The Crimson Shield (20 page)

The monastery wall rose straight up from the the cliff. It was an old wall, the stones large and ill-fitting, the mortar between them crumbling and badly eroded. Gallow pulled a dirk from his
belt and held it between his teeth. Where the cracks were too narrow for his fingers, he took it and widened them; where he couldn’t do that, he forced the dirk itself deep into the crack
until it would take his weight. His feet found what purchase they could. The wall wasn’t tall, and he thanked the Maker-Devourer for that.

There were no sentries on the back wall and he thanked the Maker-Devourer for that too. Once he was over he wrapped the end of his rope around his waist, braced himself and tugged. On the other
end, Jyrdas tugged back. He came up fast, jumping over the top of the wall and landing with the grace of a man half his age, sword already out and gleaming in the moonlight. Tolvis followed, and
there they were, the three of them in an empty darkness. The walls curved around to each side of them, following the shape of the rauk. From the outside they’d looked taller than they were.
Two small towers rose from the walls, each with a sentry on top. The walls and the towers wrapped the space around the monastery itself, a stone longhouse with a steep leaded roof and that was all.
Small and shabby. Gallow had expected something grander.

The sentries on the towers and on the walls were all looking towards the bridge. So far the three Lhosir hadn’t been seen.

‘Right then.’ Tolvis squinted across the yard. ‘That was so easy that One-Eye here might possibly still be asleep.’ He frowned. Close by stood a pile of wood, a beacon
carefully prepared and ready to be lit. ‘So now what? One-Eye shakes the ground with one of his farts and then while the islanders are screaming in horror and choking to death, you and I see
if we can hold our breath long enough to get the gates open? Either of you got any idea how many people are actually in this place? Not that I suppose you care, eh?’

Jyrdas grabbed him round the throat and snarled, ‘The sentries, piss-pot boy. We cut their scrawny necks.’

‘Really?’ Tolvis blinked as Jyrdas let him go. ‘Well, I suppose. If you say so, but I thought my way sounded easier. Painful as it is to say, One-Eye, but after sharing a ship
with you, I think you underestimate your prowess.’

G
allow pulled them apart. Jyrdas took his axe off his belt and hefted it. He aimed at the sentry on the closer tower. Gallow caught his wrist.
‘Even the Screambreaker couldn’t fell a man from this distance, One-Eye.’

‘In my prime I would have split his skull.’

‘In your prime you had more eyes!’ hissed Tolvis.

Jyrdas glowered, but he lowered the axe and crept toward the tower instead. Gallow watched him go and then turned his eyes to the one on the other side of the rauk. With Tolvis close behind, he
sidled along the wall until he could see the gates past the dark bulk of the monastery. Torches lit the yard around them and he could see men moving there, maybe a dozen or so split between the
yard and the walls. The shouting had died down, as though the Lhosir outside had given up and gone to their beds.

When he pushed gently at the tower door it swung open onto a spiral stair. Gallow climbed in silence to a small round room, empty except for a handful of crossbows hung from pegs and a ladder to
the roof. He put a finger to his lips and handed Tolvis the sword and axe from his belt, then inched up the ladder until the cool sea breeze touched his head and his eyes emerged back into the
night. The sentry was looking the other way and Gallow didn’t hesitate: he grabbed the islander’s ankles and pulled hard, falling down the ladder and into the guardroom and taking the
sentry with him. The islander let out a squawk. His arms flew out as the rest of him flew back, his face smacked into the stone roof, he fell down the ladder and the back of his head hit the floor
below. He might have been dead from that, but in case he wasn’t, Tolvis jumped on him and twisted his neck until it snapped.

Gallow climbed up again. From the tower roof he could see the gates clearly, the bridge and Medrin’s bonfire dying slowly. There was no gatehouse, just the two squat stone columns that
held the gates. The gates themselves were barred, the sort of bars that would take two men to lift. And he was right: there were a dozen or so men in the yard and on the battlements, too many for
even Jyrdas to hold at bay while he and Tolvis opened the way for Medrin and the others.

He went back down and took a crossbow. ‘What we need is Gorrin or Durlak.’ They were a Marroc thing, crossbows, brought across the mountains by Aulian traders before they’d
vanished when their empire collapsed. The Screambreaker had looked down his nose at anyone who tried to learn the use of one; Medrin doubtless saw them differently.

