Gallow (54 page)

‘The crime of being a Marroc!’ snapped Addic.

‘No, no!’ Oribas raised his hands and shook his head the way he always did when he was about to explain to someone why they were wrong using arguments forged from unshakeable calm and rational logic, and which more often than not ended with him being dumped on his backside.

‘Yes.’ Gallow stopped him with a glance. There was no place here for a scholar’s debate. ‘Even Medrin never killed without a reason, but whatever that reason was makes no difference. When a man is put to death then his passing should be seen. It should be heard. Men might speak against him and others might speak for him. No matter the guilt, a death should carry a weight. A significance. My brothers of the sea would never treat one of their own like this, not even one they splayed apart and hung as the bloody raven of a
nioingr.
What they’ve done here is for animals, Oribas, not for men.’ He glowered at the fire. ‘Medrin. It wasn’t like this before Medrin.’

No one spoke. Gradually the Marroc settled to sleep, but as Gallow closed his eyes, Achista crouched beside him. She hissed in his ear, ‘It wasn’t King Sixfingers, forkbeard. It was your precious Widowmaker. He was the one who started this.’

At dawn they rekindled the fire at the mouth of the cave and sat around it in glum silence, waiting for Jonnic and Krasic to come back with furs and boots and food for all of them. When two men leading a donkey came through the snow at the end of the ravine, the Marroc cried out and waved their hands. Two of the prisoners even ran out into the snow. Addic stood and stared and frowned. Achista too. The hairs on Gallow’s neck prickled.

The first Marroc reached the newcomers and the men leading the donkey drew swords from under the furs and ran them through. Shields followed and then they charged. Addic snarled and took up the axe from the Lhosir Gallow had killed the day before. Achista strung her bow.

‘Wait!’ Gallow gripped his sword. ‘There are more of them. There must be.’ And a moment later they saw he was right. More Lhosir on horseback came over the rise, riding fast towards the caves, squashing into the mouth of the ravine. There must have been a score of them, more perhaps, all armed, and lumbering at the back on a great black horse came a man in iron. Beyard. And though for the Marroc to stand and fight was sure death, the sight gave Gallow a strange surge of hope, for if Beyard was here then he wasn’t somewhere else and he hadn’t gone hunting for Arda, not yet, and there was a chance to stop him or for Gallow to die and make his hunting pointless.

Achista let fly an arrow. It struck one of the Lhosir shields. Addic clenched his fists. ‘I won’t lie down and die! Every one of them we kill is a victory.’

He looked ready to charge out into the snow in his rags but Achista stilled him. ‘There’s a way through the caves, Addi.’ Addic turned and stared at her as Gallow thought of the wisp of wind he’d felt back where the bodies of the murdered Marroc lay. ‘Krasic led us though. That’s how we were waiting for the forkbeards inside.’

‘They’ll follow us.’

There wasn’t much to be done about that, but at least through the caves the Lhosir would be on foot and not on horseback. ‘You lead,’ said Gallow. ‘I’ll hold the rear.’

‘You?’ Jonnic snarled. ‘And how do we know you won’t turn your coat to save your skin?’

Gallow bared his teeth. ‘Because I took King Medrin’s hand off his arm, Marroc. What forgiveness do you imagine there could be for that? Besides, if I mean to turn against you, would you rather have me in your midst?’ He pushed Oribas deeper into the cave. The Lhosir at the front were getting close and the Marroc were taking too long to get going. ‘Go, Aulian. Get away.’ He pushed Achista too. ‘Dither and they’ll be on us.’

He drew his sword and wished he had a spear, but at least he had a shield again and the Lhosir were in their winter furs, which would make them slow and clumsy. The Marroc ran into the depths of the caves, grabbing burning sticks from the fire to light their way. Gallow stamped out what they left – no reason for the Lhosir to see where they were going. And then the first two were at the mouth of the cave with the others on their horses only a moment behind. Gallow kicked the embers into their faces and ran at them. He brought his sword down on one man’s helm, dazing him, and barged the other with his shield, staggering him so he tripped and fell and dropped his spear. Beyard and the rest of the Lhosir were almost on him now. No time to finish either of these then, but he took the dropped spear. If the caves grew narrow then a spear might serve better than a sword.

