Gallow (34 page)

Valaric stared. ‘The red sword?
That
is the Comforter?’ His face went tight, almost as though he was afraid of it. ‘Modris preserve us!’

‘Solace. The Peacebringer.’

Valaric took a step away. ‘Oh, I know its names. The Edge of Sorrows. The Unholy Comforter. The blade of the Weeping God that struck at Diaran the Lifegiver and would have killed all men had not Modris the Protector taken the blow on his shield.’ He shook his head and backed further away. ‘That’s a cursed blade, Gallow, and it brings death wherever it goes. You should never have brought it into my city!’

‘It’s just a sword, Valaric.’ Gallow frowned but Valaric was still shaking his head, fists clenched.

‘No. You know the tale of the Weeping God. You know how he became what he is but it comes from that sword. It’s a pitiless thing. It serves no one, or perhaps everyone with an even-handed faithlessness. Blood follows that blade, Gallow. And now you’ve brought it here, and look around you.’

‘The Vathen brought it here, Valaric, not me.’

Valaric seized Gallow by the shoulders. ‘But
you
brought it into Andhun. Take it
away
! Ah. Modris preserve us! Forkbeards again!’ He let go of Gallow and ran down the street towards the harbour. The Lhosir who’d gone into the Grey Man were coming out again. Gallow ran after Valaric for a few paces and then stopped and turned another way. He didn’t believe in cursed swords just as he didn’t believe in Modris and Diaran and the Weeping God and the rest of them. Stories, that’s all they were. Some swords were better than others, no more. The skill of the smith and the quality of the metal he worked saw to that, but in the end they were all made from the Maker-Devourer’s cauldron just like everything else.

But Valaric was right – there was a better place for this sword to be.

He turned his back on the docks where Valaric’s men were waiting, and headed towards the keep on the top of the cliffs.

Medrin.

B
y the time Tolvis and the Screambreaker’s men reached Andhun’s gates, whatever had kicked off the fighting was done and over. Lhosir still trickled into the city, chasing with eager feet and hungry eyes after the scent of plunder and blood. A few of them loitered sulking around the gates, ordered to keep them open.

‘And where are the Vathen?’ Tolvis asked them but they only shrugged.

‘Fled in the night,’ they said. ‘It’s the Marroc against whom we hold the gates.’ They weren’t happy about it either, denied their share of plunder. Men who’d done something to earn Twelvefingers’ disfavour. Tolvis passed on into the city. The cobbles were littered with bodies. Marroc mostly, from the looks of them, but there were Lhosir here too. A few of the bodies were soldiers, freshly dead in their mail, even with their swords and spears still lying beside them. Most of the Marroc wore simple clothes, the ordinary folk of the city in the wrong place at the wrong time. Many had been cut down from behind, stabbed in the back. Only a few had found the courage to die facing their fate.

He found the Marroc duke. When he turned over the bodies of the dead Lhosir to see their faces, he found Horsan. He laughed.
So much for you.

Smoke wafted in wisps from the streets that led down towards the harbour. The Lhosir who came in after Tolvis and the Screambreaker’s men headed that way. A few stopped among the dead, taking a spear if they didn’t have one, or a sword or a helm. A couple were crouched down, stripping bodies of their mail. The stragglers weren’t Medrin’s men or anyone else’s so Tolvis paid them no mind. They could head off down the hill towards the harbour – so much the better if they did – but
he
was aiming for the castle. Twelvefingers wasn’t stupid. You couldn’t come into Andhun and murder their duke and burn the place down without making sure you had the castle first, not if you were planning to stay. The plunder would be down in the harbour, but Medrin would be up there.

There were going to be some problems later, when it came to explaining to King Yurlak why he’d taken it on himself to hunt down the king’s only son and stick his head on a spike.
The Screambreaker told me to
probably wasn’t going to be good enough. Ah well. He could think of an excuse later.

Valaric ran through the streets to the first barricade. The Lhosir thought the Marroc were sheep and maybe they were; maybe they didn’t have the madness in their blood that the men from over the sea called courage and bravery and honour. Didn’t make them stupid, though.

‘Valaric!’ Sarvic was there keeping watch, ready for the forkbeards to sweep down the street.