Tolvis spat. ‘
Nioingr
weapons.’ Arrows were bad enough.

On the south side Jyrdas had silenced the other sentry. They watched across the darkness, waiting until they saw him slipping back along the wall. Tolvis’s lips twitched. ‘I hate to
say this and he surely wouldn’t thank me for mentioning it, but One-Eye was quite a good shot with one of these once. Back when he had both eyes.’

Jyrdas climbed up through the tower. His eye gleamed at Gallow in the starlight. ‘Managed to keep Loudmouth quiet enough not to give yourselves away, eh? That must be a first. So,
here’s what I say: stuff Twelvefingers. Half the islanders are out at the gate and the other half must be asleep. I say we slip into the monastery and find their shield and slip out again and
murder anyone who opens an eye to our passing.’

Gallow thrust a crossbow into One-Eye’s hands and picked up the fallen sentry’s shield and helm. They made him feel whole again. ‘We open the gates,’ he said.
‘That’s what we came to do.’

Jyrdas gave him a long hard look, then shrugged and nodded. He looked past Gallow at the crossbows still hanging on the wall. ‘All right then. So we load them all up. You and I get as
close as we can. Loudmouth stands at the top of the tower and starts shooting. When they all start running around like frightened chickens, we throw the gates open. Anyone comes after us, Loudmouth
does for them.’

‘Which is fine enough,’ agreed Tolvis, ‘except I can’t hit a barn door with one of these things.’ He winked at Gallow. ‘Mind you, I have got two eyes, so at
least when I shoot at something there’s a chance of the arrow at least going in the right
sort
of direction. So yes, probably best I take them.’

‘Give me those!’ Jyrdas pushed past Gallow into the tower and started cocking the crossbows. Gallow and Tolvis slipped out into the darkness of the yard. They hugged the wall,
keeping in its shadows. The half-moon was heading towards the horizon now but the clouds were breaking apart and the stars were many.

‘Knowing that I’m about to trust my life to a one-eyed archer, I think I’d rather have gone with Twelvefingers’ plan too.’ Tolvis still had Gallow’s sword.
Gallow loosened his axe. A small bonfire burned in the middle of the yard behind the gates. A cauldron hung over it and Gallow caught a whiff of boiling pitch.

‘A javelin or two would be nice.’ Gallow counted the islanders again. Four down in the yard, two of them tending the fire, the other two by the gate pacing back and forth and looking
bored. Eight or nine up on the battlements, but there were wooden steps down from either side of the gates and the men up there would be down them quick enough when the fighting started. He
wondered whether he and Tolvis could simply walk out into the yard and how far they’d get before anyone realised they were Lhosir. Gallow had a sentry’s helm and shield. It was dark.
They’d know Tolvis for what he was as soon as they saw his forked beard, but they wouldn’t know
him.
Not until he spoke. Which just might be enough. He risked a glance back at
Jyrdas’s tower. ‘Your one eye had better be a good one,’ he muttered. And then to Tolvis, ‘Stay here and follow my lead.’

He walked out into the open towards the flames in the middle of the yard and the two men beside the fire. They glanced at him as he came up to them, but it took a moment for the nearest to
realise that under the helm was someone he didn’t know.

‘Reidas?’

Gallow picked up a burning brand from the fire. He nodded and grunted and shrugged.

‘Reidas?’ The islander was reaching for his sword. The other one had turned and cocked his head, trying to understand what was going on. Then a crossbow bolt hit him in the chest. He
staggered back with a grunt and fell. ‘Luonatta!’ shouted the man in front of Gallow. ‘They’re inside!’ He drew his sword but too late: Gallow gave the cauldron over
the fire a mighty kick towards the nearer steps up to the battlements. The cauldron wobbled and toppled. Burning hot pitch spewed across the yard and he threw the burning brand into it. Flames
jumped across the stones as he ran for the other stairs. The islander who’d sounded the alarm came after him with his sword and then stopped short and slumped, another crossbow bolt in his
back. Gallow raced to the steps. He whipped his axe from his belt and swung at them. The two soldiers by the gates saw him too late. His axe split one of the wooden supports clean in two and a
solid kick brought the whole lot crashing down.

