The Crimson Shield (35 page)

The Screambreaker’s men nodded grimly. Most of them had blood on their swords and on their mail now. Lhosir blood. Medrin might rail at them for killing their own kin, but these were men
who remembered how it was when Yurlak had first taken the throne, before the Screambreaker and the Marroc and crossing the sea.
How we used to fight and feud among ourselves. Like it was. The
old way.
Maybe they’d wait or maybe they’d just kill Medrin without him. Most of them had known the Screambreaker better than he had. Some of them had been in the wood with him but
there were some too who had fought beside the Screambreaker against the Vathen and watched him fall. Men who hadn’t died while Twelvefingers had stayed on the top of his hill, watching and
doing nothing – they had a grudge of their own to feed. Maybe they had spirited the Screambreaker’s body away. It felt right that someone had done that. A dozen men had seen him fall
and no one ever said he wasn’t dead, but this way it was the Maker-Devourer himself who’d come away from his cauldron for the old Nightmare of the North. Made for a good story. A
legend, even.

When he had Durlak in a corner out of the way, he crouched beside the dead man. ‘Durlak. Don’t know his father, don’t know his family, don’t have their roll of deeds to
lay out beside him. I don’t know what else he did in his life, fair or foul, but I was the one who fought him and I was the one who killed him, and I’ll say to any who’ll listen
that he faced me without fear, that he fought fiercely and that he died bravely. Maker-Devourer, I offer you this man for your cauldron for he will enrich it with his spirit.’ He screwed up
his eyes, growling at the pain from his cheek.

‘Tolvis?’

He looked up. A last pair of soldiers had come up the stairs. Stragglers from the fighting outside in the yard or at the gates perhaps. For a moment his eyes wouldn’t focus in the gloom.
He recognised the voice, though.

‘Gallow?’

Gallow looked down at Tolvis crouching over a dead Lhosir wearing a bracer that marked him as one of Medrin’s men. Loudmouth had blood all down the side of his face and
over his neck and shoulder. ‘You look a mess.’

Tolvis snorted then winced in pain. He stood. ‘Nothing that won’t heal, Truesword.’

‘What are you doing?’

‘And it’s good to see you too. And how was the battle for you and so on and so on? Finishing Medrin, that’s what.’

‘Where is he?’

Tolvis nodded towards the door that led to the duke’s chamber. ‘Hear all that ruckus? Take a guess. He’s got nowhere left to run.’

Gallow frowned, struggling to understand the mangled words that came out of Tolvis’s mouth. ‘I’d see someone about that mess of a face,’ he said and turned towards the
sounds of fighting.

‘Nothing like a good scar to add to my fine looks, eh?’

Tolvis stayed where he was. Gallow couldn’t make himself look any more. Wound like that didn’t kill you straight away, but more often than not it went bad and green and oozed pus and
rotted and then there was nothing to do but cut out whatever had gone bad. Not much to be done when it was a man’s face.
Maker-Devourer spare him that. Let it heal clean or give him a
good death first.

The old Marroc duke’s room wasn’t anything more than a big open space with a bed and a few hangings, a place for dressing, a hole in the corner for shitting and pissing, a table by
the window with a quill and ink, a chest and a few piles of furs on the floor. Medrin and the last of his Lhosir were backed into a corner. Three of them and the prince himself, though they were
far from finished. Medrin still had the Crimson Shield strapped to his arm, a short stabbing blade held high and ready over the top of it. A dozen or more Lhosir penned him in, holding him at bay.
They shouted at him while Medrin and his three bared their teeth and hurled back taunts and insults, challenging the Screambreaker’s men to come forward and finish what they’d
started.

‘Turn on your king? You’re outcasts already!
Nioingr
, all of you.’

‘Yield, traitor!’

‘You’ll be hunted to the end of the world. Kill me and my father will do it. Let me live and I’ll hunt you myself!’

‘You betrayed the Screambreaker!’

‘He fell in battle! He got what he wanted!’

Gallow pushed past them. As he did, he drew Solace from its sheath. ‘Yield, Medrin. End this. Go back across the sea and stay there. Say what you like about what happened here, just
don’t come back.’

‘Never, Foxbeard!’

‘Then go back in pieces.’ Gallow shrugged. ‘It’s all the same to me.’

He closed on the prince and Medrin backed away behind his men. Gallow smiled. ‘See. In the end you always were a coward.’

