The Last Bastion (4 page)
Authors: Nathan Hawke
Oribas didn’t answer for a very long time. When he turned to look at her, his face was pale and he looked as if he’d seen a ghost.
‘What was it?’
‘A long time ago.’ He shook himself. Shivered as if trying to free himself of something. ‘A long time ago I told him that every heart is wicked. That there are no good men in the world at all, just those who have the courage to look at their own deeds with honest eyes, and those who don’t.’
A hundred fishing boats once sheltered in the sweep of Andhun Bay, protected by cliffs that swept the north-east winds from the Storm Coast up into the air and over the tops of their masts, but no more. The Marroc had taken to the sea when the Vathen came. Their ships had gone and the harbour had burned and the busiest port east of Kelfhun was gone in a single day. Few ships came now
.
It was a sight then, when a white ship sailed across the mouth of the bay, driven by the freezing winds that blew down from the Ice Wraiths of the north. She didn’t turn towards the harbour but men still stopped to look. Eyes followed her, wondering who might be coming; on both sides of the Isset they stared. In the eastern half of divided Andhun the ardshan of the Vathen paused at the window of his stolen castle and peered and then called for the Aulian tinker he’d taken to keeping around like a court fool. Across the waters of the Isset and the cliffs that kept the two halves of the city apart, the Lhosir looked with more knowing eyes, for she was a Lhosir ship and the white of her sails and her hull gave her away: she was a priest ship from the Temple of Fates on the edge of the frozen wastes, and that alone was reason to stare. White as though she carried the snow of the north through the waters with her, she passed Andhun Bay and sailed on a little way along the coast to the first cove where a party could put ashore. There she dropped her sail. Boats eased their way through the waves, and by the time they’d landed the first
party and had returned to come back with the next, Lhosir riders from the city reached the cove. They came filled with questions from their lord of Andhun but their words died in their throats. The men on the stony beach were clad in iron. There were twelve of them
.
The next boats brought men more familiar. Holy men, as far as the Lhosir had such things. Chanters of nonsense and rhyme who sent their words not to the Maker-Devourer but to the Fates themselves and to the frozen palace far to the north
.
The boats went back a second time and headed for the shore once more. The holy men cried out for all to look away but the Lhosir were too curious and unafraid to do such a thing, and so their eyes burned as the last burden of the white ship came ashore. The ones who stared the longest remembered only white and light and a terrible brightness. The ones who looked away more quickly would say afterwards that what they had seen was another of the Fateguard, armoured in an iron skin but missing chest and back plates, and that what was there instead was the whiteness of ice and the brightness of the cold winter sun and patterns of both that wove with such a brilliance that for a while they thought they were blinded
.
All understood at once what they saw: the Eyes of Time come down from the iron palace. A thing that had never happened in any remembered life
.
The Fateguard commanded the Lhosir to get down from their horses and then took them, and the Lhosir – those who could still see anything at all – were left to watch the Eyes of Time and the iron-skinned men of fate as they vanished across the hills
.
T
he wind roared and moaned and the rain beat on the roof of the forge and swirled inside, another winter storm come howling off the seas to the north. Arda stood, steadfastly ignoring it, drawing wire. The forge fire kept everything nearby comfortably warm and dry, even in the bitter tail of winter. Tathic and Pursic sat in the dirt nearby, keeping out of the rain, playing with the little wooden figures Nadric had carved for them while they’d been hiding in the Crackmarsh. Nadric wasn’t much of a carver but they had at least the suggestion of legs and arms and a head, and that was enough. Pursic jumped his toy man onto Tathic’s and the two boys started wrestling on the floor.
‘I’m Valaric the Wolf! You’re a forkbeard. Yaargh!’
Forkbeard. The word still made Arda stop. Made her look up too, eyes scanning the track to the big barn and the road beyond to Fedderhun, or else the other way, south to the Crackmarsh and then the long way round to Hrodicslet. A month ago she’d watched him leave Witches’ Reach and head south for Varyxhun. An hour later she’d followed with a dozen Crackmarsh men, but they’d quickly turned from the Varyxhun Road and followed the secret trail through the Devil’s Caves and Jodderslet. A mountain path had taken them to Hrodicslet and to the Crackmarsh, where the villagers of Middislet always hid in troubled times. To her children. To Nadric, who’d been father to the Marroc husband she’d had before the forkbeards had killed him. To
Jelira, the oldest, the one who wasn’t
his
but remembered him better than the rest. To her sons Tathic and little Pursic. To Feya, their daughter. She’d vowed she’d never let herself think of him ever again and she broke that vow every single day. Gallow. Gallow, the clay-brained, sheep-witted, onion-eyed, flap-eared clod.