‘Foxbeard!
Nioingr!
’ Beyard dismounted outside the cave. The rest of the Lhosir paused as Gallow backed away.

‘That’s three, Beyard,’ Gallow shouted back. ‘You have to fight me now.’

‘I know that, old friend. So let’s be at it.’ The Fateguard drew a long dark sword, too long to be either a Lhosir or a Marroc blade, and Gallow knew it at once. Solace. ‘First blood drawn, shall we have? Or to the death? Make it easy for yourself. Face me here and be done with it. Sixfingers will have to settle for gloating over your head and I’ll have no reason to go hunting for those who share your blood.’

Gallow almost threw the spear; but even if Beyard wasn’t quick enough to dodge, the point would never pass through all that iron. ‘Why don’t you call me by name, Beyard? Have you forgotten it? We’ll have our reckoning but I’ll be the one to choose the ground for it. That’s my right and it’ll not be here.’ He turned and bolted into the cave, following his memory of the twists and turns of the tunnel until it spilled him out into the great underground cathedral again. He had no light to see by but across the darkness torches burned, bobbing up and down, the Marroc finding their way to the other side. The closest were a full spear’s throw ahead of him. Maker-Devourer but the place was huge!

And dark, but he’d seen before that a ledge ran down from the balcony and that it was a twenty-foot drop to the floor below. And he’d seen where the Marroc bodies lay piled. He jumped into the blackness, landing on their frozen limbs and sliding down among them, then fumbled blindly towards the flickering of the torches, hands out in front of him feeling for the pillars and spires of stone, feet groping warily for pits and chasms. He couldn’t see his hand in front of his face, nothing but the distant torches, and he hadn’t gone far at all when the Marroc ahead started to climb some slope he couldn’t see while the Lhosir reached the balcony behind him. He didn’t see them but he heard, heard one of them pitch over the edge among the murdered Marroc and shout and curse his luck. The thought came to him then that a man could hide in this place. Simply slip to one side and let the Lhosir pass after the Marroc and none of them would ever know until they came out the other end. He could go back, take their horses and whatever else he fancied and vanish on his way to Middislet. Be there before Beyard could possibly catch him. He turned the thought over in his head without stopping, then tossed it aside. Oribas would probably tell him he should do it, and Arda surely would, but he’d given these Marroc his word. Besides, there was Beyard. He was Fateguard and not so easily fooled.

He felt the floor of the cathedral rise beneath his feet as he crept on. The Marroc lights were almost gone, all that was left of them a soft glow shining out of some passage high in the wall of the cave. The Lhosir behind him had torches of their own now. They were coming, jumping down from the balcony and running through the stone spires. They were gaining. With his own light to guide him, a man could run faster.

He slowed. Let Beyard keep his sword. Let the Lhosir and Marroc kill each other without him. Three years wasted. Three years and he hadn’t seen his sons, and even a Fateguard’s senses weren’t perfect, and he’d still get back to their horses before Beyard knew for sure what he’d done.

‘Gallow?’ A hiss came from one of the spires as he passed.

‘Oribas?’

An arm from the shadows grabbed his own, pulling him. ‘The others wouldn’t wait for you. I’m sorry.’

‘I told you to run!’ But now they could both stay! They could hide, the two of them, and yet he let the Aulian lead him on, not towards the fading orange glow further along the wall but in and out of spires of stone. There was some sort of path here, one that Gallow would never have found on his own in the dark. It twisted and turned and then they were at the brink of some depthless fissure, invisible in the blackness but Gallow could feel the space at his feet. Oribas led him on to where one of the stone columns had snapped and fallen. Tucked behind it was a narrow bridge, little more than a thick branch laid across the void. Oribas crawled across. ‘It was easier with a torch.’

It would be a fine place to hold, a little voice said – one man against many for a time. He might kill a good few before they took him down. Or he still might hide as he’d planned and let Beyard and his Lhosir pass. But Oribas was leading him on, hurrying him, no thought of anything except to follow the Marroc, and so Gallow followed too, and the moment when outcomes might have been different was gone. He knew what drove Oribas on. When Achista had looked at the Aulian with that one lingering glance, it had landed like a perfect snowflake, and Oribas had caught it, impossible to resist, and of everything that the world took and gave, here was a thing that Gallow’s heart understood without question.

