The Crimson Shield (38 page)
‘You were a friend, were you?’ she asked. ‘Or did you loot his body?’ But not that, or why come all this way to hand her a bag of silver? Yes, and she could see
she’d insulted him. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. Probably the first time she’d ever said sorry to a forkbeard.
He told her about Gallow and how it was his fault that Gallow hadn’t come home, and of the crossing of the sea and the Crimson Shield and the fight with the Vathen and then in Andhun and
what he’d done and how he’d finally come to his end.
‘You were in his thoughts.’ Tolvis had a distant look in his eyes. ‘Always. That was always what he wanted just as soon as he’d made everything right. To come back to
you.’
‘Bloody idiot didn’t though, did he?’ Stupid eyes watering again. Stupid mountain air. ‘So he died thinking it was me then, did he? Who gave him away to the
Vathen?’ Almost more than anything else, that was what she couldn’t bear.
‘The Screambreaker told him otherwise.’ Tolvis smiled. Or tried to, as best his ruined face would let him. ‘And Gallow believed him. And I’ll not ask.’
She couldn’t stop the tears. Had to look away. ‘Bloody idiot,’ she said again.
‘Not the only idiot either.’ Tolvis laughed and shook his head. ‘Well I didn’t have anything better to do, what with Medrin’s men taking the only ship we had and
leaving us on the beach and the Vathen hunting all over for us. So I went back. Last place they’d look. They were all a bit mad, mind you, on account of some crazy Marroc managing to fire the
bridge across the Isset. The air stank of fish oil for days, but I think it was the bridge collapsing into the river that upset them rather than the smell.’ He sighed and a perplexed look
furrowed his face. ‘They searched the beach for Gallow’s body, you know, and for the sword too. I watched while they waited for the tide to go right out. They searched and searched,
then and every low tide since, and for all I know they’re searching still.’ He grinned. ‘Man jumps off a fifty-foot cliff into the sea in mail, he generally sinks right quick to
the bottom by my reckoning. Same goes for swords. But they never found him and they never found Solace. The sea took them. Took him away and maybe washed him up somewhere and maybe
didn’t.’
He got up and she let him go, but when he was at the door and the wretched mountain air had stopped blurring everything for a moment she told him he could stay if he wanted. It was a long
journey he’d come, and Varyxhun was a bit full of Marroc running from the Vathen just now, and he’d pay far more than he ought for a place to sleep, if a forkbeard could find a place at
all, and that was hardly fair considering why he’d come. And the Lhosir Tolvis, he said well maybe, because he could do with a couple of days without there being Vathen in the morning and
Marroc in the afternoon and brigands in between and all of them trying to kill him.
‘Forkbeard wants it easy?’ she mocked.
‘Yes,’ said Tolvis without any bitterness but maybe a touch of the wistful. ‘Sometimes a forkbeard does.’
Pug-ugly scar
though she thought to herself when he went to get his horse. But she was smiling as she thought it, and that was good, because there hadn’t been any smiles for a
while.
And Tolvis Loudmouth stayed, for a while at least. After all, the Vathen still hadn’t crossed the Isset and likely wouldn’t for a while now, so he was hardly going
to miss anything. But mostly he stayed because he could have sworn that the very last time he’d looked back as he’d run from the hail of Vathan spears and arrows, he’d caught a
glimpse of a boat amid the waves and some old Lhosir soldier hauling something big and heavy out of the water.
Or maybe that had just been wishful thinking, because the next time he looked the boat had been gone. But yes, he stayed a while in Varyxhun just in case, because if Gallow Truesword
wasn’t drowned after all then sooner or later this was where he’d show his face.
T
he gods had sent Oribas away from his home, out to the edge of this ocean of sand where it met the sea at the far fringes of what the Aulians had
once called their own. They were mocking him for the audacity of asking for their help but he’d come anyway because he had nowhere else to go. He’d not expected to find anything except
perhaps a snake with a novel poison or else a slow death from thirst and hunger.
He stared along the beach. An hour ago he could have looked either way for miles along the flat sands and the barely restless waters and seen nothing, not a single thing. It had been like that
for days.
But now it wasn’t. He quickened his pace. Something was on the sand. Something large. A chest, perhaps, washed up by the sea and wrapped in seaweed.
Filled with the treasure of the
gods?
He laughed at himself. More likely it was the half-eaten corpse of some giant sea creature or a piece of a wrecked galley.
But it wasn’t either of these things. When he came closer it was a man. Two arms, two legs. Surely dead so not much use, but wrapped in armour of metal rings. Maybe he had a use for that?
The man was clinging to the remains of a mast or tree trunk, his arms still wrapped tight around it. He was lying on a shield and his hand was clenched tight around something that hung from his
neck.
Oribas rolled the man over and his eyes grew wide. As well as his shield the man was clutching a sword. A strange dark reddish steel, unusual but a fine weapon. Oribas reached down to take
it.
Under the bright desert sun the man’s eyes flicked open.
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 it, 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 work, 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.
Thank you too for reading this. As always, if you liked this story, please tell others who might like it too.
Gallow: The Crimson Shield
Gallow: Cold Redemption
Gallow: The Last Bastion
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 eBook first published in 2013 by Gollancz.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 0 575 11509 5
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