‘You heard then.’ Valaric stopped in front of the barricade. Sarvic nodded. ‘How many men have we got down here?’

‘Hard to say. We had two hundred this morning before you left. When word came of what you did and how it went with the forkbeards . . .’ Sarvic shook his head. ‘It’s gone through the docks like fire. Most people are running for the sea. There’s boats already leaving.’

Valaric winced. ‘I’d hoped . . .’ But what had he hoped? That thousands of men and women who’d never raised a hand to another soul in their life would suddenly take up arms against an army of rampaging armoured monsters? Of course they were running for the boats.

‘A few are staying. Hard to know how many.’

‘You told them what they have to do?’ Sarvic nodded. Valaric looked around. Enough men to hold the barricade for a few minutes. He looked at Sarvic long and hard, remembering Lostring Hill and the scared man he’d seen there. He nodded. ‘Go to the harbour.’ He pointed to three more of them, men he didn’t know, but all soldiers in mail with shields and axes. ‘Go to the boats. If there are men down there who think they can take everything a family has to let them onto a ship, show them your steel and explain to them why they’re wrong. Give them a choice: They can keep their weapons and use them on the forkbeards or they can give them to someone else who will. I’ll not have Marroc turning against Marroc.’

The other three turned and left without hesitation, glad to be let go and not to face the forkbeards. Sarvic didn’t move.

‘Well, go on then.’

‘No.’ Sarvic shook his head. ‘I don’t want to run.’

‘Everyone who stays is going to die. Our lives buy time for the others, that’s all.’

‘I said I don’t want to run.’ When Sarvic’s eyes didn’t falter, Valaric clapped him on the shoulder.

‘You want to kill forkbeards? Then come with me. Not long now.’

Tolvis looked over the litter of bodies in Castle Square. Marroc mostly. They’d put up some sort of fight in the end. Too little too late though, because there were hardly any Lhosir among the dead and the men at the castle gates had forked beards and waved at Tolvis as he came forward. Half a dozen of them. They looked tense, stamping their feet, eyes constantly roving. Tolvis grinned at them. He recognised this lot. Medrin’s men, every one of them.

‘A fine morning for sacking a city!’ He waved back as he got up close. ‘Wish you were down there, eh?’

The gate guards snorted. Who wouldn’t really? Nothing to do up here. They’d had a great big fight yesterday and they’d won, but they’d all lost friends and half of them had lost family, some cousin or other at the very least, and what came after a big fight was a couple of days plundering to make up for it. And here they were, missing it. Tolvis nodded. He understood perfectly.

‘The Maker-Devourer sends you some luck then.’ He nodded back at the men he had behind him. Fifty or so Lhosir. The Screambreaker’s men, what was left of them. Men who’d fought a dozen battles and lived through them all. ‘We’re here to relieve you. Go and have some fun. Kill some Marroc and get drunk.’

He had their attention now. He could see the thoughts running through their minds.
That would be nice, but Twelvefingers told us to guard the gate.
‘Prince Medrin ordered us to stay,’ said the first man doubtfully.

Tolvis shrugged. ‘Stay then. When the other guards on the inside come out to go off a-looting don’t take it too personal if they laugh at you.’

The man shook his head. ‘That won’t happen. You can’t go inside.’

Tolvis took his time over his next words. ‘Thing is, you see, that
is
where we’re going. Sure you don’t want us to take over at the gate here? It was the Screambreaker himself said we should.
You’ve seen enough over the years. Let the young ones have their share of the plunder.
Or something a bit like that anyway.’ Tolvis laughed. ‘Me? I’m so old and bashed around the head, I can’t remember
exactly
what he said. I probably couldn’t remember how to plunder a Marroc city either. Best you lot get on and do it. Make a proper job of it.’

Medrin’s men shuffled their feet. ‘And you’d give us your word over the Maker-Devourer’s cauldron that you’d all just stand here and not let anyone into the castle, eh? You included. You’d have to share blood with us about that.’

Tolvis shrugged. ‘Not sure I could do
that
.’

The man let out a great sigh. ‘Thought not.’ He drew his sword and shook his head. ‘Can’t let you in, Loudmouth.’

Tolvis raised his shield and his spear. ‘Ah well. Pity. I salute you. I’ll speak you out to the Maker-Devourer myself when the time comes. Anything you want me to mention?’

