe he can
get there first if he moves fast. He’d want to know that. But find him for me, Gosomon. Make me look less stupid that I am, eh? I tell you what – you find him, you can have Mirrahj for
your own wife, if she doesn’t knock you out first, and I’ll take a woman who’s still got a use to her – how about that? Oh, and if you pass any Marroc, have the sense to
ask.’ He patted the little bag of silver hanging from his saddle. ‘Show them a little of something that shines.’

He kicked his horse into a canter and turned for Fedderhun.

V
athen or no, Fenaric the carter and his sons headed off for Fedderhun as they did every year before Shieftane. The whole of Middislet came out to
watch them go, clapping their hands at their bravery or else shaking their heads at such foolishness. Gallow thought they were stupid, so of course Arda thought they were brave and pointedly went
out to tell them so before they left. A week later they were back, alive and well. They even had what they’d gone looking for, barrels of Fedderhun beer. Fenaric drew up his cart in the
middle of the village and stopped and waited while everyone gathered around him.

‘Well they haven’t burned it down!’ He sat calmly on the back of his wagon, used to being the centre of attention.

‘There’s Vathen everywhere!’ His sons were more wide-eyed. ‘They look so strange. Short and faces the colour of Harnshun clay and eyes as dark as a forkbeard’s
soul.’

‘Hundreds of them! Thousands!’

‘There’s people running away too. The roads are full of them.’

Fenaric patted the barrels and nodded sagely. ‘Aye. But these Vathen prefer their own brews over good Fedderhun beer and they haven’t gone burning anything down, not yet.
There’s a few folk keeping on—’

He wasn’t allowed to finish. ‘They’re marching on Andhun!’

‘They’re eating all the food and—’

‘That’s where the real fight’s going to be.’

‘I heard the Sword of the Weeping God is coming! Out from the swamps far to the east. They’re bringing the red curse back!’

Fenaric looked from side to side, drawing his audience in. ‘They do say that, yes.’ He looked sombre.

Later on Gallow passed the news to Corvin. The fever had broken but it had left the Screambreaker as weak as a child. ‘Another two or three days and you’ll be strong enough to ride.
I’ll go with you to Andhun.’

‘No need, bare-face. I’ll leave tonight.’

He said that every day, when he was conscious enough to say anything at all. Gallow shrugged. For once he might actually mean it. ‘Then I’ll leave your horse saddled for you, because
you won’t be managing that without help and tonight you
will
be on your own. It’s the festival of Shiefa. Fenaric has brought ale back from Fedderhun. You’d stand a
better chance if you waited a few days more. I’m sure you know it. But . . .’ He paused. ‘If you don’t want to be seen then tonight is a good night for slipping
away.’

The Screambreaker’s brow furrowed. ‘Ale back from Fedderhun, did you say? Your carter must be an unusually brave man. Are you sure it’s not horse piss?’

‘The Vathen never had much taste for Marroc beer. They ferment milk, don’t they?’

‘They do. Sour stuff.’ The furrows on his brow wouldn’t leave. He let out a long sigh and shook his head. ‘If I were you I might ask him how he paid the Vathen. I think I
will
leave tonight.’ The Screambreaker spat. ‘Shiefa? Some Marroc god?’

‘The lady of the summer rains.’

Corvin shook his head. ‘You have a god for everything. I never understood the need for so many. The Maker-Devourer is enough for me.’

‘It’s their way.’ Gallow gave the Screambreaker a long look. ‘They’ll be celebrating tonight. If your heartsong says you have to go, I’ll make it easy for
you. No food, no water, no shelter, no help, riding into a battle from the wrong side, all of those will be trials enough. The house and the road will both be empty tonight. Everyone should be in
the big barn. Wait until dark and no one will see you, or if they do then they’ll be too drunk to be sure you’re not a ghost. For what my words are worth, I ask you to wait. I’d
come with you to guide you there. I know this country better than you, and if Andhun falls then Yurlak will need you.’

