The Crimson Shield Read Free Page B

sea. Some of these Marroc ideas were taking root
and a dozen and more winters have passed since then. Was it all different when you went back? Is that why you sailed again? Or was it simply too hard to resist? One last glorious stand. A battle
you couldn’t possibly win. A hero’s death for a hero’s life.’
    He shifted the Screambreaker closer to the fire and settled down on the other side, gazing up at the stars. ‘We weren’t all that far from here when we last parted. Andhun opened its
gates to us, do you remember? You gave your word not to plunder it. We honoured that. By then we just wanted to go home, to get back across the sea and eat proper food again. Drink water that
tasted of mountain ice and marry some big-boned woman who’d bear us lots of sons and sleep in a longhouse with all our kin and not in those stinking Marroc huts. That sort of thing. We talked
about it all the time in those last weeks. Was it all there waiting for you just as we remembered it? It must have gone well enough for you and the others, what with bringing old Yurlak home and
every ship laden with loot and plunder. But I can’t say it’s been too bad here.’
    The Screambreaker moaned and shifted, still wandering the Herenian Marches where the lost spirits of those neither alive nor dead were cursed to dwell, spirits like the Aulian shadewalkers.
Gallow patted his hand. ‘I wasn’t going to stay. I was as eager as the rest of you. But then Yurlak fell ill and everyone was sure he was going to die before you reached home and Medrin
would be king in his place. I’m not so fond of Medrin. So I got to thinking that maybe I’d stay and I watched you all go, ship by ship. You took Yurlak back across the sea so he could
die in his own house and among his own people, only then he went and didn’t die after all. If I’d still been in Andhun, I’d have come home when I heard but, as you see, I never
did. I left. Back to the mountains and the giant trees of Varyxhun. I was going to cross the Aulian Way. Go south, to lands we can hardly name, but on my way I found a forge and an old smith who
needed a strong arm to work it, and one of his three dead sons had left a wife behind him and a girl he likely never saw. It was us who left her a widow, us who took the old man’s sons, so I
won’t say they were happy with having a forkbeard around the place. But it felt good to be making things again. I wonder if you can understand that.’ He took a deep breath and touched
his hand to his chest, to the place where the locket lay next to his skin. ‘I took a lock of her hair while she was sleeping. A little luck to carry into battle. I know what you’d say
about that, old man. Laugh and scoff and tell me I was daft in the head, tell me that a man’s fate is written for him before he’s born. But here we are, so perhaps it worked, in its
way. No one would have her, see, because she was another man’s wife and she came with another man’s child to feed when both men and food were scarce, and she was . . . Screambreaker,
you’ll understand if you meet her. The Marroc prefer their women a little more docile.’ He rose and looked up at the stars. ‘A fine woman, Screambreaker. We have two sons of our
own now, and another daughter. You’ll like her if you last long enough to see her. Fierce and speaks her mind as often as she likes and doesn’t give a rat’s arse what anyone else
thinks. She won’t like
you
, sorry to say. Not one bit. Arda. That’s her name.’
    He lay down beside the fire and pulled his cloak over himself. ‘Maker-Devourer watch over you, old man. Don’t get yourself lost in the Marches. And don’t tell Arda about the
hair. I’d never hear the end of it.’
    Gallow closed his eyes. The Screambreaker was mumbling to himself. He hadn’t heard a word.

 
     
     
     
4
THE ARDSHAN
     
     
     
     
    G ulsukh Ardshan’s horse shifted beneath him, impatient to move. From where he sat, the battlefield