‘How about you just shut up and we get on with it?’

Tolvis took a deep breath. ‘Fine, fine. I’m just trying to make it a bit easier for everyone.’ He lunged with his spear, quick as a snake. The man caught the point on his shield and stepped back. In half a blink the six of them were in a circle, shields locked together. Tolvis left a dozen of the Screambreaker’s Men to deal with them and moved on into the castle yard. Another handful of Medrin’s men were lounging there, bored and not sure what to do with themselves. They found an answer to that quickly enough. After the gate guards, Tolvis didn’t bother trying to talk his way past the rest.

They fought well. He’d give them that as he stepped over the bodies. They even managed to take a few of his men with them. Not many, but what did you expect when you put boys against men? Still, he’d speak out their names if he had the chance when all this was done. Brave men, all of them. Foolish, perhaps, but then the Maker-Devourer had never cared about
that.
Just as well really.

On a hill not far from the battlefield where the Screambreaker had killed the Weeping Giant and set his fellow Vathen to flight, Gulsukh Ardshan watched from the back of his horse.

‘Bashar,’ he said without taking his eyes from the city.

‘Ardshan?’ Behind him, hidden by the bulk of the hill from the Lhosir who’d stayed outside Andhun’s walls, two thousand Vathen were waiting for his order. A pitiful fraction of the army that had marched to sweep the Marroc aside, but here and now it would do.

‘Now, Bashar.’

G
allow ran up an alley, turned into a yard, found himself in a dead end and turned back. He tried to remember how Tolvis had led him to the castle from the river on the night they’d sold his Vathan horses, but they’d been deeper inside the city that night. There were the roads he used to follow when he’d been in Andhun before, but Lhosir in Andhun then had known better than to stray into dark and narrow alleys, especially after the Screambreaker crossed back over the sea. They’d walked in groups in the wider streets, always watchful and wary, and Gallow couldn’t use these now.

He saw Lhosir here and there, groups of them, mostly running toward the sounds of fighting or screaming or the smell of burning. They too kept out of the alleys. The Marroc didn’t, but they were all just desperate to get away. Whenever they saw Gallow coming, they fled.

But all he had to do was keep going uphill and so he did, keeping away from the main streets and the gangs of Medrin’s Lhosir until he reached the Castle Square. The gates hung open. No one stood guard but there were bodies outside, a lot of them. Gallow picked his way through, casting his eyes around for anyone who was still alive. The bodies were Marroc at first. A few ordinary folk and a few dozen Marroc soldiers who’d made a stand and been overwhelmed with a handful of Lhosir around them. Inside in the castle yard there were plenty more dead, now all Lhosir. He found two locked together. One had his axe stuck through the other’s collarbone, half into his neck, wedged fast. The second man’s sword had been driven right through the first man’s face, pinning him to the stones.

Fighting among themselves?
He ran past them, across the castle yard and into the open doors of the keep.

The forkbeards came down the street at a slow run, shouting throat-cutting threats and battle whoops. Valaric watched from a window overlooking the barricade. They slowed as they reached it, forming a shield wall and levelling their spears as they advanced. He waited. The Marroc behind the barricade threw stones and pieces of wood and burning torches. The forkbeards batted them away, laughing. The Marroc were ordinary men from the harbour – fishermen and boatmen and oarsmen and sailors – not soldiers. They had no mail, few of them even had helms, and their weapons were boathooks and clubs and axes, whatever they’d been able to find. The barricade was a cart on its side and piles of crates. But they didn’t run. Valaric felt a warmth course through him. Pride, that’s what that was.
We don’t have to be sheep. We don’t.

The forkbeards reached the barricade and started stabbing over the top of it with their spears, round the sides of it, anywhere there was a gap. At the edges they started to pull at the crates and boxes, tearing them down. Valaric’s men shouted back, swinging their clubs and hooks, but the forkbeards were clearly going to pull the barricade down and sweep them away.

Or so they thought. Valaric lifted the first crossbow and cocked it. He looked at the handful of men around him and then through the window at the Marroc up on the other side of the street. He nodded, then leaned out and fired the crossbow down into the forkbeards. Picked his shot carefully, straight into the back of the neck of one at the front. He watched the man go down.