Back across the cavern the dancing lights of Beyard’s Lhosir were getting closer.

A
chista waited at the mouth of the passage. She had a bow. She could hold the forkbeards up and keep them at bay and maybe send one or two of them back to their uncaring god; and when she spoke her thinking aloud, she almost believed it, almost believed that she hadn’t stayed simply because of the Aulian wizard.

He killed a shadewalker.
Addic spoke of it with awe and it was nothing short of magic. The Aulian had caught her staring at him too, and he’d smiled and she’d scowled and looked away, but she couldn’t pretend that her heart hadn’t been beating faster, nor now as she waited watching the torches of the Lhosir dip and bob their way across the floor of the cavern. Her own light was guiding them, but it was also guiding the Aulian and his forkbeard friend.

She hurried them past when they finally reached her, pressing her torch into their hands while she waited on, alone and in the dark. She had her bow trained on the spot where the forkbeards would cross the fissure. As they reached it she let fly, her aim guided by the flame of their brands. The first arrow must have missed but she heard the forkbeards call out. The second drew a yell of pain and the third a flurry of shouts and movement. Some of the forkbeards dropped their torches. She’d slowed them, daring them to come onward in the face of a Marroc with a bow, and that, for now, was enough. She turned and crept away, fingers and toes feeling along the tunnel. Around the first bend she saw a glow of orange light. She’d asked him not to, but the Aulian had been waiting for her.

‘It seemed only polite to return the favour.’ He smiled and her heart jumped. The forkbeard Gallow muttered something in his surly way and took off ahead, running over the stone with the torch held in front of him while she and Oribas followed, eyes down, careful not to look at the brightness of the flame but only at where each foot would fall; and after a time that felt like an age, with their torch burned almost down to a stub, the walls of the caves gleamed daylight white instead of fiery yellow and they were at the end, out among snow-covered crags and jagged lumps of black stone.

Below them the mountain sloped steeply down and disappeared over the edge of yet another ravine. The Marroc ahead had already cut a path across the pristine deep snow to where lumps of stone broke through the white once more. They’d gouged a great furrow, and now they were picking their way down among snow-drenched outcrops, descending with laborious care towards the edge of the precipice. Achista watched Oribas. She pointed and he nodded as he saw the bridge of three long ropes that spanned the ravine to another precarious path on the other side. As he started to follow she put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Tread lightly, Aulian. The snow here is unstable.’ She pointed to where a swathe had already come loose lower down the slope, sliding off the mountain to reveal ice and the rock beneath. Oribas took a step and almost fell as the snow swallowed him. He reached out to catch himself. His hand caught her arm and her hand caught his. She held it fast.

‘Thank you.’ He smiled again and she thought his smile might have been the kindest she’d ever seen. Simple and honest. None of the bitterness that festered among all the Marroc men she knew. ‘I’ve seen this in sand,’ he said. ‘Sometimes it makes a crust. If you disturb it, it will give way beneath as you walk and the whole slope will slide.’ He looked down thoughtfully. ‘And in this case take you over the edge into that ravine. We should each follow the tracks of the others then.’ He put a hand on the forkbeard’s arm. ‘Let Achista go first, Gallow. You, my friend, are far less delicate. You’re more likely to upset the balance at work here.’

The forkbeard snorted. ‘A desert man lecturing a Lhosir of the Ice Wraiths and a Marroc of the Varyxhun valley on the dangers of sliding snow?’

He let her go first though, and the Aulian was right, even if he
was
from the desert. She followed the trail left by the other Marroc, cutting high across the snowfield instead of down and straight for the bridge. She reached the rocks without the snow shifting under her feet and looked back for the forkbeard and the Aulian. The forkbeard was following, but Oribas had scrambled higher up where the slope was steeper still and the snowfield ended and black gnarls of mountain jutted out from the white. As she watched, he began digging in the snow under the stones as if he was looking for something.

Achista picked her way down to the edge of the ravine. When she reached the bridge Oribas was still up there and now Addic was already on the other side, shouting at them to get across before he cut the ropes. She waited for the forkbeard to catch up.