The Crimson Shield (2 page)

Out of the shadows of the trees a Vathan rider stepped into the clearing. Valaric froze for a moment but the rider was slumped in his saddle. He had blood all over him and he was clearly dead.
Half his face was missing.

‘Well, well. An unwanted horse. Now there’s a blessing.’ He grinned at the other Marroc around him. He’d picked them carefully, the ones who’d fight hard and long
and keep their wits. Torvic, the three Jonnics, Davic, all men who’d fought the forkbeards years ago and lived, even towards the end when the forkbeards had hired Vathan mercenaries with
their plundered gold and sent them in after the Marroc lines broke. The Marroc were used to running away by then, but not from horses. Thousands of men dead. And here he was not ten years later:
same forkbeards, same Vathen, only now the forkbeards claimed they were his friends. Valaric was having none of it.

The other Marroc were on their feet now. They were all thinking the same thing. All of them except the forkbeard Gallow, who’d keep quiet if he had any sense. Valaric got to the horse
first. He took the reins and hauled the dead Vathan out of the saddle.

‘So let’s see what we’ve got, lads.’ He left the body to the others and started going through the saddlebags. Food and water they’d share since none of them carried
any. A rare piece of good fortune. Someone else’s horse and saddle were fine things to carry away from a battle even after a victory. They’d have to divide it somehow. Needed a care
that did. He’d seen men kill each other over spoils like this, men who’d fought side by side only hours before.

‘There are more.’ Gallow was pointing off into the trees on the other side of the clearing.

Valaric growled. He let go of the horse and slipped his sword into his hand and picked up his shield where he’d left it in the grass. ‘Men? Or just horses?’

‘Horses.’

Horses was more like it. But still . . . He looked around the other Marroc. They all had a greedy look to them, but nervous too. ‘Right. You lot stay here. Keep on the edge of the trees.
Shields and spears ready in case. Me and the forkbeard, we’ll go see what’s there.’ He took a long hard look at Gallow. He was tall – certainly compared to a Marroc, and
maybe even tall among his own kind – and broad. His muscles might be hidden beneath mail and thick leather, but the man had been a soldier for years and worked in a forge before and after,
and there was no such thing as a weak-armed smith. His face was strong-boned and weathered. Valaric supposed there’d be some who’d say it was handsome if it hadn’t been for the
scar running across one cheek and the dent in his nose that went with it. He didn’t have the forked beard of a Lhosir any more, but Valaric’s eyes saw it anyway.
Demon-beards
.
Thick black hair that didn’t mark him as anything much one way or the other, but eyes of the palest blue like mountain glaciers. Lhosir eyes, cold and pitiless and deadly. Valaric cocked his
head. ‘You man for that?’

Gallow didn’t blink, just nodded, which made Valaric want to hit him. They stood face to face. Gallow looked down at him. Those ice-filled eyes
were
piercing, but Valaric
didn’t see the things he was looking for there. Forkbeards were merciless, filled with hate and rage – that’s how they’d been on the battlefield – but Gallow’s
eyes were just sad and weary. They had a longing to them.

‘You can go back to your own kind after this,’ he said shortly and brushed past on into the trees, eyes alert for the horses Gallow had seen. He picked up two of them straight away,
two more Vathan ones, riderless this time. Probably they’d followed the first. If there were more, so much the better.

‘I have a family, Valaric,’ said Gallow. ‘A wife and an old man and two young sons and a daughter. Those are my people now, and yes, I’ll go back to them. I don’t
know these Vathen but they’ll head west for Andhun. If that falls then who knows what they’ll do? Maybe they’re set on making new kings and cities and will leave my village alone.
Or maybe they’re the sort to swarm across the country with their horses and their swords, with burning torches, sweeping everything before them until nothing is left.’

‘Two young sons and a daughter, eh?’ Valaric couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his voice. ‘Sounds like you’ve been busy since you finished raping and murdering
and settled to the business of breaking our backs for the pleasure of your king.’