The boys roughhousing on the floor thumped into her feet and stopped and looked up. Pursic and even Tathic and certainly Feya barely remembered him. They’d come to know Tolvis as their father, and Arda quietly wondered if they understood that Tolvis Loudmouth was dead and gone for ever now. At least you could mourn for the dead. Speak them out like the forkbeards did or bury them and know where their bones lay and now and then go and talk to them. Couldn’t do that with Gallow. He’d chosen something else. Found a thing that mattered to him more than her and his own children. Lhosir thought differently and there was nothing any woman could do about that, so she was better off with him gone, or so she told herself. She’d been miserly with the silver he’d sent back from Andhun and still had enough to make her worth a look from a Marroc man looking for a home, even if he’d have mouths to feed that weren’t his and even if she was tainted by two forkbeards now. Although it was
her
silver and she wasn’t sure she wanted another man anyway. If it wasn’t for Nadric losing his strength, she might have kept things quietly as they were and done without, thank you very much.
She sighed and turned back to drawing her wire. Men would be knocking on the door for Jelira soon, not for her. She was Marroc through and through and close on her fourteenth year, which certainly made her old enough for the village boys to be interested.
Made her old enough to help in the forge too. She could cut wire into lengths for nails. Or wind it and cut it for links for all the mail that Nadric was quietly making. Valaric the
Mournful had done her a favour looking after her little ones and he hadn’t forgotten who she was and where, and nor had his men still left in the Crackmarsh, and there were precious few forges where a man could make mail without the eyes of a forkbeard on his back.
She caught the thought. Snatched it out of the air and held it dangling, wriggling before her eyes, full of guilt.
Forkbeard
. She’d always called him that, right to his face, in good moods and bad. And he’d taken it. Never complained. And then she smiled and started to laugh, though the tears that came weren’t of joy, because really what did it matter? She’d sent him away, and that had been the right thing, right for her and right for their children, though it hurt like a nail in the knuckle.
‘Arda Smithswife?’
She almost dropped the draw plate. She spun round, hand reaching for the forging hammer that was never far away, but it was only Torvic, standing out in the wind and the lashing rain, leaning in around the corner of the workshop and flicking drips of water from his eyes. Torvic, who’d walked with her back to the Crackmarsh so she didn’t get murdered by ghuldogs or the sentries Valaric had left behind.
‘You’re early,’ she snapped. ‘Wasn’t expecting you for another two days.’
Torvic slid into the workshop. He cast an eye up and down the road. ‘Sixfingers is on the move.’
She flinched. The name put her on edge every time. King Medrin and the doom looming over them all since he learned that Gallow was still alive.
‘He’s heading for Tarkhun.’ Torvic snorted. ‘The Vathen are getting restless again. When the weather breaks we’ll be back to forkbeards and Vathen killing each other. And us Crackmarsh men, we’ll be in the middle, happy as anything . . .’ He laughed and then caught himself and looked up sharply. ‘No offence.’
Arda shrugged and shook her head. ‘He’s gone, Torvic. I don’t know where and I try not to care. Say what you like.’ She smiled. Forced it. Took some getting used to, being mistress of her own house again but knowing that Gallow was still alive after all.
A nasty grin spread across Torvic’s face. ‘Valaric let slip that he’s got the Foxbeard in Varyxhun carrying the Comforter at his side. You ask me, Mournful can’t wait to get Sixfingers across the Aulian Bridge so he can start picking and poking.’
‘Is it true? Is Gallow with Valaric?’