The Screambreaker roared, ‘Maker-Devourer! Andhun has walls and the sea! It won’t fall to a horde of bloody Vathan horse lovers no matter how many of them there are!’ He turned
away with nothing more to say. Gallow went out to Nadric’s workshop and finished off a few simple jobs that the old man was working on. Better to let Nadric get himself ready. The Marroc
grudgingly let Gallow into the big barn to drink ale with them these days, as long as he kept to the shadows and didn’t bother anyone, but they certainly didn’t want him dressing up and
dancing and singing like he was one of them. So he stayed in the workshop, pottering from one thing to another until after dark, when everyone else was gone and Arda would be dancing with the
village men and Nadric would be swaying back and forth with a happy ale-smile on his face and the children would be asleep in a corner with the other little ones. Perhaps Jelira might still be
awake this year, yawning as though she was out to catch flies.

Before the forge fire died he lit a torch and took it into the fields, calling the two Lhosir ponies. The old general wouldn’t have the patience to stay.
Lhosir pride over simple
sense
. Arda’s words those, said about him, and when she’d said them he hadn’t understood; but now he did and they made him laugh because they were sometimes so true. In the
workshop he saddled a pony ready to go. He filled a couple of skins from the well and put cheese and some bread and some eggs into the saddlebags. Arda would see they were gone straight away and
they’d have another fight, but the Screambreaker was a guest under his roof and a Lhosir never sent away a guest without at least a first meal for the journey. He took down the
Screambreaker’s armour and laid it out piece by piece beside the horse. Last of all he left his own helm. The Screambreaker would leave a proud warrior. If the Vathen weren’t heading
south with torches to burn Marroc villages then he had no need of the helm for himself. He was a smith now, a father, living as a Marroc even if he wasn’t. He could let Arda have that much.
Peace.

He left the fire to die and walked slowly to the big barn and the bonfire outside. Music and singing and dancing filled the night. He kept to the shadows around the edges, avoiding the other
villagers as best he could. They tolerated him – just barely – throughout most of the year, but festival days were bad and today would be worse. They’d be drunk tonight and ugly.
A good few had once lost kin to a sword or a spear from across the sea and the Vathen were making them remember all over again. He waved a cup at Fenaric and took an ale from him. The carter seemed
to dislike him less than the rest, perhaps because he travelled and saw Lhosir traders now and then in Andhun and sometimes even in Fedderhun, or perhaps because he and his sons hadn’t been
born in the village and he was something of an outsider himself. Or maybe none of those things. Maybe he simply hid it better.

‘Might be better if you go home early tonight,’ murmured Fenaric. Gallow thought he was right, but he stayed for a drink because Marroc ale was a pleasure and one of the few things
that no Lhosir could reasonably say was done better across the sea. He waved his cup at Fenaric again. Drink always brought out the sea in him. He saw more clearly now: he
had
spent too
long living among the Marroc. The Screambreaker would go tonight because that’s what any Lhosir worth his beard would do. And he’d go alone, because Gallow would stay here. Because this
was where he belonged. And it would be a shame, he thought, not to share a last toast with the Screambreaker after all the years they’d fought side by side.

He held the cup carefully in front of him as he walked out of the big barn. Share a few memories and a few mouthfuls of Marroc ale with the old warrior. Have their own little festival and then
help him onto his horse and watch him go. Better for everyone that way. And besides, a man couldn’t bring a stranger into his house and call him a friend without sharing his bread and
ale.

As he reached the yard a horse snickered somewhere behind him. Lit up by the embers from the forge, a shadow flitted across the back yard. Gallow chuckled. The Screambreaker moved quickly for an
old man emerging from the grip of a fever. Maybe he wasn’t as weak as he’d seemed.

The Screambreaker’s horse was where he’d left it. The other Lhosir horse was standing beside it. Gallow froze. Then the horse he’d heard behind him wasn’t one of his. And
that shadow
had
moved too quickly.

Maker-Devourer!
He burst into life, dropping Fenaric’s cup and racing for the workshop, low and quiet and glued to the shadows. To where he kept his sword hidden. Men creeping
about his house? Someone who’d somehow found out about the Screambreaker? Who? The whole village was up in the barn! Who was missing?