Gallow didn’t answer. Didn’t care, most likely, and the thought flashed through Valaric’s head to kill him right there and then while the two of them were alone. None of the
others would think any less of him for doing it. They’d all lost something when the forkbeards had come across the sea in their sharp-faced boats. He had no idea why Gallow had stayed.
Married a local girl, a smith’s daughter, and that alone was enough for Valaric to hate him.
Our land, not yours
. Nine years ago that was, when everyone had hated the forkbeards and
everything they stood for; but over those years the world had slowly changed. Everyone in these parts had come to hear of the forkbeard who hadn’t gone home. Maybe he even had friends now,
but for Valaric time had healed nothing. Gallow wasn’t welcome. None of them were.

‘There.’

Among the trees in the shade Valaric saw the shapes of more horses. A dozen maybe, one for each of them to ride and a few spare. Good coin if they could get to a place where they could sell
them. Changed things, that did. Not so much chance of a squabble over the spoils. The battle was going to give him a decent purse after all – which wasn’t why he’d come to fight
it, but a man still had to live.

Gallow pressed ahead through the trees to the horses, his hand staying close to his axe. He moved quickly but with cautious feet. Valaric let him go ahead while he tied up the first two animals
and then ran after him. Couldn’t let a forkbeard take the best of the pickings, but by then Gallow had stopped. When Valaric caught up, he saw why.

‘Modris!’ Cursing the old god’s name was the only thing left to do.

There were bodies everywhere. More horses too, a lot of them with their Vathan riders still slumped on their backs. The bodies on the ground were mostly forkbeards. Valaric took it all in and
nodded to the dead. He pointed through the trees, roughly back towards the battlefield. ‘Forkbeards were riding through the forest. The Vathen got ahead of them. They encircled them and took
your friends from the front and from behind.’

Gallow nodded. ‘The Lhosir made a stand rather than run. They dismounted because that’s how we like to fight. Like you, with our feet on the earth. The trees made that work for them.
No one ever thought of running. Not our way.’

‘The Vathen stayed in their saddles. Maybe that wasn’t so clever of them.’ There were a lot more dead Vathen than forkbeards. One of them had an arrow sticking out of his
chest. Valaric saw it and frowned: the forkbeards almost never used bows in battle. Arrows were for hunting or for cowards, but someone had used one here. For once not losing had mattered more than
how they fought.

‘They were protecting something,’ he whispered.

Gallow was staring around the corpses of his own people. He nodded. ‘These were the Screambreaker’s men.’ He walked slowly among them, axe drawn, eyes darting back and forth
among the shadows.

‘A pretty sight. Forkbeards and Vathen killing each other. My heart soars.’ Valaric didn’t feel it though, not here. He’d told himself that he and Gallow were enemies
from the moment they’d met, reminded himself that one day they might face each other in a different way, iron and steel edges drawn to the death. He hadn’t bothered much about that
though, because they both had to live through the Vathen first for that to ever happen, and Valaric had been in enough battles to know when victory lay with the enemy. The Marroc were mostly too
stupid and too fresh to fighting to see it, but the forkbeards must have known too, yet they’d faced the enemy anyway. They’d stood and held their shields and their spears and roared
their cries of battle. ‘Is he here then, your general?’

Gallow crouched beside a man with blood all over his face. He nodded. ‘Yes, Valaric, he is.’ He stood up. He still had his axe, and the way he was looking made Valaric wonder if that
day when they’d face each other wasn’t so far off after all. ‘He’s still alive.’ Gallow’s eyes were right for a forkbeard now. Merciless. Valaric took a step
back. He let his hand sit on the hilt of his own sword. The Nightmare of the North. The man who’d led the forkbeards back and forth across his land and stained it black with ash and red with
blood. Whoever killed the Widowmaker would be a hero among the Marroc, his name sung through the ages. And here he was, helpless, and there was only one forkbeard left standing in Valaric’s
way.

Gallow met his eye. ‘Now what?’

Valaric couldn’t draw his sword. Simply couldn’t. Not that Gallow scared him, although it would be a hard fight, that was for sure. Or he could have called the other Marroc and told
them what he’d found, because no forkbeard ever born was strong enough to face nine against one. But he didn’t do that either. The honest truth was that the Nightmare of the North
hadn’t done half the things people said he had. What he
had
done was stand with two thousand Marroc against the Vathen in a battle he must have known he couldn’t win.
He’d done that today. Valaric turned away. ‘They say things about you, Gallow.’

‘I’m sure they do.’