‘Maker-Devourer!’ he yelled. Two on two in the yard, now
that
was better. The islanders on the battlements now either had to jump down with their mail and shields or walk
through fire. Enough to slow them and Jyrdas would be shooting at them. He bellowed and ran at the nearest gate guard, hooking the man’s shield with his axe and then slicing at his neck. The
islander jumped out of the way and straight into his fellow, tripping him up, and then Tolvis was there to split the man’s skull while Gallow stamped on the second soldier’s arm,
snapping it. His axe finished the job, smashed into the man’s face.

Tolvis looked at the axe in his hand and held it up to the moonlight. ‘Nice edge you keep on this,’ he said. ‘Six Vathen was it?’ They ran to the gate. Someone on the
battlement screamed and fell. Gallow remembered six crossbows hanging in the sentry tower. The first three had all counted and the other three had to count too. For a moment, though, they were the
only ones alive beside the gate. The smoke from the burning pitch swirled around them, choking. Three bars held the gates closed. They reached for the top one.

‘It would be helpful just about now,’ roared Tolvis, ‘if Medrin and the rest of them came hollering across the bridge.’

Two islanders ran down the burning steps, yelling and shouting through the flames, waving their swords. Gallow and Tolvis heaved the beam from the door at them, staggering one and pinning the
other. The trapped islander screamed as the flames licked through his mail. The other one died with Jyrdas’s next arrow in his back. Tolvis shook his fist at the tower. ‘Don’t
waste them, you one-eyed clod!’

They lifted the second bar out. The men from the other battlement were jumping down now, the danger of a broken ankle less than the danger if the gates fell. Another islander howled as
Jyrdas’s fifth bolt took him in the leg. Two more came at Gallow. He turned to face them but Tolvis jumped in the way.

‘You’re the one with the arms of a smith! Get the last bar!’ He launched himself at the two islanders with such savagery that for a moment they backed away. Gallow took a deep
breath and grabbed the beam and heaved. Damn thing was as heavy as a man and it was stuck. Behind him Tolvis was howling away: ‘Take your time, Truesword. These two aren’t much sport
but I’ll have another couple in a moment and I’d hate for that opportunity to go to waste!’

With one last savage effort he lifted the beam away. He turned to drop it and stared straight at another islander who’d jumped through the flames on the stairs. A crossbow bolt flew
between them, inches from Gallow’s face and buried itself in the gate. For an instant they looked at each other, then the islander brought down his axe and Gallow did the only thing he could:
he lifted the beam to put it in the way. The axe bit into the wood and stuck. Gallow dropped the beam on the islander’s foot and kicked the gates open.

The bridge was empty. Medrin and the others who should have been hammering to get in weren’t there. Gallow whipped out his axe and hacked the islander who’d come at him, severing his
wrist. Tolvis was facing three now and there were more coming. Gallow ran to him. They stood back to back.

‘Medrin!’ he roared. ‘Now or never, Twelvefingers!’

The three islanders circled them. Two more, the last from the battlements and the one with the arrow in his leg, came warily closer then stopped where they stood, looked at Gallow and Tolvis,
and went for the gate instead. The monastery doors were open now and more islanders were running out from inside, half-mailed, helms askew, grim-faced.

‘Medrin!’ They’d never get it open again. But two men side by side could hold the gateway. For a while. If they could get to it. Gallow let out a cry and launched himself at
the nearest islander, the one between him and the gate. The islander met him, took Gallow’s axe on his shield and stabbed back, forcing Gallow sideways. A second islander lunged, slicing
across his mail, driving him even further away from the gate. The men from the monastery were flooding the yard now, surrounding him and Tolvis. The islanders by the gate had it closed and now they
were trying to lift one of the beams back into place. Another, a huge brute of a man, was running along the battlements to help.

Back to back, he and Tolvis held their ground, a dozen men around them now. Here was where he was going to die. Medrin had betrayed them.

I’m sorry, Arda.

‘Come on then!’ The huge brute from the battlements jumped down to the gates, swinging steel and bellowing. Jyrdas!

The gates swung open again. Jyrdas stood between them, towering over everything, an axe in each hand and dead islanders all around him. And there, finally, at the other end of the bridge was
Medrin, the other Lhosir yelling and waving their spears and their swords and their shields and charging across the bridge. The men around Gallow backed away, wavered, then as one turned and ran
towards the monastery and its flimsy doors. Jyrdas came screaming past, chasing them, and then the yard was filled with Lhosir, all shouting in triumph, and Tolvis had Medrin by the throat.