Free The Last Bastion by Nathan Hawke

looked at him. It stepped forward, almost into the doorway, and that was when Reddic remembered there were five more people in the house behind him and three of them were children.
    ‘Shadewalker!’ He slammed the door in its face and hurled himself against it. ‘Shadewalker! Stannic! By Modris! Get up! Run!’ He was screaming now, willing the others to get out of their beds and into their furs as fast as they possibly could. There wasn’t anything to do when a shadewalker came except run, every Marroc knew that. Even the forkbeards didn’t try to fight them because they couldn’t be killed, and they couldn’t be killed because they were already dead. They wandered aimlessly, served no purpose. No one knew what they were or why, save that they came across the mountains from Aulia now and then,
    The door rattled. The shadewalker slammed into it hard enough to knock Reddic back a step. The Marroc were piling out of the night room, the children already wailing in fear. Stannic pulled on his boots and wrapped another furaround himself and picked up a hay fork. He threw open the other door and roared at everyone to get out. Against Reddic’s shoulder the door rattled again. The shadewalker pushed it open another inch.
    ‘I’ll hold it here as long as I can.’ Reddic wasn’t sure why he’d said that except that he was the one holding the door closed and no one was helping him and so he was pretty much stuck with it and never mind how much he wanted to piss himself and sink to the floor. Stannic was still throwing cloaks and furs and blankets to his wife and his children. Reddic’s feet slipped back. A gap opened wide enough for a finger to slip through and then for two and then three, and that was when he turned and let go, and Stannic was out the other door a step ahead, still carrying armfuls of furs. Stannic ran, glancing over his shoulder now and then, while Reddic shot past them all, legs pumping as hard as they’d go, flailing and floundering in the snow. After a minute he stopped to catch his breath. When Stannic’s wife caught him, gasping with her children pecking at her heels, Stannic snapped at them all to wait. He stood and stared back at the farm and at the tracks they’d left behind them in the snow. The shadewalker was following, out in the open now, walking fast and steady, clear as anything.
    Stannic stared at it as he handed out the furs, then met Reddic’s eye. ‘Not the first time I’ve had to run from a shadewalker and probably won’t be the last. They’re not so quick and they don’t run but they don’t give up easy neither, and they don’t feel the cold. Follow us until sunrise, this one, most likely, and pick off whoever drops. So we go steady, quick as we can but slow enough we don’t have to stop much, and we keep warm, and we don’t leave anyone behind. I’ll take the front, you take the back. Keep your eyes on it, lad, and if the cold bites too hard, you shout for help and I’ll come.’ He slapped Reddic on the shoulder. ‘You did good, lad. Held it back long enough so we got what we need.Modris walks with us and we’ll all live to see the sun again.’ The shadewalker was getting closer. Stannic set off. ‘Shout to me, lad, if it gets too close.’
    Sometimes Reddic forgot he wasn’t many years from being boy. Others he felt it sharp as an Aulian knife.

7
    MIRRAHJ
    ‘F orkbeard king’s on the move.’ Gallow woke up slumped over the back of a horse. The ground was right in front of him, swaying from side to side, lurching up and down with the animal’s gait. He flinched. His hands were tied behind his back, his ankles bound together and the whole of him lashed tight to the saddle beneath. His head throbbed. Bits and pieces of Vathan conversation drifted over him. ‘Where?’ ‘Somewhere down south.’ He tried to remember what had happened the night before. Trouble. Fighting. He’d been drunk. Marroc running and screaming and men on horses . . . Vathen. And then