‘Tavern talk, now and then. They say you’re good to your word. That you work hard. Decent, they say, for a forkbeard. Always with the same words at the end:
for a forkbeard
.
Which is good. Doesn’t serve a man to forget who his enemies are. Why did you fight beside me and not with your own people, eh? Would have been safer, after all. Likely as not they were the
last to break.’ The words were bitter.
Bloody forkbeards
.

‘You’re my people now, Valaric.’

Valaric spat in disgust. ‘No, we’re not. A forkbeard is a forkbeard. Shaving your face changes nothing.’ He stared at Gallow and found he couldn’t meet the Lhosir’s
eyes any more. They were the eyes of a man who would stand without flinching against all nine of his Marroc if he had to because it would never occur to him to do anything else. Valaric shook his
head. ‘I tell you, I got so sick of running away from you lot. Must be a first for you.’

‘Selleuk’s Bridge, Marroc.’

‘Selleuk’s Bridge?’ Valaric bellowed out a laugh. ‘I missed that. Beat you good, eh?’

‘That you did.’ Gallow’s hand still rested on the head of his axe.

Valaric turned and started to walk away. ‘I’ve done my fighting for today. Best you be on your way. You take more than your share of these horses and we’ll come after you like
the howling hordes of hell. Go. And be quick about it.’

G
allow saw to the horses first. Two of them, one for him and one for the Screambreaker. That was fair. A man took what he needed and no more when
times were hard. He chose Lhosir mounts over the Vathan ones. Stamina over speed. He couldn’t see he’d be needing to win any races today but it was a long ride home and there
wouldn’t be any stopping while the sun was up.

He grimaced as he lifted the general across his shoulders. The Marroc called him the Widowmaker and the Nightmare of the North. To the Lhosir he was Corvin Screambreaker. He was a heavy man,
full of muscle, but old enough to have a belly as well, and nearly ten years of peace had done him no favours there. In his armour he was almost too much; but for all Gallow knew, the Screambreaker
was already knocking at the Maker-Devourer’s cauldron, and a Lhosir died in his armour if he could, dressed for battle with his spear in one hand and his shield in the other. That was a good
death, one the Maker-Devourer would add to his brew. Once Gallow had the Screambreaker on the back of his horse he strapped a shield to the old warrior’s arm and wrapped his limp fingers
around a knife and tied it fast with a leather thong ripped from a dead Vathan’s saddle. A sword would have been better, but swords were heavy. Chances were it would fall out and be lost and
then the Screambreaker would have nothing. A knife was at least something. The Maker-Devourer would understand that.

The Marroc were still back in the clearing. He ought to lay out the other Lhosir dead and speak them out, tell the Maker-Devourer of their names and their deeds, but he couldn’t. He
didn’t know them. He put swords and knives into empty hands, knowing full well that the Marroc would simply loot them again as soon as he was gone. With the Screambreaker’s horse
tethered to his own, he whispered a prayer to the sky and the earth, mounted and rode away.By the time he was free of the woods, the sun was sinking towards the distant mountains of the south.
Varyxhun was up there somewhere, up in the hills, surrounded by its mighty trees and guarding what had once been a pass through the mountains to Cimmer and the Holy Aulian Empire, but that was an
old path. Nothing but the odd shadewalker had come from the empire for more than fifty years now, while the castle overlooking Varyxhun itself was said to be haunted, full of the vengeful spirits
of the last Marroc to hold out against the Screambreaker. It was said to be the home of a sleeping water-dragon too, but the Vathen wouldn’t bother with it, dragon or not. They’d stay
north and move along the coast to Andhun. If Valaric and the other Marroc wanted a fight, that’s where it would be.
I’ll be with my family
, Valaric had said, but
Valaric’s family were six wooden grave markers in a field near a village by the coast, far away to the west, and had been for years. Everyone knew that.

He watched the sun finish creeping its way behind the distant horizon. As the stars came out, he stopped and eased Corvin to the ground and gently took away his shield. He let the horses cool
and took them to water; when he was done with that he searched their saddlebags for food for both of them and blankets for Corvin. The Screambreaker’s breathing was fast and shallow, but at
least he was still alive. Gallow forced one of his eyes open. It was rolled back so far that all Gallow could see was white. He made a fire, forced some water into the old man and ate from what
he’d found on the stolen horses.