‘
Nioingr!
’ With sudden fury, Medrin leaped forward again, slamming the Crimson Shield into Gallow and lunging with his blade. The shock staggered Gallow, knocking him back
as though the shield had a strength of its own beyond Medrin’s arm. The prince’s blade eased past his guard and skimmed off his mail. ‘Die!’ Twelvefingers lunged again, high
this time at Gallow’s collar, their shields still pressed together. Gallow barely dodged aside while Medrin kept pushing forward. ‘You always had poison in your blood for me, you
sheep-loving clean-skin no-beard! Now I’ll let that poison out!’

With their shields locked together Medrin’s short thrusting blade had the advantage over the long edge of the red sword. Gallow raised Solace over his head and brought it down but Medrin
parried the blow with his own steel, keeping so close that Gallow could smell his breath. ‘Yes,’ said Gallow, ‘I have.’ With a mighty heave he threw Medrin back and for a
moment they stood apart, circling each other. ‘You led us to the Temple of Fates, Medrin, and you left us to the Fateguard.’

‘And were you any better?’ snarled Medrin. ‘You let Beyard die!’

‘
You
let us both die, you snivelling shit! “Hold them! I cannot be found here!” Do you remember those words as you ran? And we did hold them, Beyard and I, and at the
last he threw himself into them and screamed at me to run too and there was nothing else I could do! But I held your words in my heart and I’ve carried them with me for fourteen years, and
you haven’t changed at all.’

‘
Nioingr!
’ Medrin charged again. Gallow brought the red sword down. Medrin caught it on the Crimson Shield, and a shock ran through Gallow as though he’d been stung by
a spark from his father’s forge. His arm fell limp and the red sword hung from his fingers. For a moment his grip on his shield loosened.

Medrin’s blade lunged past, catching him on the shoulder, digging into the mail with enough force to split open its links. Gallow felt its point bite into him, scraping against bone. He
jerked away, stumbling back. The pain was staggering. Medrin bared his teeth and came at him again, slamming the Crimson Shield into him and lunging at Gallow’s face this time. Gallow could
barely hold his sword. His shield arm felt as weak as a child’s. He jumped back as Medrin’s edge sliced past his nose.

‘You wanted to fight me, clean-skin? You always did. So fight me!’ Gallow tried to grip Solace but his fingers were still numb. It was all he could do not to drop the sword. Medrin
slammed into him again and again, a lunge each time, pushing him back and back while Gallow’s shield arm grew weaker with every blow.

They parted for a moment. Medrin wore a vicious smile. ‘Now you know better than to strike this shield, but I’ll take that Vathan sword too. Yield, clean-skin. Yield and give me the
Edge of Sorrows and I’ll put it to fine use. Beyard was your friend? He was mine too and I’ve not forgotten his fate. Give me that sword and I’ll have revenge for both of
us.’ He took another step back. ‘We’ll do it together. I’ll even spare the rest of these men. They’ll be outcasts but I’ll let them run a few days before I hang
them as ravens over their own houses. Yield, clean-skin!’

Gallow shook his head. He let go of his shield and let it slip off his arm and crash to the floor. ‘No.’ When he tried to lift the red sword, his arm twitched and refused.

Medrin shrugged. ‘Look at you. Raise your blade at least before I finish you!’

‘Take me if you can, demon-prince.’

‘So be it. And then the rest of you will follow, and then I will take that sword you carry and settle what we started all those years ago.’ He launched himself again, as he had
before, each time always the same, the shield to batter his enemy down and the stabbing lunge over the top. Gallow pulled the red sword out of his one hand and into the other, threw himself
sideways and swung as Medrin passed. The prince screamed. Something clattered on the floor. When Gallow staggered back to look at what he’d done, Medrin was hugging his arm to his side. Blood
ran down his mail. His sword lay on the floor and the hand that had held it still gripped its hilt.

‘No! No!’ he screamed at Gallow. ‘
No!
What have you done to me?’

Gallow turned to face him. He held the Sword of the Weeping God out straight before him. ‘The sword against the shield, Medrin? Or do you yield?’

‘Kill him,’ shouted Loudmouth from behind the rest of his men. ‘Finish him properly. Let him end well at least.’

Medrin lowered the Crimson Shield. His face was filled with murder and hate. ‘Yes, Foxbeard. Give me that at least. Let me die as a Lhosir should die. It’s what your precious
Screambreaker would have done.’ He had his own blood all over him. He was already pale.

