Authors: Nathan Hawke
Cold Redemption (38 page)
‘Yes.’
The Arda he’d left behind three years ago would have sworn and shouted and thrown things, screaming about family and loyalty, but now she only looked at him. ‘Why, Gallow?
Why?’
‘Oribas.’ And that was all. As if that should be enough. She stiffened, the old anger and resentment and all those other things still burning away inside her, hard to push away.
‘Pursic doesn’t even remember you.’ She knew he’d seen back in Middislet: Pursic at the top of the cellar stairs staring at Tolvis.
Dada!
Gallow closed his eyes. His voice broke to a whisper. ‘I know.’
She snorted, and for a moment she was herself again, the old Arda who was used to being around mud-brained forkbeards. ‘Well, if you’re going then you’ll be not much use if you
freeze to death.’ She picked up a handful of furs and threw them at him. ‘At least keep yourself warm.’ She waited while he put on his mail and buckled his belt and arranged his
furs, and then when he was dressed she led him by the hand to the gates of Witches’ Reach and handed him his spear. ‘I won’t be here when you come back. Three years was enough.
I’ll not do that again.’
‘They’re going to hang him. He was my friend. I have to go.’
Her lips were dry. ‘I know. And so do I.’
‘If you ask me to I’ll stay.’
She didn’t doubt he meant it but it was such a stupid thing to say. She pushed him on and then stepped back. ‘You stole my heart with all your forkbeard pride and your courage and
your strength. I love you for what you are, Gallow, but what I need is a man who’ll feed my children and protect them. Someone who’s there. War clouds are coming. I need a man
who’ll stay at home and that’s not you. So yes, Gallow Truesword, Gallow the Foxbeard, I want you to stay, I want that more than anything, but I’ll not ask it. Only you can say
which matters to you more. And if you ask me to wait, I won’t. Not again.’ She stepped back into the shadows of Witches’ Reach.
‘There’s no peace for us, Arda.’ Gallow shook his head. ‘No peace. Not while Medrin lives.’
Arda nodded and turned her back and walked away because hell would freeze over before she’d let a forkbeard see her cry. Gallow called after her one last time but she didn’t dare
look back, and then he was gone. She climbed to the top of the tower and looked out over the dawn and saw him again, standing by the pyre of Tolvis Loudmouth, and she watched him pull a sword out
of the ground where he’d left it the night before and turn and go. Watched until she couldn’t see him any more, until she saw that he didn’t look back, not once.
When he was gone, she dried her eyes and went looking for Valaric the Mournful, the Marroc whose men had her children back in his hideout. There were things to be said about that and in no
uncertain manner.
More Lhosir came later that day, the half-an-army that had been waiting by the Aulian Bridge to fall on Valaric’s Crackmarsh men. They were righteously furious, and from
all the stories told afterwards it was a vicious and bloody little siege until the forkbeards finally took the walls and built the iron devil’s ram again and smashed down the gates and
stormed inside. But at the end, the stories said, all they found was an empty tower. And Arda heard those stories too, but she couldn’t have said if they were true because before the first of
the forkbeards came up from the bridge, she was already gone.
No one had taken the red sword. A hundred upon a hundred Marroc plundering and looting the dead, and not one of them had touched it. Gallow pulled it free and sheathed it at his side. The cursed
blade. His and his alone, stained by the blood of his oldest friend. He turned to face south, the road to Varyxhun, and when the Lhosir came later that day he was long gone too.
T
here were riots in the city. Oribas couldn’t see but he could hear them and he could smell the smoke. The Marroc had been restless for days.
Something had happened but no one would tell him what. Down in his cell he picked up rumours now and then and saw the odd Marroc being dragged off to the torturer and then later he heard their
screams and sobs. He heard everything they cried, not that it added up to much, but there were more every day.
His cell was underground, but on the day they hanged him they hauled him up to the castle yard and he could hear and smell the turmoil clearly at last. He could see it too, written on the Lhosir
around the castle, on their faces and in the way they held themselves. He looked up at the gallows and he could see it even there. They were going to hang him but he wouldn’t be the only one.
There were some Marroc to die too. Out here in the yard, pressed together with the other prisoners, he’d heard what it was that had the streets of Varyxhun filled with revolt. The forkbeards
were beaten. The iron devil was dead and Witches’ Reach still held.
Witches’ Reach still held.
He stared up at the waiting gallows and knew that Achista was still alive. He would hang a happy man.
When Simon Spanton, who commissioned this and with whom I war perpetually on the subject of prologues, called me up to ask if I could do fantasy without any dragons, he
didn’t know I was surrounded by Vikings at the time. If there are a lot of axes in this, that’s probably why. So thanks to Simon for his endless faith, sometimes rewarded and sometimes
not, and to Marcus Gipps for his editorial input, to Hugh Davies who did the copy-edit and to the proofreaders, even if I never know who you are. Thank you in particular to all the booksellers who
are are real people with real enthusiasms and not an algorithm in Luxembourg.
And thanks to all the crazy people who thought the best way to spend a week in February was to strut though York in mail carrying an axe. And thank you too for reading this. As
always, if you liked this story, please tell others who might like it too.
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © Nathan Hawke 2013
All rights reserved
The right of Nathan Hawke to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in Great Britain in 2013 by
Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper St Martin’s Lane,
London WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company
This edition published in Great Britain in 2013 by Gollancz
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 575 11511 8
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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