Torvic’s grin froze and then fell off his face piece by piece. He looked away. ‘Best I know, your Gallow left the red sword in Varyxhun and headed out the valley. He hasn’t been through the Crackmarsh. We’d know. Sixfingers holds Isset bridge and the forkbeards that were in Varyxhun have got Witches’ Reach and no one crosses without their say-so. So I’d say he’s still in the valley, but no one knows for sure.’ The crooked grin grew back. ‘Valaric’s been putting it about that the Foxbeard had family in Hrodicslet and now they’re in Varyxhun. Close enough to the truth, eh, but far enough to keep the forkbeards from coming across the Crackmarsh again.’
It was like the weight of a wet fur cloak coming off her, though she tried to sound as though she didn’t care. ‘As long as they’re on the other side of the Isset, they’re no bother to me.’
Torvic made a face. ‘I’d keep my worries for the Vathen. Not often they come this far south but we see them now and then.’ He hunched his shoulders and pushed out into the rain and came back again a moment later leading a bedraggled mule. ‘Flour. Good for the rest of the winter.’ He hauled a sheet of oiled leather off the animal’s back and then threw down a couple of sacks and a pair of strong leather bags and emptied out a string of onions and a leg of cured
ham. ‘Keep your bellies full for a bit.’ He went back to the mule. Arda picked up the onions and the ham and put them carefully to one side. She started to fill the leather bags with squares of mail. Making it up into a coat that sat well on a man was an armourer’s job, but long hard hours went into drawing the wire, cutting the rings and riveting them together into lines and squares the size of a man’s hand. Didn’t take much skill, but it did take a forge and tools and a willingness for hard work. Nadric had the tools and the forge and everyone in Middislet knew how to work. Valaric paid in food and the winter had been a hard one. They were grateful, all of them.
She looked up when she was done. ‘So. Are you all going to die up there when Sixfingers comes?’ She spat out the forkbeard king’s name. A ritual that was habit now.
‘He could bring every forkbeard ever born, he still wouldn’t get into Varyxhun castle. The Screambreaker had ten thousand men and even
he
couldn’t do it. Anyway, you know the story. If the sixth gate ever falls, the Isset itself will wash the castle clean. Can’t lose, can we?’ He chuckled.
Arda snorted. ‘The Screambreaker didn’t bother trying, and his ten thousand were more like two by the time they got to Varyxhun. And they were knackered, worn to the end of their boots.’ Little things she remembered. Gallow had never said much about the Screambreaker’s war, all his years of killing good Marroc men. Hadn’t been something either of them wanted to hear, but little things still came out now and then.
Torvic rummaged around in the mule’s packs and threw a small leather bag at her, about the size of a hand. ‘That’s for Gallow,’ he said when she caught it. ‘If he comes by. From his Aulian friend.’
‘What is it?’ Arda opened the bag and sniffed. Some sort of pale crumbly grey stuff.
‘Salt. In case.’
‘Salt?’ She laughed. ‘Well
you
know how to keep a woman sweet!’ Then she shivered and her smile died. Salt was for shadewalkers. And Fateguard too, as it had turned out, but the less said about
them
the better. One of the things you learned when you were stuck in a besieged fort with an Aulian wizard for company. Other things as well. Mostly things she didn’t care to dwell on.
Torvic was looking at her like he had a bad taste in his mouth. ‘Something else.’ He stepped out and then came back in out of the rain with a second mule, even more bedraggled than the first. There were large pieces of metal tied across its back. He pulled one off, and it took a moment before Arda understood what it was. A mask and helm and crown made of iron, which could only mean it had once belonged to the iron devil of Varyxhun. The devil Gallow had said was once a friend, who’d taken her in a cage from her home. Some friend. She looked at the pieces of armour like they were a nest of snakes.
‘Valaric said to give it to you. Maybe you can melt it down and make something. Or maybe if Gallow comes by there’s some proper thing to do with it. Some forkb— some Lhosir thing.’ He dragged the rest off the mule’s back onto the floor. A whole set of iron plates. The iron skin of a Fateguard. She shuddered. The Aulian wizard had had things to say about the iron devils.
‘Melt it down?’
If Gallow comes by
. Torvic had said that as if he was hoping for it but Arda wished he hadn’t because a part of her was hoping for it too. A part hoping and another part praying that he didn’t.
‘Forge something with it.’ Torvic shrugged. ‘Whatever you want. Valaric wants it gone, that’s all, and he doesn’t want Sixfingers getting it back.’ He nodded at the floor. ‘It’s good iron that. Worth a bit.’