Gallow nodded. He lowered Solace. ‘He would. But I’m wondering, Prince Sixfingers, what
you
would have done.’

T
he Vathen reached Andhun and attacked. The Lhosir saw them coming and tried to close the gates but they were too late and Gulsukh and his horsemen
were too quick. A hundred were inside before the Lhosir could form a wall of shields. It hung in the balance for a minute but that was all, and then Gulsukh and his riders broke the Lhosir. He
called his bashars to him as they came through the gates and gave them their orders. Two hundred to stay here, to hold the gates and tear them down so they couldn’t be closed again. Another
hundred to ride back out after the Vathan clans retreating across the countryside, to tell them they didn’t need the Weeping Giant and his god-touched sword, that Gulsukh had broken the
Lhosir without either and that Andhun lay helpless and waiting for them. Others he sent down towards the Isset to take the bridge and hold it against any who would try to destroy it, and to the
docks and to the harbour to find the Lhosir soldiers and the Marroc and kill them, but above all to stop them from leaving in their ships.

Some he took himself, up the hill from the gate towards the castle, where surely whoever commanded this city would be waiting for him.

Valaric’s spear point rammed into a Lhosir collarbone and stuck tight. The forkbeard snatched at it and roared, pulling it with such force that Valaric had to let go or
be pulled off the barricade. He switched to his axe until that stuck in a shield and was wrenched out of his hand. He drew his sword and fought on, kept hitting them but achieving nothing much,
while all around him the Marroc were dying.
Damn them – why did they all wear armour? Where did they get such mail, so many swords?
But he knew the answer to that. They’d taken
it from all the Marroc they’d killed for the last fifteen years. Iron and steel were cheap to the forkbeards, they had so much.

A Marroc fell at the far end of the barricade, blood gushing from an arm severed at the elbow. A forkbeard pulled himself up before anyone could take the dead man’s place. Valaric swore
and shouted and then realised there wasn’t anyone left. The forkbeard swung his axe and caved in the skull of another Marroc and then jumped down, howling and chopping left and right. Valaric
swung down behind him and stabbed him in the back of the head. He tried to climb back up before another forkbeard could get over the barricade but his legs failed him. There was no strength there
any more. His arms could barely hold his sword and shield. He gritted his teeth and hauled himself back up anyway. Most of the Marroc he’d led here were dead. Sarvic was still up, Jonnic too.
And the rest . . . the rest were ordinary men who just didn’t want to see their homes go up in flames.

‘Enough!’ he shouted. He looked at Sarvic and Jonnic.
We’re the ones with mail. We hold them long enough for the others to get away.
He simply didn’t have the
energy to say that but he didn’t need to. A look was enough.

Jonnic nodded. Sarvic looked at him too but his was a different look. His was
Look, Valaric, look!

Behind the forkbeards at the end of the street, men on horseback were coming. Soldiers. A mass of them. Valaric had no idea who they were but they didn’t look like forkbeards and they
weren’t dismounting as Marroc soldiers would. The forkbeards had noticed too and had started to turn.

Vathen!

The Vathen drew back their arms. Javelots rained on Lhosir and Marroc alike.

‘What would you have done?’ Gallow said again.

‘Put an end to it,’ slurred Tolvis. He sounded as though he was talking with his mouth stuffed full of food.

‘No.’ As Medrin slumped against a wall and the Crimson Shield fell from his other arm, Gallow stood over him. He closed his eyes for a moment at another wave of pain from his
shoulder. The feeling in his sword arm was coming back and it was like being stabbed by a thousand needles. He sat Medrin up, lifted his arm, wrapped a belt around his severed wrist and squeezed it
tighter and tighter until the bleeding stopped. ‘Pitch?’ he asked. ‘Is there any?’

The last three of Medrin’s men looked uneasily from one to the other. The others shook their heads.

‘Fire? Torches?’

The prince was breathing too quickly. He was pale as death now, his eyes barely open. Tolvis stood watching. ‘First you try to kill him, now you’re trying to save him. Why,
Truesword? So you can hang him beside the gates for the Marroc to see, the way he used to do to them? I’ll not have that. I might turn my back if anyone speaks him out but I’ll not have
a prince of the sea strung up like that. Yurlak’s son? No. Put an axe in his hand and kill him properly.’ Behind him Medrin’s men were surrendering their swords.