He wasn’t wrong either, and maybe it would feel good to turn those pieces of cursed metal into something of value.
The other villagers would help. They’d be glad to. A little victory, but still, the very sight of it made her skin crawl. Valaric wanted it gone? She could understand that. ‘You want me to hammer this out into wire and make it into mail for your men. Will they take kindly to wearing the skin of the iron devil of Varyxhun?’
Torvic shook his head. ‘Not when you put it like that, no.’ He shrugged. ‘Do what you like with it. No one wants it back, not in any shape. Just get rid of it. Bury it if you want.’
Across the yard, the back door of the house opened. Nadric stood at the threshold. He stared at Torvic, scowled at the rain and then hunched his shoulders and hurried across to the forge. ‘This your friend from the Crackmarsh?’ He looked Torvic up and down. ‘Rotten day to be living in a swamp when you could be under a roof with a nice warm fire.’ He flashed a look at Arda. ‘Getting ready to stick some forkbeards?’
‘This is Torvic.’ Arda stepped away from Nadric, distancing herself. They’d never quite got past what he’d done three years ago on the night that Gallow had left and never came back. Gallow’s choice, but a part of her would always blame Nadric for doing something so stupid.
Nadric beckoned Torvic closer. ‘Come over here then, Torvic of the Crackmarsh. I have something for you.’ He pushed his way past Arda to the back of the workshop, to the corner full of dust and cobwebs where he kept the bits and pieces he couldn’t bring himself to throw away. The scrap corner. Arda had never paid it much attention except to note that in the three years Gallow had been away all it had done was grow. Gallow had kept his armour there once, his sword and shield and helm. There was still a single Vathan javelot.
Nadric pulled away an armful of old tools and broken wood and then some sacking. Underneath was a wooden chest bound with iron and three thick leather straps. Torvic
crowded closer as Nadric started to undo them and even Arda couldn’t help peering over his shoulder. She’d had no idea the chest was even there. ‘Pull it out where we can all see it, then!’
‘Pull it out, she says.’ Nadric chuckled. He finished with the straps and threw open the lid. Arda stared.
‘Diaran preserve us.’
‘Holy Modris, old man. Where did you get them?’
Nadric cackled. ‘
Get
them, young man? I
made
them. Me and that other forkbeard, the one who’s dead now.’ Tolvis. Arda winced. ‘Been making them for the last three years. Still got
some
strength in these arms.’
Inside the chest were arrowheads. Thousands of them. Arda and Torvic and Nadric stood together, staring at the pile. Torvic couldn’t keep his mouth closed and Nadric couldn’t stop chuckling.
‘How long?’ asked Arda. ‘How long were you making them?’
‘Ever since Gallow left.’
‘No.’ Arda shook her head. ‘You didn’t make all of these. I’d have known.’
Nadric laughed. ‘I made a lot of them. It started after the Vathen—’
He stopped abruptly. They’d both said everything they had to say about that night long ago, loud and furious, and they both thought they were right. Gallow had brought a wounded forkbeard back after Lostring Hill. The Widowmaker. When the Vathen came looking, Gallow had killed them and he and the Widowmaker had gone and never come back, and it had been Nadric’s fault and Arda had never forgiven him.
‘It wasn’t so bad. Not like what the forkbeards did across the Isset.’ Torvic coughed and Nadric turned to him, shuffling away from the anger in Arda’s face. ‘They killed the animals we couldn’t take with us, you see. That was how it
started, because they left all their arrows behind and that was money that was, if there was anyone who’d buy them, only no one wanted to be making the trip to Fedderhun to see if the Vathen would trade them for food, not when they were Vathan arrows in the first place.’ Nadric shook his head. ‘Was a hard winter after that summer with so many animals dead. We were back from Varyxhun by then.’ He peered sharply at Torvic. ‘Was Arda who kept the village alive, not that she’ll tell you. Her and that silver the forkbeard brought with him. They had food in Varyxhun and the Wolf was in the Crackmarsh.’ He nodded at Torvic and the mule outside and then the sacks of flour and the onions on the floor. ‘Was how that all started. Arda here and that other forkbeard. We did what we could. No one in the village had money or anything to give that winter. They had them arrows, though, and so they gave them to me.’
